Страница 45 из 93
It is August. A Sunday morning. They have journeyed to Sanaya, a skeletal town on Jordan ’s eastern border with Iraq. It is a temporary assignment. Three days filling in for one of Emma’s colleagues who has been stricken with appendicitis. The work is pleasant, if undemanding. Colds. Infections. Minor cuts and bruises.
It is early and they lie side by side atop a flurry of tangled sheets. An open window brings a warm, fitful breeze and the chant of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Alone and undisturbed, they have rediscovered the habits of courtship, making love each morning, drifting back to sleep afterward, making love again.
Paris is forgotten. There are no headaches. No empty stares.
“Reading my mail?” Jonathan asks. “Find anything exciting?”
“You tell me.”
“A letter from my girlfriend in Finland?”
“You’ve never been to Finland.”
“A copy of Playboy?”
“Nope,” she says, sliding on top of him and sitting up. “You don’t need a girlie mag.”
“I give up,” says Jonathan, ru
“I’ll give you a hint: Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Her accent is atrocious. Paris by way of Penzance.
“We just did. At least, I think that qualifies.”
Emma shakes her head in exasperation. “Ah, oui, oui,” she continues. “Uh, je t’aime. Pepé le pew. Magnifique…”
“You love Pepé Le Pew? Now I know I married a nutcase.”
“Non, non. Fromage. Duck à l’orange. Pâtisserie.”
“Something French? You read my copy of the Guide Michelin?”
Emma claps her hands, her eyes bright. He is getting warmer. “Um… Croix-Rouge…Jean Calvin…Fondue,” she goes on, rambling merrily.
The lightbulb goes on inside Jonathan’s head. She’s talking about the letter from Doctors Without Borders. A curt note from his boss asking if he’ll accept a post at headquarters in Geneva. “Oh that.”
“‘Oh that’? Come on,” she says, falling onto the bed by his side. “You weren’t going to tell me? That’s great news.”
“Is it?”
“Let’s go. We’ve done our bit.”
“ Geneva? It’s admin. I’d be stuck behind a desk.”
“It’s a promotion. You’d be in charge of organizing all missions going into Africa and the Middle East.”
“I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to be with patients.”
“It’s not like it’s forever. Besides, it will do you good to have a change of pace.”
“ Geneva isn’t a change of pace. It’s a change of profession.”
“You’ll be seeing your work from a different side, that’s all. Think how much you’ll learn. Besides, you’ll look cute in a suit. Ever so handsome, I daresay.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Next thing I know, you’ll have me joining a country club and playing golf.”
“Aren’t doctors supposed to love golf?”
Jonathan fixes her with his serious gaze. He knows there’s something else.
Emma props herself up on an elbow. “There’s another reason.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to go. I’ve had enough of all this for a while. I want to eat at a restaurant with white tablecloths. I want to drink wine from clean glasses. Wine glasses. I want to put on makeup and wear a dress. Does that sound so odd?”
“You? A dress? Not possible.” Jonathan throws back the top sheet and climbs out of bed. This is not a discussion he wants to have. Now or ever. “Sorry, I don’t do admin.”
“Please,” says Emma. “Just consider it.”
Turning, he looks at his wife draped in the white cotton bedding. Her cheeks are raw and sunburned, strafed by constant exposure to sun and wind. Her auburn hair has gone from teased to tangled to just plain tortured. The cut on her chin is taking too long to heal.
Just consider it…
In Geneva, they’d have plenty of mornings like this. Time to lounge. Time not only to talk about starting a family, but to do something about it. And, of course, there’s the climbing. Chamonix, two hours’ drive to the north. The Berner Oberland, two hours to the east. The Dolomites to the south.
“Maybe,” he says, pulling back a curtain and staring across the hard, arid landscape. “But don’t get your hopes up.”
A loose assembly has gathered in front of the mosque for morning prayer. The men greet each other in the Arab fashion, a kiss to each cheek.
“You getting up?” he asks over his shoulder. “If you want, I can go out and get you some breakfast…”
It is then that he sees the car. A white sedan driving madly across the dirt. A car where no car should be. Plumes of dust spray from its tires as it rocks and rattles on the hardscrabble surface. Behind the windscreen, two silhouettes.
“Move,” he calls to the crowd, though his voice is only a whisper. Then louder. “Get out of the way! Move! Hurry!”
Helpless, he watches the car plow into the crowd, sending bodies flying. Screams. Gunshots. The car slams into a wall of the mosque, bricks and mortar toppling onto the hood. For a moment, silence. In his mind, he is counting…
A flash of light.
A garish pulse that sears his retina.
A quarter of a second later, the noise comes. A thunderclap that strikes his eardrums hard enough to make him wince. Not one explosion, but three in succession.
Jonathan hurls himself onto the bed, covering Emma’s body with his own as the shockwave blows out the windows, spraying the room with glass, launching the curtain rod like a Crusader’s spear, and shaking loose a veil of dust and mortar.
“A car bomb,” he says as the noise dies. “It drove into the mosque.”
Dazed, he stands and brushes the debris from his hair. Emma pushes herself off the bed and dances across the broken glass to the dresser, where she throws on her clothes. Jonathan searches for his medical kit, but Emma already has it and is stuffing it with gauze, bandages, and antiseptic wipes taken from their portable supply locker. He comes to her side and begins calling out the medicines he needs. In ninety seconds, his bag is full.
Black smoke curls into the sky. The mosque is gone. The blast has obliterated the structure. Only the base of the building remains, shorn walls resembling broken teeth. Paper and debris rain from above.
Jonathan slows as he approaches the ruined vehicle. He gazes down at a pair of smoking boots. Nearby, an arm reaches to the heavens, its hand clutching a Koran. Somewhere else lies the upper half of a human being. Everything is charred black and daubed with blood. Around him survivors are getting to their feet, staggering aimlessly. Others rush toward them, heeding the pitiful calls of the wounded. The smell of burning oil and cauterized flesh is overpowering.
“Over here,” says Emma. Her voice is rock solid. She stands next to a young man lying on his back. The man’s face is a bloody mess, the flesh of his chest flayed and badly burned. But it is his leg that draws Jonathan’s attention. Shattered bone protrudes from his pant leg. A compound fracture of the femur.
“Don’t move,” Jonathan instructs the man in Arabic. “Keep still.” To Emma: “I’m getting a splint. It’s crucial that he stay just as he is or he’ll nick his femoral artery.”
Emma grasps the man’s shoulders and combats his thrashing as Jonathan splints the leg.
Jonathan raises his head and counts a dozen more who need urgent treatment. His decision whom to treat will determine who lives and who dies.
“Okay,” he says, meeting Emma’s eye.
“Okay what?”
“ Geneva. Let’s go.”
“Really?”
“Those white tablecloths are looking pretty good right about now.”