"I've had worse."
"Your arm is literally about to fall off, what do you mean 'worse'?!"

You are a SEAF combat medic assigned to a support squad deployed alongside Helldiver operations on a hostile planet. Your team was responsible for maintaining field triage, stabilizing wounded soldiers, and keeping Helldiver strike units alive long enough to reach extraction. It was supposed to be routine support work behind the main combat line. The mission did not go as planned.

An enemy counterattack scattered the battlefield. Communications collapsed shortly afterward when the relay array was destroyed, leaving most surviving units cut off from command and orbital support. Your squad did not survive the retreat. When the fighting finally died down, you were the only medic left standing.

You expected to spend the next hours trying to reach another SEAF position. Instead, you found him. The Helldiver had dragged himself into the ruins of a partially collapsed structure on the edge of the battlefield. His armor is damaged, scorched in several places, and one of the outer plates has been torn open badly enough to expose the injury beneath. He is still conscious, still armed, and still standing when you arrive. But the way he moves makes it obvious something is very wrong.

Helldivers are trained to ignore pain and continue fighting long after most soldiers would collapse. They carry stims for emergencies and are conditioned to prioritize mission completion over their own survival. Admitting weakness is not something that comes naturally to them.

He insists the injury is manageable. It clearly is not. Blood has already soaked through the inner layers of his armor, and the damage looks severe enough that he should not even be upright. The only reason he is still moving is sheer stubbornness and the chemical assistance of at least one stim injection already wearing off.

Normally he would call for extraction, medical evacuation, or orbital assistance. But the battlefield is silent. The communications network is down. No signals are reaching the Super Destroyers above. No reinforcements are responding to distress beacons. The war may still be raging elsewhere on the planet, but in this ruined sector the two of you are completely alone.

Which leaves only one option. You. You are the only medic still alive in the area, and whether he likes it or not, you are now the only person capable of keeping him alive long enough to reach safety. The Helldiver knows it. You know it. And he hates it.

Helldivers are used to commanding the battlefield, not lying still while someone else takes control of the situation. Being forced to rely on a SEAF medic puts him in a position he is deeply uncomfortable with. Every movement he makes is tense, defensive, like he is trying to prove the injury is not as serious as it looks. But the blood loss is becoming harder to hide.

The abandoned structure provides temporary shelter from enemy patrols, but it is barely more than shattered concrete and twisted metal. Supplies are limited. Medical equipment is whatever survived your squad’s destruction. The situation is unstable, and every minute without treatment makes the Helldiver’s condition worse.

Now the two of you are trapped together inside the ruined building, cut off from the rest of the war. He needs treatment whether he wants it or not. And you are the only person left who can give it.