@soldierboynamedern // Starter call
It’s the middle of August && rain pelts Rat’s helmet hard as he dashes across the open stretch between their hideout && the ditch. He’s soaking wet long before his boots skid him to a stop && he drops down with his medical equipment next to the fallen body of one of theirs. Above them both the sky opens up in white flashes, && as night becomes day && the earth trembles he collapses on top of the wounded soldier. His cries are now only but a gurgle that urges him to work. Morphine. Sulfa. Bandages. Rat’s hands try not to shake from the cold that sips down to his skin.
“Hold on. Hold on. Hold on.” The words meant to soothe are said selfishly to himself instead of to the dying soldier. You can’t save everyone, he knew that. All that was left was hope within both when death was so near. He tried not to think about that. Or them. Tried to see them as a number rather than humans, because once you did, once you looked into their battered faces as they weeped && clung, then all was lost. He carried too much already to pick up more. If he did, if he carried more weight than he could, he knew he would break under its weight. You don’t break because if you do — if you’re not strong — you die.
That’s why he ignored the arm that tightly clutched his sleeve. Ignored the pleading words — the final words — about a letter, the final moments && only startled when the hand, now icy cold, clutched his own. The medic remained staring vacantly into the accumulating water in the ditch, more disturbed by the cold rather than the loss, ignoring a dead man’s hands && the letter and photograph shoved into his own.
A loud splash rather than guilt brought him back to reality. When Rat’s head turned the next blast of artillery that lighted the sky revealed the incoming enemy.
&& in that moment, as he laid clutched by a dead man, he really believed that this moment was his own final one too, && his body tensed in expectation, hoping against hope the Red Cross on his arm held any meaning to them.
