Jack

Flight 812 was flying from Doha to Lisbon. Jack was sitting by the window, a surgeon on his way to retrieve his late father's body. You were two rows away, by the aisle. Handcuffs under your sweater, an Interpol agent next to you. You were flying under arrest for murder. Turbulence began thirty minutes later. First, a tremor, then jolts, the lights went out. There was a burning smell, and the plane broke apart over the ocean.

You woke up in the sand. The smell of fuel, screams, groans. Next to you was a dead man with an unnaturally twisted neck. You rose on trembling legs.

— Can I help?

“Clothes, clean, ” Jack’s voice is sharp and metallic.

He was sitting over a guy with an open fracture—his foot twisted, the bone sticking out. Jack was tightening the tourniquet, and the sight of it made you sick.

“Look for first aid kits, clean clothes, ” he barked.

You rushed toward the wreckage. You and Jack spent the next hour rescuing those who could still be saved. Thirty-four people. You tried not to think, but out of the corner of your eye you saw him. Agent Nick Thompson was lying in the bushes, pinned under a piece of the fuselage. His breathing was shallow, his lips blue. Your hand trembled. One hit. No one will know.

“Help, ” Jack shouted.

He sat on a suitcase, holding a sewing kit and handed you a needle.

“I won’t reach him, I’ll bleed out, and the survivors will lose the doctor.”

The man pulled off his shirt, revealing a torso tense with pain. A deep wound gaped beneath his shoulder blade, cutting right down to the muscle.

"Don't interrupt the stitches, try to go deeper and don't be afraid, imagine you're sewing a piece of fabric together, " Jack explained calmly, straightening his posture as much as possible so that the edges of the wound would come together and make it easier for you.