“This many years later, still you have not answered my question,” I say, my voice controlled. People around us would be stunned if they understood our conversation. “Did you kill my family? My father and mother—the woman who showed you only kindness—and my brother who was barely old enough to be steady on his feet. What a threat he must have been to the future of the country! Did you kill him too?”

“What difference does it make?” Shair says quietly. His hands move to his belly and his eyes droop, forlorn. “The dead are dead. The dying will soon be dead. Only the living can stand and be counted.”

“It makes all the difference in the world. It is the difference between heaven and hell,” I say.

“Heaven and hell,” Shair scoffs. “As if those are two separate places. As if you and I have not already stood in both!”

The security guard takes another two steps closer. His lips are compressed, his brow furrowed.

“Are you the nurse that called?” he asks me. He puffs his chest and positions himself so that his golden badge enters our conversation first. He reminds me of a boy in a superhero costume. “Everything all right here?”

Shair lets out a mournful chuckle. He ambles toward the door, not an ounce lighter than when he entered this room. He is almost at the door when he turns and points at me with one finger.

“She is not nurse. She is doctor,” he says, punching out the words like letters on a typewriter. And then he is gone.

Curious eyes follow me as I retreat behind the heavy doors of the operating suites. They will make assumptions, I know. Some will guess that he is a desperate patient and I am a coldhearted surgeon. Others might think he is an old man who has dangerously lost his mind. Maybe they’re all right.

I want to pound on his chest and demand answers. I want to scream to the world what a monster he is. I want to hold up the picture of my mother and father, of my three-year-old brother who lost his life to men grasping for power. Every day they have been absent from my life has been because Shair turned on us, because he didn’t bother to warn my mother.

I scrub my hands raw in the deep sinks, digging the bristles into my skin. My scarred foot releases the pedal and I hold my hands up, arms bent. Water slides down my forearms and drips from the knobs of my elbows like teardrops.

Shair wants to count me among the living to ease his own conscience, but I am not certain that is where I belong.

Chapter 45