At the hospital, they ushered her into a room. Commander Hood came forward to her. She didn’t like his expression. It was not the face of a man who was about to chew her out—that’s what she wanted to see. Off-base nonsense has tragic consequences. His face should have beamed that.

“Sit down, Captain,” he said, seeming as if he might take her hand. She could hear lowered voices in other parts of the room. It was a waiting room, like any hospital, but there was the regular MP posted at the door.

“Frank’s the same,” Hood said.

She waited.

“Can I see him?” she finally asked.

“Absolutely,” Hood said. He looked high-minded. And his worst flaw, the perfection of his handsomeness, seemed more pronounced than usual. He needed to drink ugly, get beat on, come nearer to something bad for him.

Now it looked as if he was going to come in with her to see Frank. She really didn’t want that. He followed close by, grazing her elbow. He was oversolicitous, momentous too. Saying about her crash, and now Frank’s this, and how ironic, and you just never knew. But then some specialist came toasting in, all hot with important missives for him. They made earnest expressions, spoke flat-dramatically, that military specialty. Mary kept waiting, stared at a protocol poster on anesthesia, Hood every so often telling her to hold on, hold on. After too long, he said, Go on ahead; are you sure you’ll be all right? Yes, she would.

Finally, she was in a corridor, wide and dormlike. A nurse she didn’t know had come to escort her past soldiers on highly developed gurneys. Now the nurse was stopped, a doctor talking to her in confidential tones. Mary waited again, her eyes drawn to the men prone around her. They were so still, so shipshape, with sheets the color of blue scrubs, and tubes coiled importantly on their stomachs. This way station was a masterpiece of cleanliness, a sanctuary from expressed pain, or at least from any pain that caused cries or moans. Deep in technology’s sympathies, these soldiers seemed little like past fallen. No mud came here.

She remembered what they’d told her the night before. They would be shipped to Germany promptly. The C-130 that took them would be an airborne ICU. It would land at Ramstein Air Base; from there they’d be rushed to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and, as soon as possible, flown on another cargo plane across Europe and the Atlantic to Andrews and Walter Reed. The average length of time for transport of the injured from front lines to the States had been forty-five days during Vietnam. Now it was four days.

Just then the nurse from last night was at her side. “Captain,” she said, any sentimental wet wrung from her voice. She guided her to Frank’s gurney.