Woman of God

Chapter 23

I WAS seated comfortably, speeding through total darkness toward a soft light far away. I smelled nothing, heard nothing, and I was not afraid. I wiggled my fingers, and I flexed my toes, but I had no desire to stand or stretch my arms or look in any direction but straight ahead.

I became suddenly aware of a warm place inside my chest that was not part of me. It was an unknown presence, knowing and alive, and it conveyed an idea to me. A big one. That what was happening to me now was meant to be.

I formed words inside my mind.

I asked, What is this?

I wasn’t answered in words, but I had an understanding, something like, You know. You called out to Me.

The warmth expanded out from my chest to the ends of my fingers and toes. What was happening? Was I with God? Was His spirit inside me? Was He protecting me?

Why now?

Am I dead? I asked.

There was no answer.

I had another question, equally pressing.

What happened?

The silence was accompanied by a warm breeze, and then the void was filled. I was far above the killing field in South Sudan, above the birds that cast circling shadows over the ground, and I heard blades chopping at the air. Thousands of bodies stretched out to the horizon. It hurt me to see them, but I could not look away.

Why has this happened? What purpose has it served?

I was sitting on the ground that radiated dry, baking heat. My eyes were half-closed to keep out the dust, and my mouth was dry. At my feet was the wounded soldier, Nick Givens.

But Givens became Nadir, the brave and hilarious boy who’d been shot and had his body hung on the wall. His arms were stretched out, and he looked up at me with light in his eyes.

Nadir is dead. Givens is dead. Why? What is the point of this?

A voice came to me, loud and echoing. “Brigid. Hang on.” It was Sabeena. I watched as my dear friend ran toward a helicopter. Men jumped down from the aircraft and headed toward where I sat in the bloodied dirt with Colin’s head in my lap.

Colin is dead. He’s gone. This can’t be.

A sound inside my mind seemed to say, Be with Colin.

I was with Colin entirely. I felt his terrible guilt and emotional pain. I understood his shame and how hard he had tried to redeem himself in the company of Kind Hands. But now, his expression was gentle, as though he had found peace at last. His voice, but not his voice, entered my mind.

I truly love you, Brigid. Do you know that?

My thoughts went out to him.

I love you, Colin. And I’m so very sorry. It was my fault that you were shot. Forgive me, please. You shouldn’t have died.

His silent words came to me again. Please listen to me, Brigid. Live a good life. Live.

Hands came from above and lifted me roughly onto a stretcher. I heard running feet, felt my weightless body being hoisted up, passed to other hands inside the helicopter.

“Brigid. Can you hear me? Brigid.” That was Sabeena.

I was inside a confessional booth. I saw Father Delahanty’s silhouette through the curtain. I had been holding his hand when he died.

He had wanted to confess, but he had said, “God has a plan for you.”

The last words of a dying man made no sense. I had only hoped to give him comfort.

Father. Why did you have to die?

A reply seemed to come from a presence warming my body and filling my mind, a presence that felt other than mine.

He lived the full extent of his life.

No. I reject that. A black rage filled me, and I thought, This is all wrong. What kind of god are you? Answer me.

No answer.

I thought, And me? Have I lived the full extent of my life?

I was in the back of the donkey cart with the remains of the dead. Father Delahanty’s body was wrapped securely in a sheet. I crossed his forehead with my thumb, and a thought bloomed in my mind fully formed. Father Delahanty wanted me to know that God had a plan for me. That He had more for me to do.

A plan? What plan is this? Speak, damn you.

A soft light was all around me. I could see it through closed eyelids, and I could almost touch it.

What is the plan?

Someone shook my shoulder.

Sabeena? Is it you? Was this all a dream?

Chapter 24

I OPENED my eyes. I was leaning against a man in the seat beside me. He was wearing a dark coat, a brimmed hat, and leather gloves. He looked to be in his sixties, and his wrinkled face was very kind.

“Oh,” I said, pulling back. “Mi dispiace tanto. I’m so sorry.”

We were on a train, and it was decelerating. Lights flashed in the windows, and the flip sign at the front of the car read CIVITAVECCHIA.

The man spoke to me in Italian.

“I hated to wake you, miss. But we are coming into Roma Termini. I’ll get your bag down. We’re here.”

People got up from their seats and gathered their possessions. The man with the hat reached up to the rack and took down my satchel.

“Watch out,” he said. “Be aware of your surroundings. Rome is a big city.”

I thanked him.

He touched his hat and was absorbed into the crush of people moving to the exit doors as the train squealed to a stop. I followed the crowd to the terminal, and from there to the street, where I joined a long taxi queue outside.

The city scene was loud and jarring, a mixed-up puzzle of sights and sounds that did not fit together in my mind. In the place of donkey carts and old Land Rovers were sports cars speeding, shifting gears, braking suddenly, accompanied by the constant blaring of horns.

Pedestrian traffic was also loud and clashing. Fashionable people carried shopping bags and computer bags. They laughed and shouted into cell phones as they strode purposefully down the sidewalk, hardly looking up at all.

Where were they going? To what end? It had been two long years since I had lived in a city.

I moved along with the queue until I was at the front of the line, and the driver of a white Fiat opened the door for me. He saw the way I held my arm and took my battered leather bag and put it in the trunk.

I got into the taxi and gripped the armrest as the driver shot away from the curb. He knew the address I had given him, and he sped through the streets of Rome. Centrifugal force pinned me painfully to the side of the cab, then threw me toward the far side of the seat as we drove around the traffic circles.

The driver had a picture of his wife and children in a frame stuck to the dashboard, and he had hung a rosary from the rearview mirror. The cross swung hypnotically as we took the many high-speed turns. That swinging rosary made me physically sick. I looked away.

I was wearing the same jeans, blue cotton shirt, and crocheted cardigan that I’d worn when I first went to South Sudan. And now I was also wearing Sabeena’s secondhand pink Skechers that, evidently, she had passed down to me.

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.

Marty said, “Brigid, get over here and meet my friend Zachary Graham. Zach, this is Brigid Fitzgerald. I told him already that we’re all outta Johns Hopkins. Have a seat, you guys. Let’s sample this wine.”

I walked over to the big farm table and shook Zach’s hand. Glasses appeared, a bottle was opened, and wine was poured. Following Marty’s lead, we made an outrageous fuss over the vino da tavola, and when we were all comfortable, Zachary Graham said, “I was telling Marty about this story I’m writing for the Times.”

Zach had just come back to Rome from the French Open and told a few anecdotes about Djokovic and Serena, using terms like “wide-open slams” and “long rallies.” I know nothing about tennis, but I loved the animated way he told a story. It was great to hear these two big men laughing and to be able to join in without thinking about enemy artillery and dirt storms and an O.R. full of mortally wounded children.

Marty was refilling my glass when his phone rang. He spoke with Tori briefly, hung up, and said, “She’s on her way. We can meet her at Leonardo’s in half an hour. You guys up for dinner?”

I was already shaking my head no when Marty said, “Brigid? You’re in Rome. Time to see some of it. Doctor’s orders.”

“In that case, absolutely,” I said.

Tori had opened her closet to me. She’s a generous size twelve, and I’m an emaciated size six. Her black dress floated around me, but I belted and bloused it, and it looked as if it were made for me. I was ready to go to an actual restaurant.

By the time the sun had set, the four of us were seated under the big, yellow awning outside a trattoria on a busy street less than a block from the Hewitts’ apartment.

We were still drinking, eating bread dipped in olive oil, while our dinners were being prepared, when Marty’s phone rang. Seconds later, Tori’s phone vibrated on the tabletop.

“Sorry, everyone,” said Marty. “The emergency room just filled up. It’s the full freakin’ moon. We have to go in.”

“Always happens,” Tori said. “Just when you can smell the lasagna, but before you get a fork in.”

I jumped to my feet out of pure reflex.

Tori said softly, “Where ya going, Brigid? You’re off duty.”

Oh.

“We’ve got a running tab here,” said Marty. “So enjoy. By the way, Brigid, Zach here is an avid baseball fan.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yankees all the way,” said Zach.

“Red Sox,” I said, setting my jaw.

“Oh, man,” Marty said, grinning widely. “I’d like to be a fly on the wall.”

And then the Hewitts were gone, and Zach and I were looking at each other over a steaming-hot dinner for four.

Chapter 28

THE WAITER had put the four enormous platters of everything in tomato sauce on the table. Zach unfolded his napkin and said, “So, you’re a Sox fan, huh?”

The waiter snapped my napkin open and laid it across my lap as I said to Zach, “Since as long as I can remember.”

Zach grinned, said, “My condolences.” And stabbed one of his shrimp scampi.

I kept my hands folded.

I said, “For what? Two thousand four, 2007, and 2013?”

“No. For the almost one hundred years it took after Babe Ruth left to win those World Series.”

I shot back, “Which would be Yankees time, correct?”

He took a gulp of vino and said, “As they say, do the math. Twenty-seven wins for the Yankees, three for the Sox.”

“Yeah, well that’s the old math. This is the new math, and we’ve won three World Series to your two since Y2K.”

“Don’t worry, we’re just warming up.”

“Well, I wish you the best getting loose.”

And suddenly, we both cracked up. It really was too funny to be sitting outdoors on a balmy night in Rome, talking about American baseball.

Zach said, “You should try this, Red. It really is the specialty of the house.”

Without waiting for me to say okay, he swapped out my untouched rigatoni alfredo for Marty’s steak pizzaiola.

“I’ll try it on your recommendation, Yank. Tell me about yourself,” I said, sawing into the steak.

Zach said, “Reporters don’t really like to talk about themselves, you know. We like to ask the questions.”

“Oh, try something new,” I said.

Then I tried the steak. It was, as advertised, very good.

Zach said, “Okay. Here I go. Born in Minnesota, degree in journalism from where else, Northwestern. Live in New York, and, as a single guy with no baggage, I’ve been assigned to the international sports desk and odds and ends, which is a dream come true. Mind if I have a bite of that?” he said, eyeing the steak. “You want to try the eggplant?”

“I’m not so big on eggplant.”

I put the plate of steak in the middle of the table, and we worked on it together.

And then Zach said, “Your turn, Red.”

I just shook my head no and kept going with the steak. I didn’t want to talk about myself. Not now, and maybe not ever. But Zach was one of those reporters who wouldn’t be brushed off.

“I hope you don’t mind that I grilled Marty about you.”

I glanced at him through my lashes, then dropped my eyes back to the table.

“He told me about the settlement being knocked down. Your injuries.”

“I can’t talk about that,” I said.

“Okay. I’m sorry, though. That you had to go through that.”

I put down my fork and knife.

I said, “Zach, the war was awful. Indescribable. But my life in South Sudan was about the displaced people who had less than nothing, the mothers with babies had no milk to feed them.”

I don’t know what came over me, but I sang right there at the table overflowing with food.

Baby boy, baby boy

Hello, baby, please be quiet

When your hunger is very painful

Just lie down and sleep

Better to just lie down and sleep.

I said, “In South Sudan, that’s a lullaby.”

The sadness on Zach’s face showed me a lot about him. He stopped eating, and so did I. And then, without our realizing that the full moon had been eclipsed by clouds, the sky opened up, dropping heavy rain on the awning.

Waiters poured out of the restaurant and began moving the tables and customers away from the loud and slashing rain. Zach said, “What do you say we get outta here?”

I stood up, and we ducked into the trattoria. And I remembered when I was in the camp, the heat radiating in waves off everything, and there wasn’t enough clean water for drinking. And I had asked God to make it rain.

He does things in His own time.

Chapter 29

WE WERE on Zach’s shiny red Vespa, tearing up the ancient roads and boulevards of modern-day Rome. My arms were around his waist, I was pressing hard against his back, and the hot air was just about blowing my eyelashes off.

Zach turned his head to look at me, and I shouted at him, “Eyes on the road!”

I had been in Rome for two weeks, and after my self-enforced week of lockdown in the Hewitts’ apartment, I now had a very engaging play pal who had wheels and a lot of free time.

As it turned out, Zach knew Rome but didn’t speak much Italian. I knew Italian well but didn’t know Rome at all.

Perfect combo.

Every day at about ten, after Zach had checked in with the Times, he picked me up at the Hewitts’, and we went for a ride. Since our first self-guided tour, I’d seen a lot of Rome at sixty miles an hour: the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain, the Colosseum and the remains of the Circus Maximus. But I’d avoided Vatican City. I just wasn’t ready to confront the hub of the Roman Catholic Church.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

Right now, we had the wind in our faces. The river rolled on to our left, and we were weaving through crazy traffic on Lungotevere Raffaello Sanzio. A couple of turns later, we were on Via del Moro, and we followed it along cute cobblestoned streets flanked by Italian-ice-colored buildings. We made our way to the center of Trastevere, the picture-perfect Piazza di Santa Maria.

Zach parked the scooter at the northwest side of the enclosed plaza, shut down the engine, and removed his helmet. He looked wild. His hair was matted down, his goggles had left white circles around his eyes, and his grin was almost maniacal.

Call me crazy, but he looked pretty hot.

I saw that he wanted to kiss me, but I smiled and handed him my helmet. Then I stretched out my hand, and he helped me off the Vespa.

The Caffè di Marzio was further perfection. We were shown seats at a small table under the awning with a full-on view of the fountain and the clock tower across the square. We ordered lunch from Giovanni, a young man with a mustache and Amo Angelina tattooed on his biceps, and he returned to our table with a bottle of Sangiovese.

We were sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, and by the time the pasta arrived, we had each put down a glass of wine and were working on a second. Heat lightning flashed back and forth between us-which was both fun and unnerving.

