Maj. Christian Swift, a nurse from Maine who manages the ICU, says the parents' story detailing how the boy was injured didn't add up. They said he fell into a pot of boiling soup. Or that he pulled it down on himself. The story changed. Back home in the States, nurses would have called in child protective services. "It raises a lot of red flags," Swift says. "But we don't really have the social infrastructure to dig any deeper. You can't pass judgment, but the question was raised. So you've got it there in the back of your head."

The boy's small body shakes with each sleeping breath, his blond hair soft as corn silk. Army nurses check in as he burbles through his dreams. They coo at him when he wakes. Soon he will leave, his bed taken by another Iraqi. But for now he is safe, his pain dulled. At least, the nurses say, we can do this for him.