Grumpy stood nearby holding a plastic bag.

“Don’t just stand around. Go! Quick!” K. yelled at him. They slid the stretcher into the ambulance and jumped in after it. The siren was deafening.

All the other sounds—the excavators, the hammering, the screams—receded.

“You try use that tone on me again, you can expect to get shot!” Grumpy hissed.

“What are you waiting for?” K. muttered. “Hand me a bandage. Get a bunch of bandages! Why are you staring? You were the one who wanted to learn!”

After losing his focus momentarily, K. pulled himself together. He looked at his watch and tightened the tourniquets. “Aaah,” the boy wailed. He had no open wounds, but his bones were broken in several places. Grumpy was still fumbling with the bandages.

K. gave the boy a novocaine injection, but it wouldn’t be enough. They’d need something stronger. He rubbed the abrasions and small cuts with alcohol.

Grumpy finally handed him the bandages.

“In the event of a compression injury,” K. explained, “the goal is to mitigate the release of toxins.”

“Yeah, I see.”

“You see what, brainbox? Wrap the legs as tightly as possible, each layer should partially overlap the previous layer. Apply the bandage all the way from the foot to the tourniquet.”

“You’re really pushing it. Like this?”

“Yes, that’s it.”

The ambulance howled past the last checkpoint at speed. Nikolai had performed splendidly, keeping the vehicle steady enough to enable the dressing operation.

They finished bandaging and applied the splint. K. placed a board between the boy’s legs and two on either side.

“Now bandage again over the top, the ankles, knees, hips,” he told Grumpy.

He turned his head to the side and saw the boy looking back at him. The tears made dark tracks along his dusty face. The ambulance swerved left and straight again. A crater, maybe from an aerial bomb, or a mine.

“Boy, can you hear me? What’s your name?”

The boy looked at him mutely. He was in shock.

Grumpy finished the dressing.

“All done.”

“Well done, we’ll make a doctor of you yet. Hand over the ice.”

“I take one look at you and think: sod that. Better to go into firefighting once the war is done.”

“This war won’t be over for another ten years. Medicine is a better bet. Your odds for survival would be better.”

K. picked up the improvised ice pack and looked inside. It was full of boxes of ice cream.

“Did you get any fruit flavoured ones?”

“I grabbed everything they had in the freezer. The woman almost attacked me with her mop. ‘Help yourself to the cheap ice-cream,’ she says, ‘but I can’t let you have the Magnums.’”

K. put a frozen chicken to one side, took out the chocolate Magnum—she had let them go in the end—and returned the rest of the pack to Grumpy.

“Place it on each leg for a few minutes.”

He unwrapped the wrapping and took a bite.