the tinyblog

If more people got to feel how unnerving it was to be punctured like this, they would be a little bit easier on the trigger, he thought. He had imagined how it would feel to get shot. He thought it would be something that would just be so painful he couldn't handle it.

Now here he was trying to convince his Commanding Officer to concentrate on putting direct pressure on the wound so he would not die, which seemed important. That man had been on the battlefield for the last six years. He was a Sargeant, and now he was acting like a new recruit. Hell, he wasn't even the one who got shot.

Even now the pressure against his chest was wavering. Annoyance crept into his voice, "Keep pressing!"

His C.O. shuddered a bit and looked up, his face looked veiny and ghoul-like. He repeated the pressure, but just kept saying stupid, inappropriate things, like, "Do you think your wife will be too mad at me?"

"No, she'll understand. She knows you look after me."

He did not want to be comforted. That did not matter at all. He felt a little like a robot, very pragmatic, computing how long he could continue to sit in that position that let him breathe. If he relaxed too much, it started to feel like his lungs were being slowly pushed underwater. He only wanted someone with the skill and equipment to take that thing out of him and make him unconscious until they could make him be able to breathe again.

"Keep pressing!"

"Oh shit I'm sorry," he renewed his pressure, but it slacked off almost immediately as he asked his question, "oh God man, why did you enlist?"

"I was hoping I would get shot. Please push, I can't breathe if you don't push."

"Ok, ok, I'll push, I'm sorry. Are you going to die? Are you...why are you laughing?"

He was laughing because at 8 years old, Brent Crudite had unfairly critiqued his acting skills during play at war.

"That's bullshit," Brent said, "you wouldn't just fall down like that if you got shot, you'd writhe around and scream or something. It hurts so bad when you get shot that you just can't take it!"

Brent was wrong, that little punk, and Brent couldn't have known that the sweetest sound in the world was actually helicopter blades in the distance.