The sharp, acrid smell of antiseptic, etched deep into the hospital walls, mingled with the faint, almost ghostly scent of cornflowers that stood in a simple glass by the bed — as if someone had tried to let a fragment of living, untouched nature slip into this sterile, soulless space.

The soft, rhythmic beeping of the monitor measured time between thoughts, and the IV line, like a second hand, counted out the pulse of life — drop by drop seeping into a vein. The thin tube scratched the skin at the bend of your elbow, a pulsing thread reminding you that the fragile balance had been broken, that somewhere, somehow, you had messed up.

The door opened soundlessly, and he entered. The dark uniform — always immaculate — the habitual, rigid posture that betrayed a commander. He brought something more than the simple bouquet of cornflowers, neatly tied with a ribbon — humble, unpretentious, like field-born hopes; in his other hand, a small bag with fruit, pastries — the kind you like — but his gaze was heavier than all those gifts, piercing straight through you.

“How are you?” — his voice was quiet, almost indistinguishable from a whisper, but it didn’t ring — it cut, sharp and burning, laced with guilt and something darker, almost fear, barely restrained.

“You’re impossible, you know that?”

His words, like shards of fine glass, cut into your exhausted consciousness. You couldn’t see — only feel — how the familiar stubbornness coiled faintly within, but there wasn’t enough strength left to resist, even that way; your body was too heavy a burden. You only closed your eyes, drawing a deep, painful breath through clenched teeth, tried to turn away — but even that movement echoed with a dull ache spreading through your ribs, your whole battered being — and you froze, quietly staring at the ceiling, where the pale light reflected faintly.

He’s scolding you.

A rough, weathered sigh escaped his chest — like wind passing through burned-out fields. In that voice, rasped raw by invisible dust of long-gone deserts, he murmured — or rather, exhaled — through his teeth:

“You were supposed to wait. You were damn well supposed to wait.”

You said nothing in return. Price, whose movements were slow and heavy, like a man carrying an unbearable weight of guilt, sank into the chair beside you, elbows resting on his knees — as if trying to hide from himself, from that searing shame that gnawed at his insides.

He couldn’t have acted so recklessly. Impossible.

“Two hundred, you understand?” He ran a hand down his face, wiping away exhaustion — and with it, trying to erase the vision of that one second. “I didn’t see when it happened.”

He couldn’t understand how he’d made such a foolish mistake — he’d been in the field too long to allow it. Everything he’d taught others, he betrayed in that single moment when he was supposed to stay sharp. Shame devoured him from within — not because he’d missed, but because he’d failed you. The one who had looked at him expecting precision, professionalism.

“After all this, you’re here. And I come with flowers, as if that’s all I can do.” His lips twisted into a short, cracked smile — almost soundless — but within it throbbed such a bottomless bitterness of self-reproach that even words suffocated in it. “A hero. The great bloody hero.”

And then, slowly, with effort, you finally turned — your gaze, once fixed on the pale void of the ceiling, slid toward him. Your face still looked fragile, translucent like porcelain, faintly shadowed, and on your parched, cracked lips — whispering faintly — lay the trace of unbearable pain. In that half-whisper, in those words that seemed to cost you the last fragments of strength, there was no reproach, but a strange kind of gratitude — for simply being alive at all.

“Don’t blame yourself. We’re both at fault.”

Everything was still as serious, still demanded care and attention — yet now, between you, hung a nearly weightless sense of mutual understanding. Both were guilty — but never just one of you.

“That doesn’t make it easier.”

Your head lifted slightly from the pillow, each millimeter of motion resonating with phantom pain rippling through your temples — yet your gaze, wet and piercing, didn’t waver.

“And it shouldn’t,” — through the suddenly thickened silence, it escaped your lips. Your voice trembled, laying bare its fragility, but not a hint of pity lingered in those words — only an exhausted, almost dispassionate statement:

“It’s simply an undeniable fact.”

His gaze, once tense and sharp — as though pushing against an invisible wall — suddenly dropped, fixing on the floor. He was thinking. In that cold, unflinching statement lay infinitely more naked truth than in all the tangled excuses he’d been desperately weaving in his mind over the unbearably long hours before.

You, in turn, kept watching him — watching the striking dissonance tearing his usual image apart. Before you stood not the John Price you knew — whose orders were absolute, not the stern but endlessly kind commander whose voice never trembled, whose hand always, by instinct, offered a cigarette after every mission.

Now he appeared different. Ashamed, and guilty.

“You can’t be responsible for everything, John,” — you said quietly. The pause that followed hung heavy with unspoken things.

You had never — not once — seen him like this. And perhaps because of that, it suddenly became a little easier to breathe. Almost imperceptibly, a weight lifted from your chest. After all, he was a good commander. And a partner.

“It’s easier for me,” he said softly, “when there’s something to answer for.”