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“Et Toi, As-tu un nom, soldat?” he asked.

“Tomasz. Tomasz Nowak, Mon Sergent,”

“Très Bien, alors.”

One of the soldiers, wide-eyed, whispered a question to the lieutenant, "Est-ce le géant polonais?" Is this the Polish giant?

The lieutenant nodded.

"Laisse tomber les armes," the lieutenant commanded. His French was crisp, carried the authority of someone accustomed to being obeyed. The guns descended in a synchronized motion. The posture of the soldiers shifted, their demeanor changed from suspicious to helpful.

"Help me, au secours," the sergeant said. He approached Tomasz with a care that suggested he understood the delicacy of the situation. He understood that the larger man would not release his burden, and that any attempt at force would be met with absolute resistance. The French soldier tugged at Tomasz’s elbow, and the larger man instinctively pulled away, pulling Alistair closer into his body.

“NON!”

“C'est bon, tu peux le garder, viens juste avec nous.” The French lieutenant signaled towards the waiting Jeep. Okay, you can keep him, just come with us.

The men started moving towards the vehicle. The stretcher that had been prepared was quickly folded back up and put away. The lieutenant gestured to Tomasz, telling him to get in. Tomasz obeyed, his bulky frame squeezing into the back seat. He made sure to keep Alistair in his lap.

Tomasz sat with his hand on Alistair's chest. His dark eyes were steady, and his body finally rested. Yet his mind was still going in circles. He was only capable of engaging through presence and touch, unable to look away from the officer's face.

The jeep ride took more time than they thought it should have. The roads were neither safe nor direct. They required navigation around obstacles that Tomasz did not fully discern from his seat. Alistair stayed unconscious for the entire journey. His small body vibrated along with the motion of the vehicle and even though he was unconscious, his lips kept moving. They produced soft sounds, almost lost under the roar of the engine.

Tomasz checked Alistair’s heartbeat and followed the rhythm of his breath. His eyes fixed on the officer's face. After the first few minutes, the soldiers in the jeep stopped talking, sensing that Tomasz's attention to the smaller man was absolute. They knew he would not let small talk or explanations distract him, that he would not relinquish his focus from the unconscious officer for any reason.

Chapter 9 - The Hospital

The morning light shone through the holes in the tent’s worn canvas. It fell across Alistair’s face in soft, pale beams. They gave the impression of having substance, even though they were just light and dust floating in the air. The rain continued its gentle patter against the fabric. Its soft percussion became the underlying rhythm of this space, against which all other sounds fell into place.

Alistair's eyes opened slowly, as if drawn back by an external force rather than his own consciousness. The tent's ceiling came into focus bit by bit. Alistair’s eyes fixated on the details. He saw the moisture stain on the canvas. He noticed where someone repaired a small tear with twine and wax.

His mind was still not completely engaged. There was a gap between awareness and clear thought. The fever blurred the line between seeing and understanding. He lay under the blankets, his body feeling strange. His limbs were arranged in ways he did not recognize. The pain was present but scattered. It did not hurt in specific spots; it felt like it came from everywhere at once. His throat was dry. His mouth had a metallic taste, the uncertain flavor of being close to death, where survival felt fragile. His body was still fighting infection and fever, struggling against a harsh reality.

Other cots surrounded him, but they were mostly empty. The tent was quieter now than it had been during the fever-bright nights when his consciousness had been fragmenting and reforming, when the sound of other men’s suffering had been a constant background against which his own pain had been measured. One soldier snored in the corner; his head wrapped in gauze with a dark stain near his temple, soaking through.

The rain continued. Diffused light worked its way through the canvas. Slowly, with the glacial progress of a mind that had been severely compromised, Alistair began to orient himself to the present moment. He recognized that he was no longer moving through the countryside. The carrying had ended, and the transfer had been completed. He was in a safe place now, just as promised.

He was alone. This was the first thing he understood. Not alone in the absolute, not in the sense that no one else inhabited the tent—the far end boasted a pair of cots, each occupied by a soldier who looked to have been assembled from leftover parts and then forgotten—but alone in the sense that the massive presence that had been constant, the gravitational pull around which his existence orbited, was gone.

Tomasz was not here. Alistair tried to summon anger, or relief, or any feeling at all, but there was only a blankness, a new kind of silence that did not vibrate with the expectation of being touched or lifted or told to “tiens bon.” Just silence, and the slow, artificial drip of water in a metal basin nearby.

He tried to sit up. His body resisted, muscles feeble and insubordinate. He tried again, this time using his elbows, and managed to lever himself to a sitting position. The world spun, then slowly resolved into the familiar chaos of a field hospital: a veritable maze of cots and stretchers, a makeshift partition at the far end, two men in blue aprons tending to instruments in a washbasin; the dull glint of metal trays, the stench of sweat, blood and disinfectant.

He scanned the tent. No sign of the Polish giant. Not even a shadow in the periphery, not even a mass displaced in the air. Alistair expected to feel lighter, as if the absence would allow him to reacquire some measure of his own gravity. Instead, he felt untethered, unmoored. Not even the pain in his leg could anchor him.

His eyes moved down his body, tracing his figure beneath the blankets. He tried to see what he had left after the war's machinery had had its way. His right leg was fully visible, wrapped in plaster from hip to ankle. It showed the evidence of a break set to heal. His toes peeked out at the end, pale but with signs of life. Blood still flowed and healing was possible.

His eyes landed on his left leg—or where it should have been. The lump under the blanket should have been larger. Instead, around mid-thigh, there was only the flattened blanket, and the brutal realization of a missing limb. A terrible emptiness marked where his left leg once was. His gaze lingered for a long moment, fixed on that void. He tracked the geography of absence, taking in what his mind refused to accept.

An extra blanket lay folded neatly under the stump to elevate it. He was laid in a position that tried to make the truth look better. But no arrangement would change the stark reality that his eyes conveyed to his mind. Nothing would alter the simple, devastating fact of what happened.

He did not cry out or thrash. He lay still, eyes on the absence of limb. His mind began to take in what happened. He realized his body had changed in ways that were impossible to fix. His hand rose languidly, moving as if through thick water. It felt like his nervous system did not know where his left leg had been. As he approached, he hesitated. His fingers hovered over the emptiness, the part of him that was now gone. After a moment, he pulled them back to his chest.

A nurse entered. She was different from the nurse who checked on him during the night. The nurses in this place seemed to blend, variations on a single theme of competence and detachment. She smiled. The smile was kind and professional. It was the smile of someone who had delivered news of amputation countless times before and learned to smile anyway. She knew how to deliver the cold facts with kindness. She moved to his cot, checked the bandages, and assessed the wounds.

"Good morning," she said. Her accent revealed she was French. It tied her to the system that removed him from his world and placed him here. "You made it. You have survived the operation. The infection in your leg wound was severe, but you were strong enough. Stronger than most men would have been in your condition."

Alistair did not reply. His eyes followed her as she checked the bandages on his stump. He watched her write notes on the clipboard, the main tool that turned human pain and suffering into manageable data.