**Prologue**
The bunk beneath me wasn't just hard—it hated my spine. The mattress, clumped into knots, felt like a sack of rotten potatoes, and the springs dug into my ribs with the persistence of debt collectors. But I didn't care. My body felt like a battery drained to absolute zero and forgotten in a trash heap. It didn't just ache—it radiated a dull, leaden heaviness from the base of my skull to my heels.
I lay there, blankly staring at the ceiling. Amid the web of cracks in the cheap whitewash spread a yellow stain of dampness. It pulsed in rhythm with my migraine, like an old hematoma or a cancerous tumor gnawing through concrete.
Two surgeries. Just two in one shift. In the old days, that would've been a warm-up. Now I felt as if I'd unloaded a coal car by myself. Not with a shovel—with my teeth.
The first was an amputation. A lieutenant, barely a kid, milk still on his lips. Stepped on a "petal" mine. Or something worse, judging by the fact that only bloody mince was left of his foot. I remember the sound. The shriek of the saw biting into bone. That vile, high-pitched screech that makes your jaw clench even through earplugs and leaves a metallic taste of blood in your mouth.
I shaped the stump, stitched skin flaps, and one completely inappropriate, vicious thought hammered in my head: You're barely over twenty, kid. You haven't even really fucked a woman yet, and now you'll spend your life limping on a piece of plastic, listening to your prosthesis creak in the silence of an empty apartment.
The second was worse. Shrapnel to the abdomen. A dirty, treacherous wound.
Digging through someone else's guts, fishing out jagged chunks of hot metal, is no pleasure. The intestine was perforated in three places. The moment I opened the peritoneum, that nauseating, sweetish bouquet hit my nose—a mix of iron, serous fluid, and shit. The gloves slipped as if greased. The orderly Lena, pale as death, barely kept up blotting the black slurry with swabs. But I pulled him through. Patched him up, flushed everything, restarted the engine. He'll live. If sepsis doesn't eat him, lucky bastard.
I raised my hand to my face. The skin was dry, parchment-like, with yellowing ground into the pores. That smell—a cocktail of bleach, cheap alcohol, and something faintly cadaverous—no soap can wash it off. It had become my second skin.
I spread my fingers. They weren't shaking. Steady as poured concrete.
Fifty-five years old. For a surgeon, the golden age—experience multiplied by muscle memory. For a man at war—deep old age. Joints twist with the weather, the lower back begs for mercy, and sleepless nights leave bags under the eyes big enough to store potatoes.
For more than twenty years I've cut people open so they wouldn't die. My personal cemetery… it's already the size of a small district town. I don't remember their names—names fade into dry lines in reports. I remember only faces. The torn-open chest of that tanker near Grozny. The sniper with a shot-through neck. Sometimes, when I close my eyes, they line up before me in silence. They don't reproach me. They just look. Waiting for reinforcements.
"God, I'm so damn tired…" The whisper came out hoarse, scraping my throat.
I wanted to get up, rip off this cursed gown, hurl it into the corner, and scream. Scream until the capillaries burst in my eyes, until my own voice made my eardrums ring: Leave me alone! Enough! I want to go home—to my grandkids, to a warm fireplace and a fucking glass of cognac!
But I lay there. Teeth clenched so hard my jaw muscles ached. Who, if not me?
That phrase, worn down to nothing by jingoists, here—in the dirt and blood of a field hospital—weighed a ton. It pressed on my chest harder than a Kevlar vest. How could I betray myself?
My whole family is a damn dynasty. My great-grandfather patched up Cossacks back under the Tsar. My grandfather went through the Great Patriotic War, cutting in tents under bombings, when earth rained straight onto their heads. I was doomed to become a doctor. From childhood, the smell of carbolic acid was dearer to me than my mother's pies. The Military Medical Academy in Saint Petersburg… I remember the wind off the Neva, the granite, the swelling pride. The Union seemed like an eternal monolith, and I was an important cog in it. A "golden boy," top student, the department's great hope.
