For Nancy, so used to standing alone in a world that often proved cold and unfriendly, this had been a blessing.

As the two women were about to part company in the parking lot, Helen paused. “Up to anything special this weekend?”

Knowing this was Helen’s preamble to an invitation for a home cooked meal followed by a video, Nancy shook her head. “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

Though she knew Nancy wasn’t seeing anyone at the moment, Helen nevertheless took the opportunity to kid her. “Hot date?”

Nancy rolled her eyes and she walked backwards in the direction of where she had parked her car. “No, nothing like that,” she explain. “Just the opposite.”

“Oh,” Helen replied with a laugh. “It’s your time of month.”

“Yep!” Nancy beamed. “I get to play weekend warrior with the boys.”

Helen sighed. “I really respect your dedication, but I don’t envy you.”

“Well,” Nancy shrugged. “It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to make the coffee.”

With a laugh, Helen waved to Nancy. “I’ll sleep safely tonight knowing that the defense of Idaho is in your capable hands.”

“Go home Helen,” Nancy chided her friend as she laughed, “I think I hear your kids. It’s either that or the local SWAT team is running a hostage rescue drill.”

HEADQUARTERS, IDAHO NATIONAL GUARD, BOISE, IDAHO • 19 MAY

Every time she entered the office of Plans, Training, and Operations, Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Kozak felt as if she had come home. Though still very much an outsider here, the familiar sights, sounds, and smells of a military headquarters awoke feelings of purpose and pride that were still very much a part of her. There was none of the abstract or theoretical that so dominated her day-to-day labors at the university. What she did here affected real people. Come summer, when most of the units of the Idaho Guard mustered for their annual two week training, they would benefit from the long hours Nancy put in ensuring that the proper ammunition was on hand. It was a thankless job, as anyone who ever had to deal with training management could attest. Still, it allowed Nancy to keep in touch with the real world, one populated by people who lived real lives. Even more importantly, it permitted her to hang on to the one thing that had always been of paramount importance to her, the Army.

It had not taken her long to find that one could not simply turn one’s back on an organization such as the Army. A decorated veteran, Nancy had participated in the First Gulf War as well as a few minor conflicts here and there around the world. Quickly she had discovered that her experiences and achievements in the military were not only of little concern to the very people she thought she had been defending, but all too often, a source of problems for her. “Have you ever stopped and wondered,” Helen told Nancy when the two of them were discussing their lack of a serious love life one night instead of studying, “how intimidating it has to be for a man to know that the woman he is dating is not only trained to kill, but has been afforded the opportunity to do so?”