The base feels different tonight.
Heavier.
Thicker.
As if the air itself has learned how to bruise.
Outside the med tent, the generators growl in mismatched rhythms, coughing out bursts of heat that cling to the skin. The sandstorms drag themselves across the horizon like something alive, scratching at the canvas walls. Voices carry—shouting, laughing too loud, crying too soft. Metal bangs against metal. Boots stomp through grit.
War hums under everything here and none of it hurts half as much as this.
It hurts more than I will ever admit.
Not just in my chest. Not just in my ribs. It’s like something’s rotting inside me now — something warm and soft that used to believe in him.
I thought we had something.
I thought?—
Fuck.
I don’t even know what I fucking thought.
That maybe when I saw him again, he’d pull me into his arms. Whisper that he missed me. That I wasn’t crazy for holding onto the memory of his voice while the bombs dropped and the nights got too long.
That he’d still be mine.
God.
I’m so fucking stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The med tent lights flicker overhead like they’re tired of trying. The overhead AC unit hums weakly, trying to push out air that isn’t sixty percent dust. Somewhere down the row, a soldier groans through morphine, and another medic mutters curses as he tries to find a vein that hasn’t collapsed.
And through all of it…
He didn’t even look at me like I mattered.
Didn’t blink when he spat those words—cold, sharp, detached—like I was just another medic with a clipboard and clean boots, not the girl he kissed like a storm in the kitchen with syrup dripping off my thighs.
He looked through me as if I was a ghost. Like I’d already died. I swallow down the lump in my throat and pretend it’s just dust. Fatigue. Dehydration.
Not heartbreak.
Not betrayal.
Not the raw scream building in my chest.
A helicopter roars overhead, rattling the tent poles. The smell of antiseptic rises sharper. Blood dries faster in the heat. There’s shouting somewhere outside—orders barked into radios, the crackle of static, the rumble of tires on gravel.
I shouldn’t care.
I shouldn’t fucking care.
We’re at war. People are dying. I’m covered in blood that isn’t mine, stitching skin I barely have time to memorise before they get dragged out on stretchers again.
This isn’t about love.
