Code Black
The Golden Light
The world outside the clinic window was a wash of golden light, the kind that softened edges and turned everything to a dream. Ryan stood still, watching the refugee camp ripple in the breeze—tent flaps fluttering, voices a low hum against the dry wind. The light turned the dust into a floating, golden mist, as if hope might rise out of the dirt.
Mira’s hand landed on his shoulder, her touch warm through his thin shirt, reminding him of the night before. “You’re staring into nothing again. You okay?” she asked.
Ryan pulled his gaze from the window. The clinic behind him was a clutter of supplies, the metal shelves groaning with makeshift order. Dev sat at a folding table, scribbling notes in his sharp, slanted handwriting.
“Thinking or worrying?” Mira asked, her voice light but eyes sharp.
“Is there a difference?” Ryan’s lips tugged into a half-smile.
Dev looked up, his grin breaking through the sweat and dirt. “Ryan’s not happy unless he’s two steps ahead of the worst-case scenario.”
“Better than being two steps behind.” Ryan tossed a roll of bandages at him, and Dev fumbled, laughing—a sound bright and out of place.
Mira snorted. “If we ever get out of here, we’re going somewhere with real beds. I need sand, waves, and no gunfire.”
“I miss surfing,” said Ryan.
“I didn’t know you surfed,” Mira answered.
“Dawn patrol,” he answered. “Every morning before med school,” Ryan responded as if reliving happy memories. “Year round. San Diego is good like that.”
The door burst open, and hot air swept in. A boy, no more than ten, stood panting, his words tumbling out fast and sharp. Mira moved first, her knees bending, her voice gentle.
“What’s wrong?”
The boy’s hand shot out, small fingers curling into hers. Ryan, Dev, and Mira followed, weaving through the camp. Faces turned to watch, hollow-eyed and silent. At the edge of the camp, a rusted truck idled, dark-uniformed men stepping out—six, maybe seven.
The boy shrank behind Mira. Ryan stepped forward, his body a shield. Dev and Mira mirrored his movements, slow and deliberate.
One of the men held up a hand. His other hand slipped into his jacket and came back with a pistol.
Ryan’s pulse spiked, a drumbeat in his ears. His hands went up. The others followed suit. “We’re doctors,” he called, his voice steady. “Just doctors.”
The men didn’t care. The gun flashed silver in the sunlight and the other men approached him and grabbed his hands, pulling them down and twisting them painfully down behind his back. The world went black as a cloth bag was pulled over his head. He felt a sharp prick against his neck—a syringe—an injection.
“Mira!” Ryan’s voice cracked as the world slipped sideways from the drug. The darkness swallowed him, dark and thick. The last thing he remembered before the world collapsed into delirium, was a gunshot and the scream of the boy’s mother.
The Cell
Ryan’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He pressed them against the cold concrete floor, roughness biting into his palms. The cell was damp, air thick with rot. He could smell his own fear, mingled with the sweat and decay. He sat up, painfully and shook his head trying to clear the fog. It hurt. Everything hurt.
“Ketamine,” Ryan thought. His mind still clawed at the edges of a nightmare, fragments of twisted images tangled with reality. His muscles screamed as he shifted, pain shooting through his joints like fire.
“Ryan?” Mira’s voice was a thin thread in the dark.
He turned his head, concrete scraping his cheek. Mira sat against the wall, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around herself like she might come apart.
Dev was a shadow in the corner, his voice scraping like rusted metal. “How long have we been here?”
“Define ‘here,’” said Mira.
Ryan’s mind sparked. Desert heat. Stale air. A glimpse of sunlight. He sat up, muscles quivering. He could hear the sounds of men in the distance. The unmistakeable clatter of 4-cylinder SR-22 engine under a load moved past the window. Old Toyotas were the preferred transport of the local rebels. He guessed they were carrying a load full of soldiers.
He thought back to his first vehicle—a cherry red 1995 extended cab pickup—-the last year Toyota used the 22-R engine before moving to a 2.4L 2 RZ and complicating engines forever. He wished he still had that truck.
