I have never seen anything more orange than an African sunset. On that day, it was more surreal than any other, before or since. It was as if the entire sky seared with the bloodshed it reflected. The sun, however, too ashamed of what it had witnessed, was nowhere to be seen. It left the squalid landscape drenched in an unworldly monochrome.
I had no other reason to hold my head up.
Finally relieved of my duty to guard the fence line, I could surrender the pretence I kept up for my men. The officer ushered the eight of us back into the hospital. He could see I needed a minute to myself, and let me slink off around the corner with a sympathetic nod once the rest of my section was inside.
The humidity was stifling. Together with the dark mud that sucked at my boots, it fought to slow my retreat. The shirt of my disruptive pattern combat uniform clung to my back, almost hosed on. I despaired. There was no escape. My breathing lumbered, and countless stars joined the moisture welling in my eyes.
I reached the back of the Besser block building, gripping the cool concrete to wrench myself around the corner. It was the closest thing this so-called hospital had to privacy: a narrow cement walkway between the rear wall and the rusted metal shed that housed the backup generator. What little warm breeze there was, was non-existent back there. The sweltering air glowed a deep, dirty orange from the merciless sunset above.
Scuffing as far down the makeshift corridor as I could, I leaned back against the wall and scraped myself down to the ground. I stretched my legs out, pressing the soles of my boots against the rusted sheet metal. The shed groaned, then clanged under the pressure.
I laid my rifle across my lap and glared down at it. The thin barrel and handles of the Steyr made it look more like a toy than a weapon. For all the good it did that day, it might as well have been. I remember hating it in that moment. That worthless, fucking thing! It was nothing more than a symbol of my impotence.
I began to shake. It was far too great a responsibility for me to bear. I was only nineteen for fuck's sake.
I don't know how I held it together. But I couldn't any longer. I began to cry. My face flushed with heat and humiliation. Lifting my knees up, I hugged them and buried my face in the sweat-soaked camouflage. I was racked with violent sobs, my shoulders bouncing uncontrollably.
The gasp of a wet sniffle jolted me from my self-pity some time later. It was one of the Médecins Sans Frontières nurses standing at the entrance of the corridor a few metres away. I think her name was Tabitha. She was holding her hand over her mouth, the other supporting her wrist. Tears streamed from her eyes and rippled over her fingers.
Quickly wiping the tears and snot from my face, I spluttered, "What's wrong?"
She shook her head and stifled another sob. Then composing herself, she lowered her hands and whined softly in a heavy French, or maybe Belgian accent, "I hate to see a man cry."
"I'm not a man," I blurted out, the utter humiliation seizing me in undignified sorrow. I bawled into my knees, unable to keep myself from wailing like a banshee.
I felt the moist heat of her presence as she crouched down beside me and draped her left arm across my back. "Shhh," she soothed in my ear, placing her other hand on my knee.
"Men don't do that," I sobbed hysterically. "Men don't let that happen."
I had us at the fence line. Our weapons aimed, fingers on the triggers, but safety switches on, we were on the brink. It was my decision to keep us there. It was my decision to hold our fire.
It was my decision to do nothing.
Tabitha laid her cheek on my shoulder. She knew better than to argue with me at that moment. She just held me close and tried to comfort me. I needed time to come to terms with what had happened, to get it all out.
The frozen terror I forced us all to watch would be forever burned in our memories. I would never forget the chilling evil that stared back at me up the barrel of my own rifle, provoking me. They wanted me to fire.
God knows I wanted to as well. My men were begging me to give the order to shoot. Our blood was boiling. But it was mine to keep my cool.
"You saved our lives, Corporal," she whispered when my outpouring had finally reduced to a pitiful shiver. "You saved all of us."
The officer would have explained to the medical staff that protecting the hospital and the people within it meant abandoning those on the other side of the wire. He would have told them that if we had tried to stop it, if we had fired, we would have been overrun.
Tabitha shuffled on the ground next to me, sitting down out of her crouch. Her baggy, blue-green scrubs looked almost pink in the warm orange gloom. The heat of her body pressed against mine caused fresh droplets of sweat to trickle down along my right side.
Conscious of her proximity, I lifted my rifle off my lap and stood it up against the wall away from her on my left. When I turned back, she gave me a sad smile and took my hand between hers, placing one underneath and the other on top. Her touch was wonderfully warm, and the gentle caress of her thumb across the back of my hand was lovely.
I don't know how long we sat there, silently watching the pendulum swing of Tabitha's thumb on my skin. It seemed like a while. I didn't even notice the weight of her head on my shoulder. The feeling had always been there. I remember nothing in my life feeling more natural. It belonged.
