Friendship Stories

Sacrifice

He stumbled across corpses of his enemies and friends. Blood trickled down the side of his head. His ears rang and his vision misted.

The man entered a coughing fit from smoke inhalation, he clutched his chest, struggling to breathe. Then he felt a deep pain stemming from his thigh. As he looked down, he already knew what happened.

In the area that pained him, he saw blood. He had been shot. Within a few seconds, another bullet pierced his flesh. This time it wasn't in his thigh, or his legs for that matter. It was in the stomach. He fell onto his hands and knees from the pain, coughing while trying to stop the bleeding in his stomach. The soldier could tell that his time was running out. But we haven't won yet, the war's not done yet, he thought to himself. He couldn't die, not now, not when he had a battle to fight and a family waiting for him to get back.

His family . . . his wife and son and daughter . . . they were waiting for him. He tried to get up but a bullet whistled past and he fell on his side, waiting for help. No matter how hard he tried to get up, he couldn't. The only thing he was able to do was to watch the war going on around him. Whether the people that he saw who fell to the ground were on his side or not, he couldn't tell. His eyes watered from the smoke, blood dribbled from the side of his mouth. 

This is how I'm going to die, he thought.

Suddenly the gunshots stopped. The soldier's eyes darted around, searching for the reason. Then he saw it. A ship with people waving a large . . . white flag.

The man smiled. We won . . . We won! "We . . . won . . ." He smiled, even when his friend called his name, even when his fellow soldier picked him up, telling him it was okay and that he would live. His smile was still on his face when he was placed on a blanket on the ground because the rest of the beds in the tent were full. He looked up at his friend, tears in both of their eyes.

"It's going to be okay, Alan, you're going to be okay," he kept saying.

"W-we . . . did it," Alan said before coughing painfully. His stomach felt like it was going to be ripped from his body.

"Yes, we did it," his friend said through tears as he pressed both of his hands onto each of his wounds.

Alan knew that death was coming to get him. He could see his parents and so many of his friends on the other side, waving at him, beckoning him closer. But he needed to say one more thing to his family; to his wife. The soldier patted his friend's arm, gripping it as firmly as he could.

"Tell . . . Susan, I love her. A-and tell the kids that Daddy—" he didn't finish. As the life left him, Alan's hand dropped from his friend's arm, and his last three tears escaped his eyes; each one for a different family member.