“Given by father, taught by mother. Still I don’t know how a name truly defines oneself.”
The young woman screams it for the sixth—maybe the seventh—time in just a few minutes. Her apron is soaked with blood, stiff in places, slick in others. My legs shake. My hands tremble. The mask over my mouth feels like a cage, trapping the stale heat of my breath until sweat pools at my jawline. Every pore on my body is open, my skin crawls with phantom itches. But I force myself to focus. I must.
Theo, the head surgeon, asks in that flat, practiced tone of his. Nothing surprises him anymore. He’s twice my age, late forties, all hard lines and sunken eyes.
“Male, late twenties,” the nurse barks, voice tight with urgency. “Shrapnel wounds to the abdomen and right thigh. Pulse weak. He’s fading fast!”
I squint through my fogging glasses at the blood-slick scalpel in my hand. I change gloves automatically, pulling on new disposable ones, the old pair stained dark with other people’s death. My fingers don’t obey. My shoulders twitch like marionette strings tangled by a drunken puppeteer. My head pounds, each heartbeat a shrill echo in my skull. Tinnitus screams in my ears.
I try to force my right glove on but it slips. I can’t concentrate. Not after all that.
My gaze drifts, dazed. Woman. Man. Dead. Their eyes are open, glassy, accusing. Empty of light. Empty of hope.
I lift my hand toward Theo out of pure instinct, but he slaps it away.
Still, I keep staring at the blood on the floor, at their unseeing eyes. My chest heaves, ribs constricting like a vice around my frantic heart. Men. Women. Even children.
I grab onto a nurse rushing past, just to stay upright.
Another shout. Then a pleading voice cuts through the chaos. It’s the man on the stretcher, his pulse a flickering candle.
I squint at him again. The world swims, vision blurred by condensation on my lenses. 1.25 diopters of farsightedness—useless here. Just fog. And behind that fog, their lonely stares.
Yesterday, I played with that kid lying out there in the grass. Gave him sweets. Joked with him and the others. Now he’s got a hole in his abdomen. His blood soaking the earth.
I’m not supposed to be here. Not in this fucking tent. I was just a student, not even halfway through med school. No real practical training. And now I’m supposed to keep soldiers alive as they’re torn apart like insects by things out of a nightmare.
Not fairy tales. Horror stories.
We’re holding the base, but only just. Barrages light up the sky, and even though the line holds, civilians are being hunted like animals.
My eyes flick again to that dead kid in the grass. He died minutes ago. One of many. One of millions in Germany. One in billions around the world.
My hand slips free of the nurse’s arm as she runs on. My attention catches on a female soldier sprawled nearby. Blood drenches her uniform. Nurses are cramming gauze into the gaping holes in her flesh, fingers slick and red. She screams, high and broken.
They said there was a conflict. Word spread just after the kid died, after they dragged so many of them into these tents.
Faceless beings. That’s what they call them. A couple of them made it through. Full artillery can barely scratch them. What chance does a rifle have?
Those damn soldiers—the ones we’re treating—some of them are doping themselves with the blood of those things. Monsters. Zombies. Slendermen. Orcs. Some of the medics make jokes, but there’s no laughter behind their teeth. The government orders them to do it. Inject it. Become it.
I push the thought away as I stagger outside.
My name. The name given by my father and taught by my mother.
I moved cities to save money. From Hamburg to Mannheim. Cheaper than Heidelberg. My parents wanted me to live near the university. I told them I didn’t mind the half-hour commute.
And now I miss them. I truly do.