The Road Back From Broken

Prologue

June 5, 2009
Evans Army Community Hospital
Fort Carson, Colorado

The siren's wail fell silent as the ambulance pulled up.

Jennifer Fitzgerald stood by the Emergency Room doors and watched the paramedics yank the gurney out of the ambulance, its wheels hitting the ground harder than they normally would. The patient squawked at the impact and began complaining in low, slurred tones. He didn't move, though, having one arm secured in a splint and the other handcuffed to the gurney.

Ordinarily Jenn would have been furious with the paramedics for handling a patient so roughly. Had she seen them behaving like that with one of her patients, she would have laid into them right there. But this time, with this patient, she simply stood in bitter silence, her jaw tightening with anger as they wheeled him into the ER.

He hadn't always been this bad. For months she'd told herself he was going through a phase, and that he'd pull himself together somehow, like he always did. That it would get better. But as the weeks turned into months and the long spring of his convalescence turned into summer, it didn't get better.

It got worse.

Four months had passed since her husband's return from Afghanistan, and she hardly recognized him anymore.

Jenn had been across town at Penrose Hospital when she got the call. She'd just ordered a nebulizer treatment for a seven-year-old asthmatic when her phone buzzed in her pocket. The first time, she glanced at the unfamiliar number and thumbed off the ringer, sending the call to voice mail. Before she could even slide it back into her pocket, it rang again-another call from the same phone number. The second call came so quickly on the heels of the first that she knew the caller had hung up and redialed without leaving a message.

"This is Jenn."

She slipped out of the exam room and shut the door with a quiet snick.

"Ma'am, this is Corporal McNamara with the Military Police." Jenn leaned against the wall for support. "There's been an accident and your husband's been injured." The nausea that swirled in her belly when she answered the phone surged into a sickening wave of dread. "We're taking him to the base hospital, ma'am. You're going to need to come down right away."

When she arrived at the Evans ER and saw him on the gurney with a dazed, heavy-lidded expression and an oozing gash above his brow, Jenn knew what had happened.

Her fear suddenly evaporated, leaving behind the stain of anger.