Secondhand Sorcery

There wasn’t enough time. Not near enough. Not after he had hauled the child, limp and groaning, and still bleeding, God, still bleeding, alongside the back half of his car, tripping on their own goods along the way. Not after he had put her down, leaving fresh red marks on the snow, to pull the back door open, and found he did not have the strength to pick her up again. His arms were shaking, his back was weak. He was not young; she was, but it would not save her.

He did not pick her up so much as drag her, a centimeter at a time, in painful jerks with painful oaths, until the back of her head was resting on the cold metal of the car’s base. She slid down, he picked her up, she slid down, he picked her up, recovering his strength in pitiful little morsels he spent as soon as he got them. Everything was bloody now, the child’s face included. The back of her head thunked with every pull.

An age of the world passed, and her head and shoulders rested on the seat, and he dared to stop and pant for breath like a dog. Her hip was still bleeding; he pressed down once more, stopped when she began to slide down, pushed her back up and over with desperate fear until she was mostly on the seat. And bleeding. Always bleeding. God have mercy.

A bandage. A cloth. Anything. Five seconds lost tugging at a soldier’s shirt, as if it would tear like a tissue. Oaths, tears, more time lost searching for a knife. He cut away a scrap, found it too small. Cut away another, and the soldier moaned, he was still just alive, and in the moment Kemal did not stop or care but took the scrap of shirt and left his bare skin, covered in nicks from his hasty work, to freeze in the bitter wind.

He could not wrap her hip properly without lifting her, and he lacked the space and the strength to move her. He did what he could, twining the cloth over her leg and stuffing loose ends in under the top of her jeans and he knew it was not well done. The blood soaked through at once, and he swore terribly and put all his weight on it, so that she woke up and screamed again, words he did not understand. Russian or English, he did not care, and he did not waste breath in screaming back but pressed down as if he meant to smother her, and when she passed out again he was glad but he kept pressing until he heard a voice, very close.

He lifted his head, looked around in hope and fear. But it was only a radio, crackling with static in one of the trucks with the open door. The soldiers over in the town, asking for updates. Who were they shooting at? Kemal gave them no answer, but tore through the truck, ransacking it as they had ransacked his a moment earlier, and found a first-aid kit. A jar of powder that promised to stop bleeding. He pried up the ruined rag and dumped some on, then lifted the poor girl’s leg and dumped the other half of the jar underneath her, in case she was bleeding there too. Then another press, a new bandage, a Turkish flag from the truck.

More voices from the radio, sounding insistent. Was there an attack coming? Injuries? The town was still bright with lights. Kemal looked at the girl and knew she would die very soon. But there would be no help in that town. No help here at all. He got in the car, reciting the Al-Fatiha as he turned the ignition, and ran over a dead soldier backing up and did not care. He heard gunshots from the town, but no impact.

There was nowhere to go—not in time—but he could drive away from the bridge and that was a blessing. He drove along the edge of the town, the little spillover fringe on the near bank of the river, not knowing what he looked for except that it would be help. There were lights on in many houses now, but nobody put their head out of doors and he did not blame them. The girl in the back made only a little noise, and to distract himself he thought of old workplace injuries, fools who played around with the crane or got in fights, and so drove right past a large building and was a half-kilometer beyond it before he realized it had said HOSPITAL.

More time lost in screams of rejoicing, then in doubt. He turned around, and in a tremulous silence he drove back, parked in the emergency lane, and hammered the horn. Cautiously a pair of men in white came out, saw the pale girl in the backseat, and called out a swarm of allies to help carry her inside, where she disappeared under a still larger mass of nurses and aides seemingly called from every area of the hospital, most of them to gawk.

Then a nurse took him by the arm and firmly escorted him out to the waiting area, which in further token of God’s undeniable providence was empty of other visitors. Nobody to wonder who this old man was, his hands red with blood. The nurse left him there to sit on a plastic chair and look at his hands until he thought to get up and rinse them in the men’s room. Then he returned to his seat where, bereft of other occupations, he cried into his lap. He shook terribly, and his stomach was sick, but he stayed in his chair until the worst of the shaking passed. Then he was very tired, and his mind left him for a time so he could stare at the wall.

Then he woke up, because a hand was shaking him by the shoulder, very hard. He looked up and there was a man his own age, in a white coat. His face wore square-rimmed glasses, a mustache, a beard, and a frown. “You came with the girl?” he said. “Gunshot wound to the hip?”

“I did. How is she?”

“You will come with me now,” the man said, and led him back into the emergency department, which was not very large. They stopped outside the glass-walled room where Nadia was being treated, where the man—his badge said “Doktor Özek”—said, “Two minutes ago, we received a phone call from the military, asking whether we had any new gunshot wounds. The receptionist, not prepared for the question, told them we had.”

Kemal nodded, struggling to take it in as he stared at the drawn privacy curtains. “She is alive and stable for the time being,” the doctor said sharply. “But if there is anything you need to tell me, you should tell me now. I am sure they will be here shortly.”

Kemal spread his hands helplessly; where should he even begin?

As if sensing the question, Özek said, “Please do not treat me like an idiot. Two hours ago the sirens start up, then stop. Multiple gunshots. A brief spell of electronics failure here, coupled with profound agitation affecting staff and patients alike. And now this. I don’t need you to tell me what has happened. I’m only asking you, as I hope you are a decent and sensible human being, to tell me what I can expect to happen when those men arrive.”

Kemal thought back to what he had heard on the bridge, and said, “They will kill the child, I think. And … I do not know what will happen to me.”

