Page 47 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

I’m pacing. Outside this impossibly understaffed, underresourced clinic, where sweet, innocent Omid died and I killed my own blood relative, and now I can feel Habib starting to stir, pushing away from the wall in genuine interest, preparing to enjoy the show.

“Why?” I demand to know. From Dr. Richard, from my encircling ghosts, from the universe in general. “Why, why, why!”

“Sabera.” Dr. Richard touches my arm. “Take a deep breath; you need to breathe…”

“It’s been over a year. My country, gone. My family, gone! And for what? Can you tell me? For what ?”

I’m panting. Up is down, down is up. I don’t know… I don’t understand…

Isaad has appeared. He stands next to Dr. Richard as they confer in low tones. There will be more meds. There are always more meds.

The Prozac protocol. I have watched it play out at the clinic countless times. From raging nightmares to vacant stares to trembling anxiety, have a Prozac. And another and another. Take three, they’re small.

I start to giggle, because they’re not really that tiny, and I have a hard time swallowing them. Jamil strokes my cheek again as two white pills appear in the palm of my hand. Isaad hands me a bottle of water. I know the drill by now.

Toss it back, swallow it down.

Prepare for the numbness that takes nothing away, just stifles it under a too-heavy blanket.

“She needs real treatment,” Dr. Richard is muttering. “I’m sorry, but this is all I got.”

“We must get out of here.”

“You and eight thousand other people.”

“She’s special.” Isaad jabs a finger in my direction. “You can’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”

A pause.

“How many languages does she speak?” Dr. Richard asks.

Habib shakes his head. He’s returned to looking like a broken, bloody doll, while Jamil stands beside him, leaking gray matter onto the ground.

“Countless,” Isaad states. “Or perhaps, more accurately, endless.”

“I’ve seen her…” Dr. Richard shakes his head.

“People come in. None of us know where they’re from, what language or dialect they’re speaking.

Your wife, she listens. Sometimes for minutes, sometimes for what seems like hours.

Then, just like that, she utters their mother tongue back to them.

The look they get on their face, when they realize that finally, someone can understand them, give them voice. It’s nothing short of miraculous.”

“We must get out of here,” Isaad repeats.

Silence. Habib dances a strange little jig that ends with his broken arm locked at an awkward angle till brain-splattered Jamil reaches over and snaps it back in place. I applaud their efforts, sway in a circle.

Farshid, possibly still alive.

Farshid, having been tortured, still being tortured, for an entire year.

Are there other frogs in the caves? I see dripping wet tunnels, lined with helpless green amphibians.

“I… I might have a possibility,” Dr. Richard says abruptly.

“Anything!”

“I have some military contacts. I recently learned they’re active in an organization that helps get former interpreters out of Afghanistan and Iraq. I could reach out, see if there’s any favors they might be able to call in.”

“But we didn’t assist—”

“Let’s just say I might be able to call in a single favor.”

“Praise be to Allah.” Isaad clutches Dr. Richard’s hand in gratitude.

“It’s just a possibility—”

“It will work. I know it will. Because it must!” Isaad glows with his newfound conviction.

Habib scowls sourly.

And Jamil smiles softly.

Then the Prozac hits, and I sink into a sea of nothingness, where only my hope for the future remains, a flicker of light dancing behind my closed eyelids.

Farshid, my brother, still alive.

Farshid, my brother, trapped in the dark.

Farshid, my brother, I am coming for you.

Miraculously, Dr. Richard manages to arrange for our transfer a few months later—a refugee center in Abu Dhabi, with better conditions and more resources.

Upon hearing the news, Malalai weeps tears of joy and sorrow, while Rafiq does his best to appear happy, then twists away to gnash his teeth.

They have yet to be granted refugee status, and as month turns into month…

Did they ever make it out? Or one day, were they unceremoniously sent back to Afghanistan, where they and their three children would be ground to dust beneath the Taliban’s relentless heels?

Is it possible poor Omid was the lucky one, after all?

Abu Dhabi offers access to real medical services, versus a two-room shack staffed by mostly volunteers.

The doctors and nurses cluck at my rudimentary diagnosis and one-note pharmaceutical regimen.

They have questions about my ghosts, which they refer to as visual and auditory hallucinations.

I don’t bother to correct them. Postpartum depression with psychosis, they murmur, as they start adding meds here, taking away there.

With access to adequate sustenance, you start to sprout up, Zahra. Still a silent, serious-eyed toddler, but now one who motors about on increasingly steady legs. Your face fills out. Your gaze begins to brighten.

Isaad learns to sleep at night, while returning to math tutoring during the day.

And I… I stop talking to shadows and weeping over minor incidents I can’t explain.

Next up, we’re on a plane heading to the United States. Some place called Texas, where we spend months answering questions, getting shots, learning “the ropes” of American life.

Once a week I speak to an eagle-eyed psych doctor who asks me even more questions, and seems to know every time I dissemble.

She drills me on my ghosts, sleep patterns, lack of concentration, and constant irritability.

She updates my diagnosis to major depressive disorder, recurrent, with psychotic features, and attempts to teach me things like reality testing.

The problem, she informs me, is that I’m too smart.

My genius doesn’t make me crazy, but it drives much more complex illusions—Habib, Jamil, my conviction my brother, Farshid, is still alive—while enabling me to rationalize the visions.

I nod, and she smiles indulgently. We both know I don’t believe in her truths any more than she believes in mine.

After those appointments come endless interviews with many military types, plus a linguistics professor. This agitates Isaad, but the testing isn’t anything I haven’t handled before.

Number of languages I speak? Where did I learn, how did I learn?

I fall back upon my mother’s instructions. I offer vague details that sound like I’m cooperating while sharing nothing. The psych doc, who observes from the sidelines, makes notes on a clipboard, while suppressing more smiles.

She knows that I’m holding back, but she never says a word. We are two brilliant female minds, carefully navigating the limited thinking of the male powers-that-be chirping around us.

More adjustments to my care. Better night’s sleep as they exchange the Prozac for Lexapro, fewer nightmares with the addition of the Haldol.

We all three begin to relax: Isaad, you, me. As my entourage of dearly departed souls slowly fades away.

Isaad declares me “fully recovered.”

I don’t bother to correct him. Personally, I believe the spirits of the dead simply aren’t as strong in America, where I suspect sensitive Jamil is too overwhelmed and arrogant Habib too intimidated.

But trust me when I say this, my beautiful Zahra. My mother had it right in the beginning:

Ghosts do exist.

They’re just not always who we expect them to be.