He looked perfect, purified somehow, without edema or bruise. If there was broken skin, she couldn’t see it, his head white-wrapped. Everything wrong was hidden. His coma could have been deep sleep. The nurse stood there with her for a while. She was grateful for her stoic way, it gave Mary some room. She put her hand on one of Frank’s hands.

“I take it your commander got with you,” the nurse said after a little longer.

“Yes, as far as it went.”

“I have a few things we should talk about,” she said. “When you’re ready.”

Mary took her hand back. “I’m ready.”

They moved a distance from Frank. The nurse leaned against a piece of medical equipment, something bulky.

“He’ll be going to Landstuhl today. We’ve got a transport leaving in less than four hours. We have folks assigned to pack up personal effects, but Lieutenant Partnoy went to the trouble to make some binding requests we’re duty-bound to honor. One of them is that you be the assistant to the sicmo—Summary Court-Martial Officer—that’s designated to conduct the processing of effects. Normally, it’s a supply soldier or clerk. He specified you. He also specified that under no conditions were any papers among his personal effects to be sent to the JPED—I’m sorry, Joint Personal Effects Depot. Those are to be kept in your possession. Apparently, he left instructions among them as to how you’re to handle them.”

“This has to be done in four hours?”

“No, the cutoff is three days from date of incident. The inventory is scheduled at his RLB at 0700 tomorrow.”

“Understood.”

“Frank also designated you be the one to call his wife, and we didn’t want that to happen last night, for a variety of reasons I won’t go into right now. But we need to call her ASAP. Are you able to do that now?”

“Yes.”

“I’m the head nurse around here, so we have a specialist assigned for morale calls and notifications. The only thing I’d say to you is, there is a sentence sequence that they’ll give you with some fill-ins for the blanks. I would stick to those—unless, of course, you feel Lieutenant Partnoy specified you because he didn’t want that kind of formal communication. Did you know his wife?”

“A little.”

“Come this way.”

Mary followed her to the specialist, who explained the phone, how long she’d have—as long as she needed—and gave her the form for a VSI—very seriously injured—call. He told her he would stand by in case she had any trouble with the connection. Then he dialed the number. It was 10:30 in Maryland.

“Hello.”

“Clara?”

“Who is this?”

“Clara, it’s Mary. Mary Goodwin.”

“Oh my God.”

“Clara, he’s alive, he’s not dead.”

“Oh my God.”

“He’s banged up, but he’s going to be fine.”