I'm Only Human

“Sister,” wheezed the faceless boy. Between the mass of gauze swathing his head and the moans of boys lying in rows throughout the tent, I almost didn’t hear him. I crouched next to his cot and took his hand.

“I’m here,” I said, trying to lend solace with my tone. I had little else to offer him. “The ambulance is coming. A surgeon will patch you up.” A lie. No one could rebuild that face, regrow those severed legs, the toll of a shrapnel shell in a narrow trench.

He reached, I thought, for my face, so I pressed his palm against my cheek, but his fingers slid behind my head. I lowered my ear to the place where his mouth had been, steeling myself for the smell of blood and burned flesh.

“I’n done,” he whispered with a sound like a wet mop. “You ha’ to galee gne.” I translated the words coming from his damaged mouth: You have to believe me. His hand fell to the breast pocket of his tunic. “Here,” he said.

I unbuttoned the flap and reached in, my fingers finding a metal disc, oddly cool to the touch. I pulled it out and laid it on his palm, wrapping his fingers around it, but he pushed it back at me. “Yours. Use it.” He moaned.

“How?”

“Magic. It will heal them.”

I scanned the rows of ruined bodies. Nothing could heal them. Magic? If only it were real.

He clutched my hand. “Believe,” he said.

I turned to the occupant of the cot behind me, a Lieutenant with a debonair mustache. He would never hold his children again. Feeling foolish, I pressed the disc to his bloodstained bandages.

I wouldn’t allow myself hope, but desperation persuaded me to try.