CHAPTER 24: VISITING THE PATIENTS

The ride back felt longer than it was.

Eagle One skimmed the treetops, the world outside the open ramp a smear of green and gray. Albert sat buckled on the starboard bench, helmet in his lap, eyes fixed on nothing. Across from him, Ward watched the valley slide past, jaw ticking. Neither spoke. The rotor thump filled the silence well enough.

"Two mikes to base," the crew chief called, half-turning. "Skids hot. Med bay’s spin-up."

Albert nodded once. He didn’t need the reminder. He could still see the room in the temple every time he blinked, the shackles, the buckets, the slack, hollow faces. He’d fought in places that wrung the soul dry. This was worse.

The Pave Low banked, nose dipping as the outpost’s runway widened beneath them, a strip of rolled dirt and pierced steel planking with floodlights and a windsock that never seemed to lie down. The hangar glowed white. The med building beyond it—an old motor pool converted with white paint and a row of HEPA units—had its doors open and a nurse at the ramp waving them in like a marshal on a flight line.

"Wheels," the pilot said. A moment later the skids kissed steel.

Albert stood as the ramp fell. "Move," he said, out of habit more than necessity. He and Ward hit the ground and cut straight across the tarmac, ducking under a swinging sling-load and stepping around a stack of pelican cases with red crosses stenciled on the lids. Two MPs saluted and fell in a pace behind them, then wisely peeled off when they saw where the commander was headed.

Inside, the med building smelled like antiseptic and heated plastic. The overhead LEDs made everything stark. The big bay, once a maintenance floor, had been partitioned into six curtained cubicles with a nurses’ station at the center. IV poles stood like thin trees. Stainless trays were lined up with instruments and packaged gauze. There were no wounded operators today; the beds were all taken by the fifteen women that Bravo had carried out of that room.

A man in green scrubs looked up from a chart. He was older than most of the operators, with salt at the temples and a face like a map of too many tours. He pulled his mask down when he saw Albert.

"Commander," he said. "Dr. Ishikawa. We spoke on the net."

Albert shook his hand. "Doc."

Ward hovered just behind, notebook out of habit and because having something in his hands felt better than standing empty.

"Walk me through it," Albert said. "All of it."

Ishikawa’s eyes softened at the directness. He rapped his knuckles lightly on the nurses’ station as if calling himself to order.

"They’re safe," he began. "That’s the first thing. They’re warm, hydrated, and out of danger for the next twelve hours if nothing surprises us. After that, it’s a marathon."

He gestured toward the first cubicle and pulled the curtain gently aside. "No names unless they give them to you," he said quietly. "Just numbers for now. Patient one."

A woman lay propped on pillows, eyes closed, a thermal blanket pulled to her collarbones. Her collarbones were ridges. An IV line snaked to her arm. A pulse-ox clipped to a finger blinked green. Someone had braided her hair to keep it off the line tape. A female corpsman sat at the bedside, charting vitals and holding the woman’s hand between observations, thumb moving in small circles like a metronome for the soul.

"Severe malnutrition," Ishikawa said. "Body mass index low teens. Ribs palpable, hip crest sharp. Classic refeeding risk, so we’re going slow thiamine first, then small carbohydrate loads, electrolytes. She’ll want to eat until it hurts. We won’t let her. If we feed too fast, she could arrest on us."

He closed the curtain gently and nodded toward the next. "Patient two, complicated but stable. Lower extremity contusions and lacerations. Metal burns on wrists and ankles. Infection at the restraint sites, purulence, warmth, so we’ve debrided, irrigated, dressed. Broad-spectrum antibiotics started, ceftriaxone and metronidazole. Tetanus boosters for all fifteen as a matter of course."

He didn’t make them look at every wound. The broad strokes painted enough.

"Many have pressure sores on hips and shoulders," he continued. "Not deep, but they’ll need off-loading and time. Two have fractured ribs, old, healed badly. One has a clavicle that healed crooked. Pain control with acetaminophen and carefully titrated opiates. They don’t need to be high. They need to be present."

He stopped at another curtain and simply stood, as if asking permission to keep speaking. Albert gave a tight nod.

"Three are in the worst shape," Ishikawa said. "Patient five, six, and nine. Five arrived obtunded, barely responsive. Hypovolemic, septic. Temperature low then high, swinging, body fighting for its thermostat. We’ve got her on fluid resuscitation, antipyretics, and broad-spectrum antibiotics. Her blood pressure is better now. She opened her eyes once and asked for water, then slept. She’s a coin toss. We’ll keep flipping."

Ward swallowed and wrote coin toss without meaning to.

"Patient six," Ishikawa said. "Pregnant. Third trimester. Fundal height forty centimeters, twins probable. Uterus irritated, contractions irregular. No bleeding yet. We’ve started tocolytics to quiet the uterus, magnesium sulfate as prophylaxis should she seize. But she needs monitoring we can’t give in a tent. I’ve requested OB support from the main task force. We’ll convert bay three into a labor room if we have to. We’ll do it right."

"And nine?" Albert asked.

