The Burdens of Others

She was asleep in his sleeping bag by the time he returned from disposing of the condom in the cracked bucket in the tent's corner. He smiled, and settled into hers, where he would dream of winter landscapes far away.

*

The next day he was fumbling through some stitches when she appeared next to him. The hum of her nearness increased his clumsiness until she took up the task for him.

"I need your advice on some inventory, Soldier," she said as she finished.

"The name's Ed," he insisted just short of petulantly.

She just gave him a look. He followed her to the tent where supplies were stored, noting her guards taking up posts at a safe distance. Rickety shelves dug into the dust covered ground; the tarp underneath them both long since buried. She led him back behind piles of empty cardboard boxes where a large wooden crate sat. She hopped up on it, legs dangling off the side.

"What help did you need?" Ed said, deciding against leaning on the shelving.

"Oh, you know," A mischievous grin spread across her lips, drawing his gaze and causing all manner of untoward thoughts. "Stress relief."

Ed grinned back. He moved between her spread legs and met her expectant lips with his own. Her hair felt thick and heavy in his fingers as he formed a fist at the base of her skull and pulled her head back and away from his kiss. Her gasp slid into a groan as he worked his way down her neck. He could feel her desire to say something, to move things along. It was in the clenching of her fingers on his shoulders, the tension in her shoulders as he continued holding her still.

Keeping his grip on her hair he pulled her down from the crate and turned her around, placing her hands flat on the top of the crate so she was bent over at the waist, releasing her only when she kept the position without fidgeting.

"Ed." She gasped as he pushed her scrubs down.

"Now you know my name." he pushed his hand between her legs to find her wet and waiting for him.

"I'll call you anything you want, soldie—" he cut her off with one deep thrust. She groaned as he set his own pace, driving her up on her toes with the force of his hips against her perfect ass. He sank his fingers into her soft flesh and she tried to wriggle back towards him. It was a contest of wills but he won it, this time. He brought his hand to her clit, gently at first and then harder until she came, her pussy contracting along his dick in a way that made him groan and he followed close behind.

That afternoon three women came in from the camp and she disappeared with them into another tent. He tended to two men with bronchitis and a large family who were new to the camp, still bearing the wounds of their flight from Syria. The nurse took him on rounds to some of the patients who weren't being taken back to the refugee camp that night, but between her strong use of dialect and his less than stellar Arabic, it took longer than he would have liked.

The nurse gestured to a girl wrapped in a head scarf, swollen belly prominent under her sheet. "Amira," the nurse said, handing him a chart he could only just make out. Handwritten Arabic raced across the page in great lines and swoops. The numerals caught his eye and he interpreted the number of weeks and the size of the girl's stomach as indicating twins.

"Ahlan wa sahlan," Ed began, grinding through his memorized greeting. "My name is Ed, how are you?"

"As salam aleykum," the girl said back with a smile. "My name is Amira," her English surprised him, the look on her face fully satisfied by his shock. "Welcome to the hospital, Ed."

He started and then smiled, eyes darting over to the nurse who also looked smug at his surprise. The nurse left him there, saying something to Amira about how she'd start all the foreigners on her bed next time.

"Amira, you speak wonderful English," he said, taking a seat in the cracked plastic chair next to her bed.

"Thank you. My father taught me mostly, but Doctor Evans has been keeping me educated these past few months."

Ed glanced down at the pages in his hand but quickly realized he would never get the story from there. His training did not include how to take patient histories from pregnant refugee teenagers, and he wouldn't begin tackling that process now.

"Well, it seems I might also be of assistance in that capacity," he said, tossing the pages to the foot of the bed. "What's the hardest part for you?"

Amira smiled, her pale face losing some of weight she carried when he didn't ask her to retell her story. "The irregular verbs," she said with a laugh. "And the spelling, definitely the spelling."

"Even we don't know how to spell," he smiled back, "So I wouldn't worry about that. But I do know a trick or two about remembering some of the worst ones."

