Author here: I messed up. The first chapter was meant to be a "one-shot" fic, so I posted it.

Then I thought to add other chapters, but now they're not in chronological order :'(

So I hope you don't mind going back in the past, then maybe forward in the future, then again back to the present.

The title of every chapter will help you understand where and when that part of the fic is set (hopefully).

If you think it's hard to follow, please let me know and I'll try to fix my mistake.


JOHN

John suddenly woke up to the annoying sound of the alarm clock set on his watch, covered in sweat and with an headache that made him quite annoyed.

He looked at his watch and found out that he surprisingly managed to rest for almost three hours, which was his personal record since British troops had been deployed in Helmand.

He dressed up quickly and went to check the patients he had treated the day before; there were no lives in danger, though Davidson had almost had his hand cut off by a dirty bomb that luckily hadn't worked properly; he had just got few first and second degree burns.

Other soldiers – Jibbs, McConnies and Fahel – were fine, they had few scratches that were about to heal; after giving some orders to the nurses, he went to the mess-hall to have breakfast.

John knew he had to get as much energy as possible, since there was an important mission planned in the morning and he and his team were supposed to back up and give medical support directly on the field.

When he had done eating, he went back to his quarters, lay on his bed and started thinking; he knew, as he had always known, that being part of the medical support troops was the right thing to do, but there was a tiny little corner of his brain that couldn't help but thinking about the fact that maybe this mission was not the right way to solve the problems with terrorists.

He dismissed the thought; he was an army doctor, his duty was to help injured soldiers and contractors, not to argue about political issues with his own brain.

"You're helping people, don't forget it" John said to himself before propping up and getting ready for the mission.

:/: :/: :/:

He was sitting in the Red Cross humvee, he had his team buddy Bill Murray on his left and a nice American fellow called T.J. ("Hi guys, I'm Teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Jaaaaaaayyyyyy from Springdale, Arkansas. Let's patch up our soldier-guys!") on his right.

As soon as they got in their position and stepped out of the vehicle, John felt that something was not entirely right: the air was still and they couldn't hear a sound, despite being at least nine o'clock of a Sunday morning in a usually quite noisy war zone.

He turned around, and he could see that his sense of discomfort was shared by all the people standing there with him.

As the soldiers told them to get back on the humvee and wait for further instructions, a rain of bullets hit them.

"That's an ambush! RUN AND HIDE! FAST!" John heard screaming, and he found himself running and jumping in a ditch behind a bush.

The hitmen were above them, carefully placed on the top of the two towers that stood next to the gate outside Naw Zad, so there was no chance of reaching a better hide-out in the town and waiting for backups.

The only chance to survive was getting back on the vehicles and run away.

He was happy to see that Bill, the other members of his team and T.J. were in the vehicle, and he was pretty sure they were safe because he didn't think their enemies also had anti-tank missiles.

John knew that the sooner he got out of the bush, the better.

He was the only one of his group who was in extreme danger; he tried to sneak out of the pit, but few shots near him stopped him immediately.

/_/ /_/ /_/

Time was passing very slowly, and John fought hard to control his urge of moving away from there; instead he kept himself still on the ground, feeling his heart hammering in his chest and breathing deeply to gain the full control of his body.

Some minutes later (but in his mind John was ready to oath it was hours later) he decided he couldn't wait longer: he checked his gun, took a last, deep breath, and, taking advantage from the fact that both hitmen were involved in a shooting with the soldiers, ran out of his hide-out to reach the humvee.

He couldn't believe he was actually running that fast while shooting to the towers to cover himself up; he was few steps away from the vehicle, when suddenly he felt a burning pain in his left shoulder and fell on the ground.

He could feel his own blood soaking his t-shirt, while his body was trembling and his temperature was dropping fast due to the blood loss.

"I'm done, not coming home" John thought, his mind blurred and light; he saw a picture of his family in front of his eyes, and felt the tears on his cheeks.

"P-please God, let me l…"

Then the darkness had him.


Author here: I'm not into all military things such as equipment, rules and so on, so I apologize if I made mistakes.

I made some researches about the position of British troops in Afghanistan and what kind of vehicles and weapons the medical teams are supposed to use, but there's an high chance I messed up, sorry about that.

Please, if you point out something that needs to be changed, please write it in a review and I'll fix my mistake. Thank you!