A week and counting.
A week.
Nobody takes a week to heal... if they spend more than a few days in a coma, the medical unit writes them off as a lost cause.
The army has neither the time nor the resources to keep terminal patients alive. Maybe at the beginning, yes, but the war has drastically sapped their abilities to cope.
Only by the saving grace of three petitions written by army officers and signed by three hundred separate NCOs, enlisted men, and officers is Staff Sergeant Jean Havoc still breathing.
If Jean ever found out, he would laugh at me.
The trick is to get the man awake so he can find out.
But he's just laying there in the medic station behind lines, breathing peacefully and completely dead to the world.
A wound that minor, relatively speaking, shouldn't have done that much damage
It's a concussion – he did fall out of a building afterwards
Wherever that fucking sod is that did this to him, I'll find him and give him –
Did you hear? Mustang hunted him down and dealt with him personally. There was an investigation and it was Private ––––'s third time of shooting a friendly soldier
I hope that bastard got what he deserved
I'm not precisely sure why Jean's so popular among the enlisted men. The NCOs I can understand – he's one of them, and he's been in this war from the beginning. If he survives, he'll get a full promotion to Lieutenant, with the State's blessing.
But the men... Jean's a sniper, and by definition, he works alone. He has no squad, even officially. However, he is an incorrigible prankster, a damn decent gambler, and an all-around nice man. Even if he's so deadpan that one can't tell his emotion by looking at or hearing him.
And he's mine. I'll threaten every single soldier and officer in this bloated mess of an army to keep him alive. Maes says that I'm taking the loyalty of my soldiers too seriously... but this time around it isn't loyalty. It's something that even I don't understand...
One week and counting...
Two weeks and counting...
Three weeks and counting...
This is becoming nightmarish. They say that he's brain-dead, that they can't save him. I want to threaten them, shake Jean awake like I did back in the school dormitories, just to prove that he's alive. But...
"Hey. Got a cigarette?"
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It's been exactly two months since I started this. And BOY, I'm slow in updating. Sorry, y'all. Usually, I'd have at least forty drabbles up.
Yes, this is a continuation of 'Ache'. You can draw your own conclusions about the ending.
I keep saying this, but if anyone out there has any other suggestions for me (I'm only working on one other drabble right now, and I don't want it to be the last) PLEASE, give them to me. I'm willing to write pretty much whatever.