Then life kicked into afterburner. Hot spots… the first blood on my hands, the first sticky, animal fear when mines fell so close the scalpel bounced on the table. It burned everything unnecessary out of me, leaving only the function: cut and stitch. Then civilian life, a career, head of a department. Beautiful daughters, grandchildren… Live and be happy, old fool. Go fishing, teach the little one how to bait a hook.
But thunder struck. A new war. Vicious, incomprehensible. Drones, thermal imagers, and primal brutality.
When the draft notice came… I had all the trump cards. Connections, age, a bouquet of illnesses—any doctor on the commission would've happily written me off for a bottle of good whiskey. But something clicked inside. Maybe longing for real work? Or the addict's subconscious craving that same adrenaline hit? Or I just couldn't look in the mirror and see a well-fed pensioner while kids were choking on blood in trenches.
"Old idiot," I smirked, staring at the yellow stain on the ceiling. "Decided to play hero? Well, here you are. Happy now?"
The silence beyond the door trembled. And shattered.
The sound was quiet, but to my ear it was deafening, like a gunshot. Rushed footsteps. Heavy, ragged boots pounding on concrete.
I tensed, like a hound scenting game. My heart traitorously skipped, lost rhythm, then raced, driving thick blood faster. A short rest died before it began. I knew that cadence. You don't walk like that with paperwork. You don't run like that for lunch. That's how you run when Death is coming in.
The door flew open without a knock, the handle slamming into the wall, knocking loose plaster.
"Aleksandr Petrovich!" The nurse's voice rang on the edge of hysteria. Primitive panic in her eyes. "Urgently! There's… a bird just came in! Lots of criticals! Triage is drowning!"
I exhaled. Slowly, fighting gravity and the creak in every joint, I lowered my legs to the floor, scuffed my sole on the linoleum.
"I'm coming, Lena. I'm coming."
I stood, straightening my shoulders. The fatigue didn't vanish—it just crawled into the shadows, driven back by an iron kick of will. Somewhere out there, in admissions, torn human flesh was waiting for me to turn it back into people.
The corridor sank into half-light, emergency lamps flickering—somewhere a phase had blown. I walked fast, hiding my habitual limp, while Lena scurried beside me, barely keeping up. Her gown hung like a sack on her thin shoulders. I glanced sideways—very young, barely over twenty. She should be kissing in the back row of a movie theater, not dumping severed fingers into a bucket. But her gaze was sharp, determined.
"Details, Lena!" I barked, cutting off her rambling. "No snot! Clear and to the point!"
She gulped air, adjusting her askew cap as she ran. "The assault started three hours ago. Our guys went into the green zone—there's a fortified concrete area. They got hit hard. Vans are coming nonstop. Drivers say it's a meat grinder. It's very hot."
I ground my teeth. "Hot." I hate that word. Hot is when you're in Sochi with a beer. There—it's blood, smoke, guts on branches, and screams of "Mom."
"So, a conveyor," I said dryly. "They'll bring them all night. OR ready? Instruments sterilized?"
"Yes, everything sterile. The anesthesiologist is scrubbing."
"No sleep then," I muttered, pushing through the swinging door.
Bright shadowless lights and the smell of ozone hit my face.
"Alright. We work."
---
The operating room greeted us not with a smell, but a punch to the gut. That thick, sticky cocktail turns civilians inside out in seconds: sharp alcohol fumes, the sweet stench of fresh blood, and the nauseating reek of burnt flesh.
"First one!" I roared, pulling on gloves. The rubber sucked onto my fingers with a vile squelch.
Hell began. Time compressed into one endless, viscous nightmare. We stopped being doctors. We became mechanics in a butcher shop.
