“For your own good. You’ll be thanking me after you see what I face daily. Trust me, these walls are a sanctuary, even for me. Why do you think I come in here to work on files? It wasn’t just to keep you company, as entertaining as you are.”
I shake my head. I don’t think anything can shock me. I’ve seen people shot, beheaded, and blown apart in front of me. I doubt anything can be as bad as what I’ve witnessed in the army. But, like a good girl, I keep my mouth shut and concentrate on moving toward the door. It’s amazing how much thought it takes to walk when you feel like an invalid. It takes so much energy to get from A to B. Besides, I promised to behave, and that takes all my power to do. Anyone who knows me well knows I’m a hothead, especially where the wellbeing of others is concerned. I’d give up my life to protect someone else. It’s the way I was brought up, even before I joined the army.
“This way.” Keir points to the left and he walks at my pace beside me. He never once rushes me or gets impatient. He’s the perfect caregiver. His skills are wasted here.
I gaze into a couple of passing rooms, but nothing is out of the ordinary. Patients lie in white beds, hooked up to machines. By the look of things, they’ve been injured in wars. Everything is clean and tidy. Exactly what I’d expect from a medical wing.
“This is the ICU wing,” Keir tells me.
“How do people end up here? It doesn’t look like the surrounding area is much of a warzone. The chaos seems far enough away.”
“Most of these patients are Iraqi soldiers. They come here to get emergency health care. I try my best. We’re getting more and more supplies sent over from the States, but sometimes it just isn’t enough to deal with the number of patients we get. We have to revert back to old techniques often.”
I nod, even though I have so many unanswered questions rattling around my head. I can’t help but wonder why the U.S.A is involved in such a project. It doesn’t make sense. These soldiers are the enemy. American soldiers come over here to put an end to the war. Something doesn’t sit right with me.
We walk through a set of double doors and I stop to catch my breath. My body and mind haven’t caught up with one another yet. I want to do more to help around here, but my body is still weak and easily exhausted. It’s frustrating the life out of me because I’m not one to sit around and mope. I’m the active type, never sitting still for too long.
“We’re now entering the mother and baby wing,” Keir informs me.
“And this is where a mother and child come for help?”
Keir shrugs and we carry on walking. “They come here to give birth.”
“Okay.”
That doesn’t sound too bad. Then I’m broken out of my thoughts by a blood-curdling scream. I look into the first window we approach, and a baby is being ripped out of her mother’s arms by three men dressed in camouflage. The man standing to the side is holding a gun to the woman’s head. I try to move to her aid, but Keir grabs my arm and stops me. He shakes his head and I look back toward the woman as she falls to the floor in tears. She looks broken. The men barge past me, knocking me into Keir. He catches me and straightens me up. I walk into the room and find the woman a sobbing mess.
“Please, get my baby back,” she cries in broken English.
“She speaks English. Why did they do that?” I ask Keir.
I lay my walking sticks alongside the bed and bend down to help the woman back into a chair.
Keir is watching me. He doesn’t answer my question, but as soon as I have the woman in the chair, I limp toward him and hit his shoulder. “Why. Did. They. Do. That?”
“It’s their rules, Shay. We don’t question them.”
“So where will that child go?” I whisper shout.
“To a new paying family.” He turns away and walks out of the room.
“I’ll be back,” I tell the woman as I pick up my sticks and march out of the room faster than I’ve moved in weeks.
Witnessing that baby being snatched away from its mother does something to me inside. It’s made me feel murderous. What is this place? Who would do that for money?
I follow Keir into what I believe is an office of some kind. I look around, but it gives nothing away. It’s impersonal. A desk and files are all it holds.
“Start talking, Keir. I want to help you, but I can’t do that if I don’t know the lengths of what’s going on. Why is that baby being sold to a new family when it clearly has a mother here who wants it?”
“All of these women have been picked up over the last several years. I don’t know the right time frame because I’ve only been here for three years. They’re here for a reason, Shay. They produce model babies. Healthy babies. Babies wealthy people buy. The young girls are often bought and used. I get them in here to piece them back together. They can be broken, but they must appear to be whole on the outside.”
“Do you know how fucked up that sounds?”
“You don’t need to preach to me. I know. But what am I meant to do? Leave them to die? Tell me! I’m doing what I know how! Saving lives!” he yells. “You don’t know the half of it, Shay. Now you’ll see why I’ve tried to keep you away from it all.”
“You’re saving their lives, but you’re still handing them a death sentence!” I cringe at my own words as the severity of the situation sinks in. “They might as well be dead without their babies and family. I know how it feels being away from your loved ones and it’s hell.”
“Don’t you think I know that death is probably best for them?” Keir balls up his fists at his side. “I’m one person. I don’t have an army to get me out of here.”
I know what he’s saying is the truth, but it’s just hard to comprehend. I’ve read and heard about stories like this, but I never once thought I’d find myself stuck in the middle of a real-life horror story. I must be one of the unluckiest people to walk this Earth; blown up, attacked, shot at, only to be captured by the fucking enemy and thrust into this hell hole.
“Will they want to sell me like that?”
Keir sniggers. “Hell, no. You’re a god in their eyes. You’re medically trained. You probably know more than I do being out in the field. They’ll leave you here to repair all their damage. You’ll make them more money healing their goods as opposed to being for sale yourself.”
“How can you be so blasé about it all?”
He breathes out a deep sigh. “I either go with it or I’m cast aside. I’m hoping that if I play the good little doctor, it will keep me alive until someone comes along and saves us all.”
I feel like a bitch for shouting at him. He’s living with the same conditions we all are. He’s just found a way to get by without it suffocating him.
“Are you ready to continue the tour?”
I shoot him a look from the corner of my eye and nod. Somehow, the confinement of the white room is more appealing to me now.
“Oh.” He turns back to me. “Whatever you see, you never step in the middle of it, because it’s only putting you in the firing line. You stand on the sidelines and ignore it. Got it? I don’t need to be patching you up any more than I already have.”