Look down at scar, something you have done 1000 times since you got it deployed in Afghanistan.

Always a clean slash diagonal across the abdomen, skin tight and puckered together betraying the force that tried to spill your intestines' to the sandy earth.

Never able to remember clearly what exactly happened on that night when you were told to clear that one room hut in the middle of the dessert. Glimpses of pain and strife as your men fell around you to the violence after you kicked in that ruined door.

Then awake to the angelic sound of a HH-60m Medevac Black Hawk thud thud thud.

Sharp pains as the medic stiches you up and gives you a toothy smile and says " Don’t you worry you'll both be fine"

Thing is no one else made it back but me, must have been the meds fucking with your head.

As you drifted back out of consciousness, you remember the wetness, in stark contrast to the arid dessert heat. Cool and slick as silk rushing over your body, almost a reprieve from scalding violence for a brief instant.

San check

Fail, notice something you have never seen before dozen small circles in line about 1 cm of each side of that clean scar across your abdomen.