It Can’t Wait

“Some choices don’t wait for daylight. They tear through you, bleeding and breathless, and dare you to flinch.”

In an instant, the urgency of the moment galvanised Chris. Without needing a word between us, we were moving—Kain slumped between our shoulders like a dying question that had yet to find its answer. The path to the medical tent felt longer than it should have, every step punctuated by his muffled groans and the weight of what had happened—or rather, what we didn’t yet understand.

The tent flap resisted us with a stubborn hiss of canvas, then gave way to the dim space within. Inside, the air felt heavier somehow, thick with a mix of dust, antiseptic, and dread. We eased Kain down onto the mattress. It was barely more than a roll of padding, woefully insufficient for triage of this kind—but it was all we had. His body sank into it with a faint gasp, the effort of staying conscious etched across his features like battle lines.

"What happened to him?" Chris asked, his voice straining under the weight of uncertainty. There was no accusation, only alarm and helplessness.

"We don't know," I answered, sharper than I meant, my tone taut with tension. I didn’t want to admit just how little we knew. Charity hadn’t attacked him—that much I believed—but what had? The pieces refused to fit. The logic I leaned on like a crutch had abandoned me in the dark.

"I think..." Kain rasped, his voice so faint I nearly missed it. Chris leaned in, his face drawn tight with worry, eyes fixed on Kain like he might vanish if he looked away.

While they stayed locked in that moment, I moved to the supply crates. My hands worked quickly, rifling through rolls of gauze, antiseptics, sutures—everything felt both urgent and insufficient. The tent walls pressed in around me like the throat of something waiting to swallow us whole.

"I think it was an animal," Kain groaned, flinching as I returned and peeled away the blood-soaked shirt we’d used as a bandage. The fabric came away reluctantly, revealing flesh torn ragged, red and angry under the dim torchlight.

"A shadow panther," Chris breathed, the words escaping before thought caught up with them.

"A what?" Kain asked, the syllables shaky, more pain than curiosity.

I froze for only a moment before the professional in me snapped back to life.

"Enough talk," I snapped, harsher than I intended—but necessary. There was no space for speculation now. No room for folklore, for fantasy, for fear. Kain’s skin was pale, his breathing shallow. If we didn’t act quickly, the question wouldn’t be what had attacked him—but how long he had left with the leg. Or worse.

"I need to concentrate, or Kain might lose his leg."

The words hung in the air like a ritual invocation, silencing everything else. Chris didn’t flinch. His response was immediate and deeply human—his hand sought out Kain’s, clasping it with quiet conviction. In the half-light, the gesture felt sacred. His eyes met Kain’s with a calm so resolute it almost made me believe, if only for a moment, that everything truly would be all right.

"You're going to be fine," he said, his voice low, deliberate, soothing—a balm over a raw wound. "Just fine."

"I'm going to give you a dose of morphine," I told Kain, forcing my voice into the realm of clinical clarity. The truth was, my heart was thudding too hard, adrenaline still whispering doomsday scenarios in the recesses of my mind. But none of that could matter now. I had to become the steady hands, the cool voice, the surgeon of crisis.

The morphine vial caught the dim light like a shard of hope. In a world that had unravelled into shadows and strange threats, here was something I understood—an old ally in an unfamiliar war. I expelled the excess air from the syringe, watching the droplet form at the needle’s tip, a liquid pearl that carried the weight of relief.

No response came from Kain, just a low groan, his face twisted in a silent war against agony. I found the meat of his upper arm and pressed the needle in gently but unhesitatingly. His breath hitched, a flicker of discomfort—and then, almost imperceptibly, a lessening of tension.

"Try to relax," I murmured, the words spilling from somewhere deep inside me. "You're safe now." I wanted to believe it. I needed to. But safety had become a fragile thing lately, something fleeting and illusory, like fog over heat-baked dunes.

Chris sat in reverent stillness, eyes trained on Kain. I caught his glance—worried, tired, yet filled with a kind of humbled awe. As the morphine began to work its quiet magic, Kain’s grip on Chris’s hand grew less frantic, more deliberate. It wasn’t relief so much as surrender—a surrender to trust, to pain, to us.

"Brianne," Kain whispered, lost in the haze, his eyes unfocused. His hand lifted, brushing Chris’s cheek with a tenderness that pierced the moment like a prayer. For an instant, everything fell away—blood, fear, exhaustion—and only the aching vulnerability remained.

A soft smile touched my lips, involuntary and brief, a flicker of relief that something, at last, was easing.

"I think the morphine's got a hold of him now," I said to Chris, voice lowered in reverence. He met my eyes, and the tired curve of his mouth told me he felt the same.

For a heartbeat, we were simply two people sitting beside another, the terror on pause—suspended just long enough to let us breathe.

"What do you need me to do?" Chris asked, his voice tinged with readiness, his eyes darting to the gruesome wound that marred Kain's leg.

The sight struck me like a gut punch. The torn flesh, glistening and angry, seemed almost unreal in the shifting, inadequate light. For a fleeting second, nausea coiled low in my belly. I closed my eyes, steeling myself. You've seen worse and had less, Glenda, I reminded myself. The words were an old refrain—one I’d chanted through war zones, collapsed villages, jungle infirmaries. I gritted my teeth and breathed through it, summoning that stubborn inner resolve I’d spent years building brick by mental brick.

"Just hold his hand," I directed Chris, the firmness in my tone masking the tremble I felt in the pit of my stomach. There were times when surgical precision and academic knowledge mattered—and others when the human heart did the heavier lifting. This was the latter.

