"Is he still alive, Father?"

"Yes, God be praised, help me carry him to an ambulance... ."

They lifted him from the pavement, instantly rousing all the demons of hell in a vengeful dance. They stampeded en masse from Stirling's skull to the toes of his combat boots. He tried to scream and mercifully lost consciousness, instead. He had no idea how long he'd been out when reality finally firmed again, piecemeal. Bits of him hurt worse than others and his ears didn't seem to be working properly. Sounds came in a confused jumble of voices and meaningless noise. Gradually Stirling differentiated various sensations as the tug of bandages, a sharp ache from an IV feed in the crook of one elbow, a plaster cast around one wrist, something stiff, a brace maybe, around one knee, and the tug of stitches along his face, down one arm, and across his torso. Stirling's hearing cleared up next, bringing order from the chaotic noise. He made out the sounds of monitors beeping softly, a rattle of glassware, hushed voices in a corridor somewhere nearby, sobbing voices farther off, and somewhere in close proximity, a very young child screaming in endless, mindless agony...

Hospital, Stirling realized fuzzily. They got me to hospital through that mess, that priest and whoever was with him. Gratitude prickled behind his eyelids and thickened his throat, making him long mightily for the strength to blow his nose. Instead he lay quietly, trying to recover the use of more of his senses.Vision cleared at last, revealing a stark white ceiling, equally stark walls, and the steel railings of a hospital bed. He lay in a casualty ward, with gurneys stacked in the spaces between the regular beds, all filled with badly injured civilians. In the corridor just beyond, Stirling could see harried doctors and nurses performing miracles of triage, routing the worst cases into surgery. He wondered how long he'd been here. Whether any of his command had survived that car bomb. If his commanding officer knew where he was.