Anna Richland - First to Burn

As if bricks had been left out during construction, square openings well over six feet up the wall allowed in dashes of white sunlight. No windows at person height meant no ventilation. The odors of kerosene, pungent food and stale bodies were strong. Amid the glittery dust motes a dozen women surrounded a young girl curled on a woven carpet. A shawl had been draped across the girl’s belly mound. Her patient.

The women turned to stare. Their clothing ranged from embroidered and bespangled fabric on the older women to threadbare tunics and dark scarves hanging loosely on the girls. If elaborate clothing denoted household status, her plainly clad patient ranked at the bottom. Her stomach heaved at the idea that this child—was she even thirteen?—was that old man’s wife. Kneeling within reach of the girl, she murmured an introduction she knew no one understood.

“Ma’am, Dostum requested I translate instead of the interpreter. His youngest wife’s name is Nazdana.” Wulf’s voice penetrated the curtain; she could see his brown socks under its edge. “Dostum would rather an American than an Afghan terp from a different tribe speak to his wife. If you work close to the curtain we won’t need to shout.”

“Fine.” She readied for the exam while women chattered. Her patient’s topaz eyes barely moved. Dark circles and bloodshot whites indicated exhaustion and pain.

“You must be doing something very interesting.” Wulf’s voice had the background rumble of a man stifling laughter.

“Changing from my gear to a sterile jacket.” She slipped the pale blue coat over her standard tan T-shirt.

“That explains it.” His voice conjured the memory of his smile in her office, the smile that had closed the space between them and made the air take weight.

“Explains wha-at?” Darn girly lilt. She spread hand sanitizer up her forearms.

“Not repeatable, ma’am.”

She glared at the curtain. He had to be sitting, because now she could see pants fabric in the gap between the cloth and the floor. “If you want to interpret for me, you can’t edit.”

“Your call.” The rising drawl on the end of his statement baited the hook. She knew that, but couldn’t resist.

“Go on.”

“They said it’s no wonder American babies grow so tall if their mothers have such admirably big—”

“Enough.” She’d invited these burning ears. He couldn’t see her chopping gesture through the curtain, but his snort meant he knew he’d scored a point. “Can you ask the women to back away from my instruments?” She’d spread her diagnostic equipment in a row on a sterile sheet, but it was in danger of being contaminated.

The women shifted to give her space after Wulf spoke. She couldn’t understand his words, but his tone matched the reliability of everything else about him.

“Please tell Nazdana this black band will go on her arm. It will tighten but it won’t hurt.”

“Ma’am, use an interpreter by speaking directly to the other person as if I’m not here. I translate what you say to her, then her replies. You don’t talk to me, just through me.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Nazdana’s blood pressure, 160 over 100, displaced her thoughts about the sergeant. The exam result wasn’t good. In fact, it was very bad. To help her patient relax, she slipped the end of the stethoscope under her own shirt and let the girl listen to the steady thumps of her heart. The childlike eyes widened, and Nazdana’s eyebrows rose into her pain-lined forehead.

“Now I need to check your body and the baby with this,” she said. “Does he kick much?”

Wulf translated her question and Nazdana’s reply. “He kicks at night and now I am not sleeping. He is taking all the space inside me and I cannot eat.”

Dark eye circles and rapid heartbeat hinted at anemia, but she couldn’t diagnose that without a blood test. “How often do you eat meat?”

The girl hadn’t seen Wulf and probably couldn’t imagine the warrior and weapons behind the gentle voice. “I am permitted to eat meat the first wife declines. Two days ago she left a piece of goat, but when devils came in my body she would not feed them.”

“Please ask what she means by devils in her body.” Theresa pulled a blue exam robe and a cotton sheet, both sealed in sterile plastic, from her pack. “We can put this robe on you, but I have to see and feel the baby, so your heavy clothing must come off.” Theresa had no idea if women disrobed in front of other women, foreign women, or if that was considered immodest. “I’ll give you privacy.” She turned her back and heard giggles and a quick exchange with Wulf.

“What’d you say that made them laugh?” she asked.

“I told her the robe is what Americans wear in the hospital. She thinks Americans aren’t as rich as she believed if they can’t buy a full robe to visit someone as important as a doctor.”

Within minutes Theresa knew the worst would happen to Nazdana. Wulf’s translation of devils in her body sounded like convulsions. Her hands and lower legs showed distinct edema from fluid retention. Life-threatening eclampsia alone justified treatment at an American hospital, but Theresa pressed again on the hard round part presenting far too high on the girl’s abdomen. “Nazdana, I believe your baby’s bottom and feet are coming first instead of his head.”

Her patient nodded to Wulf’s soothing voice, as if he held her hand through the curtain.

“I would like to take you to the American hospital to have your baby. We might have to do surgery,” she continued. Wulf hadn’t finished interpreting before the girl’s eyes widened and her mouth formed an O. “We would take good care of you and your baby.”

Wulf said, “I think we can convince Dostum because he’s desperate for a living son, but a woman can’t go alone.” Conversation flurried between him, Nazdana and the older women. “They want to send the first wife’s youngest—a daughter named Meena—no, he’s a son—ahh.”

She could hear Wulf’s understanding nod. “Maybe you can share the revelation?”

“Meena is Dostum’s favorite daughter and attended school two years ago. When his last son died fighting Taliban last summer, they changed Meena into a boy. Now he’s Mir.”

“What?”

“Many patriarchal cultures do it. Cut their hair, dress them like a boy, change their name. Then Dostum has a son for prestige and the women have someone to run errands. Win-win, as long as no one outside the clan knows.”

“Is it a win for her?”

“Which would you rather be? Meena, married at eleven, or Mir, outside playing soccer?”

“Point made.” As a kid she would’ve traded her dolls for a soccer ball, but thankfully in New Jersey she hadn’t had to. She bit her lip. “I need to call for permission to transport.” She’d urge Colonel Loughrey to push the request, but air evacuations of civilians had strict eligibility rules. The army didn’t have the resources to become every Afghan’s ambulance.

“Negative. The team will take her down in a stretcher and boogie out.”

“Sergeant, you know the regulations.” Air evacuations didn’t happen as easily as a buzz cut. They had to follow protocols. “We can’t fly a local civilian without preapproval.”

“Captain, you don’t know Special Forces.”

She pictured him shaking his head.

“We never ask permission.”

Knowing that the addition of a patient and a kid would completely change the Black Hawk seating, Wulf hadn’t expected to be close to Theresa on this trip. Shortsighted, because of course she’d sit on the deck next to Nazdana’s stretcher, and he’d have to be ready to interpret. He held out a spare communication headset. Its cord dangled inches short of brushing Nazdana, who lay between them.