(Tag: Dreams)

They stay in the Mess tent for hours that night, drinking coffee, talking, doing anything except sleeping, afraid of the things that haunt their dreams.

Young men marching off to war, leaving their wounded piled behind, in the middle of her honeymoon.

A long-awaited ballroom dance that moves from the nightclub to the operating theatre.

Trips back to childhood and games of polo played with hand grenades.

Working magic in the operating room but still being unable to save lives.

Delivering a Sunday service as the Pope, in the middle of an operating room with a wounded soldier on the cross beside him.

Finally arriving home to an eerily empty city and watching his own operation through a dirty window.

Waking in the middle of a lecture and being unable to help the wounded, though he's given up his arms for them.

They stay in the Mess tent for hours, drinking coffee, talking, doing anything except sleeping, preferring the waking nightmare they know so well to the phantasms conjured by their own minds.