Something I wrote. Looking for feed back
A deep rumble signalled the falling of another shell as it went about its business of carelessly spreading disarray, dismay and destruction amongst the streets. The deafening blast could only be silenced by the eruption of two of its brothers, each closer and louder than the last. The sound was not unlike that of a giant door being rapped upon by a monstrous fist. But sadly no door existed and the only knocker was death.
It was ironic, really. A few weeks ago you would have come to see him, so that he could treat you, make you better. He was a well-respected man, one you would see in the street, wave to. People wanted to stop and talk to him and would regularly compliment him on his appearance, his manner, and his pleasant smile would earn him one in return.
Comparative to the rest of the city of Grozny the car he drove was one of luxury, his house was one of sophistication, his job was one of glamour and the company he kept were of equal social standing, though no one would ever say he looked down on those who were less fortunate than him. In fact he had acquired a reputation as a well-known philanthropist hosting fundraising parties with his affluent friends one week and then working in a soup kitchen the next.
This had been the life of Doctor Alexei Rascalov, a man that was formally a senior medic at Grozny’s First Maternity Hospital: a dynamic, charismatic and, openly, arrogant upstart that had been tipped for big things. He had just received his first bit of international recognition after having one of his papers published in the British Medical Journal and was rocketing his way towards youngest chief of surgery in the hospital’s history. I was one of the lucky ones to call myself his friend from the war
But war changes everything. Now to look at him you wouldn’t guess he had come from one of the prosperous families in Chechnya and had attended Stamford Medical school in America. Now standing there was a phantom of the man I once knew. Now before you stood a man destroyed.
His expensive suits had been replaced by a grubby jackets, tattered jeans and filthy boots. All of this was hemmed in by the man’s one life line, his body armour.
His black hair, usually combed and neat had become a tangled mess that appeared to have been dumped on top of his head, mud soaked streaks fell across his eyes. A layer of dust, dirt and dried blood had made his face its home over the past weeks. This did nothing to spare him the discomfort, pain or infection from the several cuts and grazes he had received in the field. His usually clean-shaven face had become wild; a tangled muzzle had sprung from his skin matted with sweat, blood and God knows what else.
He had always been a handsome man, something which he was all too aware of. He had a string of lovers to warm his bed over the years I had known him and his appearance had been something of pride for him. But now his face would more like to cause women to run in terror than for them to melt before his gaze. His once soft, friendly features had become gaunt. His skin had changed from subtle tan to a pale pallor similar in hue and texture to candle wax. His teeth had yellowed and his eyes had become sunken with dark purple rings under them
But it was the eyes themselves where the most startling change had transpired. His deep blue eyes had been one of his key features, something that his vanity had always made him look twice at in the mirror. They had been able to capture an audience, impart confidence in the most nervous of patients and had been known to draw in women from across the room in a crowded bar.
Now though they were empty, lifeless, abandoned. The only sign of emotion that you could find in them now was one of desperation. His eyes had seen things beyond their years, more than they could comprehend.
They were the flag of my fallen friend.
Another shell hit the ground outside. I had stopped attempting to count how many it was now. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? This was the kind of fact that historians would debate for years after the war ended, detached from the reality of what each blast meant. I raised a shaking hand to my brow to sweep the sweat into my hair and out of my eyes.
My job had been the same as Dr Rascalov’s, though I could never claim his level of prestige, and I was never ashamed to admit that he had for several years now been my mentor. In fact I say it with pride. We had worked together ensuring the safety of women that were bringing children into the world; there was no greater joy than seeing the smile on their face when their eyes first met the tiny bundle of cloth that draped around their child. We were happy with this career, we were comfortable.
Now things were different. We were not safe, we were not secure. We rarely slept and, if we did, our dreams were haunted by the screams of the dying. Now we worked as surgeons on the frontline, everyday a battle with death and chaos. For every baby that we had brought into this world over our careers, we now had to witness ten men being taken away. Their cries, screams and kicks in their last breaths were hauntingly similar to that of their infant counterparts taking their first.
Nothing about war is nice and nothing about this war was just. I silently cursed our leaders, the men who had decided that we would wage a war against Russia once more, to throw the oppressors from our soils forever, turn them back like we had done four years ago.
