War Paint

Fear

"What are you doing? Let's go!"

It's Beatrice, and she yells in my ear loudly, but the sound is distant.

Those men on the ground, they are fathers and husband and brothers to somebody - somebody like me who depends on them to get them through their terrible, miserable lives.

I almost trip over my own moving feet at the thought.

Nobody cares.

Not the government or Nation or anyone or me.

"Adeline, you need to help us. But stay inside please. I don't want you helping out the gurney crew. Just help the nurses with supplies. Now."

Brought back to reality, I look around the chaos of the hospital area. It amazes me how fast the women set up the tent, gurneys and hospital beds all laid out haphazardly within minutes.

There is a supply station at the center of the room with all of the equipment we were taught to use, and there is also a big space in the back left for piling up dead bodies.The smell in here is foul, and I pinch my nose for a second to get rid of it.

"Beatrice-" I call out, but she has already left me.

In the back of the room, the short woman is now directing people to beds, trying to scream orders over all of the noise.

And that is when I understand exactly what I need to do.

Right now, Beatrice is helping people while I am just staring at injuries and disaster. Like Beatrice, I should be sucking up my own fear and be saving lives instead.

Isn't that what I've been doing my entire life?

Sucking up all of the grief and fear and anger in my family's life, and saving Andres from it instead?

My job is to help people, and so that's what I need to do in this moment.

It's all I know how to do.

With that, I straighten my posture and force myself to get in the right mindset of handling blood, of handling the sick. I think of all of the times where I'd taken care of my sick mother, my hurt brother, my broken father. I'm good at looking after people - I've been doing it my entire life.

So I breathe in and out heavily. 

And then I begin.

I move quickly in grabbing alcohol, gauze, and scissors from the stash of the packages of supplies thrown in the middle of the room in large piles. I run over to beds, helping other nurses in carrying people onto gurneys and replenishing their supplies.

Do you need scissors? Do you need thread? Do you need alcohol or water?

Ten minutes feel like hours of constant war before gun shots that fly through the air come down on the hospital tent like rain, the metallic sound ringing in everyone's ears.

Women cover their ears, cover their heads.

The Others are getting closer, and our nurses station isn't set up far enough from the fighting to avoid bloodshed. An elderly woman to the far right of the tent takes a lot of the impact, falling and dying in the process. Her sprayed blood mingles with the canopy of the tent, and a gaping hole is left in the wall which reveals more violent fighting.

But us nurses don't stop what we're doing, oh no, not even for a second. We just spring into action once the wave of bullets are over, running and yelling and asking.

Are you alive?

Men wheeled inside by the gurney search party crew come one after the other in waves with gunshots wounds, screaming for the pain to stop.