It was the start of the last day. Caleb was jolted from his sleep. A hand lifted his arm. It had been a fitful sleep, without calm. The swab wetted the skin. From instinct, because he was touched, he flinched and tried to break the grip.
'Easy, young man, easy. Don't fight me.'
The doctor's voice was soft in his ear. Then the needle went in. He gazed up and saw the outline of the man's face and above it the dark ceiling of the awning.
'Had you slept long?'
Caleb nodded.
'That's good. Funny, but sleep is a better healer than any drug. It's good that you slept and you must sleep again.'
The needle was withdrawn. His arm was lowered gently.
He remembered what he had thought before the sleep had caught him.
' Why do you help me?'
The shape towered above him. 'The question, young man, is becoming repetitive. You care not to tell me your name, and I care not to burden you with reasoning for my actions. You get your next injection at dawn. Go back to sleep.'
Caleb started up, tried to push himself higher on his elbows, to raise his back. 'That's not good enough.'
'It isn't good enough that I don't know your name, don't know where you come from, don't know where you're going and what your intentions are when you get there. Don't tell me, young man, what's "good enough" and what's not.'
He was gone. Caleb sagged. The body of the launcher was against his leg. When he had slept he had forgotten it and the pain in his leg, and he had forgotten that to see his face was to be condemned.
The kindness of the doctor and the devotion of the woman who had brought help to him did not compete with the demand of and his obligation to the family. It would be weakness if he did not destroy them. He lay on his back under the awning and felt the throb in his leg and the hammer of the pulse from the antibiotic injection. The doctor and the woman were trifles when set against the importance of the family: they had seen his face. They were condemned. They stood between him and his duty. He let his hand fall beside him, and beyond the edge of the sacking bed, his fingers lifted a pinch of sand grains and he held his hand above his chest and the sand ran from it, fell on him – not one grain of sand but a thousand. A great crowd, not one person but a thousand, passed him and among them were the doctor who was kind and the woman who was devoted. He could not cherry-pick among the crowd he walked through with a suitcase or a grip bag or a rucksack, could not say that some were his enemy and some were not – could not extricate the doctor and the woman from the crowd. To do so would be a betrayal of the family, would show weakness.
In the morning, when the doctor had given him the strength to stand and when the woman had supported his first hobbling steps – as hesitant as when the chain shackles had been on his ankles at Camp Delta – he would go to the guide, take the rifle from him, arm it, and do what was necessary to prove to the dead, to Hosni, Fahd and Tommy, that he was not weak.
He drifted back towards sleep.
He was at peace, because the strength had not deserted him. He felt no shame because he would not have recognized the man he had been before. He was his family's man.