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“Medic! Medic!”
Eugene’s hands tremble in time to the pounding of his heart and he runs, runs, faster than he’s ever run in his life.
(He liked to run, back home. Through the maze of the bayou, swatting away branches of trees, sun fiercely hot on the back of his neck. He ran track after school, competition driving him- reveled in the shouts of his competition as he left them in the dust behind him, laughingly cursing his name.)
(This is nothing like that. )
”God, I need a medic, someone get a- it’s Johnny, he’s hit, he’s hit, the goddamn Krauts, God, medic-“
(One time Mamere asked him to run an errand for her down to the post office, laughed when he returned wheezing and sweating. “Oh boo, d’you think I meant to actually run? Silly boy.”)
Skytrains fall from the sky above him, tails of blazing fire suggesting the fates of the men within. He runs past a soldier struggling with his parachute, another fumbling with his rifle while tears stream down his cheeks. His feet pound the muddy earth, too-heavy pack dragging him backwards like it’s working against him.
In the dark, there are no familiar faces, just the dulled screams of “medic” that drown out any other sound like he’s underwater and just about to break surface, he runs and runs and runs and then…..
Blood.
”Oh Doc, thank Christ, it’s- he got hit, too many of the-too many, I can’t stop the bleeding, please, please-“
An explosion in the sky illuminates the man on the ground, cradelled in the arms of a fellow soldier. Torn uniform, ligaments, skin, bone- and blood, blood, so much blood. Eugene falls to his knees and pain radiates through his body as he hits the ground, hands still trembling as he fights to free a syrette from his pocket.
”Do something, he’s- he’s hurtin’, Doc, is he gonna die? Oh, God-“
He can’t look at the soldier’s face, at the blank expression there. His friend’s blackened hands scrabble at the open wounds, the gaping holes that shouldn’t be there, and Eugene pushes him aside as gently as he can.
”Hey, buddy, take it easy, it’s gonna be okay. He’ll be okay. What’s his name?”
”J-Johnny.”
”Ain't that bad, he’s gonna make it, but I need you to help me hold ‘im down. Can y’ do that?”
He hears his own voice as though from far away, as though in a dream, and even though there’s white noise in his ears and his mind is blank he finds that his trembling hands move of their own accord- morphine, tourniquet, plasma.
A wounded man’s blood is hotter than he’d thought it would be, thick and sticky, pulsing slowly over his hands with every lethargic beat of the man’s heart.
(Later, much later, he will pour water over his stained hands and scrub and scrub until they are raw. He will fear that they’ll never feel clean again.)
The soldier moans, slowly coming to as Eugene labors over him, stitching him back together piece by broken piece. (The plastic manikins at the training camps were hard, cold. They didn’t flinch beneath his touch, give way to the press of his fingers. They didn’t scream.) Eugene pins the bandage in place, numbly watches red seep through and swallow pure white. An irrevocable stain. The bones of the soldier’s right arm are fractured in so many places that the limb feels like putty in Eugene’s hand.
This soldier, Johnny, with the terrified eyes of a young boy far away from home- he will never use his arm again. He will feel an ache in his left shoulder where the bullet is lodged too deep, roll it gingerly in its socket and wince at the pain. He will walk with a limp from the shrapnel in his leg that Eugene can’t reach.
But he will live.
”Medic! Mediiiiic!”
Eugene takes a deep breath of the night air, tastes the acrid, metallic tang of it- and runs.