He said, “You know you have a two-part laugh?”

“I have what?”

“Yeah. You start way up here with a giggle, and then it drops to a belly laugh. That just kills me, Red.”

I became self-conscious. I didn’t know what to say.

But Zach wasn’t going to let my silence drag on. He was a reporter, after all, and he could handle a little glitch in the repartee. He topped up my wineglass and said, “You know, you haven’t told me your plans. Like, where are you headed from here?”

I pictured the interior of the O.R. at Kind Hands. I knew every windowless inch of it. There was no view of the future.

Zach said into the lengthening silence, “Let me put that another way. Are you planning to stay in Rome?”

I said, “I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do next. I might take myself on a world tour.”

Why leave Rome? Why leave Zach?

He was smart and funny, and he was honestly trying to get to know me even as I pushed him away.

He said, “Oh. That sounds like fun.”

Clearly, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He leaned in and reached for his glass. His knee touched mine, and the electricity just shot through me.

I was this close to leaning against his shoulder and tucking my head under his chin. But I didn’t want to start what I knew damn well I couldn’t finish.

Zach said, “You’re a funny girl, Brigid. You won’t tell me where you’re going or where you’ve been.”

I wanted to give him something.

I said, “I really should tell you what it was like in South Sudan.”

Chapter 30

I DIDN’T know how to tell Zach about hell on earth without feeling it all over again. But I had decided to try.

I dropped my hands into my lap and said, “Imagine a dirt-poor town of eighty thousand people who’ve been driven from their homes and are now living under tarps, Zach. A lot of these people have been brutalized, their families killed, and now they have no possessions, no work, just decimated lives and nothing to live for.

“The food is bare subsistence. The water is contaminated, and you can add to all of that drought and hundred-and-fifteen-degree heat and infectious disease and an armed militia looking for opportunities to murder anyone who steps outside the gates.”

Zach kept his eyes on me, encouraging me to go on.

“There were six doctors and a few volunteer nurses to care for every kind of medical condition you can imagine and about a thousand you can’t. We did surgeries with dull knives and drills and with watered-down anesthesia, if we happened to have anesthetics at all.

“A lot of people died, Zach. Every stinking day. They died when you slept or when you went outside to take a breath of air. You came back, and your patient was dead. For us, working in that hospital was like trying to carry water in a bucket full of holes.”

Zach said, “You should write about this, Brigid. People don’t know anything about the conditions in these settlements. They should know.”

I was lost in thoughts of Kind Hands. I heard Zach say, “Please. Go on.”

Amid music from car speakers and the put-put of scooters in the square, the clamor of customers and the clashing of silverware and dishes in the trattoria around us, I described the routine at the hospital to Zach.

I told him about Sabeena and the orphan girls whom I loved. I told him about my colleagues from all over, about Wuster and Bailey, Khalil and Vander; about our twenty-hour days operating by the light of flashlights in our mouths. The patients’ terrified families standing at our elbows.

“You said six doctors,” Zach said.

I hadn’t mentioned Colin. I couldn’t do it. I actually had a sense that Colin was sitting with us. That he was listening and about to make a rude comment. Or tell me that he loved me.

I said, “A lot of doctors were on the field the day I was shot. They’re scattered. Or buried.”

Zach put his hand on mine and said, “Your bravery…It’s inspirational, Brigid.”

I shrugged and kept my eyes on his big hand, covering mine. It looked strange there, but it felt good.

Zach blurted, “I want to know everything about you.”

And right then, with the impeccable timing of waiters all around the world, Giovanni appeared between us to ask if we would like coffee and dessert.

“Brigid?” Zach asked me.

“No, thanks. Not for me.”

Zach removed his hand from mine, and as the waiter presented the bill, I was struck with a weird impulse I didn’t see coming. I tossed my napkin to the table, jumped to my feet, and said, “Time to go.”

Chapter 31

AT 9:27 the next morning, I was in a window seat on a plane flying out of Fiumicino to Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

I was wearing new jeans, a nubby cotton sweater, a lightweight denim jacket, Sabeena’s pink shoes, a crucifix on a heavy gold chain that Tori had fastened around my neck before we kissed good-bye on both cheeks, and I had the taxi driver’s rosary in my pocket.

I rolled up my jacket and wedged it between the armrest and the window and laid my head against the glass. I’d never been to Paris. It was as good a destination as any. I needed to get out of town, and there were flights to Paris nearly every hour.

I watched Rome recede until it looked like a sepia drawing in an old history book. Then a layer of clouds filled in between the plane and the noble city many thousands of feet below.

I missed Zach already and felt guilty for bolting without telling him that I was going and why. I couldn’t imagine explaining to him that I was still in love with Colin, a man I’d been inextricably bound to by tenuous life and violent death.

No holiday romance could compare, not when I was still suffering such a profound loss of love in my heart and soul.

And yet, I was vulnerable. I could still get hurt. I thought Zach could get hurt, too.

The flight attendant offered food and drink, but I shook my head no and watched sunlight limn the clouds as we sailed across the morning sky.

I closed my eyes, and as soon as I did, an image of our IDP settlement came to me in minute detail. I saw the hundreds of rows of tukuls, the individual faces of men and women and children whose names I hadn’t known-I knew those people now. Their eyes turned to me as I passed them on the dusty track.

How many of these innocent people had been slaughtered since I left Africa?

Two weeks ago, when I’d taken the train from Amsterdam to Rome, a warm feeling filled my chest, and I had a sense of something “not me.” I’d found myself asking why. And I was doing it now.

Just as it had happened then, I heard or sensed something like a voice that I didn’t feel was coming from me.

Brigid. You want to know why.

I opened my eyes. I wasn’t asleep. The flight attendant was still walking up the aisle. A mother and two children were in the seat ahead of me, and the children were throwing candies at one another and laughing.

I had a shocking revelation.

I was on the plane, and at the same time, I was outside it. A pretty village came into focus just below me, as if I were flying over the treetops on my own power. I saw people tending a community garden, children playing in a park. I felt wind in my hair, the warmth of the sun on my back, and a sense of incredible peace.

The voice-if that was what it was-cut into my thoughts. This is happening.

Air hissed through the vent overhead.

I said, out loud, “Tell me. Are you God?”

A little boy with big, blue eyes threw a fistful of candy over the seat back at me. His mother turned and apologized-“Scusa, signora”-and scolded the child.

And, still, while I was seated in row 11, seat D, on an Air France flight to Paris, I was “flying” freely over adorable shops on a lane in the heart of the village. As I watched, a baby carriage rolled into the street, where it was struck by a car, full on, crushing the carriage under the wheels.

I clapped my hands over my mouth and clamped down on a scream.

I heard the words inside my head.

This is yours. Take care of it.

There was a sparrow in my now-outstretched hand. It was brown and black, with white streaks on its wings. It looked at me and blinked its sharp, knowing eyes. Then it flew away.

I said, Come back.

More birds joined the one that was mine. Hundreds of little birds, thousands, millions, all rising up from the trees and power lines, filling the air to the horizon and beyond, shutting out the sunlight until all I could see was a shimmering blackness.

The vibration, like a voice inside my head, said, Can you care for your bird? Does it obey? Or does it have its own will?

I spoke out loud, “Stop. No metaphors. Please.”

An African village appeared in my mind. It might be Magwi, the closest town to our settlement. I had been there only once, when the driver who had taken me from Juba to Kind Hands had skirted the village center on the way to the camp.

Now, I saw the whole town from my flight path overhead. I saw the individual tukuls and a church and low buildings built within the curl of an estuary. I saw umbrellas over the street market. I saw barefoot children herding thin cattle with sticks.

I said, “Why are You showing me this?”

You know.

“I only know that I’ve lost my faith in You.”

The “voice” resonated in my mind.

I haven’t lost mine in you.

Chapter 32

A METALLIC squeal and warble called my attention to the public address system. A flight attendant announced the start of a movie and requested that passengers lower their shades.

I lowered mine and tried to call up the now-broken connection to the presence in my mind. But the line was down. Had I imagined the voice, the birds, the close-up view of Magwi from above? Had I been dreaming?

Or was I crazy?

It was possible. Two months ago my brain had been deprived of oxygen for however long it had taken Sabeena to get me into that helicopter, find the appropriate needle, and shove it with surgical precision into my chest. I was technically dead for four minutes, maybe five.

Oxygen deprivation can cause brain damage, but recovery is possible, even common. Top neurologists in Amsterdam had checked me out and declared my brain perfectly fine.

Still, residual injury might cause hallucinations.

Or possibly, because of this injury, a part of my brain that was normally closed off had become a two-way channel for communication with God.

Was that possible?

Was I delusional? Or was I hearing the Word of God?

Either way, this “voice,” these visions, scared me a lot.

I stared at the seat back in front of me. Lights flickered as a movie played on a couple hundred little screens throughout the cabin. Eventually, I got up from my seat and retrieved my bag from the overhead rack. I dug around until I found my iPad, and then I created a new page in my journal.

I wrote, If I could ask God only one question, it would be the same question Aziza asked me not long ago. “Why must we suffer so?” This question has been addressed in biblical verses and theological writings and notably in the book of Job.

But the answers seem hazy and theoretical on the page.

In real life, I see suffering. And I see faith. And the second doesn’t cancel out the first. When I ask why, the answer comes back, “You can’t see from God’s point of view.”

If today God was putting thoughts and words and images in my mind, He conveyed that He has faith in me. And He showed me a path.

If I have no faith, how can I follow Him?

If I follow Him, does it mean that I have faith?

I thought about what I had written, and then I went to my email in-box and I typed:

Dear Zach, You did nothing wrong. I’m a coward, and I’m sorry to have left without saying good-bye. I was afraid that if I saw you, I wouldn’t be able to go, and I must.

I care about you very much, but I am a broken woman.

All I can do is run.

I won’t ever forget the wonderful times we spent together.

Yours, with a sad heart,

Brigid

When the plane landed, I reread my email to Zach, and then I launched it.

I got off the airplane with purpose. I stood in front of the arrivals-and-departures board and got my bearings. Then I crossed the airport and booked a flight to Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

God called. I answered.

Chapter 33

BUT I couldn’t leave France just yet.

There would be a two-hour wait in Charles de Gaulle Airport before my plane departed for Juba. And then there would be a change of planes and the next leg of my journey, for a total of twenty-six hours en route.

I ate a croque monsieur at a fast-food brasserie. I had a beer. Then I had another one.

I bought three new T-shirts in an airport shop, along with a pair of socks and a green rubber slicker. I washed much of my body in the sink in the ladies’ room and put on a new shirt, a pink one with the Eiffel Tower outlined in sequins. I purchased bags and bags of hard candies and some American newsmagazines. I found a seat at the gate and read for hours.

The big stories were startling. There was a severe drought in California that threatened wildlife and agriculture. Sea level and pollution were up. Ice was cracking off the poles. Planes had crashed. There were terrorist attacks in several countries and a plague in Saudi Arabia. Nine people had been shot to death during Bible study in a church in South Carolina. There was another mass killing in South Sudan that tested my belief, not in God but in the human race.

At two in the afternoon, I boarded the plane, and this flight was full. Again I had a window seat, and I didn’t wait for takeoff to fall asleep.

I awoke to change planes in Dubai, and once we were aloft, I took a pill and slept again. I wasn’t in communication with God or anyone else, but while I slept, I was making plans.

I arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, at sundown. The sky was heavy with clouds, and there was a line of red at the horizon. I walked a half mile past the far end of the airport, to the bus stop, and I waited inside the shelter for the coach to Magwi.

I was going there on faith, according to some kind of voice in my head that had suggested rather strongly that this was what I was meant to do.

And I had my own reasons.

I had to find out what had happened after I left the continent wrapped in bandages, going in and out of consciousness and having almost no awareness until I’d passed a month in a hospital in Amsterdam.

What news I had, had come to me from Kind Hands. A paycheck had been wired, my health insurance had paid the tab, and in a brief email from Human Resources, I learned that my former colleagues, Drs. Wuster, Bailey, and Khalil, had each returned home, but KH wasn’t permitted to give out contact information.

I was told that Jup Vander was missing and presumed dead. And there was no information on the whereabouts of a volunteer nurse by the name of Sabeena Gaol.

As the rim of the earth burned red, five people and I waited for a bus in a lean-to shelter alongside Route A43. There was a tree across the road, two hobbled goats standing beneath it. The bus shed with the corrugated tin roof, the bone-thin animals, the nearly bare trees, and the brown dirt beneath them were more familiar to me now than Fenway Park.

Out on the highway, two cones of light bore down on us. The man sitting next to me stood up and pointed down the road, saying, “Miss. The bus. She comes.”

Chapter 34

THE BUS that rumbled and creaked and squealed to a stop looked as though it had been a veteran of many crashes. The side panels and hood were different colors. Windows were broken. The grille was gone. The tailpipe dragged. But there was a sign in the windshield that read God Is Good.

Riding in one of these coaches was a test of faith all by itself. Juba Line was a serial killer. Buses collided with cars and carts, ran over pedestrians, lost control and flipped over in the rainy season, when the dirt roads turned into slippery clay and tires could no more get traction on mud than they could if the roads had been paved with ice.

It was raining as I boarded the bus with my bags and went to the long bench seat in the rear. I shared my sweets with everyone but the chickens. I thought of the experience that had brought me back to Africa: the warmth of a presence inside my chest, the reverberation that was something like a voice in my head, and the images I had seen that I knew I hadn’t created by myself.

I wondered again if I had slipped over the edge into psychosis, or if I was truly following a vision from God.

