The corridor on floor minus one of the Saudi Hospital has three iron beds, a metal table with four trays, a camp stove turned off, a pail of blue plastic with a lid, a single fluorescent tube that flickers on the second minute of every hour. On the raw concrete wall there is a diagonal crack that begins at the height of the door handle and reaches the ceiling. The floor is gray tiles, three cracked, one lifted at the south corner. Doctor Ibrahim disinfects his hands with the ethyl alcohol he distilled yesterday morning from the *makwa*, the coffee still, because since the twelfth of April the central storehouse no longer opens. The alcohol smells of bitter almond. The water in the pail, for rinsing, comes from the well in the courtyard. The pump works by hand.

On the first bed lies Abdalla, seventeen years old, arrived at dawn. Open fracture of the right femur. The fragment has come out of the skin by four centimeters. The mother, who brought him, sits in the corridor on a blue plastic chair. She does not cry. She holds in her hand a plastic bag with her son’s change of clothes inside. Ibrahim saw her come in. He said nothing. He gave her a nod.

Zeinab, the nurse, arrives from the storeroom with the syringe. The syringe is a five-milliliter disposable, already used twice. Ibrahim takes it. He brings it close to the flame of a camp stove: three seconds on the tip, two on the plunger. He shuts off the stove. He opens the vial of morphine. Two milliliters. No more. There is no more. He draws. He holds the syringe up, taps it twice with the forefinger. A drop comes out. He leans against the edge of the bed.

Abdalla looks at the ceiling. The light flickers. Ibrahim says, in Arabic, to Abdalla: boy, listen. He says: I do not have enough anesthetic. He says: you have to stay quiet when I cut. He says: the scream attracts. Abdalla turns his eyes to Ibrahim. He says: yes, doctor. Abdalla’s voice is steady. Ibrahim nods.

Zeinab places a rolled piece of cloth between Abdalla’s teeth. The cloth was Abdalla’s shirt. Abdalla bites. Ibrahim injects the morphine into the left deltoid. Not near the leg: in the arm. The true local anesthetic, the one that would be needed, ran out on the third of April. Morphine in the arm does not bring down the pain in the femur. It only makes the head float.

They wait six minutes. Ibrahim washes his hands again. Zeinab prepares the gauze, the pieces she tore from a bedsheet this morning: strips three fingers wide, folded in four, twelve in all, stacked on the smaller tray. The scalpel is sterilized, set on a steel tray that came from a kitchen and that someone brought here in March. Beside the scalpel, a hemostat, two steel arcs, a small graduated ruler. The fluorescent tube flickers. It is ten fifteen. From the courtyard comes the sound of a generator that starts and stops twice — diesel is scarce.

Ibrahim places his left forefinger on Abdalla’s lips. Abdalla sees it. Ibrahim mouths. One. Abdalla does not close his eyes. Two. Zeinab has her hand on Abdalla’s right ankle. Three.

Ibrahim cuts. Abdalla does not scream. He bites the cloth. He breathes through the nose. Tears come from the corners. Zeinab pulls. Ibrahim follows with his hands. The traction succeeds on the second attempt. The fragment goes back in. Ibrahim cleans with gauze. He sutures with the thread he has in the storeroom, silk thread, of which he has eight meters. He uses two. He bandages with the gauze torn from the sheet. He applies a wooden splint: a slat the caretaker cut from a banana crate.

The operation is finished at ten to eleven. Abdalla is still. The rolled cloth is damp. Zeinab takes it from his teeth. Abdalla says, in Arabic, in a broken voice: I felt three. Ibrahim says: good boy. He goes out into the corridor.

He leans against the raw concrete wall, under the diagonal crack. For thirty seconds he does not breathe. He counts in his head: twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven. Zeinab comes out, does not look at him, goes to Abdalla’s mother, bends down, says something to her in a low voice, rests a hand on her shoulder, stands up. The mother nods. She does not rise. The plastic bag with her son’s change of clothes is still on her lap. Ibrahim turns to the wall. His hands begin to tremble only now. The tremor lasts twelve seconds. Then the tremor ends. Ibrahim runs his forearm across his forehead. The forearm is damp.

He goes back in. On the second bed, arrived while he was operating, is a woman with a child in her arms. The child is two years old. He has a metal splinter in his neck. The woman does not cry. The woman says: doctor. Ibrahim washes his hands with the ethyl alcohol of bitter almond. He says to Zeinab: the syringe. Zeinab goes to get it. Ibrahim takes the child. He lays him on the bed. The child does not cry. The woman, standing beside, puts her joined hands in front of her mouth.

Ibrahim places his forefinger on the child’s lips. The child looks at him. Ibrahim does not mouth. He waits for Zeinab.