Page 71 of Deacon

I held Ana’s hand through the turbulence that bounced the airframe as Luka and I mapped out the next steps after landing in Kenya’s capital city.

‘Nairobi Hospital is on standby,’ he informed me after firing off emails and making satellite calls as we flew south.

Ana dozed on and off until the pilot gave us an update.

I stroked Ana’s hand till her eyes flickered open.

‘Ana,’ I muttered into my headset. ‘We’re touching down in Wajir soon, and transferring to a larger aircraft. How’re you going?’

She nodded, her skin pale.

‘I’m OK, just don’t let go, D.’

‘Never have.’

It was true; I’d never let her go, not now, not then, and perhaps never.

My eyes flicked over her face as her eyelids fluttered shut, my heart twisting.

She seemed so small, so vulnerable on the gurney, her beautiful hair matted with ash and sweat, her face ravaged from her ordeal.

Relief hit me in waves that it hadn’t been a worse scenario than the volcano explosion.

At the sun-baked Wajir airstrip, the extraction crew and I handled the seamless transfer, lifting her stretcher onto the larger twin-engine craft.

Ana slept through most of the journey, slipping into the hold of the sedation coursing through her veins.

We soared toward Nairobi, landing at Jomo Kenyatta Airport under a bruising purple twilight, where an ambulance idled on the tarmac.

Luka had also organized an escort of Kenya police on badass motorcycles to clear the way on the highway.

We transferred into the medevac, and the emergency vehicle wailed through thick traffic, which parted for us.

We arrived at the entrance of Nairobi Hospital, a world-class healthcare institution, where a team waited to wheel Ana straight into a pristine private wing.

Minutes later, she had a room, and the medical crew took over, attaching monitors and prepping intravenous lines, then getting her ready for an X-ray.

The IR crew lingered in the corridor seats, completing handover paperwork and waiting for an all-clear.

Still groggy and half-asleep, Ana went to imaging and returned to the room.

They dressed her leg, put it in a cast, placed it on an elevation pillow, and raised it on a stirrup.

Soon after, Dr. Ritu, a competent, calm Kenyan in her fifties, appeared with two other medics.

I took point as Ana’s next of kin, as my ex-wife listened, awake but still shaky.

Projecting the scan onto a display, the doctor broke down her injuries.

‘You have a tibial plateau fracture. You’ve broken your tibia, below your knee, and damaged the cartilage. In short, your fall caused your thigh femur to push into your tibia like a hammer hitting an anvil.’

‘Will I require surgery?’ Ana whispered.

Dr. Ritu shook her head.

‘We’ll keep you in a cast, but you won’t be able to walk or put weight on your leg for six to twelve weeks. You’ll also have to do some PT and get that swelling down prior to clearing you for travel, and we’ll break that into three clear phases.’

‘What does that look like right now?’ I asked.