Meanwhile, the rain poured down, and the bus slid along the road. After three hours of nauseating twists and sloppy turns, it eventually stopped at the side of Magwi’s main drag.

As we passengers exited the bus, a hard, slanting rain beat on the rusted, multicolored chassis and the people who were running toward the bus shelter. The nearly toothless fellow in his twenties who had ridden next to me since the start approached me when I was out of the rain. He had told me that his name was Kwame, and now asked, “May I give you a ride, lady?”

I thanked him very much, and, even though he was a stranger, I liked him. I got into the passenger side of his 1970s Dodge Charger, parked just beyond the shed.

“Where are you going?” asked Kwame.

“Is there a clinic here?” I asked him.

“Yes, lady.”

He gave me a towel from the backseat, and I thanked him again and dried my face.

Kwame released the brake and revved his engine. We shot off the mark as the rain came down harder.

Chapter 35

THE RAIN sheeted down the wiperless car windows. I peered through the watery curtain and took in the shapes of the buildings along the darkened main street.

The strip of road, the spindly trees, the silhouettes of the squat buildings, and the tall spike of the radio tower all felt as familiar to me as if I’d lived in Magwi for years. That both creeped me out and made me feel that I was supposed to be here.

We cleared the small town and continued on down the road that was barely recognizable as a road. And I said to Kwame, “It’s right up there.”

Kwame gave me a sidelong glance, and I read his expression. He knew quite well where the clinic was, but how did I know? Then something like recognition lit up in his eyes.

That, I didn’t understand at all.

He turned the car off the main road, onto a ribbon of muddy track. A few minutes later, he braked his junker outside a long wooden building with a sign reading MAGWI CLINIC under the peak of the roof. Tents were set up under the red acacia trees-a small village, I thought, of patients under care.

A porch ran the length of the building and was furnished with white plastic chairs, some of them occupied by patients. Light glowed behind the glass, and I could hear the soft roar of a generator over the rain pattering on tarps, the car’s rusted body, and a peaked tin roof.

I thanked Kwame for the ride, and I paid him in dollars and a packet of M &M’s. He was happy.

“When are you going back to the airport?”

I told him that I didn’t know, but for sure it wouldn’t be tonight.

“I work at the post office, lady, if you need me.”

I wanted to hug him, but that wasn’t the right thing to do. So I shook his hand, gathered my bags, pulled up the hood of my raincoat, and got out of the car. I waved as the old Dodge went slip-sliding away down the track to the road that divided the town.

When the taillights were out of view, I felt a flash of panic. What the hell was I doing here when I could be in Paris, or Brugge, or Panama City, or Malibu-anywhere but this place? Oh, right. I’d had a vision of Magwi, and now I was here.

I reached inside my raincoat pocket and felt for the rosary the cabdriver in Rome had given to me. It wasn’t in any of my pockets, and after a hasty search of my leather bag, I found that it wasn’t there, either. I’d lost the rosary somewhere.

I turned back to face the clinic and saw that the people on the porch were staring at the dazed and dripping woman standing calf deep in the muddy water.

A moment passed. And then a young woman got up from her chair and leaned over the porch railing.

“Doctor?” she said.

“Yes. I’m a doctor.”

She clapped her hands together, smiled broadly, and said, “Welcome to this place. Come this way, Doctor.”

She ran down the steps to meet me, led me up to the porch, and opened the door for me.

I was in a corridor paneled with plywood and lined with people. A light flickered on the wall, and I saw a painted door at the far end. A teenage boy who was in the line pointed.

“Doctor is there.”

I said thank you and kept walking. If Sabeena had passed through Magwi, she might have stopped at this clinic. A doctor here might know where I could find her.

If Sabeena was still alive.

I knocked on the door, and the sound of my knuckles on wood suddenly brought reality home.

I had been rash and probably crazy to travel for a day and a half to get to Magwi without any contacts or confirmation that I was on the right track.

I had gone on faith, and I knew what would happen now.

The door would open, and a doctor would say that he had never heard of Sabeena Gaol. Right after that, he would close the door in my face.

I realized in that instant that I didn’t have a backup plan, and once that door opened, I had no plan at all.

The door swung open, and inside the wedge of light, I saw a scowling face, a face I loved.

She said to me, “Brigid? This can’t be you.”

I reached out to embrace Sabeena, the woman who had saved my life. But I didn’t make it.

I felt weightless and at the same time as heavy as rocks.

My knees buckled, and I dropped to the floor.

Chapter 36

I WOKE up between clean sheets, looking over the footboard of a metal-frame bed.

A candle burned on the bedside table, casting a dancing yellow light on the plywood walls and on the woman who was watching me from a chair by the window. She was wearing a white lab coat, and her braided hair was wrapped around her head like a halo.

I remembered-or had I dreamed it? Sabeena caught me as I fainted and put me to bed. Had I actually found Sabeena exactly where I had looked for her? Was it really her? How else could this have happened except by some kind of miracle?

I was nearly overwhelmed. I spoke in a whisper.

“Sa-bee-na.”

Ten feet away, Sabeena clasped her hands together and said, “Thank you, Jesus.”

She came over and sat on the bed, and she stretched her arms out to me. I went into her hug and held her so tight. I no longer felt faint. I was jubilant. Oh, my God, Sabeena was here and alive. And I still hadn’t thanked her.

“Thank you, Sabeena. Thank you for saving my life.”

“My dear, of course, and you would have done exactly the same. My God, Brigid. I’ve missed you like crazy.”

I prayed right there in her arms.

“Dear Lord. Thank you for showing me the way to my dearest friend. Thank you for this amazing gift. Amen.”

Sabeena said, “Amen,” and we rocked and cried for good long time, and then she rubbed my back and let me go, saying, “I had a feeling I was going to see you when I least expected it. But this, Brigid? I never thought you’d come right to my door.”

“You just never know what I’m going to do next.”

We had a good laugh, and then I said, “Lie down, Sabeena. Tell me what happened at Kind Hands.”

She wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms, sighed deeply, and flipped around, and we shared the pillow.

She said, “It’s an ugly story, Brigid. The day after you were shot, Zuberi came into the settlement with troops, big vehicles, and explosives. A lot of everything. They shot up the settlement. Burned down what would burn. I heard that Jup died.”

“I heard the same.”

“Most of the IDPs got out, but not all. I heard terrible stories, Brigid. Children and people who couldn’t run were just gunned down. The South Sudanese arrived at the last minute and fought a good fight. Zuberi retreated. Some of the survivors are here in Magwi. Some are in Yida or Jamam. Some are in camps in Uganda. So I’ve been told.”

“How did you escape?”

“On my two feet. When I came back from taking you to the airport, the action was just starting. My ride took off without me. I wanted to hide, but Wuster said, ‘Get out while you can.’ I started walking out. Many people did. I saw the smoke rising where the settlement had been and kept going for maybe two weeks. Then I got a ride to Magwi. I was needed. I stayed.”

I wanted to ask about Jemilla and Aziza, but I thought she would tell me that she didn’t know where they were. Or that they were dead. I wasn’t ready to hear that.

And then Sabeena rolled toward me so that we were lying face to face. She was excited.

“Guess what, Brigid?”

I said, “Give me a hint.”

“I got married.”

“No. You did not.”

She smiled and nodded. Showed me her ring. I squealed. She squealed, too.

I’m sure we woke up some of the patients sleeping in the wards around us, but joyful screaming was on the program.

“Tell me more,” I managed to say. “Tell me everything.”

“His name is Albert. You’ll meet him tomorrow, and he will tell you a lot in great detail. But now, I must ask, what have you been up to, my darling girl? Last time I saw you, you weren’t saying anything at all.”

I squeezed her hand. She squeezed back.

I told her, “After I was released from the hospital in Amsterdam, I stayed with friends in Rome. And then God showed me a picture of Magwi.”

“Did He?”

“How else could I have found you?”

“Then of course He did,” said Sabeena. “I’m going to thank Him for this big blessing. But right now, I have rounds. You sleep well, and I’ll see you in the morning, Brigid. Sweet dreams.”

“I love you, Sabeena.”

“Me too, Brigid, dear.”

She put a bottle of water on my night table, blew out the candle, and kissed my forehead good night.

Chapter 37

MAGWI WASN’T paradise, but it also wasn’t hell on earth. There were cattle raids, but so far, there had been no massacres. Nonstop rain made conditions ripe for infectious disease, but fortunately we had antibiotics. The buildings didn’t have electricity, but we had fuel for the generator.

People got sick from diseases no longer seen in most of the world, but families stayed on in the tent village outside the clinic and helped care for their loved ones. Often, they sang and danced. I was able to follow up with my patients, and helping them get well helped me, too.

One day during my first weeks in Magwi, I was injecting babies in the midst of a scene of controlled chaos. Kala-azar is a horrific insect-borne disease. Left untreated, it’s often fatal. We had enough amphotericin and miltefosine for now, and we had patients’ families filling the tents in front of the clinic, helping with patient care. But the shots hurt.

The serum was thick. We had to use big needles, and injections had to be continued every day for a month. Toddlers screamed when they saw me coming, and they fought back. It took two people to keep an angry child still.

That morning, Obit, a boy of twelve, sat down next to me on the blanket as I worked. We had been treating him for an infected foot, and he liked hanging out at the clinic. He was good with the younger children, and now he assisted me and the mothers by holding their infants and distracting them with toys he made out of brush and twigs.

During a rare peaceful moment, he said to me, “Your hair. I have never seen hair like this.”

“Red, you mean?”

He asked to touch my hair, and I said, “Sure.” I told Obit that I had Irish roots, that my mother had had red hair. Obit became quiet.

“What are you thinking, Obit?”

He teared up and told me that he had no family left, that Zuberi had come to his village and killed everyone.

“They even took down my old grandmother,” he told me. “With knives. I saw this. She love everyone. She die hard.”

“I’m so sorry, Obit. What was her name?”

“Joya. Grandmother Joya.”

There is a radio station in Magwi, and that day I heard that Zuberi’s people had attacked the city of Juba. They had captured a hundred and twenty-nine children. They castrated the boys and left them to bleed to death. They had gang-raped the little girls before killing them. Little boys who had been unable to run were roped together, and their throats had been slit.

I couldn’t stop thinking about this horror.

God, why? Why didn’t You stop this?

That night, I wrote in my journal about the attack on Juba, and then I created a new section and a new page. I called the first entry “This Was Joya.” I wrote down what Obit had told me about what his grandmother had taught him, and anecdotes about his parents and siblings, who had been brutally slaughtered.

Since “Joya,” I’ve written sixty memorial stories in my journal. As I recorded Zuberi’s crimes against humanity, one real person at a time, I became a historian of bloody murder in South Sudan. I prayed every day that soon, the eyes of the world would be fixed on Colonel Zuberi. And that he would pay on this earth for what he had done to these poor people.

Chapter 38

MY FIRST three months in Magwi passed like a med school dream. I worked with Sabeena, and since we could just about read each other’s minds, we made an excellent team.

Medical supplies were delivered to the Magwi post office directly from Juba. We received virgin bandages, saline solution, and an autoclave for sterilizing equipment. Most important, we got cases of medicine for kala-azar.

A new doctor joined us from Connecticut. Dr. Susan Gregan was an emergency doctor and as committed as we were. She brought her bubbly personality, a trunk full of paperback thrillers, and a soothing way with the most fearful of patients. Susan liked working the night shift, leaving Sabeena and Albert to their newly wedded bliss in their room at the end of the clinic. I spent my long, lovely nights writing in my room under the eaves.

On this particular day, about three months after my arrival, I noticed that doors closed and conversation stopped at my approach. What was happening?

I found Albert repairing a motor behind the clinic.

Albert was Egyptian, with a degree in electrical engineering. He loved Sabeena madly, and she was wildly in love with him. Albert was in charge of the clinic’s mechanicals, especially the critically important generator and water pump. He made up stories for his own amusement and had a truly great laugh. He also cooked.

That morning, a delicious aroma came from the clay oven in the patch of ground beyond the back porch. When I asked Albert what he was baking, he said, “The queen of England is coming. It’s special for her.”

“Really, Albert? Come on.”

He let out a deep, rolling laugh, and when he finally took a breath, I said, “Al, people are acting weird. What’s up?”

He smiled up at me. “How old are you, Brigid?”

The scurrying and whispering suddenly made sense. Sabeena trotted down the steps and into the yard. She looked at Albert’s face, then mine.

“I guess my big-mouth husband has already ruined the surprise. So, Brigid, close your eyes.”

Albert said in a spooky voice, “Nooo peek-ing.”

I covered my eyes, and Sabeena spun me around until I was dizzy. I heard a commotion on the steps, and then Sabeena said, “You can open them now.”

Two grinning girls stood before me, smiling and plump, their hair braided, and dressed in pretty clothes. They were almost unrecognizable. And then, I screamed.

Aziza threw herself at me, and Jemilla did the same. Albert broke into “Happy Birthday,” giving it tremendous importance with his baritone voice. Sabeena served the banana cake that Albert had baked in the clay oven, and Dr. Susan somehow produced a bunch of flowers.

I don’t remember many of my birthdays, but I’ll never forget this one. I was twenty-eight. I was happy. I wanted for nothing. Just before we sliced the cake, I prayed.

“Dear Lord, thank You for leading me to this place, for the good health and safety of these wonderful people, and for this incomparable day. Amen.”

That night, the young ladies pushed a bed up to mine so that we could sleep together as we had at Kind Hands. They were living now in Juba, going to school, and no one was suffering that night. We had a window with a screen, clean beds, and full stomachs, and we were surrounded by people we loved.

