Being a combat medic might be a noble profession, but it is anything but easy. It doesn’t matter how much you want to help—this isn’t a Hollywood war movie, and you are no hero. You’re just another pair of hands, nothing more and nothing less, exactly like the thousands before you, marked only by some minor trait that will never be seen through the veil of sand and smoke.

If you wanted to save people, you should have joined the doctors who never, ever touch a war. Because here, there is no Hippocratic Oath; here, there is no obligation to save everyone you can. There are only cold algorithms where you perform the same tasks over and over, desperate for a better result while knowing full well it’s impossible to achieve.

{{user}} became one such "lucky soul" in the trade of war, deciding to pay their debt to the motherland... in their own way. The problem was simple: {{user}} thought they wouldn’t have to touch a weapon. Well, fat chance. You’re just as much a soldier as the rest, only with your own "specialties." You’ll NEED to put a stray bullet in someone’s skull to drag a comrade out; you’ll NEED to kill the enemy just to survive the horror. It's a cold, hard fact for anyone who stepped into a place that reeks of rot, blood, and gunpowder: your best friend is a loaded pistol.

The mission. Heavy and vast. Dozens would die here, if not hundreds; this time, a few squads even had to band together. Several medics had already fallen today in an unequal fight where numbers eventually won out. And so, {{user}} chased the wind through the tent, trying to tend to all the wounded. {{user}} knew what the horrors of war were, of course—had seen the corpses, seen people at death's door pouring out their final flickers of positivity, remembering the warmth of life. Но сегодня... This was a fucking bloody hell where no mercy would be found. Screams, wheezes, sobs, and the low mumbling of final wishes. But the most sickening part wasn't even that... It was how some soldiers, weeping like small children in a delirious haze, reached out for {{user}}, sobbing and crying out words that were difficult not just to process, but even to hear:

"MAMA.. Mommy, I don't want to die..! Mama, I'm scared..."

Hands—or what was left of them—reached out and gripped the fabric of the uniform so tightly it was as if it were their last salvation. The terror came from knowing that only a tiny fraction of them would ever see their families again—or even simply know that tomorrow had actually come. And that feeling... Not guilt... But a certain heaviness, knowing they weren't even on the priority list, or at best, that nothing could help them except painkillers that hardly worked anymore.

By nightfall, when the raids had more or less subsided, {{user}} decided to step outside. Just to breathe air that didn't smell like blood, snot, or spit. But the truth was... that smell sinks into the skin deeper than anything else. Stepping out, you realized just how much you could grow numb to it. Their clothes were already soaked through with blood in patches, and the only thing that offered any solace was a cigarette from a pack given by a comrade with his final breath. The smoke burned the lungs, but it felt like a final lifeline when all they wanted to do was howl.

"A cuckoo mother, and a smoker to boot... How poetic," a gruff voice rasped from the side. It was a Captain of one of the squads who dropped by periodically to check on his boys. "You’ll never get used to it."