Page 6 of A Hero Comes Home

Jake elbowed him, and Izzie elbowed him back. Immature, yeah. A sign of longtime companionship, more so. They grinned at each other.

“Dr. Sheila asked me if I’m suffering from wargasm.”

Izzie’s eyes went wide before he let out a hoot of laughter. “What the hell is wargasm?”

“Google it when you get home. You won’t believe it.” Jake took a small sip of his beer and set it aside. He really wasn’t in the mood for alcohol. The combination with his meds was making him a bit nauseated.

“The private hospital wing, the mental and physical rehab, the isolation . . . all these things . . .” Izzie continued, “Well, I repeat, they’re protecting you until you’re well enough to return home.”

“And I repeat, bullshit! They’re protecting their own asses. I leave here and tell the press what happened to me in that Taliban shithole, it will jeopardize that ridiculous truce with the Balakistan rebels. If the brass had their way—and they’ve been trying to brainwash me with some asinine ‘forgive and forget’ philosophy, for the sake of peace, for three months now—I would go home and keep my mouth shut. It’s all politics!”

“Everything in the military—hell, everything in life—is politics. You know that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have to like it.” Jake gazed at his friend, who was wearing Army fatigues, and smiled. “Is that another bar I see on your chest, soldier?”

Izzie puffed his chest out and grinned. “Yep. Finally made captain. Now I’m just like you.”

“Hah! They want to make me a major and plant me in some defense department office, making ‘Hail to the Chief’ promo videos. Or some such crap.”

“Be real, man, you’re in no shape to return to active duty, if that’s even what you’d want,” Izzie said, not in an unkind way.

“Don’t I know it!”

“A cushy job in DC sounds pretty good to me, short-term anyhow.”

“Yeah, right. You’d be as miserable in a desk job as I would.”

“Maybe.” He studied Jake for a moment. “You do look a lot better than you did three months ago when they brought me in to identify your unconscious body.”

That had to have been hard for Izzie, but then, Jake would have done the same for him in a heartbeat. “I saw pictures in my file this week. I looked like Frankenstein’s younger, uglier brother. Now, I look like some Long John Silver Freakoid.”

“You do not.”

Jake put a hand to the patch over his one eye and then held out his hands to display his nailless fingers.

“The nails will grow back, and your other injuries will heal eventually. Maybe not totally, but . . .”

“Not my eye.”

“The laser surgery didn’t work?”

“No. They want to do another one in a month or so, but I am not sticking around this burg that long. Even if I have to rappel down the side of the building using bedsheets.”

“And then what?”

“Hell if I know!”

“Still don’t want to go home?”

“Still don’t want to go home,” Jake agreed.

A sudden idea seemed to occur to Izzie and he said, “Please don’t tell me you had other injuries.”

At first, Jake didn’t understand until he noticed the blush on Izzie’s face and his quick glance downward to Jake’s crotch. “No, the package is still intact. Wanna see?”

“Hell, no!” Izzie relaxed visibly. But then he continued on the previous vein, “Don’t you want to see Sally? And your kids?”

Jake shook his head.