This was what angered me the most about this war. We had already fought it, we had already suffered for it and we had already won it; once before we had driven the Russian infidels from our nation’s capital. We had beaten them on the streets of Grozny, out-fought them, kicked them from the borders of Chechnya and blasted them back into the hell that was the post-Soviet Russia!
We had already achieved an impossible task.
We overestimated our own might, we kept kicking and biting and goading them like a child would to his older brother with the knowledge his mother would keep him from harm
But this was no fraternal brawl and we didn’t pick on a child. This was a full-scale military empire! We were the youngster, the underdog and now we had become the foolish aggressors….
A shout went up from the hall. Another unfortunate soul was being dragged through to our “operating theatre”. Again a farce of an idea, in war there were no theatres of operation. We made do with bare rooms with a table in the middle. No sterilisation, no anaesthetic and no time for any kind words. A curtain in the door frame was luxury enough.
As I arrived in the room I saw that my “colleagues” had already restrained the patient, strapping his arms and legs with ropes, mainly for our protection more than his comfort. From the blood pools on the floor, the weak thrashes of the body on the table I used my medical knowledge to correctly guess that this man did not have long for this world. I washed my hands and put on latex gloves, my one true attempt at hygiene.
“This just isn’t fair,” muttered one of my orderlies, “he was…. a great man. I would have rather taken his place…”
I turned and could barely control my cynicism; a harsh burst of laughter only just caught in my throat which would otherwise have been directed at my colleague’s naivety; he was a soldier of only eighteen, foolish and clearly easily spooked. He would have seen his fair share of horrors but clearly not enough to learn my jaded detached view of the war. In war you had to be tough, you had to separate yourself from the pain and suffering or else you would lose yourself to it. Instead of repeating this ideology yet again, I focused on my work and turned toward the patient.
A pathetic whimper escaped my lip which, unlike my laughter, was unstoppable.
Alexei lay on my table, a gaping hole in his chest cavity, his beating heart visible, working in vain, each pump hurling more blood across the floor leaving none to drive his body. I would find out later that he had been picked off through the ruthless scope of a Russian sniper rifle as he had crossed a street to aid a small family who had been horribly injured during the relentless shelling of the city. As he had tended to eldest son, the only one of the five who could be saved, the bullet found its mark. It struck him in the back tearing through flesh, tissue and bone as it bore through him. As the bullet exited, his chest had exploded and the bullet continued indiscriminately putting the child out of his misery as well.
After the First World War the Geneva Convention had put in action laws making it illegal to kill a military doctor as long as they carried no weapons and wore the red cross emblem internationally affiliated with our profession.
But this did not stop the bastards aiming for us. Alexei once told me that during the invasion of Iwo Jima it was said that for every medic that the Japanese killed, it would mean the death of ten U.S. Marines. In Grozny doctors were in short supply and the loss of just one could mean that a hundred soldiers and countless civilians would go without proper treatment and either die or become such a burden on our resources that we would wish death upon them.
This meant the red cross that should have been our shield had become our death sentence, with more and more of us falling each day many had even taken to cowardly carrying Kalashnikovs, myself included. Alexei had been different though.
He took pride in the fact that he saved lives and refused to kill on principle. I remembered a time only a few weeks ago where we had been stuck in a trench awaiting the approaching Russian infantry. Our friends all around us were dead or dying. I picked up the rifle next to me with vengeance in my heart and took aim…. But Alexei stopped me before I could fire. “Remember your oath, friend”. His eyes bore into me searching for the goodness he was confident was still there. And with that I put the rifle down, ashamed of myself and followed him into the shadows away from the coming onslaught.
He had saved me from myself, now it was my turn to save him but I knew there was nothing I could do.
I walked slowly to him, begging this not to be real, each step feeling like a lifetime. His eyes caught mine, what life they had in them was quickly ebbing away but instead of the despondency I had become accustomed to seeing, now I found the typical warmth instilled back in them. He knew better than I that his time was almost over, he was close to peace.
As tears formed at the corners of my eyes, his mouth curled into a smile and his hand motioned weakly. I shouted for his arm to be released. I held his hand, his fingers entwined feebly with mine. His lips moved, I leaned in close to hear his dying words.
Only a gurgle was emitted, his last impartment of wisdom obscured by the blood filling his lungs and throat.
His hand lost all strength and became heavy. His compassionate heart laid itself to rest. His eyes, emptier now than ever, stared into nothingness but the trace of his last smile still visible on his lips. Ironically, Dr Alexei Rascalov was the only man that could have saved himself….