While Colonel Dage Zuberi was still roaming free and planning genocide, Aziza, Jemilla, and I were snug in the attic room under the eaves.

We were giggling as we floated off to sleep.

Chapter 39

I STEELED myself for my trip to the village center of Magwi, which was an hour from the clinic, over a winding and rutted mud road. I had the use of a cart, and I was on good terms with the donkey, an old soldier called Carrot. But this wouldn’t be a ride in the park.

Kwame, the nearly toothless young man who had driven me from the airport bus stop to the clinic four months ago, worked at the post office in Magwi. He had called me over the radio channel the previous night and told me that a shipment of antibiotics had arrived for Zuberi’s Gray Army.

We had been waiting for this.

I said, “I’ll come for the drugs tomorrow. You understand, Kwame? I’m coming.”

“Lady, the Kill on Sight posters of the doctors at Kind Hands are still on the door. Your face is still up there. Maybe you should stay home.”

“Make the calls for me, please, Kwame. Make them now.”

On any day, going into town was very dangerous. I was scared but not suicidal. I had a good and very important reason for going to Magwi by myself.

I was going alone, but I wouldn’t be alone.

I held the crucifix hanging from a chain around my neck, and I prayed. After getting off my knees, I made notes in my journal, then tucked it under my pillow. I got a carrot from the kitchen for the donkey and left a note for Sabeena.

I had to make an emergency call. I’ll be back by dinner.

Then, at midday, when everyone was busy inside the clinic, I pulled on my rain slicker over my scrubs, borrowed Albert’s waterproof boots without asking, and took off in the cart.

I clucked to Carrot and told him he was a good fellow. He lowered his head and forged through hock-deep water, his hooves sucking at the mud as he pulled me without complaint toward Magwi’s small town center.

After about three miles, the dirt track merged with an unpaved two-lane road that morphed into Magwi’s main street. I stopped just outside the town and tied Carrot’s reins to the branch of a tree. I said, “Best to keep you out of traffic, buddy.” I gave him his treat and patted his shoulder.

The post office was located at the far end of the town, on the corner of an intersection of the main street and the road toward Torit. My heart was beating way too fast as I wondered if I would sleep tonight in my bed under the eaves.

Only God knew.

Was He busy with other people or things? Or did He hold this particular sparrow in His hand? Just before I entered the village proper, I spoke out loud, and I put everything I had into it.

“God? It’s me, Brigid. I really need you. Now.”

Chapter 40

MAGWI’S MAIN street was only three hundred yards long, lined with decrepit mud-and-wood-frame shacks and shopkeepers selling sleeping mats, cooking oil, and sacks of dried maize. I walked past the open-doored shops, the one-pump gas station, a brick-faced municipal building, and farther along I came to the market where men and women sat under umbrellas and sold produce out of suitcases.

Music and dancing broke out under the steel-gray sky. Beat-up cars, motorcycles, and pedestrians in bright clothing mingled in the street, and men on bikes with bundles on their backs wove through light traffic.

Several cars and trucks, including Kwame’s old Dodge junker, were parked at the end of the street, bounding the one-room post office building on two sides. A bare flagpole angled out from the peak of the metal roof, which had been half torn off by a storm. A line of people stood out front, and when I joined the line, they stared.

I smiled, but I was trembling.

As the line crept toward the open front door, I silently rehearsed what I would say when I got to the window inside.

I’m Dr. Fitzgerald, from Magwi Clinic. I’m expecting a package from Juba.

I was focused on the length of the line and the distance to the open doorway ahead. So when I was seized from behind and thrown violently facedown in the mud, I was stunned, and for a long second, my mind scrambled-then I screamed.

I tried to get to my hands and knees, but a voice behind me barked, “Be still,” and a heavy boot pressed hard on my back and kept me down. The people who had been in the line and those who had been walking in the street didn’t try to help me. They fled. They simply ran.

I gagged on mud and my stomach heaved, and that was when I became aware of a blade biting into the skin of my throat. I started to black out, but if I lost consciousness, I would surely die. So, by sheer will, I stayed in the horrifying present.

Then, just as suddenly as I had been thrown down, I was hauled to my feet. I was so weak my knees wouldn’t lock, but two men behind me had that covered. One still held his knife to my jugular, and the other gripped my arms so that I couldn’t slip to the ground.

A male voice with a trace of an English accent came at me from the street.

“Could this be Dr. Fitzgerald? What a fortunate surprise.”

Standing ten feet away, dressed in fatigues, with an AK strapped across his chest, was an average-sized man in his forties, going bald, with black-framed glasses and a beard giving cover to a double chin. He was backed by a half dozen Gray soldiers with clay-smeared faces, all of them heavily armed, and he radiated a powerful presence.

I’d never seen his picture, but I knew I was face-to-face with Colonel Dage Zuberi, a diabolic monster and one of the most terrifying people in the world.

Chapter 41

ZUBERI’S SMILE was way too familiar, and he spoke to me as if we were friends.

“Oh. I have wanted to meet you, Dr. Fitz-ger-ald. Brigid, correct? How interesting that we both had business here today.”

Zuberi didn’t know that I had set up this showdown. Or did he? My pulse boomed in my ears. I couldn’t swallow or blink or speak. I couldn’t even think. I just stared until he said, “You’re afraid? Why, Brigid? Did you do something wrong?”

I was twenty-eight years old, a city girl, a doctor with three years of work under my belt. I wasn’t a soldier or a spy. And yet, I had brought this upon myself.

Of course I was afraid. As Christ is the Word made flesh, Zuberi was evil in the flesh. And the reality of that was overwhelming.

I wanted to shout for help, but I didn’t dare. Instead I said, “Please ask your man to put down the knife.”

“Kofi is his own man,” said Zuberi. “Kofi, do you wish to walk away from Dr. Brigid?”

The man behind me scoffed.

I felt the edge of that blade cutting me, and my arms were pinned. I wasn’t going anywhere on my own power. I forced myself to say what I’d come here to say.

“Colonel Zuberi-yes, I know who you are. You have killed so many people. Your soldiers have killed mothers and their babies. You’ve slit the throats of little children and hacked old people to death. Doctors and missionaries who came here to help with food and medicine-you’ve murdered them, too.

“These terrible acts are an affront to humanity and to God. We are all God’s creatures, and He loves us all. How can you dare to take away what God has given?”

Zuberi flicked his eyes up and down, from my eyes to my boots, and when his inventory of my features and baggy clothing was complete, he said, “How do you know what God wants? He speaks to people differently. It’s too bad that you can’t hold conflicting thoughts in your tiny mind. I expected you to be-I don’t know. Smarter. More impressive.”

Sighing with disappointment, he pulled a long knife from a scabbard on his hip and walked toward me. It was only a few paces, and he took his time.

My reaction was born of pure, impotent fear.

“Stay where you are!” I shrieked. “I’m an American. Don’t you dare screw with me.”

The monster was very amused.

“Don’t screw with you? I’ll decide that. Let me see you first, Doctor. Don’t be shy.”

I imagined my face on the kill poster tacked inside the post office door. I envisioned my picture and a fresh red stamp across my forehead. DEAD.

Blackness swallowed me up, and I just let go.

Chapter 42

I HEARD that voice as if from a long way away.

“Wake her.”

I was slapped hard across the face, and then the blade was back at my throat. Blood seeped down my neck and mingled with the icy sweat rolling down my body.

Where is the damned cavalry?

I tried to pull away, but, as before, the men behind painfully gripped my arms as Zuberi slipped his blade into the flap of my coat and sliced through the fasteners as though they were made of cheese.

My arms were released long enough for one of the men behind me to yank my opened coat down my back, further pinning my arms to my body. When my upper arms were restrained again, he held his knife to my neck.

I saw deep pleasure on Zuberi’s face as he placed his blade precisely at the V-neck of my scrub shirt and cut straight down. Fabric parted with a whisper as the sharp steel divided my shirt, the center of my bra, the elastic of my pants, along with a layer of my skin from my clavicle to my belly.

I screamed with all the air in my lungs and struggled to get my arms free, but I might as well have been nailed to a wall. I knew what was going to happen to me. People were routinely beheaded in South Sudan. I’d seen the decapitated bodies outside the gates. I’d seen detached heads on the killing field.

I tried to send my mind to God, but I was distracted as the monster sheathed his knife and mumbled, “Now, let me see.”

He grabbed a fistful of my clothing in each hand and tore my scrubs apart in one movement.

The entire front of my body was naked and exposed.

The Gray soldiers laughed and hooted and gathered around. Instinctively, I tried to cover myself, but it was futile. The man behind me pressed his blade to my throat. I couldn’t move.

Zuberi laughed.

“You look better with clothes,” he said. “No. I don’t want to screw with you. I want whatever your stinking government will pay to get you back alive. A million dollars U.S., at least. Thank you, Brigid Fitzgerald, for coming to Magwi.”

“They’ll pay nothing!” I shouted into Zuberi’s mocking face. I was helpless. Humiliated. He had won. All I had was the spit in my mouth, a very poor weapon, but I let it fly.

My saliva hit Zuberi between the eyes.

It was a feeble gesture, but Zuberi went crazy, wiping frantically with his sleeve as though I’d flung acid in his face. He cursed me in a language I didn’t know.

And as I expected, the man standing directly behind me grabbed my hair and pulled my head back, baring my throat to the leaden, drizzling sky.

He growled, “Do you love life? Apologize to Colonel Zuberi or die.”

I had written to Sabeena, I’ll be back by dinner. That had been a wish, a prayer, and, although I had been bluffing, I had visualized my triumphal return.

I had thought too highly of myself. I had thought I could do the impossible. I saw that now. No more than three minutes had passed since Zuberi’s men had grabbed me from the line outside the post office. I’d accomplished nothing. I never had a chance.

Dear God. Forgive me my trespasses. I’m ready.

Chapter 43

I FLUNG the doors of my mind wide open to God and braced for death. But He didn’t speak to me. Rather, I heard pops of gunfire, and in a pause, a distinctly American voice shouted, “Drop the knife!”

The blade bit into my neck and I fully expected to feel it slide across my throat. Instead, there was more gunfire. The man with the knife grunted and fell to the mud at my feet. The one holding my arms also dropped, moaning and coughing out his last breath.

I didn’t hesitate.

I dove for the ground and covered the back of my neck with my hands.

There were more shots, and then a heavy-duty vehicle tore around the corner from the main street and braked within yards of me. I stayed down as bullets strafed the street. A third man, part of Zuberi’s armed guard, ran, and he too was cut down.

I lifted my face and saw Zuberi, along with several of his men, zigzagging around the bodies and running toward the odd assortment of vehicles parked across the street.

Another salvo of bullets chattered, and someone grabbed my arm. I wrenched it away.

I heard, “Lady, it’s me.”

It was Kwame. It was Kwame.

He helped me to my feet, and we ran to the side of the post office. From there, I saw a truck swerve to avoid a pedestrian and collide with a car, which in turn skidded into another car. In the midst of the chaos, Zuberi had reached his Land Rover and had gotten in beside a driver.

Kwame yelled, “He’s going now!”

Zuberi’s Land Rover rammed into a parked car in front, then backed into a truck behind it. The driver was trying to make an opening, an avenue of escape, and, in fact, the nose of the vehicle now had a clear shot at the road to Torit.

But as the Land Rover lurched ahead, two U.S. Army Humvees roared up and blocked it.

American soldiers poured out of their Humvees. Bullets sprayed Zuberi’s ride, killing his driver. Zuberi stuck his hands up and shouted, “Stop shooting! I give up!”

Soldiers pulled open the doors and dragged Zuberi out of the Land Rover, then slammed him across the hood and stripped him of his weapons.

I heard Kwame saying, “Lady. Look here.”

He had taken off his long, boxy shirt, and after peeling off my raincoat, he stuck my numb arms through his shirtsleeves. I couldn’t manage buttonholes, so Kwame closed the shirt for me, picked up my raincoat, and draped it over my shoulders.

Someone called my name.

I looked up as a gray-haired U.S. Army officer bolted out of a junker parked on the same side of the street as the post office. Holstering his gun, he hurried over to where Kwame and I stood. I blinked stupidly as the officer said, “Dr. Fitzgerald? I’m Captain Jeff Gurney. We spoke last night. Are you hurt?”

I shook my head no, but my hand went to where the knife had sliced into my throat. I was bleeding, but the chain around my neck, the one Tori had given me with a crucifix, had stopped the blade from cutting into my artery.

I closed my hand around the crucifix.

Thank you, God.

Captain Gurney said, “I’m sorry for what those men did to you, Dr. Fitzgerald. We were watching you the whole time, but I’m no sniper. I was waiting for support, but this situation went critical so fast. Finally, I had to risk it.”

I got it now. It was Gurney who had shouted, “Drop the knife!” Then he had taken his shots. If his aim had been slightly off in any direction, he could have shot me.

I thanked him for saving my life, and he thanked me in turn. “Your courage is amazing, Dr. Fitzgerald. Because of you, Zuberi is out of the game.”

The captain introduced himself to Kwame, saying, “Good work connecting the dots, sir. First-class job.”

Kwame was smiling now, shaking the captain’s hand with both of his. He had been the perfect go-between. He had conspired with me. He had let Zuberi know that a package had arrived. He had contacted the army and made arrangements with Gurney. As Gurney had said, Kwame had done a first-class job.

My voice quavered when I said to Kwame, “I know what you risked for me. Thank you. I’m your friend for life.”

“You are the brave one, lady. You did this. You stood up to Zuberi. Only you.”

We hugged hard, both of us crying.

Is it over? Am I going to live?

And then, the noise on the street got even louder.

