The sky was dark, not with night-but storm clouds. The air heavy with the scent of approaching rain, blasted dirt, metal, and … blood. He was accustomed to the scent of blood. It filled his every waking hour intermittent with waking and resting. Strangely, he found it calming. Where even the most hardened men shied at the sight and smell of a person's broken body giving up its life force to the earth, the sight gave his mind a sense of clarity in the chaos of the war. The surgeon part of his brain took over ignoring the sound of death around him, the bullets pattering the ground to dust and the distant thunder of cannons dimmed in his efforts to save a single life. How it was strange, pathetic even. How should one life make a difference when a thousand others dropped like flies? It was like trying to light an entire cathedral with a single candle or holding back a flood with one sandbag. What was the point? But he did not allow his mind to dwell on such thoughts for long. Sane men did not last long on the battlefield if they kept an open conscience.
But today, today was different. He couldn't say how or why. But there was something new that had not been there before.
He had made a friend of late. A young doctor fresh from training, unstained and unhardened by the crushing realities of war. He had a boldness about him and a charismatic smile, like an unexpected burst of sunshine on a cloudy day. It had unsettled the surgeon at first, such things did not belong in his dark and ordered world. But the mans energy had begun to chip away at his stone walls and he found himself smiling occasionally for what seemed like the first time in an age. The claustrophobic shadow of the war lifted slightly and the sun shown through and he could almost remember a time when wars occurred only in someone else's overactive imagination and not in his own hellish reality. He was surprised to realize, eventually, that he was happy.
But it had all ended in a heartbeat. His white gloved hands red with blood not his own struggled to stem a chest cavity the size of his fist and a pair of blue eyes gazed sightlessly at the shrouded heavens. It had all happened so fast. One moment the two of them had been running towered a capsized truck, he could still here the cries of dead and dying soldiers in the distance. There was a sudden crack in the air. And the next his friend was not with him. He had gone back, forgetting at once all his training struck by the realization that the man he had come to look upon as his shadow was no longer with him, and found him laying in a pool of his own blood still grasping his black bag that held the tools of his trade.
Their eyes found each other and the young man tried to speak but only more blood escaped his mouth and ran down his cheek to be absorbed into his black, dirt smeared hair, hair that he always kept meticulously tidy to the point he had earned the nickname "Peter Perfect" and had annoyed the surgeon about his own lack of self care. What did it matter if his hair had grown to his shoulders so long that it was clean? A bath was hard to come by and a hair cut was the last of his concerns when trying to stay alive long enough to save another's. He didn't even keep a comb. A fact that had shocked his friend when he had come asking for one after loosing his own in a skirmish. A quick run through with his fingers was all that he required due to the fact that he rarely tangled unlike his young friend who seemed to find every bur and thistle on Gods good earth.
What had happened? He had thought himself hardened to the fears of the common man. A machine untouched by pain and undaunted by the very real chance of failure. Some men could be saved and some could not. That was a grim fact in his line of work. One he had accepted long ago and had come to live with every time a man died under his hand. "It could not be helped", he told himself, "it's far easier to kill a man that to save one".
He knew this. He had always known this. So where had this sudden dread come from that sat in the pit of his stomach like a lead ball as his experienced eyes watched the life flow from the mans eyes just as surely as his blood fled his body? The cold, calculating half of his brain that had ruled him for so long said calmly, "He is dead," while the other half that had lain long buried cried out unexpectedly, "No! I won't let him!" His hands became frantic in their efforts to restart his heart, to bring back the glint in his eyes that he had become so familiar with, to see him look up and wink and say, "What's gotten you so riled up, Stone Face?" But nothing changed. A corpse lay at his feet and he was slow to realize it. The surgeons mind was lost in the resurgence of feelings that had long slumbered forgotten in the depths of his soul and had awakened with a vengeance. His shoulders shook and tears that he never knew he had slid down his pale features to splatter and mix with the blood on the young mans body soon to be lost when the hovering storm clouds finally let go of their burden and had them both drenched within minutes. Washing the blood away in pink rivers quickly lost with the mud.
The rain calmed him. The overpowering smell of blood dampened with the natural cleansing of the air. The cold seeped into his skin and dug icy claws into his bones, cool and unremorseful in it's intrusion as it incased his body in cold.
A crack of thunder broke the spell and the ground exploded a few yards away, shredding the ground in an explosion of dirt and rock sending his broad hat flying and knocking him onto his back where his head exploded in pain and stars drifted into his vision.
Minutes slid by, a warm wet feeling spread across his chest as manikin hands searched for the source to discover at least ten surgeons' scalpels imbedded across his torso. His mind slowly recalled the black bag the boy had been carrying and realized that it must have imploded in the blast sending the small blades flying.
He sat up; the blades twisted sending lighting bolts of pain through his body as his breath hissed through clenched teeth and his hands and knees found the ground.
"Don't move idiot!" the surgeon's half shouted, but he ignored it. What did it matter what happened to his body now? Let the blades stay there. Let them sink into his body, among his organs and let that be the end of it. He looked about wildly until he found his own black bag and crawled towards it. Tearing it open, he found more of the surgical scalpels in all sizes, blades he knew well having used them on his own share of patients and grabbing a handful, drove them into his belly.
