Page 1 of Gone Before Goodbye

TriPoint, North Africa

I don’t hear the scream.

The nurse does. So does the anesthesiologist. I am too deep in the zone, the zone I can only enter in an operating theater, when a sternum is cracked open like this, and my hands are inside the boy’s chest.

This is my home, my office, my sanctuary. I am Zen here.

More screams. Gunfire. Helicopters. An explosion.

“Doctor?”

I hear the panic in her voice. But I don’t move. I don’t look away. My hands, the oldest medical instruments known to mankind, are inside the chest cavity, my index finger palpitating the pericardium. I am totally focused on that, only that. No music is playing. That’s weird in an operating room nowadays, I know, but I relish silence in this hallowed space, even when we’ve done heart transplants that last eight hours. It annoys my staff. They need the diversion, the entertainment, the distraction—and that’s the problem for me. I want no distractions. Both my bliss and my excellence come from that singular focus.

But the sounds invade.

Rapid gunfire. Another explosion. Louder screams.

Getting closer now.

“Doctor?” The voice is shaky now, panicked. Then, because I’m clearly not listening: “Marc?”

“Nothing we can do about it,” I say.

Which is hardly a comfort.

Trace and I arrived in Ghadames eight days ago. We flew into Diori Hamani airport, where we were met by a young woman Trace and I knew named Salima, if that is her real name, and a burly driver who never introduced himself or said a word to us. The four of us traveled northeast for two long days, sleeping in a safe house near Agadez and then tents under the stars in Bilma. We left the driver in northern Niger, traveling through the desert by night, until we met another car.

Salima and Trace have eyes for one another. I’m not surprised. Trace is the pure definition of a “playah.” Even surrounded by death… well, maybe that’s just it.

When you’re close to death, that’s when you feel your most alive.

Salima kept us moving north, straddling the border between Algeria and Libya. East of Djanet, a half dozen heavily armed militants stopped us. They were all young—teens, I would guess—and tweaking from some sort of potent narcotic. They were called the Child Army. Blood was in the air. Wide-eyed, they grabbed me first, then Trace. The young militants made me kneel.

They put a gun to the back of my skull.

I would be first to die. Trace would watch. Then it would be his turn.

I closed my eyes and pictured Maggie’s face and waited for someone to pull the trigger.

The Child Army didn’t shoot us, obviously. Salima, who speaks at least four languages fluently, fell to her knees and talked fast. I don’tknow exactly what she said—Salima wouldn’t tell us—but the child soldiers moved on.

More screams. More gunfire. Closer now. I try to hurry.

I didn’t tell Maggie the truth about how risky this last mission was on so many levels, not because I thought she would worry but because of the promises we had made to one another—she would have insisted on coming.

That’s how Maggie and I are built.

You wonder what makes a hero? There’s altruism, sure. But there’s also ego and recklessness and thrill-seeking.

We don’t fear danger. We fear normalcy.

Trace, wearing a surgical mask, pokes his head in. “Marc?”

“How much time do we have?”

“They’ve burned down the north side of the camp. Dozens are already dead. Salima is moving everyone out.”

I look at the nurse and the anesthesiologist. “Go,” I tell them.