He spent nearly an hour by her bed, his first genuinely calm moment of the past few months. The girl had an incredible capacity for conversation and it was soothing. He liked her instantly and effortlessly, but the nurse claimed him to help with another infection he had limited capacity to treat, and then again later to bring out the food packets his team had left for the patients to eat.

He rolled into his bed before the sunset, exhausted from the night before and yet thoroughly pleased with having actually physically helped, impromptu English lesson and all. He didn't envy the team out surveying the landscape and writing reports that would never really make a difference.

The sound of the tent's zipper woke him up sometime long after dark.

"Oriel?" he spoke into the dark of the tent. "Everything okay?" Her form was silhouetted by the glare of the floodlights muted through the walls of the tent.

"Yeah." She didn't sound alright. "The last doctor left a case of whiskey behind, and I can't finish it by myself."

He groaned as he sat up. "Seems like I might be able to help with that."

They sat outside the tent, wrapped up in the same blanket against the chill of the desert night.

"I fucking hate the desert," she said, taking a sip from the bottle and passing it to him. "One minute the sun is cooking your head like you've stepped into an oven and the next the night is trying to freeze you from the inside out. Who the fuck thought this up? Who thought this was a reasonable climate to throw in the mix?"

Ed chuckled as he took a long pull of the fiery liquid. "You aren't helping yourself in those scrubs, you know."

Her lip curled. "It's laundry day."

"Yeah? How long has it been laundry day?"

"Well I brought enough clean clothes for a week, so..." She took the bottle back and took a longer swig.

"No one here to help you with that?"

"There's no one here to help with just about anything." Her tone had shifted ever so slightly and Ed took the hint. For a few minutes they sat in silence.

"I have a funny laundry story," he said. She passed him the bottle with a noncommittal sound of encouragement. He didn't say anything. A moment passed while he drank and passed the bottle back.

"Well?" she said finally.

"Well, what?" his voice all innocence.

"Your laundry story."

"Oh, you missed it."

"What?" She looked at him completely confused now, the somber look was gone.

He grinned. "You were sulking and forgot to laugh at my funny, topically-relevant story to distract you from your pity party. Shame really, it's a great story."

She stared at him for a beat, no doubt searching her memory for the missing piece of their conversation before realizing it didn't exist. Her lips split into a grin to mirror his own. She laughed, her usually low voice going up an octave and escaping her lips in small bursts that brought him a smile. "That part with the polar bear is a bit much. People believe that?"

"Well—" Ed cleared his throat guiltily. "I may have embellished that part. You looked like a tough nut to crack so I had to go above and beyond. But the part with the cross dressing quarterback is totally true."

She punched him playfully in the shoulder. "Mission accomplished, soldier"

"Ed," he said again.

She shook her head. "I don't buy it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You just don't look like an Ed." She gave him an appraising look. "Also Ed Razavi rings wrong, even if your parents were trying to blend in."

"Well ferreted, Doc," he said with a chuckle. "Seyyed Razavi, at your service. Ed started as a joke in grade school and just kind of stuck around."

"So where's the name from?"

"Same place my parents came from; Iran."

She smiled back at him. "I didn't know they made Persians your size."

He puffed out his chest. "This here is American born and bred, lady."

She rolled her eyes "You Americans, always with the big talk." He laughed and she smiled, accepting the bottle back.

"So I've gotta go with Canadian, given your snarky attitude," he said.

She gave him a nod.

"And I'll say Quebec given that you've made no effort to disguise your name."

She laughed. Ed decided he liked the sound. "You are right, monsieur, ten points to America."

"Well if we are awarding points I'll give you twenty for being the first to figure out 'Ed' isn't short for 'Edward' or something. But-" He made a regretful sound of sucking air through his teeth. "I gotta take ten for not guessing the exact location of my heritage. So that'll put us in a dead heat."

"I bet ten points I come first." She turned toward him, the bottle finished, forgotten, or otherwise lost.

"No way I'm taking that bet."

Her mouth was sweet and warm from the alcohol, her body's heat met his hands through her thin scrubs. He drew her to standing to make their way back into the tent. Once inside she ignored the cold and shucked her clothing fast before trying to help him with his. He grabbed her hands though and pulled them behind her back.

