Chapter 18
By the time two weeks had crawled by on the front lines, Maya had already shed the panic of her first day and slipped into the brutal rhythm of the camp.
Every shift brought in a flood of casualties, from knife wounds to stray bullets to blast injuries.
Some came in already dead. Most of the survivors would live with missing limbs.
In the span of a single week, she watched families say goodbye forever, lovers refuse to leave each other’s side, and siblings cling to one another in the way that brother and sister had the night before.
Grief, which once gutted her, had dulled into something she could carry, because here there was no time to revisit old wounds or replay memories of bullying and betrayal.
Half the time, she forgot to switch on her phone, so she had no idea what was happening back in her
country.
Amid so much death, what had once carved her to the bone felt trivial. Staying alive and intact was already considered fortunate.
She fished a ring from her pocket and turned it under the moon until the stone flashed a soft light.
Kevin Blake’s voice echoed in her head, the way it had in the minutes before he bled out. “Maya, if you make it home, please give this to my fiancee. Her name is Megan Price. She’s a teacher…”
The diamond glowed the same way Kevin’s eyes had when he said his fiancee’s name.
He had arrived six months before Maya. Just days ago, he was hit in the chest by a stray round on a
rescue mission. Nothing could be done to save him.
He had asked Maya because every other doctor who came with him had already been killed.
Maya slipped the ring back into her pocket.
She wasn’t afraid. She had no one waiting on her. If the worst happened while she was doing the work she
chose, at least it would have meaning.
Even so, she wanted to make it back home. She wanted to give this ring to Megan.
At dawn the next day, sirens wailed beyond the compound.
An entire neighborhood had been shelled. The local clinics were overwhelmed and calling for help.
Maya signed up without hesitation and rolled out with the mobile unit.
The streets were all rubble and smoke, and the air was filled with dust and crying. Civilians who could still
run were sprinting the other way, while soldiers and medics pushed into the chaos.
Maya noticed a group of soldiers in olive drab. They were part of a peacekeeping unit from her country.
She only spared them a glance, then redirected her attention to the patient.
Gunfire cracked in the distance, and mortars thumped like a second heartbeat. They worked fast and kept their heads low, always ready to dive for cover.
Suddenly, a shell landed close enough to rattle the ground under Maya’s boots. Instinctively, she scooped the boy she was treating into her arms.
The blast knocked her off her feet. She rolled twice and got up, her forearm burning, but the rest of her was unharmed.
Gunshots flew through the air behind her. She flattened out over the boy and waited for the barrage to ease, but his breaths were growing shallow, and the wound on his chest was pumping.
If she didn’t stop the bleeding now, it would be too late.
She gritted her teeth, pushed to her feet, and tore open his shirt. She had the hemostatic powder in one
hand when a stray round screamed toward her.
At the last possible second, a tall figure barreled in from the side and drove her to the dirt.
Maya’s cheek rasped across grit, and heat bloomed along her jaw. She shoved up on her elbows, mind snapping back to the boy first.
However, the boy was already gone.
For a single beat, her vision dimmed, then she turned to the person who had knocked her clear.
It was one of the peacekeepers. He was already looking back at her. When their eyes met, both of them stopped short.
“It’s you?”