My white-hot fury at the loss of this great man all escaped in one desperate and uncontrollable sob. I kicked out. I smashed the table of surgical equipment against the wall, scattering the tools across the floor. I lifted the table and threw it through the door way into the hall. I pulled the curtain from the door frame and bundled it. All hollow attempts to vent my frenzy.
I fell to the floor when all my anger drained from me replaced only by grief. Staring gauntly at the table where my finest friend’s corpse now lay, the warmth escaping from his body; a physical representation of his life force. His one free arm hung limply where I had let it go, a thin trickle of blood ran down it dripping from his fingers into a small puddle inches from my feet.
My eyes stared at the growing pool, looking but not seeing it. I could not tell you how long I sat there for. It could have been minutes or hours. My orderlies placed a sheet respectfully over the table before wheeling it out. A woman came in with a mop and bucket and cleaned away any trace that this was where my friend had breathed his last breathe, thought his last thought and smiled his last comforting smile. Eventually my orderlies returned asking if I was ok, asking for my help with a new patient, telling me to stand up and help with this and that, ordering me to move out of the way as they wheeled in the next lamentable lamb who had faced the slaughter outside and would later be anonymously laid to rest in the cold ground outside.
But to all of this I was blind.
Throughout all of this I sat gaping at nothing. My eyes had run dry and the ghosts of tears had marked their journey in the crusted dirt on my face.
To this day I do not recall first standing; I do not recollect the long walk to the janitor’s closet which had become my make-shift office. I do not remember unlocking my top desk drawer or withdrawing my revolver from the back of it. But I could never forget the cold steel on my tongue as I placed it in my mouth.
That bitter feeling was what stirred me from my waking coma. My last thoughts had been with Alexei and the raw touch of the pistol in my mouth so juxtaposed the fiery glow that had been his life I knew this was not what he would have wanted.
For the second time in my life I put down a gun due to the distraught embarrassment at what my greatest compatriot would have thought of me. I knew that I would never be the same as I had been before the events of that morning, but I realised that I had to endure as he endured, to bare the misery as he had done for so long and to fight on without fighting. Despite losing everything he cherished Alexei had not allowed the war to take him from himself.
This was the day I lost my war. Chechnya lost theirs two months later.
It was ironic, really. A few weeks ago you would have come to see him, so that he could treat you, make you better. He was a well-respected man, one you would see in the street, wave to. People wanted to stop and talk to him and would regularly compliment him on his appearance, his manner, and his pleasant smile would earn him one in return.
Comparative to the rest of the city of Grozny the car he drove was one of luxury, his house was one of sophistication, his job was one of glamour and the company he kept were of equal social standing, though no one would ever say he looked down on those who were less fortunate than him. In fact he had acquired a reputation as a well-known philanthropist hosting fundraising parties with his affluent friends one week and then working in a soup kitchen the next.
This had been the life of Doctor Alexei Rascalov, a man that was formally a senior medic at Grozny’s First Maternity Hospital: a dynamic, charismatic and, openly, arrogant upstart that had been tipped for big things. He had just received his first bit of international recognition after having one of his papers published in the British Medical Journal and was rocketing his way towards youngest chief of surgery in the hospital’s history. I was one of the lucky ones to call myself his friend from the war
But war changes everything. Now to look at him you wouldn’t guess he had come from one of the prosperous families in Chechnya and had attended Stamford Medical school in America. Now standing there was a phantom of the man I once knew. Now before you stood a man destroyed.
His expensive suits had been replaced by a grubby jackets, tattered jeans and filthy boots. All of this was hemmed in by the man’s one life line, his body armour.
His black hair, usually combed and neat had become a tangled mess that appeared to have been dumped on top of his head, mud soaked streaks fell across his eyes. A layer of dust, dirt and dried blood had made his face its home over the past weeks. This did nothing to spare him the discomfort, pain or infection from the several cuts and grazes he had received in the field. His usually clean-shaven face had become wild; a tangled muzzle had sprung from his skin matted with sweat, blood and God knows what else.
