The air in Ward C hung thick and still, smelling faintly of antiseptic trying, and failing, to mask something older, something metallic and sad. Light struggled through grimy window panes, slicing the dimness into bars that fell across rows of occupied beds. Each bed held a story, most of them edited down to groans and the rhythmic sigh of medical machinery. My story, today, was meant to be about Private Miller.
His name sat crisp and official on my assignment tablet: Pvt. R. Miller. Commendation for Valor. Sector Gamma Engagement. Objective: Capture spirit, resilience. They wanted soundbites for the newsfeeds, paragraphs for the morning reports. Another brick in the wall of curated courage we were building, far from the mud and the screams. I found him in the third bed on the left. He seemed swallowed by the regulation-thin blanket, the stark white bandages starker still against his pallor. The medal they'd pinned to his tunic, draped over a nearby chair, caught the weak light with an offensive shine. Too bright for this place. Too simple for the look in his eyes.
My recorder felt heavy and awkward in my hand, a tool for catching lies or, worse, truths nobody wanted broadcast. The usual process kicked in, the detached part of me taking over, cataloging observations like a machine: Subject appears underweight, minor tremors in left hand, pupils dilated despite low ambient light. Monitor indicates elevated heart rate, shallow respiration. Textbook trauma response. Nothing the official narrative accounted for. My job was simple: press record, ask the questions, nod sympathetically, extract the approved version of bravery. Easy. Safe. A desperate, fluttering instinct craved the safety of that script.
But Miller spoke before I could even offer a pointless pleasantry. His voice was a dry rasp, barely louder than the drip feed beside his bed. "They told you I was brave?"
It wasn't the opening line I'd prepared for.
He wasn't looking at me, but at some point on the stained ceiling tiles. "Charging the nest. Saving the squad." The words sounded memorized, alien on his tongue. Then his gaze flickered towards me, sharp and sudden. "Was I?"
The air crackled. My careful detachment fractured. He wasn't reciting the story; he was questioning it. He leaned forward, a wince tightening his features. "I tripped," he whispered, the word landing like a stone in the quiet ward. "Over Jenkins. He… he wasn't moving. Then the noise… I just closed my eyes, sir. Pulled the trigger. Don't remember aiming. Just… screaming." He swallowed hard. "After. It was me screaming, I think."
My thumb hovered over the record button. This wasn't the spirit they wanted. This was the raw, ragged wound beneath the bandage. Shrapnel in the soul. An unwelcome warmth, a useless ache, started in my chest. The cold observer in me noted the confirmation of trauma indicators, filing them away. But raw panic surged, a voice screaming abort mission, get out, danger close!
"They gave me this," Miller gestured vaguely towards the gleaming medal on the chair. "Said I made sense of the chaos. But it doesn't make sense to me." His eyes, finally meeting mine fully, were desperate, drowning. "You… you write the stories, right? The ones that make it make sense?" He searched my face, not for a journalist, but for something else. An interpreter. A liar, maybe. A better one than himself. "Tell me," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "Tell me the story. The right story. Make sense of this."
The recorder felt colder now, heavier. A weapon aimed the wrong way. The official narrative lay dead on the floor between us, riddled with the holes of his quiet confession. The story they needed versus the broken truth he offered. My own thoughts fractured: Reassure. Redirect. Record approved excerpts only. But another impulse screamed: Flee. Just run.
But his eyes held me captive. Asking the storyteller – asking me, the weaver of words – to spin a tale that could either save him or damn him.
What damned story do I weave now?
The silence stretches, thin and fragile as old gauze. Miller's eyes, fixed on mine, are abysses demanding an answer, a narrative life raft. My thumb still hovers over the cold plastic of the recorder. The script, the safe, pre-approved story of Private Miller, Hero of Sector Gamma, feels like a useless, mocking weight in my pocket.
My own breath catches. Pathetic. The internal calculations ran themselves: Subject seeking validation/meaning beyond official commendation. Trauma prevents self-acceptance of heroic narrative. Requires alternative framework. Risk of emotional contagion: High. Risk of deviating from assignment: Critical.
