Words swam in his head, but not all of them in the same language. The television in his room was tuned to Al Jazeera, and he understood everything the announcers were saying, but he knew that Arabic was not his native tongue. His neck hurt, and his vision was blurred. His head throbbed. A doctor shone a small light in his eyes and spoke to him in French, which he also understood. He couldn’t respond. He was tired, so he went back to sleep. The next time he awoke, his vision was better but his neck still hurt. He recalled being in a car, but the details of the rest of it simply weren’t there. “Patient X. Je m’appelle Claude Chaline et je suis avec Docteurs Sans Frontières. Parlez-vous français?” “Oui,” Vasquez said. “Vous étiez dans un accident. Vous avez souffrit d’une commotion cérébrade. Savez-vous où vous êtes? The doctor said he’d been in an accident and was asking him if he knew where he was.
