Impossible Odds

medical neglect. I kept choking up at the sound of civil voices addressing me with gentleness and courtesy.
    A young female doctor took me to a private room and asked if I had been raped. There would be a much different protocol if the threat of HIV/AIDS was involved. I explained that I didn’t knowwhy a full sexual attack never took place, given the callous attitudes of the men, but I was happy to report that unwanted pregnancy or STDs weren’t going to be an issue.
    This greatly simplified my treatment, leaving me yet another reason to be grateful the SEAL attackers arrived before Jabreel’s inevitable attack, or Abdi’s, or that of any of the men who arrived and departed on the breezes out there. The more I thought about the perfection of the raid’s timing, right down to the dark of the moon and the careless guards, the more unreal it appeared. I had to get very small in my thinking and just take one moment after the next, to keep from being completely overloaded.
    The nurse made a fresh pot of coffee and brought me a cup with sugar and cream. Until the moment I tasted the brew I hadn’t realized the taste of coffee with sugar and cream was a basic sense-memory for me, fundamental to the lines of memory running through my life. It was a warm reminder that this was all real.
    At last I was allowed the luxury of a long, hot shower. Oh, it was good, though it wasn’t going to be too long, this time; since the FBI was eager to interview us and gain anything they could about the surviving kidnappers. I agreed to do whatever they asked, feeling no desire to argue with people who had just brought me back for one more chance at life, a surprise do-over after lengthy head-time spent considering how that life might best be employed, if it was somehow returned to me.
    So I stood in that first shower washing away layers of dirt, noticing how bony I was to my own touch. I not only had a sense of being unreal within these surroundings, I felt unreal to myself. The dirt rinsed away well enough, but how dark were the stains on me going to be in the long run? I stood in the thick steam under the luxury of running water and safety and privacy, wondering who was under the hot spray.
    I remembered who I had been, well enough. But I had no clear sense of who remained after this experience, or how I was to returnto ordinary life, do ordinary things. All I felt certain about was that this experience had swept through my life with a wide broom, pushing away so much that seemed terribly important, right up until that first automatic rifle barrel was thrust into my face.
    I soaped myself all over for maybe the fourth or fifth time and loved the sensations of shaving my legs. I know the ritual is considered pointless in some parts of the world, but it’s a basic part of my picture of myself, and I was surprised by how good it felt. The ritual had power, voodoolike in its ability to act on me and restore some of the fundamental sensations of how it is supposed to feel to be myself, living in my body as I know it, and in my world as I choose to exist in it. Simple personal grooming restored some part of me in a genuine rush of strength and determination.
    I was already resolved to make it the first thing I did in this new second chance at life to convince Erik our priorities had been shifted by this thing. We had to start avoiding such long work hours. We had to stop taking risks in the field and instead live like people who intended to have a full family life together and survive long enough to live it out. And of course that meant we would resume our efforts to get pregnant and not allow this thing to interrupt what had been so important to us before it all began.
    Because the one thing that emerged stronger and clearer to me out of this experience was the certain knowledge that I wanted more than anything else to be a mother. That and my love for Erik were ultimately the strongest forces to keep my hopes for the future intact when illness and despair would have otherwise taken me away, perhaps long before rescuers had the chance to arrive.
    It’s funny how the act of getting nice and clean clears up your thinking. I stepped out of the shower convinced that even though I was still full of doubt over my impeded social abilities, I was now clearly focused on the next step for me in this life with Erik in Africa, or anywhere else we might live in the future. I dried with an actual bath towel, thick and freshly laundered, and then