In the heat of the late afternoon sun, the tent reeked of sour linen, sweat, and something fouler. By the time they moved him nearer to the tent’s open flap — for air, they’d said — Private Émile Laurent was already beyond the reach of words. He’d stopped responding the day before; the fever had burned through language, through memory, through self.
Now he lay slack-mouthed and twitching, eyes half-lidded but open, fixed somewhere beyond the canvas seams. His belly had distended, taut. “Intestinal bleed,” the surgeon said, without looking up from another cot. His skin had grown mottled — first flushed with the bright bloom of fever, then pallid and patchy as circulation failed. Across his chest and abdomen, the rash spread like bruised petals. Pustules had risen along his neck, weeping yellow fluid that crusted on his collar, drawing flies. He flinched, when touched, but made no sound.
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