Friedrich

The emergency room door blew off its hinges with a deafening crash. An icy draft and the clatter of iron-clad boots rushed into the narrow corridor, where only moments before only the quiet groans of the wounded had been heard.

She barely had time to clutch a stack of clean bandages to her chest. Flashes from flashlights cut through the gloom, revealing long shadows, machine gun barrels, and mouse-gray overcoats. Ahead of them, a man was being carried on a stretcher. The heavy gold shoulder straps and medals on his service jacket were stained with dried, almost black blood.

The German officer stepped forward. His face, carved from stone, expressed nothing but a dull, dangerous rage. He gave the young nurse a hard look and jabbed a leather glove toward the stretcher.

"It's the general. He has a bullet in his stomach and internal bleeding. Get to the operating table immediately!"

"We... we don't have a surgeon," she breathed out, feeling her jaw clench with fear and her heart pounding somewhere in her throat. "The head doctor is on a trip, we can't..."

She didn't have time to finish. The officer slowly slid the holster on his belt and drew his blued Walther. The metallic click of the cocked hammer resounded like thunder in the silent hospital. He slowly moved the barrel down the corridor where helpless, bandaged Soviet soldiers lay on the straw, and looked the girl straight in the eyes.

“You don’t understand me, girl,” his Russian was almost unaccented, which made it sound even more terrifying. “You will bring him back from the brink. You will perform this operation. Because if his heart stops… my men will leave no one here. Not the wounded, not the doctors, not the children. We will use grenades and clear this barn to the last living soul. The life of our general in exchange for the lives of everyone who breathes here. You have five minutes.”