He grabbed the hem of Eric’s shirt and started cutting.
The Viking grabbed his wrist, stilling his hand. “Hey, Doc. This isn’t my blood.”
He’d heard that one before. “Take a deep breath for me.” He tried to shove off Eric’s hold. “I’m here to help. I won’t hurt you.” It was absolutely horrific how many times he had to repeat that phrase on a daily basis.
“Seriously. Not my blood.” But Eric released his hand.
Walt finished cutting the shirt up the middle, then cut through the sleeves at the shoulders, quickly pulling the fabric away. The baby docs who came here to both help and learn were usually shocked by how brusque he was. He had to teach them that it was more important to get the patient into a position where they could be cared for than it was to gently remove clothes.
Given how much blood was on Eric’s upper half, Walt expected long, shallow cuts. An arterial cut and Eric wouldn’t have been upright and walking, which meant he needed to have a lot of bleeder wounds.
Instead, the man’s chest only sported a few old scars and some fresh bruises around the ribs. Walt looked at Eric’s scalp. It had to be a head wound. But there wasn’t blood on his face.
“We done with the weird foreplay?” Eric was leering at him.
Walt pushed aside his doctor instincts—which were telling him to strip off the rest of Eric’s clothes to do a complete check. “Whose blood is this?”
Eric’s expression sobered. “That’s why I need your help. Can you come with me?”
“Where?”
“I need you to patch up someone.”
“Where?”
“About half an hour from here.”
If they were bleeding this heavily, there was very little chance that the person would still be alive when they got there. Walt grimaced but grabbed his kit—a large duffel bag—and threw it over his shoulder. Eric followed him out of the exam room. Walt stopped only long enough to knock on the door of the small bunkhouse where the visiting baby docs slept, calling out that he was going out for an emergency.
Eric led him to a rusted jeep, and Walt hopped in, turning to see that one of the doctors—a young French woman—had opened the door. She raised her hand to wave at him as Eric started the vehicle. She was the most experienced of the lot and, though still slow in the way of new doctors, she was competent and confident.
There was no opportunity to talk on the drive, given the speed and open top. Walt was sorry he hadn’t grabbed a jacket. While the weather in December was fairly mild, it was chillier tonight than normal. They drove too quickly over rutted dirt roads here on the very furthest outskirts of the Bani Walid area. His clinic was in a densely populated, underserved area, but the direction they were headed…
Walt tensed because he was fairly sure they were now in an undeveloped area that was considered so dangerous, the local health authority had made it off-limits for him. For any foreigner. Even locals avoided it.
They came around a corner, the narrow road—which was more of a dirt path—opening up into a clearing with a few buildings.
Eric stepped on the brakes and dust spat up from under the tires as he stopped. When he turned the headlights off, Walt couldn’t see anything for a moment—the only light here was a very faint orange glow coming through an open doorway in one of the three white buildings surrounding a small dirt courtyard.
Eric grabbed Walt’s shoulder, guiding him toward the open door.
The long, low building seemed to be a storehouse and had probably started out as a barn. There were stall areas now full of army-green trunks. A table with four chairs near the door boasted a lantern.
He took all that in without actually acknowledging it because his focus was on the people in the room. Six men in mismatched camouflage were either kneeling or lying on the floor, their hands behind their backs.
Standing over them, holding very large guns, were a dozen girls, ranging in ages from what looked like ten to fourteen. The smallest girl turned to point her gun at them, teeth bared in a snarl that was no less terrifying coming from a little girl.
Eric gestured to the men. “I need you to patch them up.”
“I won’t work with someone holding a gun on me.” Sadly, it was not the first time in his life Walt had used those words.
Eric looked at the girls. “Up to you.”
“If I want to shoot them?” one of the older girls asked in soft, lovely accented English.
“Your call.” Eric shrugged.
“What…” Walt wanted to channel his brother Oscar and say, “What the actual fuck is going on?” but he refrained because, despite the guns, the girls were still just children and his mama had raised him better than that.
“I need you to patch them up so we can finish questioning them.”
Walt closed his eyes. “It’s their blood. You’re torturing them.”
“Yep.” Eric’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. “They’re the bad guys.”
Walt glanced sideways at Eric. “If you’re torturing them, you’re a bad guy.”
“But they deserve it.”
“No one deserves—”
“They do.” The same girl’s voice cut through the room. “They deserve death.”
Walt blew out a long breath. He’d been avoiding thinking about what the presence of the girls meant because even he had his limits to what his heart could handle. He’d seen far too much in his years as a doctor, on battlefields, traveling to ravaged, desperate places most people wouldn’t dream of stepping foot in. But this… Walt fought hard to distance himself from what he was seeing. It was either that or walk back outside to throw up.
Walt set down his kit and dropped to a squat next to one of the girls. He was a big guy, though not as big as Eric, and could be intimidating for kids. “Are