He had bought the shell for $400 and his Dad helped him rebuild it before passing away from Cancer. His dad had taught him to love mechanical work. His Dad’s cancer had lead him to medicine. A bad breakup with the girlfriend who totaled his pickup while driving drunk and boredom had brought him to Africa—to doctors without borders—to Mira.
Mira’s voice was sharp. “Ryan. Are you still with us?”
“I’m here,” he said. “I think we’re in their training camp. “They didn’t bring us far.”
Her breath hitched. Silence pressed in, a weight on their chests.
The metal door clanged open, and they froze. A guard stepped in, his flashlight carving harsh lines through the dark. His face was stone, eyes hard. The light landed on Dev.
“No.” Mira’s voice was a desperate, ragged thing.
Dev rose slowly, hands up, body a loose collection of angles. The guard barked a command, and Dev moved forward, disappearing through the door. The metal slammed shut behind him, swallowing his shadow.
Time bled out, slow and heavy. When the door opened again, Dev stumbled back in. His face was swollen. He was missing three teeth. His nose was badly broken. Blood smeared his shirt, dark and wet. His body crumpled to the floor, and Ryan was on him, hands pressing into the wound, checking him for concussion.
“They made me choose.” Dev’s voice was a wet rasp. “Who to save. Who to let die.”
Ryan’s stomach twisted. The cell walls seemed to close in, the concrete squeezing the air out of his lungs.
“They’re playing a game,” he whispered, his breath frosting in the damp air. “A sick, twisted game.”
And they were the pieces.
The Choice
When they came for Ryan, he was ready. His body was tight, coiled. His mind was a blade, honed and sharp. The guards hauled him through corridors that smelled of damp stone and old blood.
Eighteen, nineteen, twenty steps. His only tether.
They led him into a room, stark and white. A metal table stood at its center, instruments laid out with precision. A man in a white coat watched him with eyes pale as ice. Clearly contacts. But unsettling against dark skin.
A boy lay on the table, strapped down tightly—a boy Ryan knew—from the camp—maybe sixteen or seventeen years old— Ruhumba. His mother Kayduna had been a patient. Ruptured appendix. A big deal for a refugee camp.
Now, Ruhumba lay on the table his voice hoarse from screaming. No one had sedated him. Dark blood pooled on his skin. His abdomen was open—entrails still attached but laid out on the table beside him.
“Save him,” the man said. “Or don’t. It’s your choice.”
Instinct and desperation told Ryan the boy could not be saved. Not here. Not in this environment. Not without anesthetic. Even if Ryan could repair the damage, the adrenaline would surely kill him.
Ryan remembered his father shooting a deer they had struck on a camping trip once— to keep the deer from suffering. He could end this boy’s suffering—but as a doctor he had been trained. He had given an oath to do no harm. But where was the good? Where was the harm. Ryan couldn’t tell.
“What’s the point?” Ryan asked, his voice like sandpaper that scraped his throat raw.
“To see if you can do it,” said the man in the white coat.
“Do what?” Ryan demanded, “Save him or end his pain.”
The boy’s breath rattled out of him, leaving the room empty and cold. Ryan went through the motions, but he didn’t need to feel for a pulse to know the boy was dead. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes.
The man’s lips barely moved as he replied quietly. “Looks like you failed to do either one, Doctor.” The man paused as if enjoying what he said next. “Let’s see what you do with the next one.”
The words hit like a hammer: “The next one.”
And then they brought Mira in, her body clearly ravaged by whatever the soldiers had done to her. She looked so fragile in the guards’ rough hands. She was conscious but her eyes looked dead— as if she would never return to him—never be whole again.
“What did you do to her?” Ryan demanded.
But the man in the white coat did not respond. Instead, he held a syringe out to Ryan, the needle a sliver of light. “Heroin,” he said. “Enough to end her pain forever.”
“You mean kill her,” Ryan spat.
The man smiled and shrugged. He was non-plussed—simply curious.
“You’re sick!” Ryan said, nearly choking on his own disgust.
A soldier lifted a gun and pressed it to Ryan’s temple.
The doctor smiled. He was enjoying this. “Her life or yours,” he said quietly.