Chapter 44

A SOFT flutter overhead turned into a loud, choppy roar as helicopters settled down on the street. Tarps and umbrellas took flight, and people shrieked as they ran from the whirling blades.

While our soldiers looked on with guns in their hands, the onlookers who had fled the shooting returned, and now they circled Zuberi. They shouted into his face. They used stout sticks like baseball bats, swinging and connecting solidly with Zuberi’s back and thighs.

When I looked again, Zuberi was naked, lying facedown in the mud. He cried for help. He ordered people to leave him alone. He covered his head with his arms. But the blows kept coming.

Gurney shouted to me over the racket of helicopter engines, “Dr. Fitzgerald! We have to get you out of here. Stay with me!”

“You’ll take me to Magwi Clinic?” I shouted.

He looked at me with stark disbelief.

“You’re kidding, right? Doctor. You just baited the trap. If you don’t leave now, Zuberi’s troops will kill you, today. Tell me you understand.”

“Captain, I can’t just go. I have patients. I have people depending on me. Thank you, though. Be safe.”

I turned away and headed up the street to where I had tied the donkey. Gurney stopped me by grabbing my arm, and, you know, I’d had enough of being manhandled today.

“Let go of me.”

I pulled my arm free and began to run in my oversized boots. I was desperate. I had to get to Sabeena and tell her what had happened. I had to warn her to leave the clinic. Because of me, she might be the next target.

But Gurney wouldn’t take no from me. He chased me down, grabbed me by the shoulders, spun me around, and held on until I stopped fighting him.

He shouted, “You’re being crazy!”

“My friends could be in danger. Don’t you understand? I have to tell them to get out.”

Gurney held on to my shoulders and shook his head.

“You’re a kid, Brigid. Listen up, as if I were your father. If you don’t leave here now, you are going to die today.”

I glared at him and could almost hear Colin telling me to get into the helicopter, saying that it was time to go. If I had listened to Colin, he might still be alive. His death was on me.

I said to Gurney, “I’m not a kid. And you’re not my father. Don’t you understand that I’m responsible?”

“I have responsibility, too. Say I let you go. You walk about three hours or so to the clinic. You warn your friends. And then what? You have no backup, no escape plan. Picture it, okay? Really picture that.”

I got it. I saw a massacre. White coats spattered with blood. Bodies in heaps.

I said, “You have to evacuate the clinic. Promise me you’ll get the doctors out.”

“I promise.”

“You’ll do it now?”

“Yes. Now.”

Would he do it? Would he get to the clinic in time?

After Gurney released me, he walked me back to the helicopter and helped me into a seat. He buckled me in, then spoke to the pilot.

He shouted to me, “Good luck, Brigid!” Then he climbed back down.

The blades whirled, and the helicopter vibrated. In the moment before we left the ground, I looked down at the mob surrounding Zuberi. He was bloodied, and the crowd was still beating him, shouting and throwing rocks at him.

Just when I thought they had killed him, a man in a blue shirt turned Zuberi over so that he was lying faceup, then used the stock of Zuberi’s own gun to break his knees.

Zuberi was rolling from side to side in agony when two American soldiers jerked him up off the ground and dragged him toward another helicopter.

The chopper I was in lifted.

We were peeling off when a flickering movement on the side of the street caught my attention. It was Kwame.

He was waving good-bye.

Chapter 45

ONCE WE were airborne, I slipped into a kind of shock.

Within a ridiculously short period of time, I’d been terrified, humiliated, and bloodied, and now I had been officially kidnapped. I didn’t know where I was going or even if our military had the right to take me out of Magwi.

What now?

I shivered in Kwame’s shirt and the remains of my raincoat as the helicopter delivered me to the Juba airport. A jeep was waiting, and the chopper pilot handed me off to the driver, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant named Karen Triebel. She gave me a temporary American passport and a knapsack, and as she drove to the terminal, she told me that the knapsack contained a tracksuit, a bottle of Advil, bandages, and a tube of triple-antibiotic ointment.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said.

“I’ve got this,” I told her.

Still, she accompanied me to a ladies’ room inside the terminal, where I washed my wounds and tossed my ripped clothing into the trash, an unceremonious conclusion to my last four months in South Sudan.

Within the hour, Lieutenant Triebel and I were streaking toward Entebbe, Uganda. There, we boarded another flight, this one bound for the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany.

I slept hard on the plane and had violent dreams that I couldn’t remember whenever I was awoken to eat. I had no appetite for food. Instead, I looked out at the clouds and formed the thought, Lord? Was this Your plan?

Even if I had been delusional when I’d last “spoken” with God, I wanted to feel His presence again. But all I heard was my own anxious chatter visiting every front: past, present, and unknowable future. Where am I going? What will happen next?

Lieutenant Triebel had shaken out her hair and was putting on a sleep mask when I touched her arm.

“Brigid. You okay?”

I asked, “What will happen to Zuberi?”

She said, “I don’t know. Maybe he’ll fall out of a helicopter. Or maybe that just wouldn’t be bad enough for that bastard.”

Twelve hours after we left Uganda, we landed at Ramstein. Lieutenant Triebel accompanied me to the base hospital, where I was kept overnight for observation. In the morning, the doctor said, “Surprisingly, you’re good to go.”

Triebel and I were driven to a square, stucco-faced house within rows of identical houses close to the base. I was given a key to the upstairs apartment, and Triebel had the apartment below.

“Right now, my job is all about you,” she said, turning the key in the lock. “Whatever you need, I’ll do my best to make it happen. Tomorrow, you need to brief some government men on whatever you know about Zuberi. After that, just do what makes you happy. Here’s a tablet and a phone, Brigid. Call someone you love.”

Chapter 46

I CALLED Tori, my dear school friend, living with her husband in Rome.

As soon as I heard her sweet voice, I broke down.

I burbled into the mouthpiece about the crucifix she had given me, how the chain had stopped the blade at my neck. She got the gist of what had gone down and comforted me. Her husband, Marty, got on the phone after that and said, “You should get a medal. Or a town named after you. Brigidsville.”

Finally, I laughed.

Then Marty said, “Zachary is in New York. You want his number? Or should I give him yours?”

I called and got Zach’s outgoing voice mail.

“I’m on assignment in New York. Leave a message, and I’ll call back.”

I spoke into my phone: “Yank. It’s Red. I’m in Ramstein, Germany, calling to say hello.”

I was both disappointed and relieved that Zach hadn’t answered, but he called back at three in the morning his time.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I was kicked out of Africa for my own good,” I told him.

“I’ll come to Ramstein,” he said.

“Funny, Zach, but, seriously, that makes no sense.”

Zach said, “You keep fending me off, Brigid. Why? You know you want to see me. I’ve grown a beard.”

I told him that I was the guest of the U.S. Air Force at present, and I sketched in some of what had gone down in Magwi. After answering a couple of questions, I changed the subject by asking Zach to tell me about his New York assignment.

“I’m tailing the Yankees. It’s that time of year.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Keep my phone number handy,” he said. “I return calls at night. Brigid. Please take care.”

After we hung up, I went to the beautiful, white-tiled bathroom, turned on the shower, and got inside. I sat in the corner of the tub, soaking my wounds while doing my rounds of Magwi Clinic in my mind. I said good-bye to all the patients and volunteers and especially to Obit. I hugged Sabeena, and then I sobbed for a long time under the hot water.

When I got out of the shower, I felt, at the very least, clean. The apartment had a stocked fridge, a television, a bookcase, an excellent shower, and a soft bed. I wanted for nothing.

I went to my knees at the side of my bed. I folded my hands and closed my eyes.

Dear God, if You can hear me, I humbly thank You for saving my life. Please protect Sabeena, Albert, Dr. Susan, and everyone at Magwi Clinic. And put Your arms around Kwame, who was so brave. I hope he found Carrot and took him home. Amen.

Chapter 47

I WAS still dazed by all that had happened when, the next morning, I was taken to Ramstein for a series of debriefings. I told various officials from several American agencies all that I knew about Zuberi. And I was briefed in return.

Fantastic news.

Sabeena, Albert, and Dr. Susan had all been evacuated from Magwi. I was given a box of my things from my room at the clinic. My hands shook as I opened the box and found my well-traveled leather hobo bag with my actual credentials inside, along with my nubby sweater. Under the sweater, wrapped in my jeans, was my journal, with a note just inside the cover.

Mission accomplished. Best regards, J. Gurney, Captain, U.S. Army

I was overjoyed for the news of my friends’ safety. And I was ecstatic to have my journal back in my hands. This euphoria lasted until I was back inside my temporary apartment.

Then my new reality set in.

After the few meetings at the base, I had nothing but time to myself. I was invited out, but going from the takedown in Magwi to restaurants with strangers was just a bridge too far.

I copied my old journal onto my new tablet, added new entries, and wrote for long hours at a time, and I drank. Quite a bit.

I was safe and I was comfortable and it was a luxury to drink as much as it took to dull the pain in my heart. But after drinking and moping for far longer than was good for me, something finally snapped. I was sick of myself. Really. What a joke to indulge myself in self-pity. Me. This thought led to the next.

I had had purpose in Africa.

Whether I’d returned to Africa because of the voice of God or my own need to do something worthwhile, I had gone. I had helped people. My life had had meaning. I’d stood up to Zuberi and helped to bring him down.

Who was I now?

That night, I was drinking my dinner and watching TV.

Most of it was stupid, but while watching the news, I learned about MERS, an infectious disease that, after killing thousands in Saudi Arabia, had spread to Europe.

MERS was a freaking stealthy virus. No one knew how it spread-was it airborne? food borne? It was entirely inconsistent. One person could be struck with severe pneumonia, and another would be asymptomatic until just before death.

The World Health Organization had issued a report on MERS saying that this disease had a mortality rate of almost 40 percent, that there was no known effective cure, and that there were reasonable concerns that MERS would become a pandemic.

A pandemic?

I ran downstairs and banged on Karen Triebel’s door.

She had cream on her face. Her hair was wrapped in a towel. She tied the sash of her robe.

“Brigid?”

“You know about MERS, Karen? I’m actually an expert on infectious diseases,” I told her. “Please hook me up with a hospital or, better yet, a clinic.”

“Let me see what I can do,” she said.

Chapter 48

BECAUSE OF my new military connection, an apartment was waiting for me when I arrived in Berlin. It was a wonderfully crazy little place, with bright colors and patterns, big windows, and a spun-glass chandelier over the dining table. The bedroom was huge, with a bed so large, it could have slept four, and, best of all, it had a balcony off the living room with a fifth-floor view of the park.

First thing the next morning, I put on an actual skirt, a smart blouse, and low heels and went for a job interview at the Berlin Center for Torture Victims.

BZFO, as the clinic was called, specialized in treating refugee patients from forty countries, mainly Middle Eastern, but there were African patients as well.

The clinic was new and looked immaculate. My interviewer, Dr. Mary Maillet, wore a severe black suit, red combs in her wavy, gray hair, and lime-green-framed glasses, making her look simultaneously warm and tough.

She told me that the staff at BZFO was made up of multidisciplinary doctors and therapists of all kinds. Then she sat back in her swivel chair and grilled me about my training and my experience in South Sudan.

I was describing our 24-7 surgery at Kind Hands when she interrupted me to say, “When can you start?”

“I have the job?”

“We’ll be lucky to have you, Brigid. Welcome to BZFO.”

I started at the clinic the next morning, and I stayed late into the night. My new patients had terrible physical injuries and profound emotional ones. They were all refugees with horrific stories like the ones I’d heard in South Sudan.

A young woman named Amena, just twenty-three, had escaped from war-shredded Syria. Her town had been shelled either by ISIS or Assad, from which side of the conflict, she didn’t know. Her beloved husband and two young boys had been killed in the blast. She had lost an eye, and her neck and hands had been burned. But, still, she had escaped, making a long and arduous journey by foot and boat and train to Berlin.

Amena said to me, “God is great, Dr. Fitzgerald.”

Her faith in the face of appalling tragedy simply brought me to tears.

“You are great, too, Amena. Now, please, cough for me.”

Within the week, I was seeing patients with flu-like symptoms. I had worked with Ebola, HIV, and kala-azar, and now I was tackling MERS in a new infectious-disease quarantine wing at the torture clinic. I was helping desperately sick people, and they needed me. I needed them, too.

And then I got sick myself.

Chapter 49

ONE MINUTE I was tending to a patient.

The next, I had collapsed in her room.

I was helped to a bed, where I hacked and threw up and wheezed for days I couldn’t remember, and I was so weak, I couldn’t sit up. I had feverish sleep in which I felt as though I were drowning. I dreamed of Africa during the flood season and that I was sinking to the muddy floor of the White Nile. I heard my own underwater screams.

I wanted to die.

In conscious moments, I grabbed my chart from the end of the bed, and I read the stark truth. My white blood cells were losing the battle against the disease.

I was going to get my dying wish.

I’d always heard that God works in mysterious ways. Now I was right there at the heart of the mystery. I had survived the plagues of Africa, bullets and near death on the killing field. I’d survived the blade at my neck, only to lose my life to a virus inside a clean German clinic.

I used some of those lucid moments to reflect on what I had done with God’s gift of life, now that I had lived out the extent of it.

Images of my childhood, my school years, the people I’d loved and ones I hadn’t loved well enough, flashed through my mind in random order and vivid color. Although I prayed, I didn’t look for a connection to God.

I just wanted to leave.

I dropped off into a haze of watery memories, and sometime later, I came out of this sweaty dream state with a normal temperature and a great thirst. I knew that I was past the worst of it. I had survived.