Lie! Just give him the approved lie! The panicked thought screeched. It's kinder! It's safer!
But the ache in my chest pushed back. He deserves something real. Something he can hold onto.
Reason cut through the noise, cold and detached. Neither extreme serves the objective. Synthesize a bridging narrative.
Slowly, deliberately, I lower the recorder, letting it rest against my leg. It's a small gesture, but it feels momentous, like stepping off a marked path into fog.
"Brave?" I echo his question, my voice quieter than intended, rough around the edges. "War isn't simple, Miller. It's… messy." I meet his gaze, trying to hold it steady despite the tremor running through my hands. "It chews people up and spits them out. Sometimes facing forward, sometimes sideways. Sometimes just… spitting them out."
He watches me, suspicion warring with hope in his eyes.
"You tripped," I say, keeping my voice level, factual – a tone the calculating part approved. Not an accusation, just a statement. "Over Jenkins. In the middle of… hell. Anyone would trip. Anyone might close their eyes when the world explodes." I pause, letting the words hang in the antiseptic air. "But you pulled the trigger. You fired. In that noise, that chaos… you acted."
Miller's breathing hitches. A flicker of something – confusion? Denial? – crosses his face.
"Maybe it wasn't like the stories they write," I continue, leaning slightly closer, lowering my voice further, making it just for him, trying for a tone that might soothe rather than incite. "Maybe it wasn't a perfect charge under a waving flag. Maybe it was blind. Maybe it was terrified." I see a muscle jump in his jaw. "But you were there. You had the weapon. And when everything was screaming, you screamed back with fire. Maybe you saved them by accident. Maybe you saved them because, even blind, even terrified, some part of you fought back instead of collapsing."
It's a story. Not the story they want, but a story. Woven from threads of his truth and the cold logic of survival. Simple words. No heroes, just… endurance.
"I…" Miller starts, then stops. He looks down at his bandaged hands resting on the thin blanket. The tension in his shoulders seems to lessen, just a fraction. He doesn't look comforted, not exactly. He looks… thoughtful. Like he's turning over a strange object, examining its facets. "Screamed back," he murmurs, almost too low to hear.
The rhythmic squeak of crepe soles announces an approaching nurse before she appears at the foot of the bed. She glances at Miller, then at me, her expression professionally neutral but with a hint of weariness. "Visiting time is nearly over," she says, her voice calm but firm. She adjusts Miller's drip feed with practiced efficiency.
The interruption breaks the spell. Reality, with its schedules and routines, reasserts itself. I stand up, the recorder feeling alien in my hand again. Did I record any of that? A quick internal check confirmed – no audio logged. Good. Or bad? The impulse to flee surged again, urging me towards the door.
"Get some rest, Miller," I say, falling back on standard platitudes. It feels hollow now.
He looks up at me one last time. His eyes are still haunted, but the raw desperation has receded slightly, replaced by a deep, weary contemplation. He gives a small, almost imperceptible nod.
I turn and walk away, the squeak of my own boots echoing the nurse's down the quiet corridor. The official story remains uncaptured. The recorder is empty of useful soundbites. The part of me already anticipating the fallout calculated the gymnastics required for the field report – vague summaries, perhaps focus on the medal ceremony instead of the recipient. The analytical part filed away Miller's reactions, the subtle shifts in expression, cataloging the effectiveness of the improvised narrative.
But the feeling remained – that dull ache, the weight of the story I told, and the heavier weight of the one I didn't get. I step out into the weak sunlight, the assignment tablet feeling heavier than before. I'd gone in to capture a hero narrative. Instead, I'd spun a different kind of tale, a desperate patch for a broken soldier, right there on the edge of the abyss.
And I have absolutely nothing usable for the Colonel. The simple words I needed for him are still unwritten. The lies feel harder to summon now, tainted by the fragile truth I glimpsed in Miller's eyes. This is bad. The logical assessment was undeniable: Situation negative. Deviation from protocol necessitates intricate damage control. The fear just trembled. Terrifyingly bad.