Home Front(81)

I’m going home tomorrow and Tami still hasn’t woken up. Carl says the doctors have started to shake their heads and “prepare” him for her death. How can we prepare to lose her?



Tami, who sings off-key and loves mai tais and never knows when to quit. My best friend. She won’t quit now. That’s for sure.



Carl came to say good-bye to me this morning and the fear in his eyes was enough to make me sick to my stomach. He said, “Her heart stopped today. They got it going again, but…” and by then we were both crying. He doesn’t know what Tami thinks of “heroic measures,” and I told him she was a hero herself and you never stop trying. Never.



*



Jolene came awake with a start. She had a perfect instant in which she forgot where she was—then the truth muscled its way in. Tami lay in a bed down the hall, and Michael was gone, and she was getting ready to go home.

Home.

She opened her eyes and saw a female soldier in dress uniform standing at the end of her bed reading the latest issue of Stars and Stripes. Jolene hit the button beside her bed, which slowly angled her up until she was looking at the marine.

“Hello, Chief,” the woman said, putting the newspaper down on the flat blankets at the foot of the bed. Not quite where Jolene’s leg should be, but close.

“Do I know you?”

“No. I’m Leah Sykes. From North Carolina,” she said in a pretty, rollingly accented voice.

“Oh.”

“This is the first time I’ve been back to Landstuhl in more than nine months. Some things take a while to confront.”

“You’re a morale officer?”

Leah laughed. “Hardly. My husband would certainly tell you that I’m far from an inspiring kind of woman. But you. I hear you are a helicopter pilot.”

Jolene looked down at the place where her leg should be. “I don’t want to be rude, Leah, but I’m tired—”

“You ever hear of the Lioness Program?”

Jolene sighed. “No.”

“It started a while ago, a few years, I think. I’m no historian. The point is, when the marines did their ground searches, they encountered real resistance from the Iraqi women, who refused to be searched by men. Women soldiers were needed, so they asked for volunteers. A bunch of us who were tired of supply work and such signed up. I was one of the first.”

Jolene looked at the woman more closely. She looked like a sorority girl, with her dyed-blond french braid and mascaraed eyelashes.

“We were attached to marine combat units and sent out. We got some special training—not enough, really, a week—but we went. I liked it. Combat, I mean. Who would have thought? Not my cheerleading coach, that’s for sure. But you know.” Leah moved away from the end of the bed. Her movements were awkward. She had a strange, hitching way of walking, and as she did her pretty face grimaced.

Then Jolene saw her legs: two steel rods that ended in hiking boots.

Jolene felt ashamed of herself for complaining. She still had one leg left. “You lost both legs?”

“IED. I’m not going to lie to you, ma’am. You have a hard road in front of you. I was a bitch like nobody’s business. I don’t know how my husband stayed.”

“Will I fly helicopters?”

Leah’s sad look was worse than an answer. “I don’t know about that. But you’ll be you again. In time.”

It should have meant something to her, seeing this woman’s courage in the face of such adversity. It would have once, in a time that already felt long ago. Now all she wanted was to be left alone. She wanted to snuggle back into the warm, dark waters of self-pity, and so she did; she closed her eyes.

Every time she woke up, Leah was still there, standing beside her.





Part Two



A Soldier’s Heart



We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.



—MARCEL PROUST





Nineteen



Michael and the girls had spent all day at the mall. They’d been like search-and-rescue dogs sniffing out the things on their list with relentless purpose. A new bed, new sheets and bedding, lots of pillows. Acrylic paint, a roll of butcher paper, a set of multicolored markers, both fine-tipped and fat.

By the time they’d had lunch at the Red Robin and piled back into the car, the trunk full of their purchases, Lulu was skating on the narrow edge of an adrenaline high. She was talking so much and so fast it was impossible to keep up. Michael had stopped even trying to answer her questions. Each one started with, “When Mommy comes home—”

“—We’ll sing her favorite song. What’s her favorite song, Betsy?”

“—We’ll yell SURPRISE!”

“—We’ll dance. She loves dancing. Oh, she losted her leg. What can we do instead of dancing?”

“—We’ll give her ice cream.”

Even Betsy couldn’t keep up.

Back in Poulsbo, they picked up his mother from the Green Thumb. She brought dozens of flowering plants with her—roses and orchids and bright yellow mums. She wanted to fill Jolene’s room with flowers.