Ryan did not hesitate: “Mine,” he said as he closed his eyes and waited for the bullet. It didn’t come. Instead, he felt the prick of another needle. More ketamine, and the world slipped into a delirium of dreams before he found the blackness.
Scene 4: The Escape
Ryan woke in the same room to the sound of water, a slow, rhythmic drip. Mira’s hands were on his face, her touch cool against his fevered skin.
“You’re alive,” she whispered, relief cracking her voice. “The guards are gone.”
Her words pulled him from the fog. He pushed to his elbows, muscles trembling, pain a dull roar.
“Gone?” he asked, confused.
“From what I can tell, General Hualatu is coming and these rebels didn’t want anything to do with that. They all ran.”
The fog moved further from the edges of Ryan’s mind. If the rebels were monsters—and they were— General Hualatu and his men—another rebel faction all to themselves— was exponentially worse. This was bad!
“We need to move,” he rasped.
“They got Dev,” she whispered. “They shot him. He’s dead.”
Ryan closed his eyes in silent grief. There was no time for that now. “We have to go right now or we’ll be joining him. Mira. We have to go!”
“You can’t move yet,” she said. “And I can’t carry you.”
“Leave me,” he said. “Save yourself.”
Tears flowed from her eyes. “I’m not leaving you here.”
“It makes no sense for us both to die, Mira. Go! Save the world. One of us has to.”
Mira hesitated.
“Go!” Ryan ordered.
She leaned in and kissed him. “I love you,” she said.
“Go!”
This time she did.
Ryan laid his head back and tears fell as he heard her footsteps disappear.
He laid his head back and prayed for death; begged the ketamine fog to consume him once again. It didn’t.
There was a banging sound in the hallway. Ryan did not even bother opening his eyes. He didn’t want to see the faces of the men who would surely kill him for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He thought of his love for Mira, his decision to come to Africa—to do what good he could—and decided even though this was the end of the road, it had all been worth it. She had been worth it.
The door burst open.
“Let’s get you out of here,” said a commanding, desperate, but resigned voice.
Mira!
Ryan’s eyes shot open. He looked into her eyes and then to the wheelbarrow that she’d brought. The next few minutes would always exist in flashes of still-shot memories to Ryan as he tried to stay conscious and tried to open disobedient eyes.
She hoisted him clumsily into the wheelbarrow and then she began to move.
He felt every bump as she pushed him quickly and desperately through the darkened corridors, shadows among shadows. The air shifted, fresh and cold. Freedom whispered at the edge of the dark.
In the distance he heard Toyotas. Men. Moving their way. Fast.
He felt Mira pick up the pace.
“Do a good job,” he whispered. “Leave me here if you have to.”
The next time Ryan awoke, he was outside, on the ground. It was night. It was never cold in Africa, but he felt a breeze waft over him. It was as close as it got to the cool of night. He opened his eyes.
The stars were sharp against the dark sky. The moon was a sliver.
Suddenly, she was there. Mira. “I reached a Medivac” she said. “Federal troops have secured the Area. General Hualatu has crawled back into the hole he came from,” she said. “The camp is gone though. We’re going home.”
Ryan closed his eyes and thought of home. She took his hand. “I’m never getting bored again,” he whispered.
Epilogue: The Light Beyond
The wave threatened to come down on him, but Ryan was in the tube. He may not have control of this ocean, but he had command of this wave. He breathed in the salt air. He felt the wax of his surfboard gripped firmly to his feet and decided to take a chance. He completed a full barrel roll before “grabbing the rail” and exiting the tube triumphantly. He imagined himself at a surf tournament and looked up at the beach to see if anyone had seen his performance.
To his surprise, Mira was there. He lowered himself and paddled in. When he reached the shore, she was standing there—smiling. It was nice to see her smile. It happened less frequently than it once had. And there was a time he thought it would never return, but it did. He kissed her deeply. He could taste the mint on her breath from the gum she chewed.
“How was the counseling session?” he asked.
“I think we’re gonna be okay,” she replied. “It’s nice to see you surfing.”