He had always been a handsome man, something which he was all too aware of. He had a string of lovers to warm his bed over the years I had known him and his appearance had been something of pride for him. But now his face would more like to cause women to run in terror than for them to melt before his gaze. His once soft, friendly features had become gaunt. His skin had changed from subtle tan to a pale pallor similar in hue and texture to candle wax. His teeth had yellowed and his eyes had become sunken with dark purple rings under them
But it was the eyes themselves where the most startling change had transpired. His deep blue eyes had been one of his key features, something that his vanity had always made him look twice at in the mirror. They had been able to capture an audience, impart confidence in the most nervous of patients and had been known to draw in women from across the room in a crowded bar.
Now though they were empty, lifeless, abandoned. The only sign of emotion that you could find in them now was one of desperation. His eyes had seen things beyond their years, more than they could comprehend.
They were the flag of my fallen friend.
Another shell hit the ground outside. I had stopped attempting to count how many it was now. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands? This was the kind of fact that historians would debate for years after the war ended, detached from the reality of what each blast meant. I raised a shaking hand to my brow to sweep the sweat into my hair and out of my eyes.
My job had been the same as Dr Rascalov’s, though I could never claim his level of prestige, and I was never ashamed to admit that he had for several years now been my mentor. In fact I say it with pride. We had worked together ensuring the safety of women that were bringing children into the world; there was no greater joy than seeing the smile on their face when their eyes first met the tiny bundle of cloth that draped around their child. We were happy with this career, we were comfortable.
Now things were different. We were not safe, we were not secure. We rarely slept and, if we did, our dreams were haunted by the screams of the dying. Now we worked as surgeons on the frontline, everyday a battle with death and chaos. For every baby that we had brought into this world over our careers, we now had to witness ten men being taken away. Their cries, screams and kicks in their last breaths were hauntingly similar to that of their infant counterparts taking their first.
Nothing about war is nice and nothing about this war was just. I silently cursed our leaders, the men who had decided that we would wage a war against Russia once more, to throw the oppressors from our soils forever, turn them back like we had done four years ago.
This was what angered me the most about this war. We had already fought it, we had already suffered for it and we had already won it; once before we had driven the Russian infidels from our nation’s capital. We had beaten them on the streets of Grozny, out-fought them, kicked them from the borders of Chechnya and blasted them back into the hell that was the post-Soviet Russia!
We had already achieved an impossible task.
We overestimated our own might, we kept kicking and biting and goading them like a child would to his older brother with the knowledge his mother would keep him from harm
But this was no fraternal brawl and we didn’t pick on a child. This was a full-scale military empire! We were the youngster, the underdog and now we had become the foolish aggressors….
A shout went up from the hall. Another unfortunate soul was being dragged through to our “operating theatre”. Again a farce of an idea, in war there were no theatres of operation. We made do with bare rooms with a table in the middle. No sterilisation, no anaesthetic and no time for any kind words. A curtain in the door frame was luxury enough.
As I arrived in the room I saw that my “colleagues” had already restrained the patient, strapping his arms and legs with ropes, mainly for our protection more than his comfort. From the blood pools on the floor, the weak thrashes of the body on the table I used my medical knowledge to correctly guess that this man did not have long for this world. I washed my hands and put on latex gloves, my one true attempt at hygiene.
“This just isn’t fair,” muttered one of my orderlies, “he was…. a great man. I would have rather taken his place…”
I turned and could barely control my cynicism; a harsh burst of laughter only just caught in my throat which would otherwise have been directed at my colleague’s naivety; he was a soldier of only eighteen, foolish and clearly easily spooked. He would have seen his fair share of horrors but clearly not enough to learn my jaded detached view of the war. In war you had to be tough, you had to separate yourself from the pain and suffering or else you would lose yourself to it. Instead of repeating this ideology yet again, I focused on my work and turned toward the patient.
A pathetic whimper escaped my lip which, unlike my laughter, was unstoppable.
Alexei lay on my table, a gaping hole in his chest cavity, his beating heart visible, working in vain, each pump hurling more blood across the floor leaving none to drive his body. I would find out later that he had been picked off through the ruthless scope of a Russian sniper rifle as he had crossed a street to aid a small family who had been horribly injured during the relentless shelling of the city. As he had tended to eldest son, the only one of the five who could be saved, the bullet found its mark. It struck him in the back tearing through flesh, tissue and bone as it bore through him. As the bullet exited, his chest had exploded and the bullet continued indiscriminately putting the child out of his misery as well.
