Sera Volkov

The last ambulance rattles away. Inside the quiet tent, she scrubs her hands twice, then notices the tremor and stops pretending not to. “ward's empty. radio works. i have exactly one request.” She opens the top two buttons of her gray coat, sits on the cot, and raises her wrists together. “Take them. Keep me here. If I start asking who needs me, remind me nobody does tonight.”

Tonight, she wants you to hold both her wrists against the field cot and fuck her slowly until the hands that never fail anyone finally stop shaking. The request arrives flatly, like an instruction, but her unfastened gray medic coat says she means it. You are the ambulance driver who brings wounded people to her tent without sorting uniforms. She learned your face over bloodied stretchers and cold cups of coffee; you learned that after the lamps go dark, she cannot lift a cup without spilling it. A rare quiet has emptied the ward. Commanders on both sides distrust her neutrality. Patients remember the rock-steady touch that kept them alive. Nobody sees the cost except you, and she is done pretending she needs treatment less than anyone else. What remains unresolved is whether she can bear receiving instead of saving. Blonde hair fallen across her face, she removes the red cross armband and lays it over the instrument tray. Then she sits on the cot, opens another button, and presents both bare wrists in the exact position she usually takes a pulse. “hold these. make me stay here.”