By the time the trouble came, the clinic had already been running for a month.
Three days a week, the Canal Bungalow yard turned into something halfway between a village fair and a military drill. lines of patients under canvas, water pots, shouting children, and Farabi guards holding the whole thing together with a mixture of politeness and visible muscle.
This day began like any other clinic day.
Under the canvas shade in the courtyard, children fidgeted, old men coughed, women clutched cloth bundles of previous prescriptions and half-finished bottles. Farabis stood at the edges — not menacing, not relaxed either. Watchful. Their rifles were still locked in the estate armoury, sealed in grease and crates; for now they carried lathis, sticks, and the kind of posture that said we are not moving first, but we are moving fast.
Inside, Evelyn's consulting room — the cleared-out front bedroom — held its usual arrangement: one desk, two chairs, a bed serving as an examination couch, a wooden box of medicines, and Mary's little fortress of order — notes, vials, tray, basin, everything in a place she understood and would kill to defend.
On the verandah, Mary called names from the register, pencil behind her ear.
"Ramlal, fever. Next. Kulsum, child, rash. Sit in the shade. No, I said shade, not in the sun to gossip, Auntie, you'll faint and then blame me and I'll refuse to sign the complaint."
The line shuffled forward.
Two men joined near the middle of the queue. They looked ordinary enough to most eyes: rough cotton shirts, lungis, a little dust, a little shuffle.
Mary's eyes skimmed over them once.
Then again.
Faces neutral, shoulders not. They stood like men who expected trouble, not treatment.
File that, Bilal muttered in Jinnah's absent mind — though at that moment Jinnah was at the stronghouse construction site arguing about lime ratios. Some of these "patients" are going to be test cases sooner rather than later.
Mary stepped closer, register in hand.
"You from which village?" she asked, casual.
"Station side," one said quickly. "Fever. Stomach pain."
She frowned faintly. The yard was noisy; a child wailed, a goat bleated on the far side of the wall, someone argued about queue jumping.
"All right," she said at last. "You go in two by two. Wait till I call. Don't push."
When their turn came, she opened the door.
"Doctor," she said, "two more. Stomach complaints, they say."
"Send them in," Evelyn answered, not yet looking up from the notes on the last case.
The two men stepped inside. Mary closed the door behind them, leaving the Farabis posted just outside in the verandah shade, within earshot but not in the way. A routine they had already repeated a dozen times over the past weeks.
Evelyn finally glanced up.
"All right," she said briskly. "Who's first? Come, sit. What's the trouble?"
The first man sat.
"Stomach," he repeated. "Pain. Two days."
"How bad?" she asked. "Show me where."
His hand twitched toward his side — and then, in a movement too smooth for a genuine invalid, toward his waistband.
The knife flashed as it came free.
"Don't shout," he hissed, voice low and suddenly sharp. "Or we cut."
The second man was already behind her, the edge of his blade touching the skin at the back of her neck.
The world shrank to the small, hot room — four people, two knives, and an invisible line between panic and control.
Evelyn's eyes went cold, not wide.
Her revolver hanging in its holster on the hook by her bed. In her own quarters. She had left it there, deliberately.
"For God's sake," she had told Mary at breakfast, "this is a clinic, not a trench. With fifty men outside, I refuse to walk around armed like a character from one of your colonial adventure novels."
Now the knives were real, and the revolver might as well have been in another province.
"Stand," the man behind her said. "Slowly. No noise."
Mary, halfway between the desk and door, had frozen. But her eyes were moving fast.
"What do you want?" Evelyn asked, voice level.
"You," the first man said. "Quiet. We take. Then others pay to get you back. Rich lawyer has rich friends, no?"
So. Not random. A plan. Kidnapping. Ransom. Maybe worse.
"Too many ears out there," the second man muttered. "We move now."
He grabbed Evelyn's arm, yanking her up.
Mary moved at the same time.
No plan. No training. Just instinct and the bone-deep refusal to watch someone lay hands on her doctor.
She threw herself sideways with all her weight, ramming into the first man's back.
The room exploded.
The first man stumbled, knife hand jerking wide. The second cursed and lunged.
"Help!" Mary screamed — a sound that cut through the closed door like a bullet. "Guards! Inside! NOW!"
The first knife found flesh before the Farabis found the handle.
Mary felt it like a burning punch in her left side — not a neat slice, more a shove with fire and iron attached. For a heartbeat she only gasped, more from shock than pain.
The second knife slashed through the air where Evelyn's arm had been; the doctor dropped low, rolling toward the corner, mind flipping into the ruthless triage it used in surgery.
The door burst open.
Farabis poured in — four of them in an instant, then more crowding behind, filling the doorway.
"Drop it!" one shouted.
The first attacker tried to twist, slashing wild, catching one Farabi across the forearm with a shallow cut. Another Farabi rammed into his legs; they went down in a tangle.
The second man made a lunge for the window, knife forward, but two men hit him from the side and behind, driving him chest-first into the wall. Someone's lathi cracked against his wrist; the blade clattered to the floor.