“You have put us in a very difficult situation,” Doktor Özek commented.

“I know. But I could not let her die.”

“Neither could we.” Outside, an armored vehicle pulled up, and in seconds men with rifles were pounding on the glass door. Özek sighed. “And now it is too late.”

Kemal did not wait for them to let the soldiers in, but pulled Nadia’s door open and slipped inside. Özek shook his head, but said nothing, and pulled the sliding glass to behind him. Kemal gripped the curtain firmly, whisked it aside, stepped forward, and pulled it back, all with his eyes closed. Finding the courage to open them again was more difficult.

Nadia’s face was still very pale under a smear of dried blood, and her hair was an ugly, matted mess. She seemed to be asleep. The rest of her was covered by a clean white sheet, with a few plastic tubes trailing out from under it to a set of machines a nurse was tinkering with. There was a monitor overhead with moving lines and numbers, but Kemal did not know what they meant. One number would be heart rate, he thought.

“What is going on out there?” the nurse asked, still playing with her machines.

“The army is here,” he told her.

At the sound of his voice she startled, and whipped her head around. “You are family?”

“A friend. A temporary caretaker.”

She frowned. “She is stable for now, but this is not a trauma center. We are here to handle sick shepherds and farm accidents. Anyone too hurt to handle here is stabilized, then moved to the bigger hospital at Erzurum. I don’t think that will be happening in her case.”

“You ... you cannot handle this?”

“We can give blood, stop bleeding, and dress wounds. Which we have. We do not have surgeons on staff who can repair her muscles and the fracture in her pelvis. Even with those, she would require weeks of therapy before she could walk again.”

He heard shouts from outside the room, quarreling, but hardly noticed. Weeks of therapy.

“What was this girl doing?” the nurse said. “Why was she shot at close range with a rifle? You are very lucky they missed the femoral artery.”

There was no more point in denying anything. “She has a jinni.”

“Yes, I know. What was she doing with it? If she has a jinni she should be using it on those monsters, not getting herself shot.”

Before Kemal could answer the door flew open behind him, then the curtain. Doktor Özek came in with four other nurses. “We are moving the patient. Now.”

“Where?” said Kemal and the nurse as one.

“Very early discharge,” Özek replied through his teeth. The nurses scurried around the room pulling plugs and adjusting the bed.

“Where are you taking her?” Kemal said.

“Out of my hospital.” The nurses started wheeling the bed out of the room, still trailing machines. Kemal tried to bar them, was shoved aside. “Don’t be a fool! We are taking the soldiers to an empty room on the top floor. She must be gone before they come back.”

“Where will she go?” he protested, hurrying after them. Four nurses could move a bed very quickly.

“Somewhere she is not going to be immediately shot. I can do no more than that.”

“God bless you for your—“

“You should save your breath for walking,” Özek snapped. “You are covered in blood, and very conspicuous.” Heads turned, wheels rolled, double doors flew open to let them through. They were not going the way they came in. “If you wish to express your gratitude, develop some sense. We do not want to see you here again.” They reached a pair of much smaller glass doors to the outside, where they paused. “How far out was she?”

“A few minutes, she said,” a nurse replied. “She was getting ready for bed.”

“Fine. Stop the pumps.”

“We did that in the—“

“Then disconnect the lines, damn you! This needs to be said?” Özek turned to Kemal. “We employed a small dose of short-acting sedative, combined with a mild analgesic. She will very likely wake up disoriented, and in some discomfort. Will this be a problem, with her jinni?”

“It might be, yes.”

The doctor scowled. “Try to contain her, please. I do not know what is going on. We will have to make arrangements for her care later. For now you are going to the home of a hospital employee, a loyal Kurd.” A large brown car pulled up outside with a screech. “Who apparently does not know how to be fast and inconspicuous at once.”

The nurses had already covered Nadia in two blankets while they waited; now they pushed a button to open the doors, and the whole convoy, minus the doctor, rushed out into the cold. The car’s driver got out and opened her car’s rear hatch, and was suddenly illuminated in brilliant yellow light. As one they all turned, and saw a blinding pair of headlights barreling toward them around the corner of the building, an enormous black shadow behind them.

One of the nurses ran toward it, waving her arms in the air; a volley of thunderclaps sounded in the night, and she fell to the pavement. The shadow and the lights didn’t even slow down. The remaining nurses screamed and ran; the other woman dove into her car’s hatch, for whatever good that would do. Kemal stood and stared, too defeated to even muster a prayer. Nadia abruptly sat up in bed with a babbling cry, then screamed and fell back again.

The lights stopped only feet away from Kemal, and countless silhouettes came out of the night, all screaming different things at once. None were understandable over each other, or the girl’s long and wordless screech. Something knocked Kemal to the ground, and put weight on his chest. He did not resist, even when it struck his face. Someone was asking a question, but he did not understand.

Then he was in a restaurant, talking to an arrogant foreign woman in immodest clothing, and he was suddenly aware that his entire back was alight with pain. There were gunshots as well, but the foreign hussy kept talking over them, as if her foolish troubles mattered. Kemal couldn’t even understand her. What did she expect him to do?

A bare foot came down next to his face, the skin glowing white with purple-blue lightning flickering through its veins. Abruptly the weight came off his chest. It was about time. He tried to sit up, but the effort hurt his back more, so he gave up, letting his head thunk against the asphalt once again. The shining foot disappeared, and all the screams were buried beneath an almighty roar like a jet taking off.

Kemal did not care. He shut his eyes, and waited for all this nonsense to be done with. Didn’t they know he was too old for this?