John had never screamed so loudly.
His first active combat mission. He was supposed to stay in the Jeep. Nothing could hurt him there. He was just going to watch. He was a medic. He wasn't in any danger. No one would hurt a medic.
He rolled down the window, looking anxiously around, searching for some sign of the others. The silence was absolute and unbearable. A battle in the movies had a defineable arc of exposition, build-up, loud, obligatory chaos, and then everyone went home. There was no waiting. In reality, most of war seemed to be made up of sitting around waiting to be shot.
The driver glared pointedly at him, and he quickly, timidly rolled the window back up. "Sorry," he muttered.
The young woman sitting next to him, gun comfortably across her lap, grinned amusedly at him. "First mission, doctor?" she asked in a thick American drawl.
He turned red. "Yeah. You?"
She snorted. "I've been here for a while." She watched him turn to check out the window for enemies for the millionth time - it was like he'd developed a twitch. He didn't know how to stop. "You really need to relax."
"How?" he asked frustratedly. "Everyone keeps telling me that. How am I supposed to relax when I could die at any minute?"
"Because there's nothing you can do about it," she replied matter-of-factly. "This ain't the way war used to be. Time was, whether you lived or died depended on how good you were. The machine gun changed all that. Nobody can counter it. You can't outrun it, you can't block it, you can't strategy your way out of getting shot. If you die, it's because you were standing in the wrong place, or you looked the wrong way, or you tried to shoot back. It's luck, that's all. Luck of the draw. Spending your whole life looking over your shoulder isn't going to save your life. It'll just make what's left of it a living nightmare. War's enough of that without you helping it along. So just relax and do your job, doctor."
He would never know what he would have said back. She didn't even have time to finish the last word. The shot came out of nowhere.
One minute there was nothing. The next minute she had no head.
There was blood spattered all over his face, bits of brain glued to his skin and up his nose and stuck in the corner of his mouth.
He screamed. More blood. In his mouth. The taste was like being on fire. He kept screaming. He could barely hear the gunfire.
"Come on, medic! Get out here! We've got wounded!"
He shook his head frantically, knees pulled up to his chest. He wasn't thinking anymore.
"Goddamn it, medic!" A hand roughly pulled him out of the Jeep. He stumbled forward and saw the soldier, writhing on the sandy ground, clutching his stomach, one arm thrown across his eyes to shield him from the sun. He couldn't have been more than nineteen, his pasty face spattered with freckles and blood.
John's head cleared. He knew how to deal with this. He knew what to do. Just focus on the work. Just relax and do your job, doctor. Just relax and do your job, doctor. The words kept repeating in his head.
He knelt and coaxed him to remove his hand from the wound. His hands started shaking again when he saw. There was so much blood. He could see the intestines. He forced himself to open his medical kit and start working. He could do it. Cauterize. Clean. Stitch. Bandage. He could do it.
His hands were covered in blood. It just kept coming. There was so much of it. The boy's face was turning pale. He saw his eyelids flutter. No. No. I've almost got it stitched. You can't die now.
But the proof was thick and coagulated all around him. He'd lost too much blood. His head tilted to one side. The heart was loud and curiously slowed down against his fingers. He'd taken too long. He hadn't been there when he still could have saved. No. Wait. Please wait. Just a moment longer. I can do it. I can still save you.
His gaze was caught, trapped like flies in amber, by the boy's green eyes. There was so much life in those eyes. And then there wasn't.
Mary shook him, forced him awake, tore him out of that endless war that could never be won, like she'd done so many times. He howled, buried his face in her chest, and sobbed like a little boy.
She held him tight and stroked his hair, soothing and 'shh'ing him, wishing she could do something substantial to help him. If anyone should have to go through this every night - which she sincerely doubted - it should be her.
Yet here he was, tormented, afraid to go to sleep at night, shouldering bravely through every day resolved and resigned to this living hell, while she felt nothing. She was no psychopath; that was just the only excuse she could come up with. She was perfectly capable of love. She loved John. Yet she never felt a thing about killing.
She wasn't afraid of death. Anyone's death. It had never made sense to her what the big deal was. Everyone died, what was the matter in going a little early? But John didn't feel the same - the man who cared and loved more than anyone else, who had cared and loved enough to forgive her. He shouldn't have to go through this.