When Ana called, Kate left the crowd gathered around the TV to get some privacy.
“How are you?” Ana asked, her voice scratching over the cell connection.
I’ve been shot. “I’m okay,” Kate said instead.
“You’re lying,” Ana said, a little too flatly for it to be a joke.
“Well, so are you.” Both women sighed, unable to explain how much they were really hurting. “Have you been watching the news at all?”
“Haven’t had time,” Ana said. “Not sure I want to. I take it things aren’t going well.”
“They could be worse. We haven’t lost anyone yet.” Then Kate wished she hadn’t said it. It was such a close thing.
“Same here. We got through Harriet, but there’s a second hurricane on the way. Category five this time.”
When it rained, it poured. And that was a really bad joke.
“Are you getting any rest at all?” Kate said.
Ana sighed. “I’m doing okay.”
“No, Ana, you’re not. I’m ten thousand miles away and I can hear that you aren’t.”
“I swear, you’re as bad as John with the overprotective thing,” Ana said, as frustrated as Kate had ever heard her. Kate didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m a big girl, Kate. You worry about your own skin, okay?”
Her own skin, with its gunshot wound and eight stitches.
“Okay,” she said weakly.
“I have to get going,” Ana said with new urgency. “Chopper’s here to take me across the lake.” It must have been midmorning in New Orleans. Ana was just getting started.
“Be careful.”
“You, too. See you later.” She clicked off.
Kate tried not to worry about what was happening on the other side of the world. Too much worry, in too many places. She returned to her room, sitting in the dark, on her cot, in sweatpants and sports bra, curling her left arm protectively to her body.
She didn’t know what to do. What the fuck were they going to do?
A brief breeze, maybe a second of whooshing air, passed through the room, like a draft through an open tent flap.
Lilith swept back her arm, flourishing her cape. Beside her stood John.
Her first thought: she didn’t want John to see her like this, hurt and defeated. Her second: Lilith told him. The bitch. But she forgot all that when John knelt by her cot and pulled her into his arms. He didn’t look a whole lot better than she felt. His face was ashen, almost sickly, his eyes bloodshot. She could smell soot and gunpowder ground into this clothing.
“Are you okay?” they asked each other at the same time.
She hugged him as tight as she could with one arm. “I’m okay, John.”
He pulled away to look at her, cupping her face in his hands, smoothing back her hair. “Kate. You were shot.”
“Grazed. Just a few stitches. Left arm, even. I can still throw.”
“Kate—” His look darkened, and Kate braced. Here it came, he was going to try to yank her from the mission.
She tried to beat him to it. “John, we’re done here. We’re cooked. We need to pull out before something ridiculous happens.”
“Lilith says this was an isolated incident. One guy. A disgruntled worker lashing out.”
She almost laughed. “You can actually say that with a straight face? After what happened to Michael and Rusty? John, we’ve seen what’s happening here. These people don’t want us here. This is an invasion. Michael will tell you the same thing—”
“You’re siding with him now?”
She huffed. “God, what is it with you two?”
“It should have been me here. I shouldn’t have let him talk me into switching.”
“John, would you listen to me? It wouldn’t matter if you’d been here. It isn’t about you or him or me or who’s doing what. It’s this place. The situation here is totally fucked up and Jayewardene’s crazy if he thinks us being here is going to help anything. The UN needs trained diplomats on the ground here, not . . . not . . . a bunch of reality show rejects!”
John looked over his shoulder. Lohengrin was standing in the doorway.
“You lack faith,” the German ace said. He’d recovered from his bout of unconsciousness with no ill effects. Hard-headed, that one. “We’re symbols. Powerful symbols. Have faith.”
This wasn’t a game, she wanted to scream. This wasn’t a divine calling. And there wasn’t always going to be someone around to save your ass.
“Kate,” John said, somber. “We’re pulling out of Africa. The mission there’s a bust. Tom Weathers—he’s psychotic. Insane.” He shook his head, as if still trying to understand. “There’s nothing we can do there. Which makes it even more important that we do some good here.”
Recalling the spray of blood from the man she’d killed, she almost laughed at him. That was doing good?
Lilith cleared her throat. “Let’s leave these two to their little conversation, shall we?”
Predictably, Lohengrin seemed all too happy to leave with the British ace.
When they were gone, Kate touched John’s face and kissed him. He looked surprised. His brow—his marred, gem-embedded brow—furrowed. “You’re hurt.”
And if that was going to stop him, he lacked serious imagination.
“Sit with me,” she said, scooting back to give him room.
He did, shifting onto the cot. When he was settled, she curled up against him, pulling his arm around her shoulders, resting her head on his chest. Cocooned herself with him. He held her tightly, stroking her hair.
In spite of her plans, the painkillers and exhaustion conspired against her. Feeling safe for the first time in days, she slept.
Double Helix
GO UP INTO GILEAD, AND TAKE BALM
Melinda M. Snodgrass
SHE’S READING TO MY father—Lucky Jim, one of his favorite books for its vicious look at the British education system. Her voice is a low chuckle like the sound of water in a fast stream. Last night I slept in my own bed for ten straight hours. I had heard Dad moaning in the wee smalls, but when I’d gone to his room Niobe had been there before me, bathing his forehead with cool citrus water. They had both ordered me back to bed, and their air of command had been both charming and amusing. I allowed myself to be dictated to.
There’s the yeasty smell of toasting bread from the kitchen. Drake has discovered the joys of Nutella. He emerges into the hall holding seven slices slathered with the chocolate/hazelnut concoction in one hand and a large glass of milk in the other. My mouth is suddenly watering. I snag one of the slices.
“Hey!”
I smile down into his round, outraged face. “It’s nice to share.”
The blush dots his face with red splotches. “They’re not all for me. They’re for Niobe and your dad.” He shuffles a bit. “And me.”
“If you can get my father to eat one of those slices I will bless you.”
He scurries away and I follow at a more sedate pace. Mum is off at another conference in London. I know she’s sought after, but it’s starting to feel like she wants to miss the actual death, too. Maybe we are more alike than I realize. If she does come home I wonder what she’ll make of the guests.
Drake is alternating bites of toast with slurping sips of milk when I enter the bedroom. It seems that the counterpane covering my father lies a little flatter each day. Niobe kneels Japanese style on a pillow on the floor. It keeps the tail out of her way. I give her shoulder a grateful squeeze as I move past. My dad lifts his hand. I take it and kiss his forehead.
“Thank you, you’ve brought me the most delightful nurse and assistant.”
He smiles at Niobe and Drake, revealing crooked teeth, legacy of a lifetime of British dentistry. I wonder how he appears to her. Nothing remarkable, medium height, gray-brown hair, neither handsome nor ugly, a deeply lined face from a lifetime of invalidism, but, like Niobe, he has wonderful eyes. Niobe blushes. She looks rather adorable.