EPILOGUE, ALTERNATE REALIT
With trembling hands, I picked up the phone the same as I always did. “Barbara-Ann Mercer for Master Sergeant Kent Mercer.”
“Relation to the patient?”
“Wife,” I replied in my sweetest tone.
I walked past the nurse’s station, straight to my husband’s room, making sure to slam the door.
On the flight over, I read the unclassified summary of the events. Apparently, a bomb that went off next to where my husband’s squadron was camped. In an act of heroism, he took a majority of the blow. He now had a chunk of metal in his brain and would likely never walk again. (That’s what it said anyway.) From his classified place of injury, he’d been airlifted to the American Army base in Landstuhl. This was standard for all critically injured deployed personnel. Since there
