“You think you can order your big brother around, now that you’re some hotshot cadet nurse, is that it?” JJ had grumbled, as Elissa, who had come to hug him just after Mary awakened him, coaxed him toward his room on his crutches. She took him into his private bath and had him lower himself onto the toilet seat so she could unwrap, wash, and rewrap his stump.

“This is goddamn embarrassing,” he told her, as she hovered over him, winding the bandage.

“Believe me, JJ, I’ve seen much worse,” she said, though she looked pale.

He picked up his cigarettes from the sink. “Well, I hope so,” he said. He lit a cigarette, wincing a little as she finished off the bandage.

He raised himself onto his crutches, and balanced on them as she fit the prosthesis over his bandaged stump, fastened the belt around his waist. He remembered her when she was younger, how shy she used to be of him, how he could make her blush in a second, teasing her.

“So, you’re actually going to marry Ty Lofgren,” he said. It was the first chance he’d had to say anything to her about it: Ty had just received a call from his mother insisting that he come home for the jam he’d been supposed to bring to the Mickelsons for their breakfast, so he had gone, kissing Elissa on the cheek, saying, “You go ahead. I’ll come as soon as I can, sweetheart.” The idea of his sister being with a guy—even a guy who’d made a decent Gloucester in the Pine Rapids High production of King Lear half a lifetime ago, before the war—made JJ’s stomach turn, but he supposed there was nothing he could do.

“Yes,” she said, making adjustments to his leg.

“I suppose it’s all right with me,” he said importantly.

She smiled up at him, and quickly ducked her head, but not before he saw the tear pooling in the corner of her eye. He swallowed a lump that had sprung up in his throat, and smoked.

Now all the sentimental rot he’d felt toward his sister paled next to his anger that she had made him put the damn Navy leg on. She didn’t know what it was like, having your body altered the way his had been. It had taken a lot of getting used to, not having his leg, and now he was practiced at getting around on just his crutches. But this damn thing! He felt like a sideshow freak, as he stood there on his crutches next to his dad’s car, puffing from just the exertion of standing up, his medals shiny on his uniformed chest.

Sometimes he couldn’t help wishing they’d sent the medals home and left him there to rot with his buddies.