First—blast injury. No legs. From the shredded mess of the thigh jutted a sharp white bone, like a snapped birch branch. The tourniquet was so tight the skin had turned blue, threatening necrosis. "Clamp! Coagulator!" The smell of burnt human meat slammed into my nostrils, overpowering even bleach. I stitched, tied knots, shaped the stump, working on pure reflex. My hands remembered everything, outrunning consciousness. My brain turned into a flight computer: pressure dropping—add plasma—faster, damn it, faster.
Second—shrapnel to the neck. A fountain of arterial blood flooding the gurney. We didn't even have time to move him to the table. He jerked, tore free, killed himself. Gurgled, bubbling red foam, and was gone, staring at me with glassy, surprised eyes.
Third… Fourth… Faces merged into a single mask of pain.
On the fifth, the system failed. A kid, nineteen at most. Chest ripped open like a can, lung collapsed. We fought for him an hour. I pumped, stitched vessels, cursed so hard it felt like the plaster was falling into the wound. But the monitor betrayed us—one long, monotonous wail, like a horizon line he crossed. Flatline.
Lena froze. Her shoulders trembled. I saw a big tear break from her lashes and fall straight onto the sterile sheet covering the corpse.
"He's just… just a child…" she sobbed.
A cold, black wave of fury rose inside me. Not at her. At death. At this damn war. At my own helplessness.
"Cut the hysteria!" My voice lashed her like a slap. "Wipe your snot! This isn't a drama club! There's a line in the corridor— the living won't wait!"
She flinched, shrank, looked at me like a beaten puppy.
"Clear the body! Now!" I shouted, blood pounding in my temples. "Next one! Move!"
While the orderlies groaned, dragging the boy away, I leaned my back against the cold tile. My vision doubled. The lamps above the table blurred into dull, pulsing halos. I blinked, once, twice, trying to clear the grit from my eyes. My hands… I raised them, gloved brown with dried blood. Shaking? No—just a nasty little tremor of overstrain. I'm old. Damn old for this shit. My back burned, my legs felt filled with lead, as if weights were tied to my boots.
"Aleksandr Petrovich…" Lena's voice was quiet, guilty. "There's… a critical one. Very."
A new body was transferred onto the bloodstained table. A solid man, airborne trooper. His undershirt shredded to rags. And in his chest, just left of center, stuck a black, vicious chunk of metal. A mine fragment. Jagged, filthy. It went in at an angle, and I knew at once—the bastard was sitting right on the pericardium.
"God…" the anesthesiologist breathed, staring at the monitor. "Millimeters."
"I see," I answered dryly. Fatigue vanished instantly. Emotions shut off. Only cold, mathematical calculation remained.
I stepped closer. The fragment pulsed. It moved, vibrated in time with the heart. Thump. Thump. Each myocardial contraction rubbed against torn metal. One wrong move, one deep breath from the patient—and the sharp edge would open the ventricle. A bloody fountain would hit the ceiling, and we'd lose him in seconds.
"Retractor. And damn it, breathe every other time!" I ordered.
I took the clamp. A long, predatory Billroth. My fingers froze above the wound. The whole world narrowed to this piece of iron and the pink, living flesh trembling around it. I felt another man's life beating through the steel.
"Scalpel. Incising the fascia… a little more…"
Acrid sweat flooded my eyes, burned, ate at the mucosa, but I couldn't even blink. I hooked the fragment. It sat tight, like a tick in a dog's ear.
"Easy… easy, buddy…" I whispered without opening my teeth. "Don't you dare move. Not now."
I pulled. Millimeter by millimeter. Metal scraped against a rib—the sound was vile, like a knife on glass. The heart beneath it started beating faster, panicked.
"Steady! Pressure?!"
"Holding!"
A pull. Soft, measured, on the exhale. The fragment squelched, releasing a stream of dark venous blood, and came out. I lifted it up in the Billroth—an ugly, blood-soaked piece of death.
"Clink!"
That sound was music. The jagged metal hit the tray, putting a period on the symphony of pain.
I exhaled. Air left my lungs with a whistle, carrying away colossal tension. The pericardium was intact. The aorta pulsed evenly. We got him.