It was not elegant. Elbows, knees, curses, the dull meaty sound of bodies colliding. But numbers and fury did their work.
Within seconds, both men were pinned — faces scraped, arms twisted behind their backs — rope looped around wrists and ankles by hands that had practised this on sandbags and drills for weeks.
Mary was on the floor, one hand clamped over her side; blood was already seeping between her fingers.
Evelyn had pressed herself into the far corner, breathing hard, eyes taking in the whole room in one sweep: blood quantity, wound location, how pale, how fast the pulse at Mary's throat.
"I am not hurt," she snapped before anyone thought to ask. "Mary—"
"I'm fine," Mary gasped, still conscious, face gone a dangerous shade of white. "Just… a little… ventilation."
The havildar spat on the floor near the attackers.
"Came as patients," he growled. "Dirty dogs."
From the yard outside, noise surged: shouting, running footsteps, the startled roar of a crowd. The two attackers had not come alone; their friends were in the line.
"Out, out!" another Farabi shouted toward the verandah. "Clinic closed. Everyone out! Go home!"
Outside Pressure
On the verandah, three more men had already stepped out of the line, knives half-concealed. The commotion inside had tipped their hand. By the time the first Farabi yelled, there were nearly a dozen men bristling at the edge of the courtyard — blades visible now, shoulders squared.
"Move," one of them shouted. "Let us in!"
The nearest Farabi shifted stance, planting his feet.
"No one goes in," he said. "Clinic closed. Drop the knives. You want to live, you go home."
More men from the queue surged behind the knife-carriers — some part of the plan, some just frightened, some curious. The Farabi line hardened, bare hands and lathis against steel.
Inside, the havildar looked up sharply as the noise outside changed from panic to something sharper.
"More of them," he said. "Outside."
"Hold them," Evelyn snapped. "Don't let them break through. I need space in here."
"My men will die before let them to you, Doctor," the havildar said— then caught the look in her eyes and amended, "yes, we'll hold."
Jinnah Arrives with a Shot
At the construction site, Jinnah had been pointing at a half-built wall.
"You cannot," he was saying to the contractor, "build a refuge with bricks that crumble like biscuits. When the time comes—"
The sound cut across the field: Mary's scream, faint but sharp, followed by the rising roar of multiple voices.
He stopped mid-sentence.
"That," he said flatly, "is not a child quarrelling."
Run, Bilal said. Now. Don't walk like a dignified barrister. Run.
To Bilal's faint surprise, Jinnah did not argue.
He moved — not a young man's sprint, but a fast, direct stride that forced others to get out of his way. A Farabi from the nearest work party fell in beside him without being called.
By the time they reached the bungalow, the courtyard was a tangle: villagers half-pushed back, men with knives at the front, Farabis forming a thin living wall between them and the verandah steps.
Knives flashed in fists. Lathis were raised. The air vibrated with that particular crackling tension that comes one heartbeat before the first man is stupid enough to move.
Jinnah did not shout.
He took in the scene once — knives, numbers, fear — and his hand went, almost of its own accord, to the inside of his coat.
He had long made a habit of travelling armed. The revolver felt heavier than usual as his fingers closed around it.
He drew it and walked straight to the front of the Farabi line.
"Stand steady," he said quietly to his men. "No one advances without my word."
Then he raised the revolver toward the sky.
The shot cracked like a thunderclap.
A moment of absolute stillness followed — even the goat on the far side of the wall stopped bleating.
Smoke drifted upward.
Every eye snapped to him: the Farabis, the villagers, the twelve armed men who had thought, a moment earlier, that they could push past some estate guards and vanish in the confusion.
Jinnah let the revolver lower, slowly, until it pointed — not directly at anyone, but near enough.
"My doctor," he said, in a voice that carried clean across the yard without needing to be raised, "has been attacked while treating patients."
He spoke in Urdu, with that precise enunciation that made every word land.
"Anyone," he continued, "who takes one more step toward this verandah will be treated as attempting murder. My men will not strike first. But if you force them, they will not stop until you are on the ground."
One of the knife-men shifted his grip.
Behind him, a villager — not part of their crew — whispered, "Are you mad? He has a gun."
The twelve looked around.
Farabis all along the line, more emerging from the edges of the compound, faces set. Villagers starting to step away from the men with knives, leaving small pockets of isolation around each.
"There are twelve of you," Jinnah said, almost conversationally. "There are fifty of my men on this estate today. I have one revolver now. More will come. Ask yourselves whether this is the day you wish your mothers to be told you died trying to kidnap a doctor."
That, Bilal observed, is not a legal argument. That's raid psychology. Good.
Silence stretched.
One of the knife-men spat on the ground.
"Come," he said to the others, eyes never leaving the revolver. "Not today."
Slowly, backs still stiff, fingers still twitching around the hilts, they stepped backward. They did not turn their backs until they reached the outer gate.
Only then did they melt away into the lane, dragging their wounded pride with them.
