"Yeah." He swallows. "That's what I'm hoping. And I guess... I guess you're right."

Oh, darn it, his eyes are prickling again. Radar swipes a couple fingers under his glasses.

"If it's that easy to fix it, then if he can't fix it then maybe there really wasn't ever any fixing it at all. Like the patients we get sometimes, you know? Where it looks like something easy but then it's either worse underneath, or fixing one thing sets off a whole other thing somewhere else that ain't so easy." He draws in a shaky breath. "I really hate it when that happens. We all do. It's not fair, either."

But it's what happens in war. The first rule is young men die, said Colonel Blake himself once, and the second rule is that doctors can't change rule number one.