Chapter 57: A Life for a Life (1)
Damian’s POV
“Given by father, taught by mother. Still I don’t know how a name truly defines oneself.”
— Damian Stark
“Next stretcher!”
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.
“What do we have?”
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.