"Fuuuh…" the team exhaled together, like a huge balloon deflating.
I slowly straightened. My spine answered with a dry, vindictive crack. Pain shot through my lower back, black spots dancing before my eyes—but it was familiar, "home" pain. The price of work.
I pulled off my gloves. The latex squelched, reluctantly releasing sweat-soaked, white skin. I tossed the sticky lumps into the bin. Into the same place as pieces of someone's flesh, gauze, and the hopes of those unlucky today.
"He'll live," my voice sounded dull, like from a barrel. I rubbed the bridge of my nose, trying to clear the haze. "ICU. Watch the drainage—might bleed."
I stepped away from the table, feeling adrenaline wash out of my blood. Emptiness came in its place. Cottony, all-consuming gravity. My legs felt like чужие prosthetics.
"You're a wizard, Aleksandr Petrovich!" Lena looked at me over her mask, her eyes shining. There was so much puppyish awe, so much naive faith in miracles, it made me nauseous.
I crooked a smile. A wizard… Tell that to the ones we zipped into black bags this shift.
"Come on, Lena…" I pulled my mask down, greedily gulping cool, ozone-scented air. "Just experience and a bit of luck. Go write the charts. I'll… catch my breath."
I wanted to say "have a smoke." God, how I wanted to smoke. To drag bitter, caustic Java smoke into my lungs and burn that cloying metallic taste out of my throat.
I took a step toward the exit. And then the world broke.
Impact.
It wasn't pain. It was an assassination attempt. As if an invisible executioner swung and drove a red-hot crowbar straight into my sternum. Dead center. Deep. To the spine, nailing me in place.
"Kh—"
Instead of a breath, a pitiful, bubbling wheeze tore from my throat. My lungs turned to concrete. I opened my mouth like a fish thrown onto ice, but my diaphragm petrified. A steel hoop tightened, crushing my ribs from within.
A supernova exploded in my head. A hot wave slammed into the back of my skull, flooding consciousness with red.
"Infarction." The first thought was professional, cold, razor-sharp. A brain trained by years of diagnostics fired faster than self-preservation. "Massive. Transmural. Or PE. A clot broke loose. That's it, Sasha. Final station."
The irony was so monstrous I wanted to laugh in Death's face. I'd just held another man's heart, patched it, coaxed it to beat. And my own—this old, worn pump—decided to quit. Without warning. Without notice.
"Aleksandr Petrovich?" Lena's voice trembled. She didn't understand yet. She still saw the "wizard" who'd just stumbled.
But the wizard was already a corpse.
My legs buckled as if the tendons were cut. I didn't try to hold on—my body no longer obeyed me. I fell. Heavy. Clumsy. Like a sack of bones.
The impact with the tile echoed in my skull with a dull boom. My glasses flew off, clinking on the floor. The world instantly lost sharpness, turning into a muddy watercolor blur.
"Sasha! Doctor!" Lena's scream reached me as if through water—thin, shrill, distorted.
I lay with my cheek on the cold floor. The tiles smelled of bleach. Before my eyes, in the murky haze, I saw a chrome table leg and a brown puddle of blood they hadn't wiped yet. A beautiful color. Rich.
"It hurts," my body reported belatedly. The burning in my chest became unbearable. As if a bonfire had been lit inside and doused with gasoline. My heart fluttered once—pitifully, convulsively, like a trapped bird—and stopped.
Silence. Absolute, ringing silence settled inside me.
Somewhere outside, meaningless fuss began. Footsteps, a gurney clattering, shouts of "Adrenaline! Clear!". Guys, don't bother… I'm a doctor. I know. This is the end. The clot blocked the main line. The switch is down.
Vision narrowed to a tiny point. A tunnel. But at the end there was no light—only viscous, inky darkness. Cold rose from my fingertips toward the center, claiming territory.
The last thought was strange, lazy, and surprisingly calm:
"At least tomorrow I don't have to be on duty…"
Darkness covered me completely.
Click.