Home Front(75)

He hardly recognized his wife. The right side of her face was scored with bloody, oozing sores, and the left side was bruised and swollen. A deep gash along her jaw had been stitched. Her lips were dry and cracked. Lank hair hung lifelessly from a side part.

But it was the leg that startled him. If you could even call it a leg. Blackened, peeling, bent, and broken, it was twice its normal size; huge metal screws held it in place at the knee and ankle. A pale bone jutted out from blue-black flesh. And the smell …

For a terrible, humiliating second, he thought he was going to be sick.

He breathed shallowly, and only through his mouth, through the mask, but still the smell was there. He knew he needed to be stronger right now, to think of her, but it felt as if he were drowning. He couldn’t catch his breath, get steady.

“Jo,” he said softly, his voice creaky, his breathing accelerated. “I’m so sorry,” he said finally—finally—finding the strength to look at her. He knew pity and horror were in his eyes; there was nothing he could do about it. He shouldn’t have come in here, not so unprepared. She needed him to be strong and certain now, and he couldn’t do it. “I didn’t talk to the doctor … I didn’t know. I should have waited…” He started to reach for her hand and saw the bruising, then drew back. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Too late for that,” she said quietly, tears glittering in her eyes.

“Jolene—”

She turned her bloody, swollen face away from him. “Tami was wrong,” she said softly, more to herself than to him.

“What? What about Tami?”

“It’s too late for us, Michael. You were right about that.” Her voice broke on the sentence, made him feel even worse. She reached out and pushed the morphine button, and in no time, she was asleep.





Seventeen



He’d let her down, again. He’d seen her injured leg and panicked, just panicked. Why had no one warned him? If he’d known, maybe he would have been able to mask his initial reaction.

Maybe. But honestly, he doubted it. Her injuries had overwhelmed him. How was he supposed to help her?

“Mr. Zarkades?”

He turned, saw a tall, gray-haired man in a white coat walk into the room. Above a surgical mask, his gray eyes were serious.

“I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. Zarkades. Emergencies happen fast around here. I’m Captain Sands. Jim. I wanted to talk to you before you saw her.”

Michael felt a rush of shame again, then anger—at himself, at the military, at this man who hadn’t shown up in time, at God. “That would have been nice.”

“Come with me,” Sands said, leading him out into the busy hallway. There were nurses everywhere out here, running from room to room.

“As I’m sure you can tell,” Sands said as Jolene’s door clicked shut. “Your wife has sustained some serious injuries. There are a lot of concerns now but the biggest is infection. Blast wounds, such as hers, are particularly dangerous. You can’t imagine what finds its way into the wound. Bacteria is rampant. We’re debriding the leg daily—taking her into surgery and cleaning it—but to be honest, I’m not hopeful.”

“What does that mean, not hopeful?”

“There’s a chance she’ll lose her leg. We don’t know about her right hand yet, whether she’ll regain use of it.”

“How can I help her?”

“We’re doing all we can. The injuries to her face will heal quickly.”

Michael thanked the doctor and went back to stand by Jolene’s bed. He was there for hours, staring down at her, waiting for her to waken. He felt sick with the need to apologize to her, to recast his reaction. To be a better man. He’d grown so much in her absence, and then, at the first chance to show her those changes, he had failed. Utterly.

Finally, exhausted, he left her room and headed out of the hospital. But as he approached the elevators, he thought of Carl and Tami. He asked a nurse where the ICU was and then took the elevator up one floor to Tami’s room.

Through the window, he saw Carl standing at his wife’s bedside, his head bent forward, tears running down his cheeks. Michael was about to leave, but Carl looked up and saw him. Wiping his eyes, straightening, Carl walked away from the bed, came to the door, opened it.

“How is she?” Michael asked.

“Traumatic brain injury.” Carl shrugged. “It means she may wake up and she may not. She may be perfectly fine and she may not. They took out a piece of her skull because her brain is swelling. How’s Jo?”

Michael was surprised at the tears that stung his eyes. He didn’t bother wiping them away. “She may lose her leg, and her right hand is useless for now.”

They stared at each other. It should have been comforting, but it wasn’t. Michael couldn’t stand here with this man he hardly knew, trading fear back and forth. “Well. I’m heading to the Landstuhl House,” he said. It was a place built by some American philanthropist to house the families of wounded soldiers.

“I’m going to sleep here tonight. I had them bring me a bed.”

Michael should have thought of that. He mumbled something about seeing Carl tomorrow and headed out of the hospital. Less than thirty minutes later, he was settled into a small, well-appointed room with a bathroom en suite and a double bed in the Landstuhl House.