"When the Chernobyl nuclear reactor began to melt down, a lot of people were brought in to help to clean up the mess. At the time I was working with the local fire department, under Lieutenant Volodymyr Pravik. I had only been on for a couple of weeks, and at the time it had seemed this would be a nice station. Nuclear energy was supposed to be safe. It was supposed to be easy work. But when the call came in, we were spared many of the full details. Had we been told the truth, I think some of us would have hesitated. We were not informed of what had happened, that the reactor had been compromised. It all seemed normal at first, and we managed to put out the fire in a little under three and a half hours, a small amount of time considering how big it got. But our celebrating, even reserved, was short. By the time we had realized what had happened, many of us were already dead.

The Lieutenant died ten days later, and was declared a hero, though his death from radiation burns felt empty to me. By that point we had discovered what had happened, how we had been exposed to high levels of radiation. At first it seemed the Lieutenant and a select few others would be the only ones to die. But they weren't. Most of the rest died too, some with dignity, and some in a way closer to the way I imagine a normal person dies.

Many of them said that exposure to radiation made you taste metal, and that there was a sensation of pins and needles on their skin. It was only later that I understood that these were signs of fatal levels of exposure to radiation. We didn't know just what we had done, the amount of people we had saved. It wasn't until later that we discovered how bad things were. By then, I didn't care much.

We were eventually relieved of our duties, though some of us stayed on. We were dead anyway. Most figured they had nothing left. I didn't though. I wanted to go away, as far as I could from the disaster. Back to my wife. Back to my family. They used those fucking gieger counters to measure the level of radiation we had been exposed to. They told this information to my family. To my wife. My wife left me. Said I was “dirty.” When she died months later I could not bring myself to go to her funeral.

Time passed. The disaster became news. I continued to be sick, but I didn't not die. In my head, I heard that gieger counter clicking away. Sometimes it would get so bad that it was all I could hear. Everything tasted like metal, and that strange sensation on my skin required me to take medicine to keep it from driving me crazy. The doctors told me it was survivor's guilt, but they didn't really get it. Me being alive wasn't something that I regretted. It was something I couldn't understand.

Eventually, those who helped to deal with the disaster became called Likvidatory, or Liquidators. There were a lot of us, a lot of people who helped keep the disaster as small as it was. But I only thought of my friends. There have been meetings, collections of survivors. I refused to go, and continue to refuse to go to any of them. It has always seemed strange to celebrate such a thing. They speak about the dead as if they knew them, but their deaths seemed senseless, even if they managed to help save the world.

Eventually I decided to move far away from my people. The American medical system might be overpriced for virtually everyone, but with all the money I have inherited, and the reparations I have received, I have managed to do well enough to afford it. If nothing else, it was away from the disaster, and the memories.

When I found out I had cancer, I was more happy than anything. It meant that all of my suffering was going to stop. I didn't feel like I was a hero nearing their end. I was selfish about it, only concerned with the idea that something was finally going to take me out. Early on I had attempted to kill myself, but I knew deep down that I couldn't do that. Somehow I survived, and whatever I was experiencing, I had somehow earned.

As time passed I began to get even sicker. Soon it felt as if something was stalking me all the time, like death wanted to let me know that I would be suffering till the very end. I hear it is common for people to feel like this. But time passed still, and I did not die. The cancer was pronounced in my body, but it has ceased to spread, and refused to go into remission. This beer I drink tastes like metal, as does everything else. I can hear it, the clicking sound rising up in my mind. And that feeling of being stalked, of being hunted has never gone away.

I don't know what a story like mine really means to anyone. I think sometimes we just need to tell someone, to let them know what we have gone through. Not for their sake, but so we can share some of our pain with others, somehow take off some of the hurt. I don't drink for the taste, nor do I eat for the flavor. I just exist, like some robot.

Long ago, I found out that they used remote controlled bulldozers and other machines to help clean up the radioactive mess. They were sent in, only for their operators to discover that their radiation detectors failed at a certain point, and that after a high level of exposure they would cease to function and die. I wonder now more than ever what is it that keeps me going, what is it that drives me. I wonder if I can no longer tell how bad things are. I wonder how much radiation I can take."

The story was told to me by a man I had met in a bar the week before. I did not know how to react. In many ways I still don't. The final thing he said, about how much radiation he can take has stuck with me, long after he had stood up and left. I am curious if he was referring to how much pain he could endure. At least, that is what I thought at first. But now I am beginning to think that he was being literal. I think in some ways he still feels like he is being irradiated, that he never stopped being exposed. Whatever the true purpose behind his words, I remain worried and disheartened. We like to believe that heroes can see the good they do. But I think far to often they are only rewarded with nightmares.