The Soldier's Homecoming

by Patricia Potter

  “Good,” she said. “The main thing now is not to get overconfident and overdo it. Until you get used to how much movement you have in that ankle and foot, you could trip.”

  They spent the rest of the hour on exercises, first for his leg and then for his hand. When they finished, he wanted to throw away the brace for good.

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Major. Keep your walks short for now. Use the crutches until you feel comfortable.” Kate reached into the pocket of her uniform and pulled out an envelope. “I was asked to give this to you,” she said.

  He took it gingerly and opened it. There was one sheet of paper enclosed, and it contained only a name and phone number.

  The name stopped him. Memories flooded back. He looked up. “Where did this come from?”

  “My boss gave it to me. He said it came from a psychologist at Fort Hood. An admirer, perhaps?” Kate, a lean, attractive woman in her forties, grinned at him. It was no come-on. She openly talked of her husband in a way that left no doubt she was madly in love with him.

  “Doubt that, since he was my best staff sergeant.”

  “Well, it must be important to come down this way.” She left him before he could ask more questions.

  Josh Manning.

  It had been nearly two years since Travis heard that name. Josh Manning was the best staff sergeant he’d ever had. Ironically, he was wounded one month before Travis. Manning’s injuries, in fact, were the reason Travis had been in Afghanistan to check on the Rangers who were training and working with their Afghanistan counterparts.

  He punched in the number.

  “Manning,” the former staff sergeant said in his usual no-nonsense manner.

  “How did you find me?” Travis asked without a greeting.

  “I didn’t. A psychologist at Fort Hood did. I’d heard you’d been wounded and asked him for help. It’s hell trying to get information from the army. He asked his colleagues at other hospitals. I learned you’re about to be released.”

  Why in the hell would Josh Manning track him down? No one else had. “Still cutting corners, Sergeant?” he asked.

  “I had a good instructor,” Josh retorted.

  Travis got down to business. “If you went to all that trouble, I assume you had a reason.”

  He heard Manning chuckle. It surprised him. He couldn’t remember the man even smiling much before. But then Manning surprised him even more with his next words. “Are you staying in the service? If not, I need you.”

  I need you. Hell, it was the first time in nearly two years he’d heard those words. It was especially surprising from Manning, who’d never admitted to needing anything, except maybe better equipment.

  “Not sure,” Travis replied. “I have three months’ medical leave coming. There could be a staff job available but...”

  His voice trailed off.

  “Maybe my offer will help,” Manning said.

  Travis couldn’t imagine how, but he’d never known Manning to waste time or words. Manning had been the most competent noncom who’d served under him.

  They had become friends during the ten years they had worked together, both moving up the military ladder. When they first met, Sergeant Manning was a squad leader, and Travis was a lieutenant. Travis made sure Manning stayed with him. He’d been his go-to guy in the most difficult and dangerous missions. He not only thought strategically, but his fellow soldiers would follow him to hell and back.

  Travis realized he’d been silent for more than a few seconds. “How?” he asked dubiously.

  “I remember you telling me you were a college athlete and studied sports management in Indiana. That included business, didn’t it?”

  “Some,” Travis admitted.

  “A friend of mine, a former navy SEAL—yeah, I know, strange friend for a Ranger—just bought a small ranch where I live. He’s thinking about starting a horse therapy program for vets. He’s knee deep in getting it started and needs help with the business aspects, particularly possible grants, regulations, staffing...”

  “Why me?”

  “Because I know how you cared about your men. The job needs someone who would be committed as well as having some knowledge of athletics and business.”

  It definitely sounded interesting, particularly Manning’s participation, but he wasn’t qualified. “I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t know anything about grants.”

  “But you know about physical therapy and organization. I also remember how you used to work the system to get what you needed. You never took no for an answer. That’s what we need now.”

  “We?”

  “It’s kinda a joint effort. You have to see it for yourself to believe it,” Manning said. “It would just be temporary, and we can’t afford to pay much.”

  “In other words, you want someone cheap.”

  “More like free, except for the use of a really nice cabin, as long as you stay.”

  “You really know how to sell a job,” Travis replied. Could it be that Manning had somehow discovered that Travis had no family, no plans?

  Being a desk jockey held little appeal for him. “Where?” he asked.

  “A little town in Colorado. It’s...unusual.”

  “You living there now?”

  “About eighteen months. After I recovered, I found Amos. He’s with me now.”

  “That’s great.” Travis remembered the military dog, how the animal mourned when his handler, Manning’s best friend, died. The dog was eventually sent back stateside.

  “Call it a working vacation,” Josh said. “I have a cabin that will be all yours. It’s on a lake, next to a mountain. The town is vet-friendly.”

  “How long?”

  “A few months. We have volunteers, enthusiasm, horses. Just no expertise.”

  Travis looked around the room. Danny was still here, supporting the others.

  “You said there’s a ranch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Any jobs available there for a young amputee?”

  “We could find something. You have a prospect?”

  “A corporal. Lost his right leg. He’s a foster kid. No family. No place to go. But he’s a damn hard worker and has encouraged everyone around here.”

