Here is Chapter 2 edited to fit a T rating down fromthe M rating I personally like way more. Turns out the watered down version of Chapt. #2 is pretty shortbut I thought I'd include it anyway. Theoriginal version where the consenting adults have sex is available as a stand alone story titled '101 Uses for Kneepads.' It is rated M so to access it, you must either select all the stories Rated M in the 'Over There' fic front page or the similar Fiction Rating: All.
Abaya: an over-garment worn by some Muslim women.
Jamila was sitting on a stack of soda-pop crates eating a green apple when the garden doors were pushed open from the sidewalk. She had seen the camouflaged crowns of helmeted heads bobbing above the tall security wall along with the other clinic employee, Raziya, who preferred to do her spying from the safety of the window. The 15 year old was a second wife and a mother of two but 15 nonetheless. She joined Jamila in the porch as the men came in. Her curiosity went unsatisfied
"Yalla! Ruuh ishtira chaay," Jamila ordered giving the girl enough money for a month's worth of tea. "Yalla." There was a brief moment of conflict on Raziya's face but she chose the sudden windfall over whatever unknown could be learned from the American's visit and disappeared with visible joy in her step. Jamila recognized Sgt. Murphy behind three of the wooden crates marked with Red Cross insignia as she opened the clinic door for the men. They lined up the boxes just inside the room.
"I was about to give up on you Sergeant," she said to their backs. Murphy had Silas' attention, tapped his radio to remind him of their pre-arranged signal and gave him a knowing smile before he stepped back out into the porch.
"I went by your house earlier but I didn't see your goat. I thought maybe you moved."
"No." She hauled one of the heavy boxes to an examination table and worked at the nailed lid with claws of an old carpenter's hammer. "I ate it."
"You ate Lexus?"
"You named my goat?"
"He was cute. He had a spot on his butt like an 'L,' kinda made him look like a car."
Jamila finished logging the contents of the first box in a lined composition notebook. Silas took off his helmet. They were bad theater sans ridiculous plots, slamming doors or any of the other deliberate absurdity of a farce. Her pencil moving right to left on a sheet of paper was the loudest sound in the room for a whole minute.
"I never know what to say to you," she said at last.
"Then we are a matched set." He popped the lid on a second box glad to have something to do.
"My last name isn't Al-Shahrani." She produced the laminated ID she had shown Del Rio earlier. "Muslim women don't take their husband's last name. Jamila Haddad, see?"
"Midwife?"
"Well it should say assistant in the bottom. I'm still learning. Did you know umbilical cords should stop pulsing before you cut them? It can go on for an hour and I helped at a birth last week where the placenta was almost as big as the baby. It's so… spongy. I haven't been able to eat meat since." She stopped after a glimpse of Silas' crinkled nose and laughed nervously. "More than you wanted to know?"
"A little."
"Your friend outside," she asked looking at the back of Murphy's body armor before she closed the curtain "do you trust him?"
"Yes."
"Good." Jamila smiled. She unfastened the pins keeping her headscarf in place and began rolling off the long stretch-lycra gloves that covered her arms to the elbows. Chris took her hands in his.
"I don't want you to think I only come here…"
"To get into my panties?" She interrupted. Chris surprised himself by replying in kind.
"Be fair darling girl." He bent down to kiss her and told himself, briefly even believing it, that nothing else would happen. "You don't wear any." Jamila pulled the neckline of her abaya away from her body, peered down and spoke in mock shock.
"Why Sergeant, I think you are right!" She took off his ICOM headset before he had a chance to protest and started on the impossibly powerful Velcro lapels of his body armor.
"No. Jamila. I'm dirty. I don't have a condom. I'm pretty sure I stink." He listed the reasons without conviction more for his own benefit than anything else.
"Sergeant," she said finally freeing him of the twenty pound vest, "shut up." It took every reserve of his common sense to stop her hands on the buttons of his jacket.
"I can't turn off responsibility Jamila." She smiled; amused by the tangible sorrow in his face as he spoke, like basic human decency was a burden he'd grown accustomed to shouldering.
"Staff Sergeant Christopher Silas," she said working her way down the five button shirtfront, "the East was teaching the West how not to get their women pregnant while you were all still trying to figure out the alphabet." Her hands rested on the buckle of his belt waiting for him. "Do you think maybe we can get naked now?"
As per an automated word count, 722 words of the previous chapter were not minor friendly.
Thy Author and Her Editor