Chapter 9.10

"You've been asleep for thirty hours; I was about to call the doc but you woke up…" I sat on the bed, my arms propping me up behind me as I watched him move around the room. It was a large room with a simple wooden desk at one end and a wardrobe propped between a set of draws and the single window.

Warm light flooded through the open window and knew this must have been where he'd lived. It never occurred to me before what rank Luke was, but to get his own room, and one as nice as this, it had to be substantial. It was comfortable here, it surprised me that there wasn't any weapons or polish left on the side, and I could pretend that this room didn't belong to a solider, that I was somewhere else- where I could really imagine, just somewhere, that wasn't at war.

"Your bandages need to be changed, you missed yesterday's check-up, but I can do them if you want." How can someone so kind be in the military? How can someone like Luke possibly end someone else's life? "Or I can take you to the hospital wing, if you'd prefer that?" he added awkwardly, and I realised I didn't answer him.

"No… Could you do them please?"

"Yeah, sure!" he offered a smile and took out a tin box from one of the draws; he sat next to me on the bed and I shuffled round so my back was to him. I began to lift my shirt, but at waist height my arms became stiff like lead weight were suddenly attached to them and I couldn't raise them any higher. Without comment, he finishes the effort and gently lifts it over my head.

He pauses, and I knew what he was looking at. Those twenty-seven black lines, each just over an inch in length, jutted across my shoulder blades. The bottom ones were probably covered by some of the bandages, and after a moment, my suspicions were deemed correct as he removes the bandage in the middle of my back before hesitating once again. He didn't say anything, but he was probably wondering what they were, and if he wasn't and he knew what they meant, he was probably counting them over and over and wondering if he'd somehow miscounted.

"Are you sure it doesn't hurt anymore? I can ask doc to prescribe you something." The silence and standstill were broken by his question. He gently cleans the first wound with solution, which sends shivers of stinging down my spine and redresses it.

If I told him that I liked the slight throb that ran through my body, that it reminded me that I was human and alive, I knew he wouldn't let it stand. "It's ok, it doesn't hurt that much."

"Ok, if you change your mind just let one of us know." The last to go was the bandage running across my eye, recently it had spent most of its time under an eye patch, but even so it was unlikely I would regain sight in that eye. The wound itself wasn't at all that deep, but it had damaged the lens and part of the iris, leaving a milky blue scar across my otherwise dark eyes.

"How's the vision?" he asked, and although I knew I couldn't see, I squinted and tried to focus the damaged eye.

"Nothing."

"That's a shame, but you're still healing so it could still come back." I didn't have his optimism.

I said nothing at that. I didn't really mind being blind in one eye, it was like a punishment for all the things I've done, a punishment I'm glad to receive.