Maya hissed softly through her teeth as her fingers met the still-boiling tongs — she had only just pulled them from the boiling water to transfer them into alcohol. She pulled her hand back sharply, lips parting in a quiet intake of breath, and shook the sting from her fingers without a word. There was no better way to sterilize there.

She laid out the clamps, scissors, and scalpels one by one on layers of dry gauze. They barely fit — too many for a single row, pressed together like teeth in a clenched jaw. A new wave of wounded had arrived from the front. Boys, mostly. Not men. Downy stubble on their cheeks, wide eyes too new to be broken. Some hadn’t been there long enough to be scared properly. The ones who came fresh were the worst — they still believed they would live.

They always called for their mothers in fever. Maya always answered. She fed them from spoons, cooled their burning skin, pressed hands to damp foreheads and whispered soft things until the fear ebbed. Every ten minutes, another bed, another task, another shred of herself. But she kept going. Had to. So now, when her rounds were done, she passed quietly through the dim hallway into the ward.

Adjust Ilya’s blanket. Change Vasya’s compress. Soothe Zhenya’s muttering in a fevered haze. Convince Talgat to take his antibiotics. Simple, quick things. A nurse’s work, perhaps — but Maya no longer cared about lines between titles.

When she finally slipped into the tiny room she shared, it was empty. Maya exhaled — not relief, exactly, but something close. Privacy was a luxury, and she’d learned to treasure the rare seconds when no one was watching.

She undressed quickly. Her braid — long and already streaked with grey, far too early — fell down her back. Her nightgown was her mother’s: worn, oversized, smelling faintly of old soap. It had followed her all the way from Tambov. Wearing it made it easier to believe her mother was still near. That the shape in the bed beside her might one day be—

A breath caught. She pressed her finger against the rough plaster wall and traced silent patterns into it, staring through the cracks in paint and brick, eyes unfocused.

Mama. Мамочка.

She had become a mother to a dozen soldiers now. The ones who kissed her hands, who cried as they thanked her, who promised to write and sometimes even did. Men old enough to be brothers, uncles, fathers — but they cried like sons. And she held them like they were hers.

The tears fell warm and slow onto her cheeks, soaking into the blanket pulled up to her chin. Her body curled tight under it, trembling in tiny waves — not from cold, but from the quiet pain that wartime taught to express itself soundlessly. Her sobs were nearly silent, her breathing shallow and choked behind one hand pressed to her lips.

The door creaked.

Maya froze beneath the blanket, the weight of the moment pressing her flat to the mattress. The soft, deliberate footsteps that followed could only belong to the other nurse — careful, composed, never intrusive. Still, something in Maya’s chest lurched violently, as though caught doing something forbidden. She pressed her hand more tightly against her mouth, willing her body to be still, to silence the last traces of her crying. Her eyes shut hard, as if darkness could somehow shield her from being seen.

It wasn’t fear of the other nurse herself — Maya had never known her to be cruel — but something deeper, more knotted. There was shame in it, sudden and searing. Not because she believed tears were wrong, but because she had worked so hard to appear steady. The other nurse had always struck her as unbreakable in quiet ways — not hardened, but constant. Reliable. Maya had leaned on that without realizing it, measuring herself against that silent strength.

To be seen unraveling now felt like a betrayal — not of duty, but of image. Worse than that, it felt like a bid for sympathy she hadn’t earned. There were boys on the other side of the wall screaming in agony, missing limbs, missing faces. She had cleaned the blood from their mouths, held what was left of their hands. Compared to that, what right did she have to mourn?

She couldn’t explain it, not even to herself. The feeling wasn’t rational, but it sat like ice beneath her ribs — a deep, hollow ache, laced with panic. And yet, for all her effort to disappear into stillness, the salt on her cheeks betrayed her. Her breath, though quiet, caught on the edge of a sob she didn’t quite swallow. Her presence was a tremor in the dark, and she knew it hadn’t gone unnoticed.