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have time for such nonsense. I needed help.
    I pulled Caleb’s head into my lap. When the ambulance arrived, I was sitting in the grass making Caleb talk to me, so he would stay awake, his head still in my lap. Two men loaded him on the stretcher, and I jumped in behind him. No one asked if I was coming. I just went. The men talked to each other as if I wasn’t there. I was okay with that. All I wanted was for Caleb to be all right. I heard one of the paramedics tell the other, “He’s stable,” and I knew he would be okay.
    In the back of the ambulance, I held onto Caleb’s hand and stared at his mangled body, when it hit me. This was the first friend I’d had since we left Iraq, and I stood by and watched him be pulverized.
    But the longer I stared at Caleb, his face contorted in pain, the stronger that sense of déjà vu I had the first time I saw him returned. I had seen this face somewhere before we moved to Killeen.

Chapter 9
    Mirriam
    When they unloaded Caleb’s stretcher at the hospital, I ran along with him. As we past the nurse’s station, a short tan woman looked right at me with a horror-stricken face and fear in her eyes. Ommy rushed out of the nurse’s station. When the paramedics parked Caleb in a room, she was there beside me.
    â€œMirriam?!” She asked me if I was okay in Arabic, followed by a string of other questions. I almost wondered if I was in trouble for being out with a boy after dark. But she didn’t say anything about it, just told me she was proud of me for helping him. She hugged me tight and said she had to get back to work. She glanced at Caleb and told him she would call his mom. His only response was a small nod.
    I took his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans, and my cheeks grew warm. I had never been this close to a guy before, and Caleb did strange things to me sometimes. Things I didn’t understand, for reasons I didn’t know.
    â€œMirriam?” I looked at Ommy . “You’re awfully comfortable around this young man.”
    â€œWe need his phone. I don’t know his mom’s number.” I handed my mom the phone, and she called his mother from his contact list.
    Caleb was conscious during all this, but he randomly screamed out in pain, completely oblivious to what was going on. To make matters worse, it turned out his mother was a crisis counselor for the military base. She was talking a soldier out of suicide a town away. She couldn’t leave right then, and even if she could, it would be thirty-five minutes before she could get to the hospital.
    Caleb’s face was pale. His legs looked like a jumbo pretzel, and there was so much blood. I couldn’t leave him like that, so I stayed. I sat in the hard plastic orange chair beside his bed until his mother came. However long that might be.
    But a doctor came and kicked me out. I moved to the waiting room. I prayed he would be all right, even though I knew it wasn’t fatal. He was too conscious for that. The bleeding had stopped. Caleb would survive this. I knew that. I’d seen people survive much worse. I just hoped he would walk again.
    My brother called, and I picked up on the first ring.
    â€œMirriam?” There was an urgency in his voice that wasn’t normal, a frantic sound reserved for only certain occasions. Like the day I came home covered in blood.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?”
    â€œWhere are you? I’m coming to get you?”
    â€œAt the hospital.”
    â€œOh my God. Are you okay? Mirriam, tell me you’re okay.”
    My chest tightened. Something was wrong.
    â€œI’m fine. What happened?”
    â€œWhy are you at the hospital?”
    â€œCaleb got hit by a car, and I was with him.”
    â€œThank God.” Abrahem sighed. “Is he okay?”
    â€œWhat is going on? Tell me what happened.”
    â€œHave you heard from Ommy ?”
    â€œShe’s here. She’s working. What’s