She Got 41 Tries, I Got Zero Seconds. So I Gave Myself a One-Way Ticket Out Chapter 10

She Got 41 Tries, I Got Zero Seconds. So I Gave Myself a One-Way Ticket Out Chapter 10

“That still has nothing to do with you.”

Auden went still

I picked up the treatment tray and walked toward the next patient.

Here, day and night had no clear border. There was only the endless roar of artillery.

Smoke hung in the air. The sharp, bitter smell of gunpowder never faded, as if it had become part of the land

itself.

The wounded kept coming.

Every body carried a mark left by the war.

A young soldier had lost his limbs. Bloody wounds disappeared beneath layers of gauze while he clenched his

teeth against the pain.

A pregnant woman lay in the corner, her face paper-white as contractions and terror tore through her at the

same time.

A child who had promised me the day before that he would not cry at his next bandage change had been hit by a mortar round on the way back to the clinic.

I stood there, looking at all that pain that seemed to have no end, and a crushing weight settled inside me.

Before coming here, I had lived in peace for so long that I thought ordinary mornings, quiet streets, and safe nights were simply how the world was supposed to be.

Only now did I truly understand that peace was never the default.

It was held up by people most of us never saw.

By soldiers who stood watch at borders.

By doctors who ran toward the wounded.

By aid workers, builders, drivers, translators, and countless nameless people who kept the world from collapsing where it had already cracked.

Standing in that field clinic, I understood peace differently.

It wasn’t something guaranteed. It was something people bled for, carried, and protected while the rest of us slept safely through the night.

After Auden’s wound healed, he still refused to leave.

He stayed with the medical teain and became a logistics volunteer.

He moved supply crates, organized stretchers, patched damaged tents, and slowly learned all the things he had never once touched in his old life.

Someone asked him, “Why insist on staying here?”

He answered, “The person I love most is here. If I can’t bring her home, I’ll stay and keep her alive.”

If this had been before, those words would have moved me to tears.

But now, my heart was still.

Completely still.