Ishikawa let out a breath. "Nine is the smallest. She’s young. Very young. Please don’t ask for a number; you won’t like it." His jaw moved once, as if he’d forced himself to keep all the words from falling out. "She has injuries consistent with repeated assault. There’s tearing. There’s infection. We’ve done gentle lavage. Prophylaxis is started for what we can see and what we can’t, HIV, hepatitis, gonorrhea, chlamydia. Emergency contraception where it isn’t contraindicated. All of it by the book, and with consent. We explain before we touch. We stop when they say stop. That’s the only control we can give back right now."

Albert’s hands were fists he hadn’t meant to make. He forced the fingers to open, then close again around the strap of his helmet. "Do they understand us?"

"Yes they can communicate well," Ishikawa said.

They moved to another bed. Patient ten stared back at them, awake, eyes flat and bottomless. Her wrists were wrapped. She looked from Ishikawa to Albert, then to Ward’s notebook, then back to Albert.

"Can I...?" Ishikawa asked.

Albert took a half step closer and lowered his voice. "We won’t ask questions you don’t want to answer," he said and added. "You’re safe. No one will touch you without asking. If you say stop, we stop. If you say no, we listen. If you want to sleep, you sleep."

She blinked. Her lips moved. "Are the goblins dead?"

"Yes," Albert said. No extra words. "They won’t come here again."

Her mouth twitched, either a ghost of a smile or a muscle learning how to move again. She exhaled, long and rattling, and turned her head. The corpsman tucked the blanket a little higher around her shoulders.

They stepped back into the aisle. Ishikawa raked a hand through his hair and handed over a clipboard, findings and a plan.

"Psychologically," the doctor said, "we’re in triage just like the bodies. Acute stress reactions today and tomorrow. Dissociation, muted affect, startle reflex, nightmares when sleep finally comes. Some will talk. Some will not. Some will try to go back to work immediately because it’s how they make sense of time. We’ll give them structure and choose our intrusions carefully."

"Counseling?" Ward asked.

"Already spun up," Ishikawa said. "We have two combat stress counselors on base. I’m requesting a proper trauma therapist through the net. Also: female staff on every shift. Dignity garments. Curtains maintained at all times. No unnecessary male presence in exam rooms. Evidence collection was offered—declined by most, but we gathered what we could with consent. Chain-of-custody logged. If there’s ever a courtroom in this world, we’ll be ready for it. If there isn’t, we still did right by them."

He set the clipboard down and let the mask drop for a moment. "Commander, I’ve seen people broken in a dozen flavors. This was deliberate. Systematic. It wasn’t just hunger and chains. It was the careful use of fear over time. That’s what you felt in that room. That’s why it sticks to you."

Albert nodded once. He wouldn’t feed it with words. Feeding it made it grow.

"What do you need?" he asked instead.

"Nothing, we have all the things that we need here. But if there are certain things, we will call you."

"You’ll have it," Albert said. He looked down the line of curtains and IV poles.

A nurse, another corpsman, hair braided tight, approached and handed Ishikawa a vitals sheet. "Five’s temp is coming down," she said softly. "Heart rate’s easing. Urine output’s up."

"Good," Ishikawa said, marking it. "Keep the fluids at the current rate. Tell her she’s safe every time you touch her."

"Yes, doc."

They moved to the last bed because there was nowhere else to move. Patient six, the pregnant one, lay on her side, knees slightly bent, a fetal heart monitor glued in place with ingenuity and surgical tape. The Doppler readout pinged softly. It wasn’t a perfect machine for this, nothing here was perfect, but the line was steady and that meant hope.

"She asked if she can keep them," said the nurse.

Albert looked at the green blip tracing across the small screen. He pictured the room again, the huddle of small, wrong things. He thought of what choice meant in a world where most of the choices had been taken at knifepoint.

"She can," he said. "If she wants. We’ll help her either way."

Ishikawa didn’t look away from the monitor. "We’ll need vitamins, iron, clean water, calories she can keep down. And a plan for delivery."

Albert rested his palm on the bedrail for a second and then let it go.

"Doc," he said, voice even, "you do what you have to do. I’ll do the part with guns and fences."

"Seems fair," Ishikawa said, the corner of his mouth lifting by a degree.

Ward touched Albert’s elbow, subtle, enough to be felt but not seen. "We should let them work," he said, voice pitched for an aisle not a room. "TOC’s going to want your signature on the recon tasking and the supply pulls for the OB kit."

Albert nodded. "Right." He faced the doctor. "You get anything you ask for. If the net says no, tell me who to call and I’ll make it a yes."

Ishikawa didn’t salute. He didn’t need to. "Go kill whatever built that room," he said quietly. "That’s the medicine I can’t administer."

Albert held his eyes for a beat. "That’s the plan."

They stepped out into the corridor, the air cooler and thinner even though it was the same air. At the door, Albert paused. The noise of the base came in, the rumble of a diesel, the clack of tent poles, the brief burst of laughter that always finds a way to exist wherever people still want to be human.

Ward exhaled, long. "We’re going to need a chapel," he said.

"We’re going to need a lot of things," Albert replied. He put his helmet back on, snapped the chinstrap, and seemed taller by half an inch. "Start with the Global Hawk. The rest we’ll build as we go."