The pain was immediate; he cried out and sank until his forehead touched the ground as blood spurted into his lap and down his legs. He stayed there, waiting for death.
But it did not come. In fact, though the pain seemed to be subsiding as one might expect with the encroachment of death, his awareness rather than slipping away, seemed heightened. This was wrong! He slowly lifted his head and felt for the scalpels that he knew to be there yet could not find. Where were they?
The surgeon sat up quickly, hands searching across his body found no sign of the blades or even any wounds. Impossible! Yet true. All trace of damage was gone and he was very much alive.
He stood. As his body moved, he noticed a shifting in his organs as though his insides struggled to make room for something that had not been there before. A twinge here and there as a foreign object slid into place and any discomfort subsided. The truth dawned on him. Apparently, someone or something had his outburst seriously
The long haired man flexed his arm experimentally, feeling the shifting of his muscles as something slid down the length of his limb, though his wrist, and slipped out between his knuckles to glint back at him in the dim light.
He smiled. It started slow with a twitch at the corner of his mouth that spread to the other side as a new but not unpleasant emotion bubbled up his throat with warmth that chased away the cold of the rain and burst past his lips with a chuckle. What had made him laugh? Had madness finally made it past all his barriers? Was it the irony of the situation? Perhaps both. Whatever the reason, he found he no longer cared. Something had awakened inside of him and all that mattered now was that he no longer felt pain.
The crunch of a boot on gravel broke him back from his musings and a harsh, accented voice growled, "Drop the knife and turn 'round Doc".
The surgeon turned his head slightly and found the owner of the voice, an enemy soldier clutching an automatic rifle in his arms with the ease of a professional. His uniform was torn and ingrained with dirt and flecks of blood and his eyes were hidden by thick eyebrows creased into a frown of concentration.
Such a sight might have stilled the surgeon to wariness not so long ago but now he could only summon a bout of amusement at the situation.
"May I help you?"
The question startled the soldier who jerked his head up as if seeing him for the first time then shifted his gun and grunted, "Yah! You can help me by picking up that bag and coming with me nice and slow-like and help a friend of mine who needs a surgeon."
The long haired man smiled and bent over as though to do as he was told but instead of touching the bag, he picked up his hat and set it on his head, the brim tipped forward hiding his eyes before he replied, "I'm afraid I can't do that".
The soldier, angry now, stomped forward and shoved the barrel of his rifle into the surgeons chest and shouted, "Watcha mean you 'can't do that'? You damn well will do it if you care at all about livin to see tomorrow,"
The surgeon lifted his head; the soldier stared back into a pair of violet eyes set in a pale thin face, corpselike it suddenly occurred to him, like the face of death.
Thin lips twisted into a sardonic smile before the surgeon said, "I'm afraid it is you who will not live to see tomorrow,"
The soldiers eyes suddenly bulged before he staggered back, clutching a half a dozen scalpel blades that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere and imbedded themselves into his belly. He fell to one knee, gagging on the blood that began to spill from his mouth before chocking out, "What the hell are you,"
The long haired man stepped forward, tall and dark he fit well into the gloom of the broken landscape, the rain that drenched them both let up slightly and the wind picked up his black tresses tossing them about like grass in a field. A gloved hand reached up to touch the brim of his hat as he replied, "Your death,"
The hand shot forward and a single scalpel streaked from between his knuckles and drove itself into the soldier's throat who uttered a gurgling cry before slumping backwards into the dirt. He did not movie again.
After a long drawn out pause the surgeon reached out with his fingers and the scalpels withdrew from the corpse and slid back into his palm, disappearing without a trace. Raising his hand before him, he contemplated himself.
What a strange power the long haired man had acquired. His dark and lonely world had suddenly been turned upside down with his newfound discovery, and though certainly bizarre in many ways, was not entirely unwelcome. What new prospects did he now face? There was no possibility of returning to the life he had previously led nor did he wish to resume them. The door was now open and he felt no reason to hesitate.
The surgeon chuckled a second time. How much he had changed in the past hour. An entirely different person had taken the place of the old one. A memory surfaced in the threshold of his mind. A story of another doctor who through certain experiments had developed a split personality, what was it, oh yes! Jekyll and Hyde. How appropriate! The doctor turned killer.
The rain had stopped and the wind had simmered down to a light breeze. The battle had moved on and the distant rumble could barely be heard beneath the fading clash of the storm. Something itched in his memory and he turned trying to remember.
The boy's body lay where he had left it, now clean from the rain and pale with the cold and the onset of rigor mortis. One corpse among many and yet different from the others. This one had once been a friend.
No! That had been a mistake. In his weakness he had opened his heart to another and was nearly broken in the process. He should have known better than to become to another, not when he was surrounded by so much death. Becoming attached meant eventually getting hurt. And pain always led to sorrow.
He was done. Done with pain and the mind numbing effort of trying to save lives in the face of an endless war. For once, he was going to try and enjoy himself.
"Besides," the surgeon; no, Doctor Jekyll said out loud though there was no one left to hear, "It's far easier to kill a man than to save one."