I thanked God humbly, passionately, and then I asked Dr. Maillet for a report on the patients in the MERS wing. My wing.

She dragged a chair up to the side of my bed.

“I don’t have great news, Brigid. Half our patients were transferred to Charité.”

She was talking about the largest, most advanced hospital in Berlin. That was good, wasn’t it?

“Why only half our patients?” I asked.

“Fourteen people died. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Brigid. That sweet girl from Syria. Amena. She asked about you before she passed away last night.”

Amena’s death was devastating. I hadn’t known her well, but she was like so many people I had known who had come through Job-like adversity with shining optimism and glowing faith.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Why did it happen?

I broke down in deep sobs, and when Dr. Maillet failed to comfort me, she injected me with a sedative, and I fell into a deep, drug-induced sleep.

I didn’t want to wake up.

It felt to me that God had forsaken me and everyone on earth.

Chapter 50

THE THIRTY of us from the BZFO clinic had gathered at the edge of the pond in Volkspark to say a few words about our patients who had died from MERS.

We all looked how we felt: heartsick, exhausted, and breaking down from frustration because the disease was still taking lives, and nothing had been found that could stop it.

At the same time, other epic tragedies were erupting around the planet: earthquakes where none had been before, and opportunistic disease that swept into ruined cities and killed tens of thousands. Financial collapses had bankrupted countries, induced even more poverty, and swept corporations, along with potential technological and medical advances, off the table. Crazed shooters got away with mass murders in malls and schools, and the genocide in sub-Saharan Africa not only continued but intensified.

Why was all of this happening?

Was God testing humanity? Or was He unwilling to intervene?

When it was my turn to speak at the service, I thought of Amena, that sweet, young widowed mother of two dead children. I pictured her scarred face and empty eye socket, and how she glowed like a neon sign in the dark with her love of God.

I said to my friends and coworkers, “You know that Amena survived what for most would have been soul-crushing tragedy-the loss of her home and entire family. But she rallied, and she was brimming with life and faith.

“I wished I had gotten to know Amena better. I would have loved to have been her friend. She told me that she had spoken with her dead boys since their deaths, and she said, ‘Don’t be sad for me, Dr. Fitzgerald. I will be with them again.’”

I teared up as I searched inside myself for an authentic, hopeful note that would represent Amena’s undiluted faith. Just then, a small bird flew across my line of sight and skimmed the glittering surface of the pond before disappearing into the tree shadows.

I snapped back into the present.

I said, “I am thinking of Amena now. Her husband sits with his arms around her, and her children are in her lap. I see her safely reunited with God.”

Was she with God? Really? Was God real? If so, did He care?

The sun was still high when the service ended.

I was still weak and depressed and thought I would simply walk home to my quirky apartment, write a journal entry about today’s service, and then drop into a dead sleep in the huge bed. I was heading toward Friedenstrasse when a gentleman coming up behind me on the same path called out, “Dr. Fitzgerald, may I give you a ride?”

I recognized Karl Lenz, one of BZFO’s benefactors. I’d seen him at the clinic but was surprised that he seemed to know me. Still, I wasn’t feeling chatty.

“Thanks anyway, Mr. Lenz. It’s a short walk.”

“Please. Call me Karl. Would you mind if I might walk with you?” he said. “I feel pretty awful, and I’m not ready to be alone.”

“Of course not,” I said.

We skipped the small talk and jumped right into the horrific week at the clinic. Karl said that he was relieved our MERS caseload had been moved to Charité. “We just weren’t equipped for it,” he said.

We had reached the edge of the park by then, and Karl asked me to lunch. I found that I wasn’t ready to be alone, either.

Chapter 51

A TAXICAB took us to Patio Restaurantschiff, a glass-enclosed restaurant on a boat moored on the Spree River.

I’d been complaining about life; then, in pretty much the next moment, a chair was pulled out for me, and a napkin dropped into my lap in one of the prettiest little restaurants in all of Berlin.

I do have restaurant German but was happy to turn the ordering of lunch over to Karl. He chose a fish soup, venison goulash with chanterelles, and a Künstler Riesling. I couldn’t help but look him over as he spoke with the waiter.

Karl looked to be in his mid to late fifties. He had good-uncle features-glasses and longish, gray-streaked dark hair. He also looked fit, and I loved that he had such expressive hands.

When the wine had been poured and the waiter was gone, Karl let me know that he was aware of my life-over-death battle with MERS. That I had almost died.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked me.

I said, “I’m not running laps around the Tiergarten, but I can tie my shoes without falling over. With my eyes closed. Pretty good, right?”

“I have to say this, Brigid. Doctors like you are why I support BZFO. Dr. Maillet told me a little about your background. I don’t want to embarrass you, but for a young woman with so many opportunities to make money and live well, to risk your life in South Sudan-well, it’s pretty impressive. Ach. I’ve embarrassed you now.”

“It’s fine,” I said. “But tell me about yourself. You’re a writer?”

“A playwright, yes,” he told me. “For me, writing plays is about the most perfect work imaginable.”

Karl told me about his play in progress, a political satire, and from there, we talked about geopolitics along the world’s worst fault lines. He was fully aware of the bloody civil war in South Sudan, and even after the dishes had been cleared away, we were still discussing the senseless conflict that was destroying the country.

“Greed and corruption are the root cause of this,” he said.

I saw it in his face: he actually felt the pain of the war. And after two and a half glasses of wine, I found myself telling Karl about my epic clash with Dage Zuberi.

It was a hard story to tell, but I felt as if I’d known Karl well and for a long time. And as I talked about that day in Magwi, I could see that Karl felt my pain, too.

We were politely thrown out of the restaurant so that it could be set up for dinner, and Karl did give me a ride the few blocks to my apartment.

Once home, I kicked off my shoes and emailed Sabeena. She was living in Mumbai with Albert, and they had adopted Jemilla and Aziza.

I wrote, Sabeena, guess what? I’ve made a new friend in Berlin.

Chapter 52

I HAD hardly hung my bag up behind the exam-room door when Dr. Maillet waved me into her office.

She pushed her green-framed glasses back into her hair and said, “Brigid, as much as you like the overnight shift, I’m putting you on days only. Get your strength back. Eat. Sleep. We need you to be in top form so we can exploit your youth and stamina later on.”

“Done,” I said.

She laughed. She had been expecting a fight. “Good,” she said. “Now take the night off.”

Since we’d closed our infectious-disease wing, I was attached to BZFO’s day clinic, and it was almost a vacation.

I didn’t miss the violence of South Sudan. I didn’t miss the upside-down days of breakfast at midnight, tinned ham at dawn. I practiced everyday medicine on refugee patients who had never had a routine doctor’s appointment before coming to Berlin.

I cleaned wounds. I set bones. I prescribed medication, and I sat in sunlit rooms with patients who, over paper cups of sugary tea, told me stories of savagery that I both understood and would never understand. I made friends with my coworkers, and I went on dates-nothing serious, but I was happy and enjoying every day, and in this way, two years passed.

Sometimes Karl stopped by the clinic at day’s end, gathered up everyone who was heading out, and took us to dinner in a local tavern, a wirtschaft, up the street.

He was the best kind of patron: supportive and a great listener, and he was a hilarious storyteller, too. One evening as I was leaving work, Karl invited me to see the rehearsal of his play Der Zug.

He had told me that the one-act play took place entirely on a train platform. Characters representing people from all over Europe waited for a train that does not come, a send-up of the unmet expectations of the eurozone.

Karl met me at the stage door to the Kleines Theater, on the Südwestkorso. He showed me around backstage and introduced me to the actors and the crew.

Clearly, Karl had told them about me.

They hugged me. Told me how they admired the work I was doing. And Karl stood by nervously, looking as if he was pacing inside his head as he waited for the curtain to go up on the train that would not come.

We sat together in the front row, and when the rehearsal began, I was completely drawn in. The set was so real-with the rumbles coming over the sound system, the intermittent dimming of overhead lights-that I felt that I was sitting on the platform right across the track.

The characters were a Greek leftist, an Italian economist, a Spanish millionaire, a Belgian bureaucrat, and a Polish plumber. They were first shown at ease, and then under increasing pressure, reacting in idiosyncratic ways.

There was a beautifully comic moment when the expectation of the coming train peaked. The actors leaned forward, air whooshed up from under their feet, and they turned their heads to see der zug rush by. Their quizzical expressions as they stared at one another were priceless.

I laughed out loud, that two-part giggle followed by a belly laugh that Zach had pinned on me, and Karl, sitting next to me, wrapped me in a spontaneous hug. Then he kissed me.

Karl Lenz kissed me.

Chapter 53

KARL’S KISS surprised the hell out of me.

First, there was the fact of that kiss, and even more unsettling was the electricity that came along with it that kind of lit me up.

Karl was my friend. And now?

He took my hand, and as the play went on in front of us, I stared at him. I was not cool. Karl smiled, squeezed my hand, and when the action on the stage broke for a discussion with the lighting man, Karl leaned toward me and whispered, “Don’t be shocked. I love you, Brigid.”

“What? No, you don’t.”

“I do. I fell for you the moment I saw Mary congratulate you on getting the job. It was just that instantaneous. And now that I know you, I want to be with you. I want to make you happy. I want to give to you. I want to marry you.”

“Karl,” I whispered fiercely back. “That’s crazy. We’ve only known each other…”

“As friends?”

I nodded.

“I had to tell you or explode,” he said. “Okay, Brigid. Maybe I see us as more than friends, eh? Or maybe this gives us an opportunity to see what we might have. No rush. We can spend as much time together as we want. Why not?”

I thought of several reasons why not, and all of them surfaced in my mind as the rehearsal commenced and I stared ahead at the stage.

Karl was crazy. He didn’t know me or my moods and habits or what had made me the person I am. And I knew only one side of his story.

Another thing-I’d never dreamed of getting married, didn’t know the first thing about being a wife, or if that was anything I should ever do. And, by the way, Karl was almost old enough to be my father.

I flashed on my heady feelings for Colin and even Zach, which were tumultuous, a little wild, a little dangerous. Karl didn’t ride a scooter at sixty miles an hour in crazy traffic. He didn’t risk his life in a medical battlefield. He wrote plays. He drove an old Daimler.

But-I liked that. Karl made me feel safe and cared about. I had come to treasure his friendship. I liked his complexity and his kindness. I liked him as a human being. As a man.

Were those reasons to marry him? He had said, No rush.

“Say something, Brigid, will you? I feel a little lost right now,” Karl said.

“I’m sorry. I forgot something.”

I stumbled across his knees as he stood up to let me out to the aisle. “Stay,” I told him. “I have to go. I’ll call you.”

I marched up the dark aisle and out the lobby door, onto the Südwestkorso. I was running again. I knew that running was old stuff, but my feet took me through and around clumps of pedestrians and all the way around the block.

What’s with you? I asked the air. What’s your problem, Brigid? And I wondered. If not now, when? If not Karl, who?

Was that a reason to get married?

I stood again in front of the theater and looked up at the sign reading DAS THEATER IST GESCHLOSSEN. “The theater is closed.”

I, too, was closed. The last time I had loved a man, he had died.

I knocked on the lobby door, and a young woman let me inside. I entered the dark lobby and went down the carpeted aisle, at last slipping into the seat next to Karl, in the front row. He whispered, “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said to Karl. “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, I would love to be your wife.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

Karl kissed me again. I took his face in my hands and kissed him back. The lights came on. The assemblage applauded the performance, and they turned to give Karl an enthusiastic hand. It was a standing ovation.

We both started to laugh. It was as if everyone had known except for me. I was going to marry Karl Lenz. He was going to be my husband.

Chapter 54

AT SEVEN A.M., I was sitting in a pew in Herz Jesu Kirche, the Church of the Sacred Heart, only two blocks from where I lived with my husband, Karl.

I still found it hard to believe that I had gotten married in a Lutheran church, wearing a long, white, and completely perfect wedding dress, surrounded by Karl’s family and good and shared friends from BZFO and Der Zug.

I’m pretty sure God had been there, too.

These past months were so unlike my previous life, it was almost comical. Who are you now, Brigid? Is this you?

As soon as we were settled into “our” three-room, top-floor apartment in the arty neighborhood of Prenzlauer Berg, Karl showed me Berlin. We walked miles, saw monuments and parks and stunning architecture. We went to the theater, of course, and I bought a new wardrobe because we were invited to so many dinner parties and benefits.

I’m a plain-looking woman, but when Karl looked at me, I felt like a cover girl. When we weren’t having nights out in the city, we nestled down in the study, where both of us did our writing.

I would read lines for Karl’s new play in progress, and sometimes my reading was so hilarious that Karl would say, “Terrible, Brigid. Terrible. Now I have to write that again. It will never sound good to me after that reading.”

I laughed so hard, and so did he.

While Karl struggled with his play, I wrote in my journal of human tragedy, one person at a time. When I put my writing into his hands, he read each word, never skimming, never patronizing. Once he said to me, “I tell you this, Brigid. Your writing is unflinching truth. You’re a better writer than I am.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“Trust me.”

Having never lived with a man before, I had to learn my way around Karl. He could get cranky when he was writing, either in his head or on his laptop. If I clashed pots in the kitchen or asked questions while he was “in the zone,” our happy flow could get interrupted. I was slow to apologize, but Karl was apologizer in chief and the best at hugging it out.

Sometimes, in bed late at night, I would awake with a start, thinking that I was back at Kind Hands, that Jemilla and Aziza had crawled into bed with me and that Sabeena was waking me up because someone was dying in the O.R.

But, no, thank God.

I was lying with my arms around the big, snoring man I trusted and loved with my whole heart.

