The gunfire starts while I'm reorganizing the supply closet. Not close—maybe half a kilometer out—but in Kandara, distance means nothing. Sound travels differently in the desert. What feels far away can be right on top of you before you finish counting the shots. I freeze with my hands on a box of gauze, listening. Three bursts. Automatic weapons. Then silence. Dr. Idris appears in the doorway, his perpetually calm face tight. "We may have incoming." I nod and follow him into the main tent. The Kandara medical camp isn't much—four tents, two operating tables, supplies that run out faster than we can restock them. But it's mine. Has been for three years. The place I came to disappear. The woman arrives on a stretcher carried by two fighters I don't recognize, her head wrapped in cloth already soaked through with blood. Shrapnel wound, I can tell before they even set her down. The way her eyes roll back, the shallow breathing—skull fracture, possible hemorrhage. "Get her on the table," I say, moving toward the sink. "Idris, I need—" "Eliza!" The voice hits me like a fist. I turn slowly, water still running over my hands. Marcus Thorne stands in the tent entrance, dust on his expensive tactical gear, sweat streaking his face. My ex-husband—the man I haven't seen in five years, the man I moved to a war zone to forget—is here, staring at me like I'm the answer to a prayer. "Thank God," he says. "You have to operate. You're the only one who can—" "I don't operate anymore." My voice sounds steadier than I feel. "Dr. Idris will—" "No." Marcus crosses the tent in three strides. "That's my wife, Eliza. Claire. She needs the best, and you're the best." I look at the woman on the table. Young. Maybe twenty-five. Blonde hair matted with blood. Of course she's beautiful. I lift my hands. They're shaking. Have been for five years, ever since the night I held a bottle of pills and decided I was done. "I can't." Marcus sees the tremor. His face changes—not sympathy, but frustration. The same look he gave me when I told him I needed help, that the pressure was breaking me. "Stop being dramatic, Eliza," he says. "People are dying."