Amina woke to shouting in the corridor.
The fan above her bed had stopped sometime in the night. The air in the nurses' hostel was thick and sour, trapped heat and stale sweat. A single strip of light leaked around the door. She swung her legs over the side of the mattress and checked her phone. No signal. The network had been cutting in and out for days any time there was "trouble" on the highway.
The shouting grew clearer.
"More coming. Make space. Move, move."
It was Dr. Kamau's voice.
Amina pulled on her scrubs, still damp from yesterday's wash, and pushed the door open. The smell hit her first: blood, alcohol, and diesel smoke blown in from outside.
In the hallway, a stretcher scraped against the peeling wall. A boy lay on it, maybe sixteen, his shirt soaked dark on one side. His eyes followed the ceiling fan blades as if they were spinning, though they were still.
"Where are they from?" Amina asked.
"Road to Cazanda," one of the orderlies said. "They say there was a protest. Then gunfire. Then the truck came, fast."
In the emergency room, there were already three other patients on beds and two on the floor. The generator coughed in the back courtyard, keeping only half the lights alive. Shadows sliced the room into strips.
Amina grabbed a pair of gloves and moved to the nearest body. A man in a dust‑stained shirt, chest rising too fast, blood bubbling at his lips.
"Help me turn him," she said to the nurse beside her.
They checked the wound, worked by habit. Pressure here. Check the airway. Listen for breath on both sides. Her hands moved, but part of her mind was fixed on the details the patients brought with them: a torn poster of the president stuck to one man's shoe, a broken protest sign splintered in another's hair, the smell of tear gas clinging to their clothes.
"Where are the soldiers?" someone shouted from the corridor. "They did this. They must take their injured too, not just leave ours."
"Keep them outside," Dr. Kamau replied sharply. "This is a hospital, not a court."
Amina finished dressing a wound and glanced at the window. Through the metal grille she could see the main road, a strip of red dirt and broken tarmac. A pickup truck was parked crooked at the entrance, its bed stained darker than the dust. A cluster of people surrounded it, arguing, crying, gesturing toward the hospital gate.
A siren wailed in the distance, thin and unfamiliar. The district only had one ambulance, and its siren rarely worked properly. This one was steady, strong. Military.
Amina felt her stomach tighten.
"More coming," the orderly said. "From the other side."
She knew what he meant. Protesters from Cazanda to one side. Soldiers from the barracks to the other.
She moved to clear a space on a bench, shoving aside boxes of saline and a stack of old files. The supply shelves were already half empty. The last shipment had been delayed. "Security situation on the highway," the ministry had said.
The military ambulance backed through the gate, reversing with authority. Two soldiers jumped down before it had fully stopped. Their uniforms were new, boots clean. One carried an automatic rifle slung across his chest, finger resting near the trigger.
"Where is the doctor?" he shouted.
"In here," Dr. Kamau answered, stepping into the corridor and wiping his hands on a cloth. "Put the patients in line. We won't move others."
The soldier frowned. "These are government forces. They must go first."
"This is not a barracks clinic," Kamau said. "We treat by need. The one bleeding fastest goes first. Uniform or no uniform."
For a moment, the air in the corridor thickened. The soldier's hand tightened on his weapon. Amina saw the second soldier glance at the waiting room, crowded with faces turned toward them, watching.
Then the first soldier spat on the floor and jerked his head toward the ambulance.
"Bring them in," he told the driver. "Quickly. Then we go. This place is already full of trouble."
They wheeled in two men. One conscious, holding his own bandaged arm, eyes darting everywhere. The other pale, lips blue, shrapnel wounds across his chest. Amina moved toward the worst one on instinct.
"Here," she said. "Lift on three."
They slid him onto a bed, pushing another patient's feet aside to make space. The man groaned once and then went limp. Amina checked his pulse.
"Gone," she said quietly.
The conscious soldier heard. His jaw clenched.
"That's Corporal Juma," he said. "He was just doing his duty. These people on the road, they—"
Amina cut him off with a small shake of her head.
"In here, everyone is just a body that needs help," she said. "If you want speeches, go back outside."
For a second, she thought he might hit her. Instead, he looked away, staring at the cracked tile floor.
From the waiting room, a woman's wail rose, long and breaking. Someone had just heard a name they recognized.
The generator faltered. The lights flickered. Amina felt panic surge in the room like heat.
"If that thing dies now, we are finished," Dr. Kamau muttered.
Amina moved automatically, checking drips, tightening bandages, reassuring hands that grabbed at her clothes.
In the prush, a boy tugged her sleeve. His shirt was damp where he had held someone who bled on him.
"Madam," he said. "My brother is outside. He is not moving. They say he is dead. But maybe he is just tired. Can you come look?"
She looked at the corridor: full. The beds: full. Her own hands: shaking.
"Where is he?" she asked.
"On the truck. They didn't bring him in. They said no more room."
She glanced at Kamau. He nodded once.
"Go," he said. "If he is gone, tell them gently. If he is not, we pull him in."
Outside, the heat hit her. The sun had risen properly now, burning off the last of the dawn cool. Dust hung in the air like a second skin.
The pickup truck bed was lined with bodies. Some covered with cloth. Some not.
The boy climbed up and pointed. "This one."
Amina pressed two fingers to the young man's neck. No pulse. She checked again, willing herself to be wrong. Nothing.
She looked at the boy. His eyes begged for something she couldn't give.
"I'm sorry," she said. "He is gone."
"No," the boy said. "He is just sleeping. He does that, he—"
Hands pulled the boy back, a woman's arms wrapping around him, his mother, face hollow, tears carving tracks through the dust on her cheeks.
A group of men at the hospital gate argued with a soldier.
"You bring yours," one of them said, pointing at the now‑empty military ambulance. "You leave ours on the truck like bags of grain."
The soldier shifted his weapon. "Not my problem," he said. "Take them to the mosque, to the church, wherever you go. Here is full."
Amina felt anger rise, hot and sharp.
"We are full of your war," she said, loud enough for him to hear. "That is what we are full of."
He looked at her, then at the truck bed, then back at the hospital.
"You people in white coats talk too much," he said. But his voice lacked conviction.
Sirens echoed faintly again from the road, then faded. Somewhere, beyond the town, more gunfire snapped in the distance, rolled over the fields, and dissolved into the morning air.
Amina wiped her hands on her scrubs, smearing dust and blood into a new pattern.
Inside, someone shouted her name.
She took one last look at the truck, at the bodies laid out in the open sun, then turned and walked back into the bright, crowded dark of the hospital.