—AWOL journalist Martha Gellhorn Fletcher said—for about the fifth time—that we needed to find a doctor for me, but I couldn’t imagine another hour or two would matter for my arm and it certainly might for Liv’s photos and my copy. Fletcher relented, and he offered to go into the Scribe to see about getting our work off for us. “I don’t care if they take me into custody now,” Liv said, her blue-green eyes bright against her grime-streaked face, her unkempt hair, her wrinkled and muddy uniform. “I’ve gotten what I came for.” “Liv,” Fletcher insisted. But Liv had always spoken of getting to Paris. Fletcher was our ride to Paris, and here we were, and now she would go back to Charles. Had Fletcher really imagined anything else? Liv had done what she’d come to do, and so had I, even if I hadn’t known it was what I’d come to do until I met Liv. We were in Paris and the city was free, and soon the world would be free and we could return to the lives we’d left behind, mundane lives for which we now had a great appreciation.
