“Get in, Sophie!” he yelled and I obeyed. He laid a small boy in my lap and I cradled him as best I could, trying to decide which way would be best to hold him that would afford him the least amount of pain.
Dingane shoved two more dazed children between us and got in, starting his truck and tearing away from the scene with decided purpose.
“The LRA is coming back?” I asked.
“They usually do. They use the leftover children as bait. They know we come in search of them.”
I turned my head toward the window and let the tears fall freely, the most I’d ever allowed, and the absolutely only time I’d ever cried and had a genuine right to.
Because I wasn’t crying for myself. I was crying for the innocents.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The gates opened as if in anticipation of our arrival around four forty-five in the morning, the sun had yet to rise and I found myself begging its return. The night I once found unbelievably peaceful and beautiful now felt unbearably dark, as if a decided lack of hope had enveloped us. As we passed, Kate and Mercy were on the other side, closing us in and running our direction. Dingane tore through and stopped abruptly, close to the schoolhouse, his headlights lighting up the baobab tree as we passed.
He ran to my side and took the little boy from my arms, running him inside. I gathered one of the girls, who’d grown unconscious during the ride back to Masego, and carried her behind him. He passed me again after dropping off the boy and gathered the remaining girl in the front.
Charles and Solomon were carrying those who could not walk on their own and within a minute we were all inside, hovering over children.
“Sophie, grab that bag for me!” Karina ordered, pointing to a bag on the creaky wood floor.
I brought it to her and opened it up. She was working on the first girl Dingane and I had helped, the one riddled with holes in the chest. She was unconscious. Karina stood quickly and ran to a drawer of a metal cabinet she had rolled into the room. Makeshift cots dotted the entire room and each bed was filled with a bleeding child.
She returned, ripping open a paper and plastic envelope carrying an IV.
“I’ll need your help removing the shrapnel,” Karina said dryly.
I looked behind me to see who she was talking to but there was no one there, everyone else was busy over the beds of one of the children. I looked back and saw her eyes trained on me.
“I can’t,” I told her.
“Wash your hands with Hibiclens. There’s a station set up there,” she said, gesturing to a corner of the room.
The room was awash in candlelight since there wasn’t any electricity and I could barely see a thing. They need a generator for these situations!
“Shouldn’t Charles help you with this? He’s trained!” I was panicking.
“He’s with another child, Sophie. It will be fine. Trust me. She’s bleeding out as we speak though.”
I ran to the corner and washed my hands, one of the older orphans there stood next to me, ready to rinse for me into the awaiting bowl. She handed me a box of older-looking latex gloves and I took two, putting them on as I walked back to Karina’s side.
“What do I do?”
“Spread this wound open for me. I can’t seem to reach the metal inside.”
Oh my God. Oh my God.
I leaned over the girl and reluctantly pulled the wound as wide as I could. Karina’s tweezers were ready and dove in without hesitation, digging back and forth, making me cringe. She pulled out a large piece of sharp metal and it clinked into a porcelain bowl on a small table beside the bed. One by one she removed the metal embedded in the girl’s tiny chest.
“There’s one more.” She pointed to another deep wound near the heart.
“What if it’s too deep?”
“Spread the wound.”
I obeyed and almost had to avert my eyes at the blood gushing but held my ground. After what seemed like forever, Karina fished out a small but substantial piece of metal and it clinked audibly next to the other shrapnel.
Karina worked steadily, stitching each wound, as I cut strips of clean gauze and readied the iodine solution. She poured the solution over the stitches, covered them all with an antibacterial ointment and we placed the gauze over each one, finally wrapping the girl’s frame similarly to how Dingane and I had at the village.
When we were done, Karina gave her a renewed dose of sleeping meds through her IV and I stood, removed my bloody gloves, tossed them in a bin and walked into the night air. The sun wouldn’t show its face for at least another hour. I begged for it to rise, to renew the day, to erase the night. The screams would live in my subconscious for the rest of my life.
Sweat poured from my face and neck and drenched my shirt; it clung to my body. The panicked adrenaline was leaving in droves and my hands were shaking with the release.
I heard footsteps on the wood creak behind me. I turned to find Dingane, his white linen shirt had three buttons unbuttoned near his collar instead of his standard two and his usual carefully rolled sleeves were in disarray.
“How is she?” he asked about our little girl.
“She’s fine.” I paused. “I don’t really know. I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know.”
Dingane leaned against one of the wood posts holding up the aluminum awning and nodded.
“How often does this happen?” I asked him, staring at the dark outline of the baobab tree.
“Too often.”
“Why can they not be stopped?”