PART I – ST. JUDE’S
I was at my workbench in the garage, cleaning carbon off my rifle bolt, when the silence broke. My phone didn’t just ring; it screamed.
I answered on the first vibration. I expected a telemarketer, maybe a buddy from the old unit calling to talk about nothing important. Instead, I heard a sound that stopped my heart cold.
It was my wife, Brooke. She wasn’t speaking. She was wailing.
It was a guttural, animal sound of pure terror. Then she choked out five words that ended my life as a civilian. “Mason… her legs are gone.”
The drive to St.
Jude’s Hospital—St. Jude Medical Center off the interstate—usually takes forty minutes in our part of the U.S. I made it in eleven.
I don’t remember the traffic lights. I don’t remember the speed bumps. I only remember the white‑knuckle grip on my steering wheel and the cold, mechanical calculation running through my brain.
Her legs are gone.
That sentence ricocheted around my skull. My daughter Tessa is six years old. She loves ballet.
She loves running in the backyard with our golden retriever, Ranger. She loves spinning until she falls in the grass, giggling. What did Brooke mean, gone?
I abandoned my truck in the emergency lane with the engine still running. I didn’t care. I sprinted through the automatic doors of the ER, boots slamming against the linoleum floor.
A security guard started to stand, ready to stop me, then saw the look in my eyes and slowly sat back down. He knew a man on the edge when he saw one. I found the triage desk and slapped my hand on the counter.
“Tessa. Six years old. Trauma unit.
Now.”
My voice sounded strange, too calm. It was the voice I used overseas, back when I carried a rifle for a living and wore a U.S. flag on my shoulder.
The nurse typed frantically, her face going pale. “Room 402. Surgery prep.
Sir, you can’t go in there—”
I was already gone. I turned the corner into the trauma wing. The smell hit me first.
Antiseptic. Old coffee. Fear.
I saw my wife. Brooke was curled up in a hard plastic orange chair, knees pulled to her chest. Her clothes were covered in blood.
It wasn’t her blood. “Brooke.”
She looked up. Her eyes were swollen nearly shut from crying.
When she saw me, she collapsed into my arms. She felt fragile, shaking so hard her teeth chattered. “Mason—oh God—Mason!”
“Where is she?” I asked.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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