Dr. Nicolas Kokoris

It was everywhere, the blood, I should have been prepared for it, but I wasn't. Sure, I'd seen the reports on the news, I'd read the briefing statements that had been sent to me before I'd made the decision to accept this assignment for Medecins Sans Frontieres, but, none of that prepares you for your first actual encounter with all of the violence, all of the blood.

I'm not really sure what prompted me to accept a placement in Palestine, probably the same that had drawn me to Bosnia, and would eventually draw me to Afghanistan, but once there the reality of it was unlike anything I had read or seen anywhere. As a surgeon I'm used to seeing blood, but not like this, and certainly not when it's evidence of a crime that takes so many lives before their time.

I don't think anything could have prepared me for my first suicide bombing. To know that so many people were caught unaware, their lives interrupted as they moved through life in the only way they could, under circumstances they had no control over. To see the randomness of the act, the victims whose lives were cut short, or worse who would live out the balance of their days forever changed.

I've no time to think of any of that though. For me, all I see is the blood and the devastation beneath it as I struggle to find ways to repair the damage that has been done, and if I'm lucky, I'll find a way to save them, a way to give them more time on this earth, and maybe with it, a reason to hope that one day all the violence will end so no one else is forced to face what they have to face.

Muse: Nicolas Kokoris
Fandom: Presidio Med
Words: 298