An empty room. This is what I fought for, right? What I wished for, lived for? Died for? The heat, the close proximity of skin, living skin; the smell of dead, burning skin. When it would all get to be too much and I would want to hit something, actually enjoying picking up my gun, holding death so close, holding at bay, so far away, always there but never focused on. Ghosts in the corner of my vision, making their home there, acting like they belong.
But these hands, the ones that I'm looking down at now, have never held a gun. Pens, forks, books, a watch, a lover's note once, jars, cups.
A gun. Limbs. A body. Blood. Shrapnel. A knife.
Just a doctor. A trainer doctor, I went through basic training thank you very much, don't look at me like I'm going to faint at the sight of the enemy, at their blood. Don't look warily at the gun in my hands. I know how to use it. I'm not going to hold you back, I went through basic training thank you very much. What's the difference between a knife and a scalpel? You flinch when you see either coming at you. They both part flesh before them, spilling forth a tide of blood. Erythrocytes, haemoglobin, lymphocytes, leukocytes, thrombocytes. Plasma.
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still.
Another empty room. An operating room. Even when full, it was empty. Which room? The stainless white, hospital regulation white, of sharp corners, the smell of disinfectant and haemolysis. Or the dull brown of the canvas tent, the heat radiating in from the thick walls, the bodies crammed into every available space, their smell, too foreign and too human to describe. Did it matter? Both were empty. Both were far beyond his reach now.
Or is this what you wanted? An empty room. We talked so often of our dreams, or our futures, that they began to resemble each other. You and me. You and I. So what, do you think I care?
Was it you who asked for an empty room? The quiet of a suburban street? Bare walls? An empty fridge. No names on Tupperware containers. Not that you ever cared about what you ate. Or how often. Was that you, or was that me? I don't eat any more, but I think that once it was something that I enjoyed. Before rations and biscuits that tastes like dirt, or worse. Before the take of smoke in my mouth destroyed my taste buds and turned everything into soot, and ash. Maybe. I don't remember.
Did you want an empty room? Boring.
Of course not. It had been me that asked for a sanctuary with blindingly bare walls. The repetition of an obscure wallpaper. Nothing like the rough texture of a tent. You didn't want this. You didn't want normal. You couldn't think past what might happen when the war ended. If the war ended. There was no forwards for you, beyond the next step. Beyond that you couldn't care. Did you have something to go back for? A picture in your pocket? Did we share that? I'll show you mine if you show me yours. The smile picture, creased in the middle, now worth little more that if I had cut it out of someone else's magazine. Did I care? Did I love?
Not any more. There are no doctors on the battlefield. Only soldiers who know enough about a body to tell it tail end from head, enough to tell the massive emptiness, the mess of bodies who could not listen, that a heart was not beating any more. And I struggled to do that. I struggled to let go of the soldier on the battlefield, to move on, past gaping wounds, the pronouncement of death still hanging on my lips. There was no change to let it go, it was constantly called upon.
Between the cros- rules about a war and rule number one is young men die. And rule number two is doctors can't change rule number one -ses, row on row
The things is, the part that really gets to me, is that there is no death on a battelfield. Death belongs to the corridors of a hospice facility, or the silent rows of a graveyard. It will be a long time before Death visits that battlefield. Until each name and rank on tht blood stained ground can be put to rest. A man, maybe two, maybe one hundred, will one day have the task of sitting down, pen and paper on hand, to sift through ledgers and numbers. A final time before their names are collected and collated. Before some clinically precise eye will sum up this war in numbers. The number of victories. The number of losses. The number of casualties.
I sentenced them to eternally tread that battlefield. I offered them only a glimpse of recognition. It was my word that bound them into a limbo. No longer living, but not yet dead. That was my job, as the doctor of the battlefield. To offer those ghosts a place, a person, to haunt.
Now I haunt this room. Confined to it. Sometimes I go out, don't I? I think I've left this room before, gone down the street, to a sop, bought something. Or have I been here my whole life? Sometimes it feels like that. Sometimes I wake up, forget about my nightmares and wonder what I'm waiting for. What am I waiting for? When will something happen? I've lived my entire life between four walls. Who am I?
What am I? Not a doctor, not anymore. Not since the tremour in my hands started up, the shaking that has left me unable to hold a needle steadily against a vein, and with a severely reduced number of plates and cups.
Not a man?
A graveyard, then. A battlefield littered with memories.
We are the Dead.
Some days are better than others. None are good, but some are better. The war had been my everyday, so now I see traces of it everywhere.
My bed is too soft. I once slept on the ground, uneven ground. Slept or passed out, I can't remember. Achieved unconsiouness.
I can't open my pantry. It's tiny, but I don't want to have to choose between a plate with a decorative edging and a plain one. So I rewash the one plate, the one cup, the one knife, fork and spoon, that I use everytime. I once ate off half a plate, the flimsy plastic had broken in my pack, and I couldn't find a spare.
I don't want to go out side. Or look out the window. I have seem so many windows, and walls, floors and roofs smashed apart, that I'm afraid that I will come home to rumble. Again.
It's not just the war, which became my everyday. It's the mundane, the normal. Boring. Bored.
I know what you would say. You would say that I should go out and find some exitement, that I can't just sit around and wait for something. Anything. For you.
You never made any plans, so I made them for you. We could find something together. It wouldn't be so hard, being out of work, out of money, out of my mind, if I had my best friend with me. But you're gone, and I really am alone. Never alone John.
No, I am alone.
You're not real, even though I see you, see your face when you smile, or when you're frowning at me for my incompitence, my reliance on these silly human feelings. I can't have you, no corporeal flesh, nothing of reality beneath my fingers. Your ghost doesn't just sit in the corner of my vision. You insist on reminding me of my failings. I'm sitting here alone, when you would have moved on, forgotten.
Well, I can't.
I don't want to.