It took us a few moments longer than it should have to notice the woman had died.
‘Rachel,’ Michael said, his hands going still.
I looked at the woman’s face, her closed eyes—remarkably peaceful, all things considered. Her chest was motionless.
‘Damn it.’ I checked her pulse just in case. Nothing.
We’d been working on her through the night: trying to stop her bleeding; trying to get her stable. But there were only the two of us left and precious few supplies, mitigating factors that did nothing to alleviate the regret flooding through me.
Over a decade older than me, and at least two decades more exposed to these kinds of impossible circumstances, Michael had his own approach to coping with disappointment. He bowed his head and made the Sign of the Cross. I waited until he’d finished before I lifted the paper sheet over the woman’s head.
‘Do we know what her name was?’ I asked.
‘No. The men who brought her ran away as soon as they got her to the door. We do not know anything about her.’
What he meant was, we didn’t know anything nice about her. Anything about her as a living, breathing member of a family and community. About the violence inflicted upon her, we knew plenty…
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