As months pass, Angela remembers less and less of her family. They're images and laughter, and sunlight on her skin as she's walking in a sunny summer meadow with Grandma. They're reading night-time stories and singing birthday songs. They're visiting friends and eating warm meals.

Mostly they're just longing. For their smiles. Their warm hugs. For better days and things than she has with Uncle.

Angela had never met her uncle before the day he came to take her away from the refugee camp. She remembers her family talking about him, sometimes, and she remembers it was never anything good. She didn't really want to go with him at the time; she wanted Mom and Dad or Grandma to come and take her, but that obviously couldn't happen. He told her they'd be going to Germany, which was scary. She'd never left Switzerland before, but she didn't want to stay in that place any longer, so she went with him. Of course she went. The camp was miserable, and so was everyone in it, all of them just waiting for the next day without anything to look forward to other than dinner, and on bad days, not even that.

That last bit hasn't changed, but at least there's a full fridge now.

She studiously ignores everything inside that isn't milk and shuts the door closed, before bringing the bottle to the table and pouring the contents into her cereal - that after thoroughly scrubbing the bowl and spoon to be sure there's nothing else left on them. Sometimes, when Uncle works late into the night and has Angela bring him something to eat, he'll put his tools on the plates. It's icky. She wonders if it's because of his terrible manners that her parents never invited him over.

Whatever their reason, Angela's glad they never did. It's a guilty admission, but Uncle can be scary sometimes when they work in his laboratory. He's nice usually, and even gives her lollipops and stickers for being a good girl, but his needles are still painful, and the cuts still ache for days after. As grateful as she is for him taking her away from the camp, the war, and the night raids, she just can't ever feel at ease when they go to his lab.

She can push it down most days, when she's only helping Uncle with keeping the place clean and not with his experiments. Sometimes, she can push it far enough down that she finds the courage to wonder at the purpose of all the strange machines he's keeping. Her parents were doctors too, but they had nothing like this at home, or even in the hospital they worked at. The fact Angela has no clue as to how all the contraptions work only makes them more fascinating in her eyes. Fantasising about what they might do keeps her mind busy while she's working, and she likes keeping her mind busy. Keeping busy keeps her wandering memories at bay.

She needn't fantasise very long. One day, when she brings Uncle the takeout she was sent to get, Angela finds him standing over a sleeping man laid out on the operating table, elbow-deep in his gut and humming along to some grown-up, boring music.

"There you are, put it over here, thank you." He smiles at her.

Angela swallows, then shakes her head to push away the flames licking at the edges of her memories to do as she's asked. The lab doesn't have a chair, so she hops up on the table by the patient's feet from where she can observe the surgery. Uncle doesn't mind, and there isn't much else to do in the house, so she often finds herself watching the man work. It's strange. She feels strange watching. Uneasy. But she does want to stay and see. To understand. She's wanted to be a doctor like Mom and Dad since she remembers, and if she's going to make that dream a reality, she can't let a bit of queasiness stop her from operating in the future. In this particular case, Uncle only seems to be cutting something out, which unfortunately means he's not using any of his fancy tools. Perplexingly, there's barely any blood. Way less than she'd seen coming from much smaller wounds in the aftermaths of bombing runs back in the camps. She doesn't understand, so she asks him. He doesn't mind it when she asks him things.

"If there were that much blood, they must've had their arteries torn. Easy enough to fix, but fatal if not handled quickly."

"Easy?" she asks, a pit opening in her stomach.

"Oh, yes. I used to deal with arterial damage on a daily basis back in the day. It's very common with shrapnel. Why, did I ever tell you about-"

She doesn't listen. Can't hear a thing. Easy, he says. And yet hundreds died each night.

Angela often wonders if her parents could've easily been saved if only someone was there to help them when the hospital was attacked. She wonders if people in the camps could've been saved if only she knew how to help them.

As always, she pushes such thoughts down, lest they spiral out of her control. She might not have known how to help back then, but that is precisely why she's going to be a doctor. So that she can help when she needs to and not just hide and cry. That's why she needs to be brave and not hide under the bed when Uncle calls for her help. It's why she asks him how to fix arterial damage.

The man adjusts his glasses, pausing his story in the middle and leaving a small splatter of blood at the base of his nose. A strange smile spreads across his lips.

"Come here."

He shows her. He pulls at a vein (artery, she later learns the difference) coming out of the exposed heart and explains how if as much as nicked, it will bleed until there's nothing left to bleed with. He points out all the others like it. Then he snaps it in his fingers.

Angela jerks in alarm. A few months ago, she'd likely have screamed at the sight. A few months ago that would've been among the scariest things she'd ever seen.

"Not to worry." He pats her on the shoulder, leaving a red print on her shirt that will never quite wash off. "Now, I don't use this for most patients, but for the purpose of a demonstration..."

He picks up one of the many strange machines lying around the room, one looking kind of like a boxy firehose (the Medigewehr, he calls it) and lets a stream of red light flow from its nozzle right onto his patient's exposed heart. It looks like magic when in a matter of seconds the damage fixes itself, and then so does the incision exposing it in the first place, all without leaving a trace of any damage.

She thinks of the patients that Uncle couldn't save. Of the woman who didn't stop bleeding when Angela gave her Uncle's shot and instead started bleeding from everywhere . Of the man whose tumour started growing rather than being burnt out with the laser, quickly consuming him whole. Of another man who took Uncle's pills, and quickly went mad with pain, and whom Uncle then had to knock out and drive somewhere away. Of the angry lines marking her own skin.

"Why not always use it?"

"Ah. You see, progress isn't made by sticking with the tried and true. One must always push the boundaries of knowledge to find out if there's more of it waiting to be found. Like when people stopped using leeches to treat blood loss! That turned out well."

She doesn't understand. Wouldn't it be better to just use the machine first, and only bother with other methods when that doesn't work? This seems unnecessary.

She pushes the thought away. Of course Uncle knows better than her, he's a doctor! She should be grateful he's willing to teach her at all, not be asking dumb questions.

Besides, Mom and Dad always said good girls listen to the doctor.

And Angela's a very good girl.