Now, inside this lovely neighborhood church with the stained glass behind the altar throwing brilliant light on the stone floor, I had some things to say to God.

I thanked Him for the baby I was carrying inside me and for the happiness that filled me up from the bottom of my soles to the ends of my incorrigible red hair, and every part of me in between.

Pretty good joke on me, Lord. This is what I get for doubting You. I get everything good in the world. I am pretty sure You knew all of this, but I am more surprised than even You can imagine. How is it that I sit here, when six years ago I was full of bullet holes, stuck in a subterranean depression, barely alive at all?

I sometimes can’t be sure if this life is real. Is this a peek at my future? Am I dreaming? Or, dear God, is this my actual life? Am I allowed to have all of this?

I waited for an answer, and I heard nothing.

But I didn’t need the voice of God to tell me what was self-evident. The pews were solid cherry. The altarpiece was bejeweled gold supported by columns of marble. And a stained-glass Jesus Christ spread his arms wide open to me.

I am thankful, Lord. I will be the best wife, doctor, mother, friend, that I can possibly be. With Your help.

Amen.

I felt woozy when I got to my feet. I steadied myself with a hand on the back of the pew, thinking for a moment how nice it would be to go back to bed. If only. I flashed on my full day at BZFO, which would unfurl from the moment I stepped through the doorway.

I had just promised God that I would be the best possible doctor, despite the risks to myself and the little one curled up inside me.

I whispered out loud, “God, please watch over us.”

I crossed myself. And then I went to work.

Chapter 55

I HAD brought hundreds of babies into the world, during floods and droughts and in the black of night, holding a flashlight between my jaws.

However, because I might not be able to deliver my own child so easily, I was under the care of a superb ob-gyn at Charité, a world-class hospital.

Karl had purchased an apartment next to ours and opened a doorway between the two units, and, using our combined talents, we made the sweetest of nests for the baby we were expecting.

I continued to work the easy shift at BZFO, wearing loose clothing and shoes with good rubber soles.

Karl cooked delicious dinners and doted on me. We spent long evenings in his study writing in matching lounge chairs under the windows. This was really the best of times. I began to read more, and my writing improved in the sanctuary of a writers’ room for two as I turned sketches written in the trenches of Magwi Clinic into tight prose.

I wasn’t prepared for my water to break while I was on duty at BZFO, but, of course, that was how it happened. I said, “I can handle this.”

But I was suddenly afraid to cross this threshold.

Would my baby be all right? Would he or she be healthy and strong? What was I supposed to do now?

Dr. Maillet had Karl on speed dial.

He drove me to Charité himself, and he stayed with me while I labored and gave birth. Giving myself over to the greater wisdom of my doctor was one kind of miracle. Holding this child Karl and I had made was like a supernova of love that both humbled and expanded me.

I hugged our baby daughter to my breast, the two of us enclosed in Karl’s embrace, and I thanked God for the beautiful gift of this precious new life.

And Karl did take videos, priceless little movies of me flushed and worn out but giddy, nursing my bitty baby girl, who had red hair like mine.

We named her after St. Teresa, and we called her Tre. We both stayed at home for a month with Tre, and then, while Karl worked in his at-home studio and I went back to BZFO, a visiting nurse took care of our daughter.

I came home every night to my job as Tre’s personal stand-up comedienne, hoping to get our baby to smile. And then, at six weeks, while I wore a toy elephant on my head and made funny noises, she gave me a genuine non-gassy grin. My little girl laughed.

That laugh triggered me to send a note and photo “home” to Cambridge. I felt obligated, and I wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t hear back.

I started a new journal for Tre, Karl, and me.

This book was devoid of horror stories, completely personal, and without any commercial merit at all. In other words, it was perfect. I noted the firsts. I pressed a fine, red curl between pages. I stuck in cards from friends and took photos of gifts and opened a Facebook page for Tre.

I was having a perfect life.

God was great. What could possibly go wrong?

Chapter 56

I WAS working in the peach-colored exam room at BZFO, giving an injection to someone else’s darling baby, when Dr. Maillet appeared at the doorway. Her expression was frozen, as if she was in shock.

I excused myself and went to Dr. Maillet, who pulled me through the doorway and closed the door behind us.

I said, “What’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry to tell you, Brigid. There’s been an accident,” she said. “It’s Karl. It’s Tre, too.”

I stared at her for a long second; then my fear caught up with her words and exploded inside me like a bomb.

I shouted, “NO! What happened? Both of them? That’s crazy.” Her mouth moved, but she didn’t speak.

I pictured a car accident and immediately thought, Karl and Tre will be all right. The car was big. It had seat belts and air bags and a kiddie seat in back. I ducked into the exam room, grabbed my bag, and ran toward the exit, with Mary Maillet following me.

“Wait. Brigid.”

I stopped running and half-turned to face her.

She had clasped her hands under her chin and looked absolutely stricken when she said, “Karl is dead. It may have been cardiac arrest. I’m so sorry. He had Tre with him in a Baby Björn when he fell down the stairs.”

“What stairs? What are you talking about? Where are they?”

“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Maillet said.

During that frantic, frustrating, stop-and-go drive to Charité, Maillet told me that Karl had been found at the foot of a long flight of stone stairs in Volkspark. The baby had been strapped across his chest and had hit her head on the treads when he fell on top of her.

“She’s in the ICU,” Maillet told me.

That, I remember.

I was screaming inside my head, seeing ahead to the hospital, to the ICU, to shoving people aside to get to my child. I begged God, Please, please, let her be all right.

I got out of the car before it stopped. I bulled my way through reception and onto the ICU floor, crashing into orderlies and gurneys, knocking chairs over. I entered the glass-enclosed ward, medical personnel staring at me as I shouted, “Lenz! Her name is Theresa Lenz! Where is she?”

By the time I found her small pod, the vital-signs monitor was flatlining.

I screamed out loud to God, “No, no, take me! Damn You, take me instead!”

The only answer was the high-pitched squeal of the machine.

God’s gift was gone.

Chapter 57

I FORCED my eyes open, hoping that Karl was still asleep. I would wake him and tell him that I’d had the most horrible dream. I would say, “Karl. See a cardiologist, today.”

Tori was sitting by the side of my hospital bed.

“I’m here, darling,” she said. “I’m here.”

“How?”

“Dr. Maillet called me. My number was in your wallet.”

I saw it all in her face. I hadn’t been dreaming. My husband. My child. They were dead. And the future I’d imagined, of seeing Tre grow up, of becoming even closer to Karl-all of that was dead, too. Tori reached for me, and I let my hysteria have its way. When I pulled away, after I had dried my face on the sleeve of my gown, I said, “Tori. I want to see them.”

Tori grabbed my hands. “Are you sure?”

I nodded and sobbed again.

“I’ll be right back.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and soon, Tori returned with a nurse. The nurse put slippers on my feet, then brought us to the morgue, where a pathologist was waiting for us in the stainless-steel, ice-cold storage room.

I stood in my cotton gown and leaned on Tori as the assistant slid out a drawer and folded the sheet down from my dear husband’s face.

The tears streamed down my cheeks as I saw Karl lying there, gray faced and inanimate. The bridge of his nose had been sliced through where his glasses had cut into his flesh in the fall. His forehead and chin were abraded, but not the palms of his hands. He hadn’t tried to break his fall, which told me that he’d been dead before he dropped, crushing our three-month-old between his body and the hard stone treads of the staircase.

Had he had heart problems before this attack?

I thought not. He would have told me.

Was his consciousness still alive somewhere, perhaps in the corner of the ceiling? I did not feel his presence at all.

Where was God? I didn’t feel His presence, either.

But I called to Him, silently speaking to Him through our private conduit in my mind.

You’re a monster, I said to the Almighty God of Moses and Solomon, the Father of Christ and all of humanity.

I’m taking this personally. You gave to me, only to take it all away, and You’ve done this to me before. I don’t care why. You’ve lost me. You can never make this up to me, and You can never get me back. You’re diabolical. Go to hell. Or go back to hell. And don’t give me any shit about millions of birds.

A stool appeared beside me. I sat beside Karl’s body and told him that I didn’t hold Tre’s death against him.

“I love you. I will always love you. You and Tre are part of me, now and forever.”

I kissed his forehead. I straightened his hair.

I apologized to the pathologist for any outbursts or rudeness and asked to see my baby. He didn’t want to show her to me, but, reluctantly, he opened her drawer.

I folded down Tre’s thin cotton blanket, and I saw what had been done to her while surgeons had tried to save her life. I counted four incisions where tubes and drains had been inserted through her pale skin and into her organs. I saw the horrible violation of her skull, where it had been opened and bone plates removed.

My poor, tiny girl. My little Tre.

I took her out of the drawer and held her against my chest. I rocked my baby’s cold corpse, and I pictured every minute that I could remember of her three months of life.

I tried, but I couldn’t envision her in a safe, warm place with her father, or anywhere with God.

Chapter 58

TORI WRAPPED her arms around me as Tre was taken away, and she walked me with me down the labyrinthine corridors and through glass doors to the street.

A black car was waiting, and once we were inside the apartment, I stripped naked and got into the vast, empty bed where I had awoken this morning with my husband.

I thought of our little one, who had been sleeping safely in her crib, just next door. My broken heart seized up again.

I have known so many mothers who have wept over the bodies of their dead children. I had sympathized with them. I had tried to console them. I had prayed with them, and I had held them while they cried out from the depths of their souls.

But there was no preparing for this.

I awoke sometime later to hear Tori speaking in the outer room, on the phone with her husband, Marty. I heard her crying. Then she was in the doorway saying that Zach was on the line.

Zach’s voice was in my ear, saying, “I’m so sorry, Brigid. I’m just so sorry.”

I managed to thank him and say good-bye. There was nothing more I could say. Nothing.

I went into the master bathroom that I had shared with Karl and cut off all my hair. I used his razor and shaved my head, after which I gulped down Valium and went back to bed.

The next day, Tori brought me coffee and told me that she’d been in touch with Karl’s lawyer. She made arrangements with a funeral home, and I’ll never be able to thank her enough for keeping me safe in a dark room during the most terrible days of my life.

Three days after Karl and Tre died, I got out of bed. I dressed in black. I covered my head with a scarf, and I buried my husband and my child in the Lenz family plot, in a Lutheran cemetery in Zehlendorf, just outside the city. I shook hands and hugged Karl’s weeping friends and family. I had depleted my reservoir of tears, and I had nothing to say to God.

Back in our apartment, Karl’s lawyer let me know that Karl had left everything to me. I didn’t care about the money, and I couldn’t live in our place anymore. It would be unbearable to walk through the rooms where I had been happier than at any time in my life.

I told the lawyer to sell our apartment and everything in it, to provide for the actors in Der Zug, and to put the rest into BZFO and other charities of Karl’s.

He said, “Karl wanted you to have money, and, like it or not, you have a bank account and a credit card. The bills will come to me. I’ll make suitable donations to his charities, and I’ll make arrangements as you wish for the bulk of his estate.”

I signed documents, and I booked a flight. I changed into pants and a sweater. I packed a bag and tucked in my journal, my laptop, and a framed photo of myself with my husband and child. Then I buttoned myself into a hooded black alpaca coat.

Tori and I went to the airport together, and when her flight to Rome was open to board, I hugged her for a long time. We both wept at the gate. And as soon as her plane was rolling down the tarmac, I called Sabeena.

“I wish you had let me be there for you,” she said.

“I was happy to think of you at home with Albert and the girls. You can’t imagine, Sabeena, how much that meant to me. Kiss everyone for me.”

My voice broke, and Sabeena murmured soothing words that couldn’t soothe.

“You deserve happiness,” she said, her voice flooded with tears. “Have faith.”

“I’m out of faith,” I said. “I need proof of His love, of His existence, or I’ll turn my back on Him as He has turned His back on me.”

What could anyone say to that?

After I said good-bye to Sabeena, I went to the flight lounge and pulled up the hood of my coat so that no one would dare talk to me.

The last time I had worn this coat, I had dropped one of Tre’s rattles in the pocket. It was pink plastic, shaped like a little barbell, hand-painted with blue forget-me-nots.

I clasped the rattle in my fist and shook it incessantly, as if she might hear it and cry out for me. I shook the rattle and jiggled my feet and waited for my flight to board.

Chapter 59

I ARRIVED in Cairo at night and hired a car to take me to Mt. Sinai. My destination was the Orthodox Chapel of the Holy Trinity, built in the 1930s over the ruins of a fourth-century Byzantine church.

Legend has it that beneath the church is the very rock from which God had taken the stone tablets that He inscribed with the Ten Commandments and handed off to Moses. You could say that the tablets were the bedrock of Judeo-Christian teachings.

It was a good place to look for God.

As the car cut through Sinai in the dark, I thought about the beginning of my own beliefs.

I hadn’t been captivated by the power and the love of God from the first time I stepped into St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge. But the barrel-vaulted ceilings, the biblical stories told in stained glass, the large crucifix behind the altar, and the homilies of our kind priest, Father Callahan, moved me. The more I learned, the more I trusted in God.

I acted on that belief in the real world, but, having lived through the ungodly horrors in South Sudan, having entertained death in my own house, my trust in God was gone.

Was God real?

Or was He all gilded myth tricked out in ceremony, illuminated by fear and stories and blind faith?

I had to know.

When my driver parked at the foot of the mountain, the sun was just rising. He said, “This is the best time to make the climb, miss. You’ll see.”

I felt very light as I began my slow journey up the 3,750 Steps of Penitence through the morning mist. I’d lost weight. I’d lost love. I’d lost faith. I was hardly there at all. Other, more substantial pilgrims mounted the steps with love for God shining on their faces and cameras in their hands.

