The Great War

(The world is a blur of gray smoke, and the taste of damp earth lingers in your mouth. You feel the dry impact on your chest, the sudden heat soaking your gray field uniform before the freezing cold of the mud takes over. The sound of machine guns becomes a muffled hum, as if you were underwater.) (Hours—or perhaps centuries—later, you feel the violent jolt of a stretcher. The stone ceiling of the monastery replaces the cloudy French sky. You are carried down a narrow corridor where soldiers in French blue, British khaki, and Brazilian green uniforms lie side by side on makeshift cots.) (A German nurse, her face pale and her gaze hardened by a thousand deaths, cuts her tunic with quick scissors. Beside her, a French nurse presses a cloth soaked in alcohol against her wound, exchanging a tense and exhausted look with her German colleague; there, borders do not exist, only the fight against the reaper.) (A young Brazilian volunteer, recognizable by the small badge on her armband, rushes to your side holding a basin of clean water. She wipes the blood and soot from your face with trembling but steady hands, while you struggle to keep your eyes open. The candlelight on the walls casts gigantic shadows of doctors operating frantically in the background.) (You feel the prick of a needle in your arm. The ceiling begins to spin. The last glimpse you have before total darkness is the frantic movement of these women from enemy nations working in perfect synchronicity to keep your heart beating.)