Page 45 of Red Line

Where the hell was she?

How did she get here?

A nurse in blue scrubs watched Red’s odd behaviors as she drew up a syringe then pressed the liquid into Red’s IV line. “Well, hello there. That was a surprising way to wake up.” She chuckled. “I’m Tomi. I’m your nurse today.”

Red shifted her leg as she twisted to see better. “What’s wrong with me?” It seemed like the most reasonable place to start. Much higher on the need-to-know list than “Where the heck am I?”

“Salmonella Typhoid, I bet you got that typhoid vaccination, not the oral dose.” Tomi wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, that’s right. I …” This woman was American. That meant Red hadn’t gotten herself to the hospital down the road. That was the last plan she remembered. Drop the bag of money into Moussa’s lap, walk out the door to a car, and ask for a ride to the hospital.

They didn’t have American nurses at that Lebanese hospital.

Where the hell was she? How did she get here?

Red’s mind scurried around, trying to find a way out from under the blanket of panic.

“Well, it's good you were taking your antibiotic pills.” Tomi’s voice was too bright for the darkness that covered Red. Something terrible had happened.

The explosion.

Moussa was dead.

She hadn’t given him the money. He couldn’t use it anymore.

Where was it? Where did she put the bag?

“You're probably feeling odd. You’ve been sedated to get some deep rest.” Tomi smiled.

Red followed the tubing from her arm up to the IV.

“You should be coming around now. I just added your last dose of antibiotics. Your blood work is looking good. Counting backward, you were on the last days of this beast. You got severely dehydrated. How are you feeling?”

“I’m not cramping. Tired. A little woozy and disoriented. Other than that, okay.” In Red’s mind, she was back at the scene of the explosion. She was stepping over bodies and crushed walls. She’s stumbled down the road out of the cloud of dust, coughing.

And now, she remembered deciding that no matter how sick she was, she shouldn’t go to the hospital. It was going to fill with victims from the blast. They’d need all their medical staff to cover the bombing. She’d lie in some hallway, ignored because she was low on the triage scale. No one would be assessing her to see if her appendix burst.

She’d just be in the way.

For everyone’s sake, Red decided she might as well go back to bed and try to survive.

But this scene didn’t make any sense at all. “How’d I get here?”

“Some concerned friends went to find you and brought you in.”

“Where’s ‘in’ exactly?”

“You’re at a US Army base in eastern Türkiye.” Tomi smiled. “Not many people know we exist, but here we are. And here you are.”

Türkiye?

“I’m told your hotel was bombed. I’m sorry that happened to you. You came out of that relatively unscathed. You had crap in your lungs, but no ear issues, no brain trauma, no bruising or internal bleeding.”

“I was in the women’s room, sitting on the toilet, cramping from salmonella.”

“That’s your story?” Tomi laughed hard, the medical version of gallows humor, Red guessed.

“Yeah. Very glam, right?”

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