"You've got to learn to keep your hands to yourself," He kissed her and she squirmed. He took both wrists in one hand and ran the other down her body.

"You take too long," she purred, rubbing herself against him.

"Only when you're moving so fast." He kissed her harder, swallowing whatever response she had for him.

She struggled against his controlling grip but when he pulled back from the kiss he saw nothing in her face to slow him down. His fingertips moved slowly over her skin, down the pebbled nipple and across her flat stomach. He kept watch on her face, waiting till she tried to dictate terms again.

He didn't wait long. "Seyyed, c'mon..." she groaned, frustrated. His fingers closed over her nipple, digging deep into the tight bud. She gasped in pain and surprise. He released it and closed his palm over her breast, soothing the ache with the heat of his hand. For a moment she looked livid, and then aroused. She moved towards him for a kiss but he denied her the satisfaction, dipping his head and bringing his lips to her throat. He could feel her humming beneath his hand as he started down her body again. Her legs spread as he drew his fingers down the dip between her hip and mound, and found her upper thighs cooling with the moisture there.

She groaned when he ignored her core again. "We don't have time—" she started again, until his teeth bit into her shoulder, his hand meeting her wet slit with a harsh slap. She gasped and wriggled. He cupped her heat and felt her juices flow as he massaged the skin he'd struck.

"There is always time," he said after kissing the indentations left by his teeth. And he set about proving it to her.

*

The week slipped by, every grueling moment in the hospital an eternity, every stolen press of their bodies a blessing. She came alive in his hands, allowing him the balm of control more and more each time. This went beyond the desperation he'd felt that first night, past the connection only found at the extremes of the human experience. There were moments when he held her still, and she calmed in his hold, that could only be born of two people finding a rare balance that set them both to right.

She was everywhere during the day, the sheer force of her energy unbelievable. He saw the cracks though, trained as he was to catch them in his teammates, and before in his comrades in arms. They would sit together with Amira sometimes and he watched her relax, ever so slightly. But she tackled Amira's situation with the same vigor she did her other patients', and he could see there was no real moment of calm for her.

The day before his team returned a scream woke them both, the dark sky attesting to the hour. They'd pressed the two cots together to sleep, embracing as much as the bars that held the supporting fabric would allow them to in the precious few hours they slept. Oriel was dressed and gone before he had one leg in his pants. He arrived in the main tent to see Oriel and the nurse bracing Amira in their hands, supporting her as she attempted to walk towards the procedure tent. Ed raced over, scooping up the girl and carrying her the rest of the way.

"Get out," Oriel said as he lay Amira down on the operation table.

"Let me help," he pleaded, not taking his eyes from the girl he'd come to know.

"You can't help. Bana and Riham have delivered more children than anyone I know. I'll be here. You have to leave." Oriel was setting up an IV when Amira screamed and curled around her obscenely large stomach. "Trust me, Seyyed, if I need help I'll call you."

He nodded then, taking one last glance at Amira's pained face, and left to tend to the others.

They'd lost at least twelve patients since he'd arrived and had to send back dozens more to their squalid living conditions, largely untreated, for lack of supplies. He balled his fists around nothing, listening to the muted sounds of the other women punctuated by Amira's screams. He looked around the tent, the empty IV hangers, the dusty floors and dense smell of unwashed skin. The filtered light covered the worst of the mess but it would never hide the smells.

He moved down the rows of bed, most patients quiet in the dark despite knowing they were not sleeping. Beds two, three and five and fifteen through eighteen would need wound cleaning. The woman with pneumonia had two more days of oxygen left but if she didn't start responding to the antibiotics soon they'd have to pull the therapy to save for someone with a better chance. There was an old man dying slowly in bed ten. Oriel had told him it was probably metastatic pancreatic cancer by the way he curled forward, but with no imaging it was just morphine pills until he didn't need them anymore. Amira screamed again and Ed remembered that first day when he'd felt good about himself, glad to have helped instead of just observed and hated himself more in that moment than he could ever remember being.

