I slumped over, sluggishly pawing at the tranq dart that had been shot at me.
“The fuck…” I slurred, trying to stay awake and understand that I’d been hit with a sedative.
“Shit. He’s going down.”
“He was hit. Hold down on his shoulder.”
“Boss?”
“He’s bleeding too much.”
“Let’s go. We’ve got to take him in for help.”
The blur of concerned voices merged into a smear of sound. With the slowing pace of my heart and the lull of sleepiness tugging at my mind, I could barely make out what they were saying.
I had to know.
If Anya was alive. How many guards and soldiers might’ve been hit or killed. If any of these attackers were taken to be questioned.
So many questions raged in my mind, but as Andre caught me from falling to the floor, I closed my eyes, defenseless against the shot I’d taken and the drug they’d hit me with.
6
CLAIRE
“That was a rush.”
I smiled at the nurse who'd just finished helping me with a patient who came just in the nick of time to deliver her babies. Despite the call up to the maternity ward, there was no hope to transport the woman up there in time. Her first daughter was crowning as she was wheeled into the emergency room, and because of how quickly her baby was descending, she had to give birth down here. The second twin wasn’t waiting either, and it really was a rush.
The urgency.
The excitement.
The experience of watching proud but freaked-out parents bringing new lives into the world.
Sometimes, it was nice to help out with emergencies that weren’t full of gore and gloom. Of violence and chaos. Sometimes, it was simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Should that young woman ever want more children, I had astrong hunch she’d pay attention to her body more acutely and realize what active labor was like quicker than she had this time.
“It was,” I agreed.
“And I bet you’ll be delivering many more babies when you go off on that missionary program.” She smiled and looked me over. “I almost envy you.”
That wasn’t something I heard often, not about missionary work. It wasn’t only altruism that had me signing up for it and already putting in the paperwork for the sabbatical, despite just starting here. It was the desperate need for something else. Something new and foreign because somewhere in my delusions, I thought that finding a new “normal” without my parents or a family would be easier if I tacked it on to a new “normal” of life after a mission in the extremes of weather and civilization.
“I wouldloveto travel like that.” The young nurse sighed wistfully.
“It’s not a vacation,” I replied.
“I know. But, like, it would be so exciting!”
You could always be a traveling nurse…
I didn’t have time to advise her about an alternative career path because someone else arrived.
“Need some help here,” a man called out.
At first sight, I cringed.
Again?