Jinnah kept the revolver in his hand until the last knife disappeared from sight.
Then he turned.
"Clear the yard," he told the Farabis. "No more patients today. Anyone injured by these men," he added, nodding to the guard whose arm had been cut, "go to the verandah. You will be treated. Everyone else goes home. Tell them the clinic will reopen — if My doctor and nurse survived."
Mary, Still Dangerous
Inside the consulting room, the air was rank with the smell of blood and ether.
Mary sat propped against the wall now, a rough bandage tied tight around her side, her hand still pressed over it. Her face had settled from panic-white to paper-pale — which Evelyn preferred.
The two attackers lay bound near the doorway, breathing hard, eyes darting like trapped animals.
Evelyn glanced up as Jinnah stepped inside, revolver now holstered but still visibly present.
"Report," he said.
"Wound, left flank," Evelyn answered crisply. "Deep enough to be untidy. Not deep enough to kill her — if we move quickly. She needs a hospital. A proper theatre. And better light than this excuse for a window."
"And them?" Jinnah nodded toward the bound men.
"They will live," the havildar said grimly. "For now. We gave them some of their own medicine. One cut," he added, gesturing to a Farabi with blood on his sleeve. "Nothing serious."
"Good," Jinnah said. "They will be more useful alive than dead. For a while."
Mary shifted, teeth clenched.
"They stabbed me," she informed him, as if filing a complaint about mislabelled ledgers.
"So I see," Jinnah replied mildly. "Most inconsiderate of them."
"They came as patients," she added. "Didn't even have the courage to pick a fight outside. Cowards."
"You can denounce their character after surgery," Evelyn said sharply. "For now, you will lie still and let us move you."
She turned to Jinnah.
"She goes to Montgomery Hospital. Immediately. I'll go with her. I'm not trusting this to chance."
"Agreed," he said. "The car will be ready in two minutes. Ahmed—"
"Already on it," Ahmed said from the doorway. "Driver's bringing it round."
They eased Mary onto a makeshift stretcher. She groaned as they lifted her.
"Easy, Nurse Mary," Jinnah said, walking beside her. "You are, for once, permitted to dramatize."
She managed a glare.
"I'll dramatize," she muttered, "after I've made sure you've taken your pills."
He almost smiled.
"Impertinent woman," he said. "You are bleeding."
"And you," she whispered, "are probably overdue by three hours."
Then they carried her out.
The yard parted as they passed — residents staring as their own nurse, the woman who had barked at them for weeks about queues and soap, was borne past them.
They saw the blood.They saw Jinnah walking beside her.
Rumours began to rearrange themselves even before the car left the gate.
Evening — Sandalbar HQ
Dusk had settled when Jinnah finally returned to the lodge.
The lamps were lit low. The estate felt… altered. Quieter. As if everyone were listening for something that had not yet been said.
As he reached the corridor, the door opened.
D'Souza stood there, hat in hand.
"She's alive," he said simply. "Surgery went well. Doctor says she'll recover."
Jinnah closed his eyes — just for a moment.
"Thank you."
As D'Souza stepped aside as Ahmed enters, a sound drifted in through the open veranda doors — low, uneven, carried by night air.
A voice was singing.
Ae ishq hamein itna tu bata,Anjaam hamara kya hoga…
Taqdeer bata, ab is se bura,Anjaam hamara kya hoga…
Jinnah paused.
The voice was rough, untrained, but steady. One of the Farabis on night guard duty.
Kashti na rahi, sahil na raha,Sahil ki tamanna bhi na rahi…
Rooh pooch rahi — ab is se bura,Anjaam hamara kya hoga…
Jinnah turned slightly, the song still drifting in from the veranda.
"What is he saying?" he asked Ahmed. "I recognize the tone, not the words."
Ahmed hesitated, then spoke carefully, as if choosing not to embarrass the sentiment.
"He's asking love what will become of them," he said. "What kind of ending awaits, when even fate seems to have turned its back."
Jinnah remained still.
"He sings of being adrift," Ahmed continued. "No boat left. No shore left. Not even the desire for a shore. Only the soul asking whether things can end worse than this."
There was a pause.
"It's not about romance, sir," Ahmed added quietly. "It's about fear. About losing the only ground they have found."
Jinnah nodded once.
"And the ground," he said, "is not land."
"No," D'Souza said from behind them. "It's certainty."
The song continued outside — not louder, not softer. Just steady. As if the man on watch were holding the night together with words he did not expect anyone to answer.
Jinnah looked toward the dark estate again.
"They think I will leave," he said.
Ahmed did not deny it.
"They are not afraid of punishment," Jinnah said. "They are afraid of abandonment."
"Yes, sir."
Jinnah stood there a moment longer, listening to a language he did not speak, yet understood perfectly well.
"Tell them," he said at last, "that a man does not walk away from a place where blood has been spilled for order."
Ahmed inclined his head.
"And the singer?"
Jinnah allowed himself the smallest pause.
"Let him finish," he said. "The night is listening."