When a hand touched his shoulder, Hanley twisted around quickly, producing a pain in his lower back, causing him to reach back to find the muscle that cramped.
“Are you trying to get yourself shot?” a harsh whisper asked. Sister Marie Claire held on to his shoulder, which did not help the pain.
“No. Do you really believe I would?” Hanley said rubbing his back muscle to make the pain go away. The shirt he was wearing was soaked through but he hadn’t notice until he grabbed for his back. The nun hung on, pulling Hanley back from the corner of the building. The pain started to fade and he turned, wrenching his shoulder away from her grip.
“Let go, will you?” Hanley turned to the nurse. Her face was composed and stern. “I will not be ignored,” she said. “You cannot have had any experience with this type of thing Mr Martin. You will get yourself killed and you haven’t been here a week. We have spent some time developing a plan for you. If you’re dead, you’re of not much value to us.”
“I wanted to see if anyone needed help and I was checking to see if anyone with a gun was heading this way,” Hanley said. “Anyway, it’s touching that you should be so concerned, especially considering you’ve invested that much time in putting together my job description.” Hanley moved back to the corner and peeked out again. Sister Marie Claire moved up and punched him in the shoulder. Hanley pressed his lips together hard, his expression of annoyance was washed over lightly with exasperation. He shook his head slightly back and forth. The heat of the day was now intense, dust rising from the ground seemingly on its own, searching for something to cover or penetrate. The hard dryness of his mouth was suddenly there, his tongue stuck in place against its roof, as a cigarette sticks to a dry lip. Swallowing several times, trying to conjure up some spit, he said, “A friend of mine in college, who was educated in a Catholic High School in Ohio, said all nuns were sadists.”
“Well, then get shot, I really shouldn’t care,” she said. He expected to hear her walk away but she stayed right behind him. Hanley saw that the man who had found shelter behind the tree was starting to move. Slowly he slid down to lay on his back and then carefully rolled over making certain most of his body remained protected by the tree. He then slowly peered around to look in the direction of the gunfire. The man and the tree were maybe sixty feet from the children’s clinic. As Hanley watched, he noticed the tree had sustained damage but the harm was not new; the bark was marred, badly marred. “The trees have saved some lives it seems,” Hanley said. “How often does this happen?” he asked.
She did not answer and Hanley turned slightly to see why. The nun was moving back toward the other end of the building, toward a dense bit of brush at the edge of the clearing near the far end of the clinic. Hanley watched her movements for a second and then looked beyond toward the edge of the clearing. An arm and hand protruded from the dense brush, the dark skin stark against the light brown grass and dust. The nun was running, shouting for help to the others in the clinic. Hanley ran for her, knowing she was about to put herself in danger.
As he cleared the edge of the building, he stopped and crouched, looking to where the shots had come from. Jolted by an immediate shame, he straightened and ran hard to where the nun had fallen to her knees. She had not stopped, had not hesitated for an instant; but he had. She was half into the high grass, bent over the head of the child, pushing down on the grass, creating some space to work. Hanley caught up to her and when he saw the girl’s head he turned away, bile rising to his throat. His mouth wide open, he gasped for air and choked back the acid rising to his lips. Spitting out the sour waste, he was aware of two more nuns running past, silent and scared; they had seen this before; this kind of death, a child’s death, wasteful, horrid, stupid. The kind of death men cause; the kind women don’t understand but have learned to deal with. No one should learn to accept this, Hanley thought.
It was the girl the nuns had just treated before the gunfire started, the girl from west of Rumbek, the beautiful girl whose mother had been raped and beaten to death. The entire left side of her head was missing, the bullet, the one that had not struck the building, had pierced her skull just above and slightly behind her right ear; it made mush of her brain and exited taking most of her head as a souvenir.
Sister Marie Claire stood and said something to the other nuns that Hanley did not hear. She stepped from the grass, her face white and rigid. Another nun, sobbed and Sister Marie Claire snapped something at her and then said to Hanley, “Get used to this Mr Martin. This is Sudan. She is Sudan; she was Sudan.”
Two of the doctors came to the edge of the clearing, examined the body