Chris nodded, wordless now, and knelt beside Kain. His hand found Kain’s, their fingers interlocking in a quiet show of solidarity. A small, grounding gesture—one that said we're here, you're not alone, without needing to speak a word.

The tent was stifling, filled with the tang of blood, sweat, and synthetic fabric. Outside, the wind whispered and hissed through the dunes, brushing against the canvas like ghostly fingers. The firelight beyond cast warped shadows that danced across the fabric walls, grotesque silhouettes that gave the illusion of movement where there was none. Inside, the air felt heavy, saturated with anxiety and purpose.

I crouched lower, squinting at the wound. My eyes strained against the dimness, the wound flickering in and out of focus like some cruel trick of perception. I blinked rapidly, trying to force the shape of the gash into clarity, to see beyond the blood, beyond the tear in flesh that pulsed with the slow rhythm of Kain’s struggling heart.

The idea came unbidden and immediately filled me with dread. A firestick. Bringing one inside could ignite the whole bloody tent if it tipped, but I needed light—more than this wavering twilight the campfire offered through the canvas walls. I hesitated, torn between the risk of fire and the certainty of failure if I couldn’t see what I was doing.

Kain's life teetered on the cusp of those seconds. And choices like these—small, rushed, weighted—were the kind that haunted long after the bleeding stopped.

"I need more light," I confessed to Chris, the words tumbling from my lips in a mix of desperation and resignation. The admission tasted bitter. Like surrender. As though by speaking it aloud, I’d crossed some invisible line between capable and helpless. I hated that line. I’d danced near it too often in Borneo, where dwindling supplies and blood-soaked shirts made up the bulk of my medical arsenal.

"A firestick?" The alarm in Chris's voice was immediate, stark. It wasn’t just concern—it was terror, written plain across his features, his eyes wide and fixed on mine as though I’d suggested lighting a match in a room soaked with petrol. The silence that followed was tight, breathless. We both knew the consequences if we got this wrong.

I nodded, slowly, solemnly. The weight of the decision threatened to bow my shoulders. "We have no choice. I can't stitch Kain's leg without it," I said, each word falling like a stone in still water. No panic. No theatrics. Just cold, clinical truth.

"It can't wait until morning?" Chris’s voice trembled, his hope too fragile to carry the weight of reality. He sounded like someone begging the night to be kinder than it had any right to be.

"He's already lost too much blood." I didn't raise my voice—I didn’t need to. The blood told its own story. I’d dragged another clean t-shirt through the pooling crimson beneath Kain’s thigh, the fabric soaking it up like parched earth. Every second we waited, more of him bled into that makeshift bed.

Chris’s face twisted with indecision. He looked down at their clasped hands, as if hoping Kain would somehow rally, tell us we were wrong. That he could endure until dawn. But Kain didn’t speak. The morphine had quietened him—his breath shallow, his brow glazed with sweat.

"There has to be another way," Chris said, but his voice broke halfway through the sentence. His grip on Kain’s hand tightened—not in comfort, but in helplessness. "One false step and I'll set this whole tent ablaze!"

"I know." My voice cracked like dry earth, laced with a tension that matched the constriction in my chest. "I just need light long enough to close the wound to stop the bleeding. We'll take him to the lagoon as soon as the sun begins to rise, and hopefully, the water will speed up the healing process."

"I don't understand how the water will make any difference," Chris's voice broke through the tension, confusion thick in his tone. Even in the dimness, I could make out the tight crease between his brows, the flicker of doubt in his eyes. The shadows skated across his face, carving lines of scepticism that mirrored the thoughts behind them.

For a moment, I faltered—torn between the instinct to shield and the impulse to explain. The truth of the lagoon’s power still unnerved me, a mystery that defied my scientific mind. How could I justify what even I struggled to fully believe? What were healing minerals compared to glowing waters that defied every known property? The rational part of me bristled at the idea of naming it magic—but what else was it?

"Just get me some light," I said instead, my voice sharper than I intended. Practicality over belief. Immediate action over abstract explanations. Chris didn’t argue. He nodded and ducked out through the flap with a burst of cool air, the canvas sighing shut behind him.

Silence rushed in to fill the void.

It wasn’t the peace of stillness—it was the kind that buzzed beneath the skin. Tense. Watching. Every creak of the tent’s fabric felt amplified. Kain’s shallow, uneven breaths scraped against the dark like dry leaves dragged across stone. My own pulse thudded in my ears, syncing to a rhythm I couldn’t control.

The embers from the campfire beyond the flap offered a reluctant flicker of warmth, but inside, the dark remained near-absolute. Shadows slithered across the canvas walls like restless spirits, morphing into shapes I refused to acknowledge. My thoughts turned cruel—what if the light came too late? What if the stitch I made in haste was the one that cost him his leg?

I closed my eyes, hard. A useless gesture against the dark, but one that momentarily shielded me from the world outside and the rising dread within. My fingers pressed against my temples, drawing slow circles, trying to will the pain away, trying to silence the voice in my head that whispered I wasn’t enough. Not here. Not now.

You’ve done this before, Glenda. You’ve saved people with less than this. You’ve stitched open wounds with the sound of gunfire at your back. You don’t get to fall apart now.

But this—this wasn’t Earth. And these weren’t just wounds.

For now, I clung to what I knew. The weight of responsibility was suffocating, but it gave me something to hold on to. As long as there was something to be done, I could keep going.

And dawn—distant, elusive, but inevitable—was on its way. It had to be.