"Leave it."
His eyes were still closed, but the edge in his voice was unmistakable.
"You… like this one?"
"It's clean. Tempo doesn't drift. Helps me regulate."
"That's not what most people mean when they say they like a song."
"Most people haven't been stitched up on five hours' sleep and less than a pint of blood."
"Fair."
I let the track keep playing. The beat pulsed softly through the apartment, and Dorian didn't say another word. The tension in his jaw eased like something in him vibrated in sync with the song.
When I spoke, it was to the window instead of directly to Dorian. My voice was quiet.
"There was a guy. Interpreter. His name was Farid."
Dorian shifted slightly and opened his eyes.
I returned to my chair and set my mug on the coffee table, rubbing my palms against the rough denim covering my thighs. "Young. Maybe twenty-three. Spoke three languages—Pashto, Dari, and English. Sometimes, he mixed all three when he got excited about something."
The words clarified the memory in my mind: Farid laughed as he translated insults between our squad and a group of local kids, his oversized Manchester United jersey flapping in the desert wind.
"He read terrain like most people read street signs. Could spot disturbed earth from two hundred meters by how the shadows fell wrong."
I glanced at Dorian. He followed my words closely, but there was no judgment in his expression. "Saved my life during a convoy ambush. Grabbed my vest and hauled me behind concrete maybe three seconds before everything exploded."
My throat tightened. "Reminded me of my dad, actually—same instincts. Dad was Seattle Fire—twenty-two years on the job. Used to say he could smell trouble before the alarm even sounded."
I picked at a loose thread on my jeans, not meeting Dorian's eyes. "He ran toward burning buildings the way most people run away from them. For him, it was the most natural thing in the world."
Ghosts drifted around me. "Lost him in a warehouse fire when I was a teenager."
Dorian mainly was still, but his head pushed slightly forward. He continued to pay close attention.
"Farid had that same thing. That instinct to step toward danger, particularly if it meant protecting someone else." My voice turned raspy, still wrapped in morning's rough edges. "When my ears stopped ringing after the ambush and I could think again, I told him he'd saved my ass. He grinned and said, 'You'd do the same.' Same thing Dad used to say when Ma worried about him going to work each day."
Dorian's eyes were steady, watchful.
"Problem was," I continued, "when his turn came, I couldn't return the favor."
My breath hitched.
"I was supposed to be the one with medical training. I was supposed to know how to fix people and keep them breathing until help arrived." My hands trembled, so I pressed them flat against my thighs. "Training doesn't mean shit when someone you care about is bleeding out and there's nothing you can do but watch it happen."
The weight of both losses filled my thoughts—Dad dying while I sat in algebra class, completely useless; Farid dying while I tried everything I knew, and it still wasn't enough.
"Different IED three weeks later. Different road, same result. I worked on him for thirty minutes—compressions, pressure bandages, trying to plug holes that wouldn't stop bleeding. He died trying to tell me something in Pashto I couldn't understand."
Dorian wasn't merely listening. He focused on me and absorbed every detail.
"Sorry. Probably more than you needed to hear."
"No." His response was immediate. "Thank you for telling me." He paused. "They sound like people worth remembering. And training teaches you to save bodies. It doesn't teach you to live with the ones you couldn't."
I grunted. "Yeah, and there's a point to all of this. After I lost Farid, a friend and part of the squad, I vowed to myself I'd never abandon someone injured in need of my help."