After the First World War the Geneva Convention had put in action laws making it illegal to kill a military doctor as long as they carried no weapons and wore the red cross emblem internationally affiliated with our profession.
But this did not stop the bastards aiming for us. Alexei once told me that during the invasion of Iwo Jima it was said that for every medic that the Japanese killed, it would mean the death of ten U.S. Marines. In Grozny doctors were in short supply and the loss of just one could mean that a hundred soldiers and countless civilians would go without proper treatment and either die or become such a burden on our resources that we would wish death upon them.
This meant the red cross that should have been our shield had become our death sentence, with more and more of us falling each day many had even taken to cowardly carrying Kalashnikovs, myself included. Alexei had been different though.
He took pride in the fact that he saved lives and refused to kill on principle. I remembered a time only a few weeks ago where we had been stuck in a trench awaiting the approaching Russian infantry. Our friends all around us were dead or dying. I picked up the rifle next to me with vengeance in my heart and took aim…. But Alexei stopped me before I could fire. “Remember your oath, friend”. His eyes bore into me searching for the goodness he was confident was still there. And with that I put the rifle down, ashamed of myself and followed him into the shadows away from the coming onslaught.
He had saved me from myself, now it was my turn to save him but I knew there was nothing I could do.
I walked slowly to him, begging this not to be real, each step feeling like a lifetime. His eyes caught mine, what life they had in them was quickly ebbing away but instead of the despondency I had become accustomed to seeing, now I found the typical warmth instilled back in them. He knew better than I that his time was almost over, he was close to peace.
As tears formed at the corners of my eyes, his mouth curled into a smile and his hand motioned weakly. I shouted for his arm to be released. I held his hand, his fingers entwined feebly with mine. His lips moved, I leaned in close to hear his dying words.
Only a gurgle was emitted, his last impartment of wisdom obscured by the blood filling his lungs and throat.
His hand lost all strength and became heavy. His compassionate heart laid itself to rest. His eyes, emptier now than ever, stared into nothingness but the trace of his last smile still visible on his lips. Ironically, Dr Alexei Rascalov was the only man that could have saved himself….
My white-hot fury at the loss of this great man all escaped in one desperate and uncontrollable sob. I kicked out. I smashed the table of surgical equipment against the wall, scattering the tools across the floor. I lifted the table and threw it through the door way into the hall. I pulled the curtain from the door frame and bundled it. All hollow attempts to vent my frenzy.
I fell to the floor when all my anger drained from me replaced only by grief. Staring gauntly at the table where my finest friend’s corpse now lay, the warmth escaping from his body; a physical representation of his life force. His one free arm hung limply where I had let it go, a thin trickle of blood ran down it dripping from his fingers into a small puddle inches from my feet.
My eyes stared at the growing pool, looking but not seeing it. I could not tell you how long I sat there for. It could have been minutes or hours. My orderlies placed a sheet respectfully over the table before wheeling it out. A woman came in with a mop and bucket and cleaned away any trace that this was where my friend had breathed his last breathe, thought his last thought and smiled his last comforting smile. Eventually my orderlies returned asking if I was ok, asking for my help with a new patient, telling me to stand up and help with this and that, ordering me to move out of the way as they wheeled in the next lamentable lamb who had faced the slaughter outside and would later be anonymously laid to rest in the cold ground outside.
But to all of this I was blind.
Throughout all of this I sat gaping at nothing. My eyes had run dry and the ghosts of tears had marked their journey in the crusted dirt on my face.
To this day I do not recall first standing; I do not recollect the long walk to the janitor’s closet which had become my make-shift office. I do not remember unlocking my top desk drawer or withdrawing my revolver from the back of it. But I could never forget the cold steel on my tongue as I placed it in my mouth.
That bitter feeling was what stirred me from my waking coma. My last thoughts had been with Alexei and the raw touch of the pistol in my mouth so juxtaposed the fiery glow that had been his life I knew this was not what he would have wanted.
For the second time in my life I put down a gun due to the distraught embarrassment at what my greatest compatriot would have thought of me. I knew that I would never be the same as I had been before the events of that morning, but I realised that I had to endure as he endured, to bare the misery as he had done for so long and to fight on without fighting. Despite losing everything he cherished Alexei had not allowed the war to take him from himself.
This was the day I lost my war. Chechnya lost theirs two months later.
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