Her right leg hardly looked like a leg at all. It was positioned on top of the crisp white covers, bent just a little at the knee. From midthigh down it was a swollen, blackened, festering mess; it looked like an overcooked sausage against the snowy sheets. Four big metal screws held it together, kept it a leg at all. A hose connected the leg to a vacuum of some kind that sucked fluids from the wound, collected them in a plastic bag. At the ankle, splinters of bone jutted out. And the smell … it was terrible, part burn, part rot.
She gagged at the sight of it, clamped a hand over her mouth; bile pushed up her throat. “Oh, my God…” she whispered.
Her door opened, and a tall man in a white coat walked into the room. “You’re awake,” he said, pulling a mask up over his mouth and nose.
He came up to the other side of the bed, stood beside her. “I’m Captain Sands.”
“H-how’s my crew?”
“Chief, you need to stay calm.”
Jolene struggled to move, but she had no strength in her upper body. The meager effort left her breathing hard, sweating. “My crew … and Tami,” she asked quietly, looking up. “Chief Flynn?”
“Chief Flynn is upstairs.”
“She’s alive,” Jolene said, slumping back into the pillows. “Thank God. Can I talk to her?”
“Not yet, Chief. She suffered a traumatic brain injury. We’re monitoring her very closely.”
“Hix?”
“Sergeant Hix is here, too. He took some shrapnel to his thigh, but he’s healing quickly. Your other gunner, Owen Smith, didn’t survive the crash. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, my God.” Smitty. She remembered his bright smile … and the gaping hole in his chest. I’m holding this space for you, Chief. I’d want to talk to my mom.
“Now, Chief, can we talk about you?” the doctor asked gently.
She looked up at him blearily, hating the pity she saw in his eyes. “I’m dying. Is that what you’re going to tell me?”
“You were seriously injured, Jolene. I won’t lie to you about that. Infection is the biggest concern in blast injuries like yours. Everything gets embedded—dirt, glass, bits of metal. We’re worried about gangrene in your leg. We’re debriding it every day. And you lost so much blood, we’re concerned about your liver and kidney function. You’re also scheduled for surgery today on your right hand. Shrapnel damaged a nerve in your wrist. We’re hopeful you’ll regain some use of it, though.”
Some use of it.
“The wounds on your face should heal in time, but we’re watching them closely. Again, it’s the blast injuries.”
She fought the urge to touch her cheeks. My face.
She closed her eyes so that he wouldn’t see how scared she was, but it was a mistake. In the darkness of her fear, she saw her children standing together, crying out for her, begging her to come home. “Please,” she whispered, hating the tremble in her voice. She was a soldier, for God’s sake, and she couldn’t make herself look this man in the eyes. “I can’t die. I have children, Captain. Please.”
He touched her left hand. She felt the cool rubber of his glove on her skin—no human contact; but what difference would it have made? What good was a stranger’s touch when everything she was hung in such precarious balance?
She needed Michael here now. He would take care of her.
Michael, whose love had saved her once before. In the back of her mind, she knew there was a problem with Michael, something that had gone wrong, but then the morphine kicked in and began soothing her, and she was with her husband again, holding his hand, walking along the beach with the man she loved …
* * *
At two o’clock, on the day CNN announced Jolene’s accident to the world, Michael and Carl boarded a plane bound for Germany.
They landed in Frankfurt on a cold black night, where rain drizzled anemically on the endless concrete buildings and runways of the airport.
When they finally emerged from customs, carrying their suitcases, Michael looked around. “They said they’d send someone to meet us,” he said to Carl. Moments later, a young uniformed man approached them. “Mr. Zarkades? Mr. Flynn?”
“That’s us,” Carl said. “I’m Flynn.”
The young soldier handed Michael a small clear plastic bag. In it were Jolene’s wedding ring and her dog tags and her old watch, its face cracked. He stared down at them. In twelve years, he’d never seen Jolene without her wedding ring. This is real, he thought. He was going to see his wife who’d been wounded in war. “Thank you,” he said hoarsely.
The soldier led them through the airport and into a waiting car. A short drive took them to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center.
Rain blew in windy sheets across the entrance. Inside the neon brightness of the lobby, Michael and Carl were immediately sucked into a whirlwind of military protocol—there were doctors, nurses, chaplains, and liaison officers waiting to greet them. Everyone stood tall and straight and unsmiling, wearing purple rubber gloves. More than once, Michael demanded to be taken to see his wife, but there was always a reason to wait.
He began to pace, then to get angry. “Damn military,” he muttered, moving up and down the busy aisle. When a neurosurgeon came to take Carl away, Michael had had it.
He marched up to the nurse’s station again. “I’m Michael Zarkades. I’ve flown halfway around the world to see my wife, Jolene Zarkades. She’s a warrant officer, if that matters. I’m sick to death of waiting. Just tell me where her damn room is.”
The nurse glanced up from a file. “Captain Sands has asked you to wait. He wants to brief you himself. I’m sorry, sir—”