Amira's screams followed him everywhere that day. The other patients and nurses were on edge. Ed tried as best he could to stay focused, but he was constantly distracted, his eyes going to the back flap that would lead him to the procedure room. He memorized the way the sand clung to the top of every bend and fold of the tarp, the way the ties moved with the breeze outside, undisturbed by human hands. Minutes crawled by between the pained calls from the other tent. And when they finally came the anxiety charged through him, something akin to panic but too far removed from action to satisfy the impetus to do something.

Late afternoon the scream didn't come, the sobbing and crying quieted and the entire hospital came to a halt. Ed sat there, eyes fixed on the far wall, imagining in vivid detail the way Oriel would look as she came through the flaps. The man below him, the same one whose leg he's set the first day, turned his head in the same direction. For a moment everything was completely still.

The seconds ticked by: no call came, no baby's wail, no Oriel to say it was over and okay.

Ed turned back to the man next to him. The wound in his shoulder was infected and Ed had to clean the tube draining it. It was painful, there was no way it couldn't be, but the man lay silent as Ed took up the task again. The quiet permeated the space. No one came out.

Ed was reorganizing the supply closet, bringing their dwindling store of bandages and gloves into one row, when Bana found him.

"Is she okay?" Ed asked, forcing her to shake her head, even though he could see it before he asked.

"We need help," Bana said, her Arabic slow and clear so he could understand. "I can't lift her."

He followed the small woman back into the makeshift delivery room. The smell hit him first. The sight was worse. Oriel sat on the ground, her head leaning back against one of the cabinets in the corner, still in the sterile coverings usually reserved for surgery. In front of her, the operating table and the body on it had been covered entirely by an old sheet. The blood had seeped through in great blossoming clouds, and collected on the floor in oozing puddles. Beside her were two tiny lumps beneath their own cloth.

He went to Oriel first, crouching down to eye level but found the woman's eyes focused far past his face. "Oriel," he said softly, reaching out and touching her knee. Still nothing. He turned to the Bana and Riham leaning on each other, backs to the others.

"We have to bury her." Oriel's voice drew his eyes back. "Diyaa and his crew are digging the grave now."

"What about her family?" he asked, finding the speed with which this was happening unsettling.

"They're dead, she's been alone, that's how she ended up..." Oriel waved her hand at the morbid scene. Her tone troubled him, but he was no stranger to coping mechanisms. Oriel rose to her feet and Ed got his first look at how covered in blood she was. "I need to shower and I'll be back to help."

A hand on her shoulder stopped her. "Let me do this, okay?" She cast a look over the room one last time and gave him a short nod before she disappeared out the door.

Ed set to work with all the unspent energy of the day. He poured the anxiety and dread into cleaning, every moment of irritation and fear into restoring the room where Amira had died. He discarded the empty blood transfusion bags, the swabs and the abandoned wound dressings. He scrubbed the rubber intubation balloon of the bloody handprints of the person who had squeezed it over and over to try to force breath into the girl who would never take another one. With it went the scalpel, the clamps and the other material they'd used to try and stem the bleeding and then to save the lives of the babies. Everything he touched told him what he had been spared when she had forced him to leave.

Oriel had harbored a secret hope that Amira would be granted asylum as an orphan, one she'd only hinted to him after she found him sitting with her patient day after day. He had thought he could help, call up some contacts, get a journalist on her story, anything to grind the gears of bureaucracy faster.

And now that was gone, and so he would clean so they didn't have to. He would wash her body, enshroud her, and carry it alone so they could be spared that burden. He would carry the children who had never cried out, and place them with their mother, a child herself, so that they wouldn't have to hold the forms of those who had never lived as they were laid to rest.

Oriel didn't reappear for the prayers. Riham and Bana were joined by the rest of the nursing staff as night fell. Those patients well enough to walk came as well. Diyaa and his men, save one who was off following their charge wherever she might be, helped to cover the body. And then it was done. There were no more tasks to be completed, nothing more required to see to her. The small group slipped away in pairs and threes, and Seyyed was left alone in the gathering evening until he turned, intent on finding the whiskey and then Oriel.