  “Sounds like someone we can use,” Manning said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  “You sound...” Travis couldn’t find the right word.

  “Content? I am. I have a wife, a kid, five or six dogs—it changes by the day—two horses and a crazy cat. I’m even an innkeeper,” Manning said with a humor that was definitely new.

  “This I have to see,” Travis replied, signaling his acceptance. They discussed the logistics for a moment more, and then he hung up.

  Stunned, Travis stood there for a moment. His thoughts raced ahead as he looked at too many warriors struggling to get their lives back.

  For the first time in two years, he felt a sense of excitement. He had a challenge, another battle, even if the campaign might be brief. He’d seen so many fellow patients sink into hopelessness. He’d felt it himself. Maybe, just maybe, he could do something worthwhile, both for himself and others fighting for a new life.

  He whistled as he limped down the hall. It was the first time he had whistled since his injury.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Denver

  A LITTLE GIRL RUNNING. Blood everywhere. Spreading like a river. Edging nearer and nearer...

  Panicked, Jenny woke, soaked in her own sweat. The jerk of her body as she woke renewed intense pain in her shoulder. Disoriented, she looked around, trying to control the trembling. The night-light, now necessary for sleep, was just strong enough to reveal the shadowed bedroom, rather than the rubble of a once prosperous city.

  Had she screamed again? God, she hoped not.

  Her brief prayer was not answere
d. She heard a tentative knock on the door, and her mother inched the door open and entered the room. Her hair was in rare disarray, her robe partly open, her face slathered with some kind of cream.

  “Jennifer?” Her mother’s voice was loud, and Jenny smelled alcohol on her breath as she leaned over. “Another nightmare?”

  Jenny struggled to sit upright. Even after four months, the pain in her shoulder could stop her cold.

  “It’s okay, Mother. It’s gone.”

  She’d never told her mother the truth of the nightmares, that they always revolved around the child standing bewildered in a blood-soaked street. Had the little girl survived? The question wouldn’t leave her. “I’m okay now. Really. Just a bad dream. Remember, I used to have them as a child.” Jenny looked at the clock. A little after 4:00 a.m. “You go back to bed. I know you have that luncheon today. I’ll read for a while, then go back to sleep.”

  “If you’re sure...”

  “I am. It’s gone now.”

  “Maybe a sleeping pill...”

  “Maybe,” she said, although she had no plans of taking one. She had watched others in pain become reliant on pills. That would not happen to her. She knew her recuperating time would be long and painful. It was too easy to become addicted to pain meds.

  “I’ll get you a glass of water, okay?” her mother persisted.

  Jenny nodded. She could do that on her own, but the small chore would satisfy her mother.

  After her mother brought the water, Jenny went to her bathroom and took a hot, and then cold, shower to shake off the nightmare.

  She knew she couldn’t go back to sleep. Not yet. The horror of those moments was still too real. She went to the corner of her room, where she kept the physical therapy equipment. She selected a rod, turned on the portable TV to an all-news station and sat down in front of it. Her injury didn’t seem to hurt so much when she was occupied with news.

  She started moving the rod from side to side as she watched. An upset election in Europe, Congress fighting again, riots in a Middle Eastern country. She ached to be in the middle of it. She didn’t belong in a luxurious bedroom, in a gated community.

  She held the rod across her body like a vaudevillian dancing with a cane. She moved it to the left and then to the right. It was one of the excruciatingly painful exercises to expand the mobility of her right shoulder. She smothered a cry as she impatiently shoved the rod too far.

  The news turned back again to the Middle East, reporting on the refugees fleeing from wars in Iraq and Syria. She wanted to cry. Scream. Do something. She kept seeing that bombing and the children and adults running for cover where there was none. Did the volunteer medical workers make it to safety? If so, what about the next day? And the one after that?

  The scenes haunted her.

  Yet despite her injury, she wanted to go back. She needed to record what was happening. She wanted the world to know. To care, dammit.

  She didn’t know now whether she could ever return, with her shattered rotator cuff and damaged tendons and muscles. The wrong movement sent rivers of pain through her. She also experienced flashbacks and nightmares. Though less frequent now, she couldn’t take the chance of endangering others during one of her episodes.

  Where was Rick now? She hadn’t heard from him in a month. He had stayed with her that day and somehow managed to get her across the border to a hospital. He’d called from a cell phone, somewhere in the field, three weeks later. She’d been barely coherent after her surgery, but she told him she would be back.

  She missed him. He was fearless and always had a joke on his lips. He was probably the only person who’d ever understood her need to write stories that needed to be told. That was her source of adrenaline, just as photography was his...

  Stop thinking about the past.

  She dropped the rod and went to the window. She stared out at the manicured lawn and towering trees in the backyard. The vivid reds and oranges stood in stark contrast to the colorless rocks and sand of much of the Middle East. So why couldn’t she appreciate it? The house and grounds felt like a prison.

