text: The earth shook with a low rumble and all the surgical tools rattled. Kono’s hand slipped with the tremor and his scalpel sliced into the young soldier’s exposed artery. Unflinchingly Kono threw the scalpel into a bucket of dirty sanitizer and pressed tattered rags against the artery but the young man had already lost too much blood and what little remained of his life slipped away. He probably would not have survived the operation anyway. Maybe a few more days alive and able to write some last words to his family and then dead of an infection or blood loss or just plain stress. Kono released the pressure and dropped the rags in a bucket of cold soapy water. He washed the blood from his hands. He wore no gloves because the camp had no gloves. Kono took off his glasses and wiped away the sweat of his brow with a dry rag and then sat in the only chair in the surgery. He cleaned his glasses with the best part of the rag and put them back on and let out a long sigh. He always held his breath during surgeries, and for a time after, too. A few heavy hailstones plinked into the metal roof of the surgery. Kono sat for a long time and stared at nothing. He saw past and through and around the mostly empty supply crates and folded cots and thin metal walls of the surgery. Sometimes it was a triage. Sometimes it was a medic’s office. Always Kono lived there. He had not slept for twenty hours. The coffee rations ran out two weeks ago. Harsh fluorescent lights lit up the concrete floor like driven snow -- the men bleached it every day. Blood trickled from the table to the floor. “Doc.” Kono looked up and saw the Major at the door. He held his hat by his side as he was a good-mannered man. The combat fatigues had no matches and the Major had clearly slept in them. The door was closed behind him, Kono had not noticed his entry at all. He had been thinking too much. Thinking about the trickle of blood. “Major,” Kono said. He did not salute but rubbed one hand over the other and brought them to his mouth and rested his elbows on his knees. The soldiers did not salute the Major because the Belligerents took to shooting commanders. Kono did not salute because he did not care. “Ryerson?” the Major asked with a nod to the body on the table. “Dead.” “Shame.” “It is.” There was silence for some time. “It was an accident,” Kono said at last. “I’m sure,” said the Major. “You’re a good doctor.” “I’m not a doctor.” “You’re most of the way there.” “I’m not a doctor.” The Major shrugged. “We can’t afford to be picky.” “It was the blast. It shook my hand,” Kono said. He held out his hand still as stone nad then dropped it. The Major gave a wan smile and nodded. “Shook the camp. Bella’s getting close.” The Major stood in silence. “Is there somewhere I can sit?” Kono waved to a box of expired antibiotics and pain pills. The Major nodded and dragged it over to where Kono was, squared it across from him, and sat. Kono glanced up at the Major, and over to Ryerson, and back to the floor, and prayed to God that Ryerson would glance at the Major but the young soldier only stayed dead. “I can’t keep doing this,” Kono said. “You just need some sleep.” “Sometimes I think I’ve killed more people than Bella.” “Maybe,” the Major said with a shrug. “But you certainly saved more than the Belligerents ever have. You know that, right?” Kono said nothing. He looked at Ryerson. The blood had stopped trickling and begun to congeal a little on the floor. The boys would have to bleach it tonight. They only bleached it when there was blood to bleach. “Why are you here?” Kono asked. The major pursed his lips and looked up over his head. “There’s an evac coming in soon for civilians. Headed for Oshkosh and then further East. Technically -- well, technically you’re still a civilian.” “And?” “And, if you’d want, I can get you on that evac.” “I can’t just go on that evac?” “I could stop you.” “But you wouldn’t?” “I wouldn’t.” Kono sat in silence for sometime again. Another, smaller tremor rumbled through the ground and rattled the surgical tools. “You’d be out a medic,” Kono said. He pushed black unwashed hair back from his face, far longer than what the FAS allowed in the enlisted men. But technically -- technically -- Kono had civilian privileges. He also kept a short beard. The Major had no facial hair and had gone bald many years ago, and once he had been fat but the skin now fell in loose folds on his face and neck. He had become as thin as Kono. “You could go back to school,” the Major said “But you’d be out a medic.” “I’ll requisition a new one.” “That doesn’t mean you’ll get one.” The Major glanced at Ryerson and back at Kono. “I didn’t even have to tell you about the evac, you know. It’s landing ten klicks East. You would never have known.” “So why tell me?” The Major was silent for a while. He massaged his hat together in his hands until it became a tight ball and then he released it again. “War is awful,” he said at last. “A lot of awful, awful things happen in war. I hoped to God I’d die before my children saw war but here we are. War is where the Devil comes to do his worst. He plays his worst games and we’re all just toys to be scattered and broken.” Kono said nothing but he thought of Ryerson and the many men and women who had preceded him. “But you, Kono, you’re just some kid in the thick of it who stepped up to the plate. You stepped up to the plate and you’ve been doing good damn work in all this awful war. You’ve been doing God’s work. God’s work in the Devil’s playground. You stepped up and you did what you could, and when I asked for more you gave more. And then I asked for more, and you gave more still. You always gave more.” The Major stopped and looked at the door. Another rumble had shaken the surgery. “Bella’s getting real close,” Kono said. “He is. But that’s my problem to deal with,” the Major said and held Kono’s gaze. “I need an answer. The evac gets here in two hours.” “I’ll go,” Kono said flatly. “I’ll go.” Kono cocked his head. He could hear a flurry of activity out in the camp. Men running, engines roaring and tires coming to a screaming halt. Voices shouted “Injured, injured incoming!” and grew closer. The Major heard it, too. Kono looked over the surgery. “I’ll need a gallon of fresh antiseptic. Any antiseptic at all,” he said. “To start. And two men to clear out Ryerson and set up triage. Bellmonte and Irish, if they’re free. I’ve taught them the most.” “Of course,” the Major said. Kono stood and began preparing Ryerson for collection. Even the dead deserved a clean suture. The Major stood and watched for a minute. “You didn’t have to tell me,” the Major said. “What?” Kono stopped and turned to face the Major. “That’s why I told you about the evac, even though I didn’t need to. When our medical staff got turned into red paint in Chelsea you stepped up. You didn’t have to tell me you were a medical student. You didn’t have to help. You didn’t have to do any of that. You could have lied and been on the first evac out of the U.P.” “I need that antiseptic and the men I requested,” Kono said and returned to Ryerson. The Major nodded, placed his crumpled hat on his head, and went to the door. He stood with his hand on the knob but did not open it. “Antiseptic. Men,” Kono repeated. He finished the suture, unlocked the table wheels and pushed Ryerson over to the far wall to make room for incoming cots. He had no sheet to cover the corpse. “The evac comes in two hours,” the Major said. “And the injured in two minutes,” Kono replied. The Major nodded, and left the surgery. Two hours later Kono instructed Irish on the proper method to drain blood from a lung, and Bellmonte pulled shrapnel from a corporal's thigh. He did not notice the corporal had stopped breathing before the operation began.