Sabeena’s shoes were all I had of her, and they were the most precious things I owned. They reminded me that it had all really happened.
I had died with Colin on the killing field.
It was Sabeena who had gotten me off the ground and into the helicopter. Jimmy Wuster told me that she had decompressed my lungs with a needle while we were in the air and literally brought me back to life.
She had assisted Dr. Wuster and Dr. Bailey in the O.R. at Kind Hands, where they did emergency meatball surgery. Then she had gone with me to the airport in Entebbe and had handed me off to an in-flight nurse for my trip to a hospital in Amsterdam.
I imagine survival odds were small.
That was six weeks ago. I hadn’t seen or heard from Sabeena. Was she alive or dead? Had she been able to rescue Jemilla and Aziza when our hospital had been shut down?
And what was I to do now? I could not imagine ever working as a doctor again. And I no longer believed that if there was a god, he was good.
Chapter 25
MY DRIVER looked at me in the rearview mirror.
He said, “La signorina, dovrei prendere da un medico?”
He was asking if he should take me to a doctor. I felt more lost and more vulnerable than I had in my life. I could only tell this stranger the truth.
“Sono un medico. I am a doctor,” I told him. “I’ve been in a war zone in Africa. A lot of people died. I lost a man I loved to this war, and I had to leave people I loved behind.”
The man’s face reflected my pain.
Horns blared. He swerved the car, got us back on track. We were on a broad avenue, Piazza del Colosseo. The Colosseum was on my right, ancient, crumbling, and at the same time still standing after thousands of years. I barely glanced at it.
We turned onto Ponte Testaccio and were crossing the bridge over the Tiber when a gang of motor scooters came up from behind. As they passed us, their loud, popping motors shot me back to the slaughter in South Sudan.
The driver was looking into the glass, watching me hunch down and cling to the corner of the backseat.
“Were you hurt?” he asked in Italian.
I nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Rome will be good to you.”
The cab slowed as we entered the section of Rome called Trastevere, which means “beyond the Tiber.” He turned onto a narrow street that was laid with cobblestones and lined with low, pastel-colored buildings. It was sweet and beautiful, like an old, hand-tinted picture postcard.
He stopped the cab in front of a three-story building the color of peaches, with ivy clinging to the walls and a tile with the number 23 painted in cobalt blue.
I pulled a wad of euros from my handbag, but my driver refused the fare.
“Be well,” he said. He unhooked the rosary from the mirror and bunched it into my hand exactly the way Nick Givens had with his dog tags. I couldn’t say no, so I said, “Grazie. I’ll keep it with me.”
He nodded and smiled and took my luggage from the trunk and set it down at the feet of a row of potted plants.
“Go with God,” he said.
“And you.”
A voice called out to me from above.
“Brigid. Brigid, up here. Oh, my God. I’m so glad to see your face.”
Chapter 26
TORI HEWITT was calling down to me from a window on the third floor. The open shutters perfectly framed the sunny face of my dear friend from medical school, who was leaning out over the street. I hadn’t seen Tori in two years, and she looked fresh and healthy and beautiful.
“I’m coming down!” she shouted.
A moment later she burst through the door with her arms open wide and pulled me into a hug that I needed more than she could possibly have known.
She asked me a million questions as she grabbed my battered bag and led me through an archway to the main entrance and the interior stairs to the apartment where she lived with her husband, Marty.
“How are you feeling, Brigid? Are you famished? I’ll bet you are. Did you have trouble finding us?”
The apartment was extraordinary. The high ceilings were made of beamed antique wood. The floors were made of terra cotta tiles, and the enormous windows let in brilliant light.
I stared at the fruit-colored upholstered furniture and the kitchen that was made for cooking as though I had never been inside a home before.
“What can I get you, Brigid, my dear friend?”
“A hot shower?”
“Done,” said Tori. “And if you don’t mind, I want to take a look at you.”
We were inside a shining, white-tiled bathroom. Tori turned on the shower, and as I undressed, she took away my clothes, clucking her tongue as I gave her a bit of a guided tour.
“One bullet went in here,” I said, pointing to the scar in my belly. “It went through my spleen and left lung and exited in my back.”
“It was the splenic trauma you had to worry about,” said my friend the doctor.
“Yeah. It’s good, though. They got to me quick in the O.R.”
“And the lung?”
“Collapsed. My friend decompressed it in the chopper. I lost a lobe, but no big deal. I lost blood flow to my brain for a while. But I’m good now.”
“You had neurological workups, right?” Tori asked me.
I nodded. “Yep.”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“What are fingers?” I asked.
Tori burst out laughing, and I had a laugh, too; it felt like the first time in my life. I showed off the scars over the plates in my right arm, which had been shattered in three places, and then I said, “That’s all I’ve got.”
“That’s plenty,” said Tori.
I hadn’t seen a mirror in a long time, and now I stared at myself in the prettily etched mirror over the sink. My red hair looked like a dead shrub. My skin was brown, and my cheekbones were sharp. My eyes had lost their innocence. I wouldn’t be getting that back.
Tori put a fluffy white bath sheet on the toilet seat and said, “I’m going to help you in.”
She gave me her arm to grasp as I stepped over the side of the tub and into the hot spray.
“Good?” she asked.
“Good” couldn’t begin to describe it. “Blissful.”
“Try this lavender shampoo, Brigid. It’s my favorite. And use the conditioner. I’m going to sit here, okay?”
She was making sure that I wouldn’t slip on the porcelain and reinjure myself. Her tenderness made tears well up. I couldn’t take it.
“You know what, Tori?” I said as the hot water streamed down my body.
“What, Brigid? What do you need?”
“I would love a very milky coffee with sugar.”
“Sit down in the tub. Here.”
She unhooked the showerhead on its long, snaky cord and put it in my good hand. “Sit down. That’s right. I’ll be back to help you out of there. Coffee’s coming right up.”
Chapter 27
TORI AND Marty Hewitt were more of a family to me than my own.
Still, I felt alone.
I stayed in their apartment for a full week without going outside. I craved the quiet and the solitude and the security of the large, old rooms. Some days went by as if I were gently riffling through the pages of a book. But the nights were bad. I had violent dreams, physical pain, and regret that I had lost my way.
Tori and Marty worked long days at the Rome American Hospital, and while they worked, I made notes in a journal. I brushed up on my Italian, cleaned up around the house, and read. Falling asleep on a velvet-covered sofa with a peach in my hand and an open book across my chest was a delight beyond anything I could have imagined a few months ago.
On this particular day, I was having a nap on the sofa before dinner when I woke up to footsteps on the stairs and the sound of masculine laughter.
The front door opened, and Marty Hewitt came in carrying a case of wine. He was followed by a tall, dark-haired man, also in his twenties. I wasn’t so burned out that I didn’t notice how good looking he was.