  It had been nearly four months since that bloody afternoon in Syria. She was lucky not to have bled to death. The red-hot metal had cauterized the wound, and Rick had cradled her body to keep the metal from moving until they found a doctor among the refugees. She’d been patched up enough to get to Turkey, where she received further medical treatment, and was sent home to Colorado.

  Following two operations on her shoulder, she’d needed weeks of intense therapy. Her mother begged her to move into the family home, which was close to the rehab center.

  She’d resisted at first. With the exception of several brief visits with her mother, she’d not been home since college. She’d been overseas for the last eight years, five of them in the Middle East. Moving back at thirty-two was humiliating.

  But staying there for a few weeks was the logical decision. She couldn’t even dress herself without going into elaborate contortions.

  Recuperating in a happy home would have been difficult enough, but this house was not happy. Her father was rarely there, and when he was, he usually went straight to his study. Her mother drank too much wine when she wasn’t at charity functions, and probably when she was, too. Her smile was a little too bright. Jenny’s journalistic eye saw the pain she tried to hide.

  On the rare weekends her father returned from San Francisco, where his company kept an apartment for him, he couldn’t stop reminding her that he had warned her not to go. The Middle East was no place for a woman. Why couldn’t she be like her two sisters?

  According to her father, journalism was no profession for his daughter. No opportunity to marry an up-and-coming husband, as her sisters had, and have children.

  But then Jenny knew she’d always been a disappointment to him.

  From the time she was old enough to walk, she’d run after fire engines or any other kind of excitement. At ten, she’d saved her allowance to buy a battered set of encyclopedias at a used book sale, and by twelve she’d read through them, along with finishing the reading list for the fifth, sixth and seventh grades. In lieu of dancing lessons, she headed for the library. The librarian was her best friend.

  Her parents hadn’t been concerned when she announced at age eleven that she wanted to wander the world, rather than get married, assuming her declaration was just a child’s wild fancy. They became more concerned when, at sixteen, she announced she was going to be a journalist and, at seventeen, attended a lecture by a renowned journalist at the University of Colorado, instead of going to the junior prom.

  More than anything else, she’d wanted to be on her own, free to fly like a bird...

  And she had.

  Would she ever fly again?

  * * *

  THREE MORNINGS LATER, Jenny woke to pounding at the door. Her brain was foggy. Daylight poured through the window. She glanced at the clock and jerked upright. It was ten in the morning, but then she hadn’t gone to sleep until 4:00 a.m. She’d been caught up in an idea for a story.

  More impatient knocking, and then the door burst open. Her sister Lenore walked in.

  Jenny stared at her. “I thought you were in San Francisco.”

  “Charlie and I flew in this morning,” she said.

  “Charlie?”

  “Charlotte, your niece. She announced last year she wants to be called Charlie.”

  “How did our parents take the announcement?”

  “They ignored Charlie’s edict, of course, and warned me that she might, of all horrors, take after you.”

  Jenny chuckled. This was a different side of Lenore. But then, except for a brief visit at the hospital a few months ago, she hadn’t seen her sister in more than five years. “Mother didn’t say you were coming,” she said.

  “She didn’t know,” Lenore said. “Charlie’s downstairs wi
th her now.” She scrutinized Jenny. “You look a lot better than you did a few months ago. But you really have to do something with that hair.”

  “Gee, thanks. I missed you, too,” Jenny replied. Her hair probably was a mess after sleeping on it. It was uncontrollably curly and a real pain to brush with her left hand.

  “You never did like lies. Even little ones,” Lenore said as she eyed Jenny critically. “You know, your hair would look really cute if you cut it shorter.”

  “I would look like Little Orphan Annie,” Jenny retorted, not admitting that she needed a new hairstyle, one that she could manage with her injury.

  Lenore laughed, but it sounded hollow. “No, you wouldn’t. It would look great on you. I couldn’t get away with it, but you could.” She paused, and then she added awkwardly, “How are you feeling? Really?”

  “Good,” Jenny lied. “I’m hoping to leave soon. I want to get back to work.”

  “Is your shoulder healed enough?”

  “I can manage most activities now. The problem is driving. A sudden movement can nearly paralyze my arm, but I’m working on it.”

  “You’re not planning to go back to the Middle East?”

  “I’m not that delusional,” Jenny said. “But I haven’t completely been idle. Thanks to the internet, I’ve been researching some stories I can do here in the States.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  She nodded. “Horse therapy.”

  “Horse therapy?” Lenore echoed. “Therapy for horses?”

  “No,” Jenny said patiently, unsure whether her sister was kidding. “Equine therapy for veterans. I was looking at various therapy programs and found a number that involved horses. I knew there were equine programs for kids with autism and disabilities. I didn’t know how many are available for veterans. It could make a great story.”

  Lenore studied her for a moment. “Does this interest have anything to do with your nightmares?”

  “Mom told you?” Jenny asked.

  “She’s worried about you.”

  “I’m worried about her, or I would have left by now,” Jenny said. “She’s drinking too much. I suppose you know our father rarely comes home these days. He’s living full time in San Francisco.”