Hu lets them think Yinsen was able to do it all. It's easier that way; he never has to say he had to make a choice. There were other people in the back of the truck that took them to the cave, but none of them leaned in to help, even when someone in the front cab yelled back in broken Pashto to say Raza needed all three of them alive. Yinsen was a doctor, but Yinsen was only one man, so Hu made the choice to cut away Jin's bulletproof (not bombproof, no one told them they would need that) vest and wind the crude copper wire electromagnet while Yinsen tried to stanch the arterial flow from Cheung's mangled legs.
Hu knew, intellectually, that a human could more easily survive the loss of a limb than a major chest wound, but Cheung was bleeding more and Jin was screaming more, so he made a choice. If Jin was screaming, he was still breathing, he could still breathe, so Hu set aside his own dizziness and pain and the nauseating smell to cut off Jin's bulletproof vest. He cut his thumb winding the copper wire. He cut the rest of his fingers pulling thread-fine steel shards from Jin's skin.
He doesn't remember arriving at the cave, or Yinsen pulling him away, but both things must have happened, because he remembers having no feeling in his fingers before the truck stopped, and being more bothered by the white flash of bone in his third left finger than by any hurt, and he remembers the certainty in the halogen-lit dim of the cave that he had to keep looking down at Cheung's right leg so he didn't let go of the tourniquet.
Hu knows, intellectually, that Cheung would have lost his right leg anyhow. He knows he shouldn't blame himself, that the damage was too severe, that it doesn't matter that he might have been able to hold the tourniquet a fraction more tightly if he hadn't made a wrong choice and ruined his hands first. He knows he isn't responsible for that, knows that even if he was, the blood Yinsen pulled from his veins later to keep Cheung alive negates the blame, should negate the blame. He knows, and still--
Cheung's eyes are sharp. It's a few months after the cave when he notices the scars on Hu's hands don't look like the burn scars he carries elsewhere on his body. He lets it go, thinks if he asks that the other words sticking in his throat might come out instead: I wasn't fast enough to save you both.
In the cave, Jin asks Yinsen, "What did you do to me?" He thinks, You should have saved Cheung's legs instead. He doesn't insult Yinsen by saying it, the man is a doctor, and they have all made choices. He was closer to Cheung when the missile hit, and instead he reached for Hu. Cheung's the oldest, he's always done everything first; Jin thought, if they were going to die, let it happen in the right order. He swallows his guilt along with the revolting mineral shakes and tells himself it's only fair.
The Weis don't talk about Afghanistan, even with each other.
