K. rubbed his eyes and pondered.

“You’re a survivor, Kostya. Like a cat with nine lives.”

“So? What does the dream mean?”

K. rubbed his leg which was numb from sitting.

“It means you don’t want to kill people. That’s why you’re dreaming that the turret is jamming. All soldiers have the same dream. That their gun has jammed or that they shoot, but keep missing their target, and so on. It means you’re still a human being.”

He slowly got to his feet, looked out of the window and refocused back into reality. They were stationed in a first-aid post that they had set up in a house next to the damaged hospital. Moonbeams cracked through fluffy white clouds floating slowly across the cold night air. The black hulking hospital half-obscured the sky. An unremitting noise emerged from within it: wind rushed and howled through the collapsed ceilings and shell-hewn holes. It smelled of smoke. The sound of a gun battle came from the road. Dima’s mighty snoring rumbled up from the cellar. He and Kostya took turns guarding the post. He had made himself a bed out of potato crates and slept on it during the shelling. He might have been the only person in the city who was able to sleep.

K. sat back on the floor by the window.

“God, do I need sleep,” he said quietly. “The wounded should be arriving about now.”

Kostya opened a tin can with a knife and sculpted the stewed meat into a cutlet. He sipped tea out of a large metal mug.

“I don’t want to kill?”

“Do you?”

An explosion nearby. An RPG or an anti-tank gun projectile had flown into one of the houses down the street. Kostya twitched, stared up at the low ceiling, and then at his rifle in the corner. He threw the cutlet into the skillet.

“I don’t know. When I think of the people I’ve killed, I feel numb.”

“How do you even know who you’ve killed?”

“Exactly. I’ve never actually seen a single enemy soldier during this entire war. Only dead people. But we’re not fighting dead people. It all seems fake, a puppet show or . . . Oh, I don’t know.”

“Like a dream,” K. said wistfully, completing his thought.

He opened a first aid kit, took out a syringe and an ampoule and measured out a milligram of butorphanol. He twirled it in his fingers, envisioning its effect. Numbness, rapid heartbeat, euphoria. In small doses, it can lower inhibitions.

K. placed the cap on the needle and put the syringe in his breast pocket. His fingers brushed against a sheet of paper folded four ways. He touched it. Did the promise he made even mean anything at this point? The past seemed too far away.

“You’re just traumatised, Kostya. It’s what we call dissociation. All soldiers with PTSD go through it.”

“You probably just mean all soldiers.”