Life means pain.

Deep, uncontrollable pain as you stare at all the people, helpless. Pain as you have to tell the people closest to them that there is no chance, no chance at all, that they can make it. Pain as you watch them break down or punch something or blame you or anything that shows how hurt they are. How you failed.

Because I failed.

The blood sweeps through the shirt as the man gasped, reaching onto my shirt as support.

He looked at me, pain in his eyes, and it's unbearable. I've never been so close to a patient-- the way he smiled despite the huge gash on his face, his stories he mumbled in his sleep, everything. 

Just like the rest, he was gone. They were always gone, gone, gone, because they were always helpless and poor and soldiers. Fighters. 

The man gasped some more, croaking, and I grimaced. Doctors huddled around me, beside me, trying to find the source of the answer that they already knew; he was gone.

The blood loss was to much and the man loosened his grip. He fell back, and I leaned over, calming him down, saying it'd be alright.

I was lying and he knew it. 

His breathing became hard and heavy, his pulse uneven, his eyes screamed the agony he was facing--

On the last seconds, he whispered into my ear.

"Remember me."