The next day they went back to the same battered administrative building as the day before. Sasha scrubbed and swept, ate her lunch, and got right back to work. She forced herself into enthusiasm for the menial labor with the same discipline she’d used when it had been time to study for an exam in a class she hated. The same tactic worked in both high school and the Heavenly Kingdom.

About two hours before the end of their workday, Sasha’s rhythm was interrupted by the sound of a crash and a scream from one of the girls in the bathroom next door to the room she was in. Sasha dropped her scrub brush and darted over. She was the first one into the room.

It took her a moment to piece together what must have happened. Susannah had been scrubbing a sink that had been badly damaged by shellfire. The sink had collapsed while she scrubbed it and a jagged edge of porcelain had torn open the girl’s hand. There was already an enormous amount of blood by the time Sasha arrived. Susannah looked pale. She’d backed up against the wall and was just screaming, wordlessly.

Sasha had taken three semesters of pre-med classes in the last two years. She had a good basic instruction in first aid. She pulled her shirt off over her head and wrapped it around the gash on the other girl’s hand. It was the spare shirt she’d brought from home, and it had an antimicrobial weave that should make it relatively safe as a wound dressing. She pulled it tight, wadded the extra fabric up over the wound and applied as much pressure as she could. Susannah kept screaming but the flow of blood from her wound slowed.

“Breath with me,” Sasha told Susannah as she stared into the other girl’s eyes. “In,” she inhaled, “and out,” she exhaled. She repeated this several times, until Susannah stopped screaming and started breathing in time with her. Several of the girls had crowded around the entrance to the bathroom at this point. When Sasha glanced up she could see Mae’s face in the back of the crowd. She looked disgusted, probably at the fact that Sasha had torn off her shirt.

“Please call for the Martyrs,” Sasha asked no one in particular. “Tell them Susannah needs medical attention. I don’t think she has any clotting agents in her blood.”

No one moved. So Sasha locked eyes with Anne and told her, “Please go now. We shouldn’t take any chances with a wound like this.”