NIGHT SWEATS

Army unit trapped in Beirut

NIGHT SWEATS

The gunfire never stopped. It was relentless — a brutal, metallic rain pelting the Beirut office building, wearing away the structure and our nerves alike. Every wall was splintering under the onslaught, shredded by rounds from assault rifles, machine guns, and whatever else the enemy could throw at us. The sound blurred into static; my ears had started to shut down, collapsing under pressure. The sergeant was yelling something, but his voice sounded like it was trapped underwater.

We’d only just taken the position — a partial vantage point meant to tighten our hold on the sector. But the room offered no full view, no safety. We were boxed in, blind on two sides. Just six of us left on the third floor, barely enough to hold it. And the enemy knew it.

The plaster walls erupted with each impact, sending clouds of razor-edged fragments hurtling through the room. My face stung from a hundred cuts. My arms were pin-cushioned with slivers of wood and metal. We’d been under siege for half an hour, maybe more — pain became a background hum, dulled by adrenaline and the growing awareness of worse things yet to come.

I heard my name. Barely. The sergeant barked an order: clear the stairs behind us — someone was coming up. I pivoted, crouched at the landing, and saw figures just a flight down. I opened fire with my M16, the crack of the rounds lost in the chaos. Thirty bullets sprayed wildly. A burst from an M21 snapped back.

One round found me.

It tore into my left side just below the rib cage, burning white-hot — like someone had driven a steel rod fresh from a furnace straight through me. The impact threw me backward into the wall, hard. Sight disappeared. Sound vanished. Pain surged like a tidal wave, stronger with every pulse. Blood poured freely; I felt its warmth before I saw it.

Then came the heaviness. A suffocating weakness that pressed down on me, stripped away pain, and replaced it with stillness. No vision. No sound. Only thoughts — fragile, drifting threads that reminded me I was still alive. I let go, resigned. And then… there was nothing.
Time lost all meaning. When I began to stir, it felt like waking from a dream too deep to name. Memories clawed their way back. The firefight. The stairwell. The bullet. Had it happened? Was it real?

I wasn't slumped in agony. I felt clean sheets beneath me, smelled antiseptic in the air. No dust, no gunpowder, no blood. Just sterile calm. It must've been a dream — vivid and terrifying. I almost laughed. I had imagined my own death in full detail.

But then I tried to open my eyes. Nothing. My lids wouldn’t respond. Sounds returned first: low murmurs, soft echoes. And then a pattern — a beeping, irregular but rhythmic, double chimes followed by silence. Again and again.

Then it stopped.

A voice cut through the quiet. Male. Flat. Calm. “Flat line,” he said.
And softer, almost tender: “The suffering’s over.”
I let go again. And drifted away.