Except for a water bottle and Tre’s rattle, I was empty handed. I had no expectations, but I was willing to be moved if God sent me a sign.

The climb up the staggered steps opened an increasingly higher and wider view of the mountainous landscape, lit with pale, slanting rays of sun and defined by deep shadows. And this magnificent view stretched as far as I could see.

I walked around the imposing stone walls of the church with my hands in my pockets, my thoughts on Father Delahanty, the priest who’d come to Kind Hands only to be murdered within his first week. He had asked God for forgiveness, but his final words were some kind of confession to me.

I’m here for you, Brigid. God has a plan for you.

How did he know? Was he speaking to God and for Him?

Or was he just crazy and deluded?

God. Are You here? Got anything for me?

I walked to the edge of the stone staircase and looked down the mountainside to where St. Catherine’s Monastery nestled between the clefts and crags, on a flat patch of stone far below.

St. Catherine’s is a working monastery and a holy place. St. Catherine’s remains are entombed there, miraculously intact after her beheading in the fourth century. It is also the site of the burning bush from which, according to the Old Testament, God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt.

I joined the throng of backpackers on the downward climb from Mt. Sinai to St. Catherine’s Monastery. I placed one foot in front of the other, making my way down the thousands of hand-chiseled stone steps, every single one of them reminding me of the steps that had been the death of my baby girl.

A college-age boy with a backpack tapped my shoulder and asked me to take his picture with Mt. Sinai in the background. After I did it, he asked me where I was from. Had I come to Sinai alone?

He couldn’t have made a worse choice for a pickup.

I said, “Sorry. No English,” and pulled the edge of my hood down so that it didn’t just cover my bald head, it deeply shaded my eyes.

I was a tourist in a place where I didn’t belong. There was nothing for me here.

My driver was waiting for me at St. Catherine’s.

I had a plane to catch.

Chapter 60

MY LONG day had started with a sunrise climb up and then down 3,750 steps carved into Mt. Sinai by penitent monks from St. Catherine’s Monastery in the seventh century. I hadn’t found peace or resolution or revelation, but I hadn’t quite given up.

Now, as the sun set on the Middle East, my plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. I was met by Nissim, a driver in a polished Lincoln sedan, who took me to my hotel in the modern section of Jerusalem.

My plan was to steep myself in Jerusalem’s Old City and the holiest sites of its three major religions. I’d been told that God’s divine presence never left the Western Wall and that this site, as well as the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, had been visited by millions of pilgrims over the last two thousand years.

If I couldn’t revive my faith in God in Jerusalem, it was truly lost.

At seven the next morning, Nissim picked me up at my hotel, and we set out for the Old City. Nissim had been a tank driver in the Six-Day War, back in 1967. He was a grandfather, a soldier, and a tour guide who claimed to know every niche in every wall of the Holy City.

We spent the day at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which had been built over the sites of Christ’s Crucifixion, burial, and resurrection and enclosed five stations of the cross.

While standing in the church’s atrium under the open sky, Nissim told me about the succession of kings, pharaohs, emperors, caliphs, and sultans who had conquered the Holy City, and about the religious wars, the Crusades; stories of saints and pilgrims; the destruction of this church in AD 1009; and the disputes over reconstruction up to the present day.

It was a glorious story, rich in detail, woven with passion for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I appreciated Nissim’s animated telling of it and the history I walked through within the walls and under the domes and across the stones walked by multitudes.

But I didn’t feel anything shift inside me: not my skepticism, nor my raging fury at God.

At day’s end, Nissim drove me back to my hotel, on Yafo Street, a four-lane, traffic-choked thoroughfare that cut through the business district. There was no parking in front of the hotel, and in the spaces beyond the no-parking zone was a bus stop, and a municipal bus had pulled in to let on passengers.

Nissim pulled around the bus and the half dozen cars in front of it and parked the Lincoln at the far end of the block. He opened the back door for me, and I told him I’d see him in the morning.

I walked back down Yafo and was mounting the steps to the hotel entrance when a concussive boom cracked through the air, lifting me off my feet and hurling me against the wall of the hotel. Glass shattered and fell on and around me like icicles in a winter hurricane. I was stunned from the impact. I couldn’t breathe.

What had happened? What the hell had happened?

As if a switch had been thrown, cars drove up onto the sidewalk, crashed into streetlights and buildings, collided with other cars. Pedestrians ran through the street, a monochromatic scene of chaos drawn in the charcoal gray of dusk, cut by headlights shining at crazed angles.

I smelled bitter smoke.

But I couldn’t hear a thing.

Chapter 61

SMOKE ROILED through the air, and crowds of terrified people stampeded down Yafo Street.

I was deaf and nearly blind from the smoke, and I realized that a bomb had gone off. A bomb.

Nissim had parked his car a block north of the hotel. Was he alive? Did he need help?

My legs were weak, but I pushed back against the wall and inched up until I was standing. I kept one hand on the wall and stepped down into the pandemonium on Yafo. I peered through the dense smoke, hoping to see to the end of the block, but my eyes were immediately drawn to the remains of the bus we had pulled around only minutes ago.

The explosion had gone off inside it and had surely been deadly. The warped metal crackled with fire as smoke poured up through the void where the roof had been.

And then the bus exploded again.

I saw the back of the bus erupt in flames. I turned my face to the hotel wall, flattened myself against the granite as the silent, roaring heat blew across my back and neck and hands.

When the blast subsided, I turned toward it and ran.

I skirted the flaming bus and kept going through the body-strewn street, which felt much like the killing fields in South Sudan. I was choking on smoke and tears when I reached the car at the corner of the block. Was it Nissim’s Lincoln? I hoped not. I hoped that he had pulled back into traffic before the explosion.

Please.

I walked to the street side of the car and saw Nissim wedged between the car door and the frame. It was him. I knew his white curls, now soaked with blood. His left arm, with his wedding ring on his hand, protruded from the door frame, and he was motionless.

Still, I called his name.

I reached through the shattered window and put two fingers to his jugular. He had no pulse.

“I’m so sorry, Nissim,” I said.

I stepped away from the car and saw a man half under the car behind Nissim’s sedan, lying in blood, his arms covering his head.

I went to his side, but he was gone. When I looked up, I saw a small body in the intersection that could only be that of a child. His legs had been blown off, and his blood was still running into the gutter.

God? What is this? What do You want me to see?

Ten yards away from the man and the child, a young woman struggled to sit up. Her right forearm was gone, and her blood was spouting onto the pavement.

“Please lie down,” I said. “I’m a doctor.”

The woman’s breathing was shallow, and her heartbeat was quickly pumping her life away.

I grabbed at my waist for my handbag, thinking I could use the shoulder strap as a tourniquet. Then I remembered that I had locked up my bag in my room this morning. I wasn’t wearing a belt, and neither was the woman in the street.

A strip of tire was lying nearby, and I needed it. I went back to the woman whose arm had been crudely amputated by the explosion and tied off the ragged wound with the rubber strip. I spoke to her in words I couldn’t hear as red and blue flashers lit up Yafo Street. Firemen, police, medics, and bomb squads were coming into the devastated area.

An ambulance braked next to me, and two medics jumped out of the back. One spoke to me. I pointed to my ears and said, “I can’t hear.”

Would I ever hear again?

The medic’s partner stooped over the woman I had just tried to save. He shook his head no and made a thumbs-down motion.

The woman with the tire tourniquet was dead.

Chapter 62

COLORED LIGHTS spun and flashed in the bomb-riven night. Three of Yafo’s four lanes were closed, and the bus and surrounding sidewalk had been cordoned off. The walking wounded, even those desperately seeking loved ones, were ushered beyond the tape.

I shouted to a medic, “I’m a doctor!” but I was walked firmly to the cordon and sent away. I made my way around the obstacles and down the street to the hotel, where I found the lobby crowded with injured and panicked people. I took the stairs to my room, and first thing, I downed a minibottle of scotch from the honor bar. Then I stripped off my clothes and got under the sheet.

I lay on my back, absolutely still, and as I stared up at the ceiling, I thought about dead people.

Karl’s cold, dead face leapt into my mind, and so did the lifeless body of my precious baby, dressed in her christening, then burial, gown, wearing my cross and chain around her neck.

I flashed on the hundreds of dead at Kind Hands, or maybe it had been thousands-the babies, the BLM soldiers, Father Delahanty, and Colin-and the bulldozer pushing dirt over mass graves. I thought of Nissim, who had survived wars only to die on the street today.

Then something like a gust of wind rushed over me, clearing the thoughts from my mind.

My view of the past was gone, the dead people were gone, and I was seeing in two dimensions at once, as I had when I was both inside the airplane from Rome and flying outside it.

I was not insane. This was not delusionary. I was aware of the bed beneath me, the sheet draped over me. My arms were outstretched to the sides of the mattress, and my ankles were crossed. At the same time, my mattress and I were floating on a clear, sunlit, glass-colored sea.

It was simply amazing and completely real. As my raft and I bobbed on this blue-green water, I had a thought. If only I could stay here forever.

If only.

Just then, the air changed, becoming thick and oily with the stink of gasoline. There was a concussive ka-rump of an explosion, followed by a loud whoosh. The water had transformed into a dancing wall of flames surrounding me on all sides.

I think I screamed. I sat up and tried to get away from the inferno lapping at the sides of my raft of a mattress, singeing my skin and my bristly hair, but there was no escape. Fire was all around me, everywhere.

I collapsed back down onto the mattress.

I accepted this death. I wanted this consummation.

And then a new breeze brought another sea change.

The smoke thinned, and the dense blackness of it coalesced into marbled gray. Thunderheads formed at the height of the ceiling. Lightning sizzled and snapped.

I watched, transfixed by the swirling storm. A drop of water fell on my forehead, then on each of my eyes, like the softest of kisses. Another drop fell on my left hand, and my right, and then the drops came down in the thousands, the millions, merging into freezing-cold torrents.

I heard the hiss of doused flames. A mist rolled across my body, and, just as suddenly as it had risen from the sea, the fire was gone. Just gone.

The air brightened, and a warm breeze dried my face and the sheet still covering me. I remained motionless, suspended in place on my raft, which rose and fell, rocking gently on the waves.

Overhead, the gray sky diffused into a luminous blue veil, which became a pure-white ball of light enclosing me at its center.

I was overcome with awe, and I sensed His presence.

There was a feeling of warmth in my chest and a wordless voice in my mind. It was as if I was in a waking dream.

Brigid. This is your life. It belongs to you.

Chapter 63

I HEARD, with my deaf ears, those nine resonant words.

And then they were gone. The ceiling was plaster, not divine light. I was dry, and my skin was not burned.

I had not been sleeping or dreaming or hallucinating. The vision had come to me from outside my own mind, and I had been shocked and amazed at every turn.

I replayed the words in my mind.

Brigid. This is your life. It belongs to you.

I lay almost paralyzed on the bed.

I recalled the vision I’d had when I’d flown from Rome and had seen the beautiful Italian town beneath me. A baby carriage had rolled out into the street, under the wheels of a car. Hadn’t that baby’s mother called out to God?

Hadn’t she begged Him for her child’s life?

I saw the bird God had placed in my hand. I watched the small bird rise up and join the multitudes. And I heard the echo of God’s message to me: Can you care for your bird?

Weren’t millions of prayers going up to God now and in the last minute and the next? God, save my child. God, don’t let my wife find out. God, where are my car keys? Make the ball land on red. Lord, please let me get to class on time. God, bless my home, my marriage, my cat, my team.

The image of floating on a calm sea, the fire blazing across it, the cold rainstorm, and the words of God had, one by one, come over me. It was easy to interpret.

God was telling me that my life was both heaven and hell on earth. It was mine to live. He loved me. But my life was my responsibility. All mine.

He had shown me the way again. Take care of yourself, Brigid. Get Me?

I was suddenly sick all the way through. The bed didn’t move, but I felt as though I were falling nine floors to my death. The sense of falling was not a vision. It was abject shame and mortification in reality.

I had questioned God.

I had thought that I was so special, I could hold God to account. And why? I had never been promised, ever, that life would be safe and have a happy ending for myself and those I knew and loved, if only I had faith in Him.

A realization broke through my shame like a bright light. I did have faith. It had been shaken because I questioned it. But the fact that I was still asking God “why” was proof that I believed in Him.

I loved Him. I had never stopped.

As I lay there in the big bed, my skepticism and rage evaporated. I felt as though I’d been brought back to life, but for what reason? I had no idea.

I still didn’t understand why people had to suffer, but God had made it clear that it was not for me to judge.

I was alive. I had to use my life well while it was still mine. I was on my knees, thanking God with the whole of my heart and soul, when my cell phone rang.

I heard it.

My hearing had returned and, with it, the clamor on the street outside the hotel, men shouting, horns blowing, heavy equipment scraping up metal.

And my phone.

Hardly anyone had my number. But Sabeena had it.

“Sabeena?”

“Are you all right?” she asked me.

“There was a bomb,” I said.

“Brigid, I know. I saw the pictures on television after you texted me from Ben Gurion. I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”

“I was near the explosion. I lost my hearing. But it just came back. My driver died.”

There was a long silence.

“Sabeena?”

“There was a suicide bomber on the bus,” she said. “Thirty-two people died, and many more are in the hospital. Brigid?”

“I’m here.”

“That’s a problem. Get the hell out of there.”

“Where should I go?”

“I know where I would go,” said Sabeena.

I’d gotten my answer from God. My life came without guarantees. I had to stop running and go back to what had driven me so far from home.

I needed to look into myself.