LITMIR.BIZ

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and worn, but offered some protection against the slushy gray November morning. More disturbing was the prosthetic leg sticking foot-up out of the junk packed on the back of the wheelchair.

      The old-timer was missing his right leg from above the knee down—a mirror-image injury to Bruce’s own missing left leg. A RAK, right-leg-above-the-knee amputee. And a LAK, left-leg-above-the-knee amputee.

      Bruce felt the familiar sinking sensation in his gut as he dug out his wallet. He’d been in prime physical condition before being cut down. He could have gone soft in the hospital, let the pain and the loss drive him to suicide like Stuart, or to bitterness like Hatch.

      But he hadn’t. He hadn’t because there was nothing more important than getting back to his unit.

      Unit, Corps, God and country.

      Every Marine knew the order of things.

      It was the one thing that kept him going.

      But this guy…this guy was right out of Bruce’s waking nightmare. He had to have been young once. One quirk of fate and thirty years from now Bruce could be an old wheelie on a street corner, trying to live off a substandard disability check and begging for change.

      “Here.” He shoved a dollar bill at the guy. Feeling the urge to put as much distance as possible between him and the wheelie, he continued up the block.

      “A buck?” The next light turned green as he reached the corner, and the wheelchair-bound vet followed Bruce into another crosswalk. He wasn’t using his hands to operate the chair. He kept pace by scooting along with his single foot, maneuvering from one dip in the curb to the other. “Do you have any idea how much public transportation costs these days? How am I supposed to get to the VA on a buck?”

      “How much?” Bruce demanded, coming to an abrupt halt. He didn’t for one minute believe the old-timer was headed to the Veterans Administration.

      “Four dollars to get me there and back. Another couple dollars to fill my belly…”

      “Here’s a five.” Bruce shoved it at him. Kissing that six bucks goodbye, he started walking again.

      “Them damn drivers don’t make change.” The old-timer kept pace with him, grumbling.

      “How much to get you to stop following me?” Bruce demanded, losing all patience with the old guy.

      “Depends on where you’re headed.”

      “Right here. This is where I’m headed,” Bruce said, walking up to the recruiting office door with the Navy and Marine Corps logos and opening it wide.

      The two-story brick-and-mortar office had received a recent face-lift. The sign above the two doors read “Armed Forces Recruiting Station.”

      “Well, hell, son, that’s where I’m headed, too.” He blew past Bruce. “I asked was you Mitzi’s Marine?”

      “I’m not Mitzi’s anything!” Bruce said a little too vehemently.

      “MITZI!” the old-timer called out. “You here?”

      “Be right out, Henry,” she answered from somewhere beyond the alcove. The bathroom? The storage room? The stairs to the second-story loft, maybe?

      The Navy/Marine Corps half of the recruiting station was divided into front offices and back offices, separated by a short hallway. Alcoves built into either side of the hall were fitted with kitchen-style counters and cabinets.

      With Bruce hot on his wheels, the old-timer scooted off in search of her. “Hey! You can’t go back there.”

      The one-eyed wheelie scowled at him. “Says who?”

      “Says me!” Bruce was about to argue further when Mitzi stepped out from the unisex bathroom in the locker area. Were those tears she was trying to hide? He felt a familiar tightness in his chest. The last time he’d seen her cry she was running from his hospital room.

      “Henry Dawson Meyers,” she said, “what is that thing over your eye?”

      “Found it in a Dumpster,” Henry said proudly. “Lots of good stuff left over from Halloween.”

      “What have I told you about digging through Dumpsters?”

      The guy had the decency to blush. Mitzi took the eye patch from him and stepped back into the open bathroom. After washing the patch with soap and water, she wiped it down with a paper towel and handed it back to Henry, who tucked the prop into his jacket pocket.

      Bruce stood there shaking his head. “Ol’ Henry here has a bus to catch,” he said. He’d put the guy in a position where he’d have to leave or be caught in a lie.

      “Oh? You don’t want a ride today?” Mitzi asked Henry.

      “Course I do.” Henry glared at Bruce with two weathered eyes.

      “I give Henry a ride to the VA hospital every Wednesday,” Mitzi explained.

      “Of course you do.” First he’d been outmaneuvered by Mitzi, aka mini-Marine. Then a one-legged con man with a fake eye patch had tried to take him for a ride. Not today. “I’ll drive,” Bruce insisted.

      MITZI BEGAN DIGGING through the glove compartment of his government vehicle. “What are you doing?” Bruce demanded.

      “Looking for this,” she said, hanging the handicap permit from the rearview mirror.

      Bruce yanked it down and shoved it back into the box. “We’re just dropping him off,” he said, pulling up to the front entrance of the VA hospital.

      “You don’t want to stop in and say hi to your mother?” she asked, incredulous. “What about your aunt? You probably haven’t seen her in ages.”

      “I saw my mother at breakfast.” His mother and paternal aunt were registered nurses. Both worked at the VA after having served in Vietnam together thirtysome-odd years ago. That’s where Aunt Dottie had introduced his mom to his dad and his uncle John.

      True, he hadn’t seen Aunt Dottie in a while. But he’d had enough well-intentioned smothering for his first day home. His mother had fussed over him at breakfast more than when he’d been an inpatient at Balboa.

      Hospitals weren’t exactly on his list of favorite places, no matter who worked where and what shift. Not after his extended stay. Been there, done that. Didn’t need the handicap permit to prove it.

      Bruce put a hand to his collar to loosen the choke hold his tie had on him. “Even if I was sticking around,” he said, “I wouldn’t need to take up a handicap parking place.”

      “I just thought you might want the extra room for Henry’s wheelchair.”

      “That’s why there’s a loading zone.”

      “Get me out of here,” Henry demanded from the backseat. “I’ve had about all I can stand of the Bickersons. If I’d of known you two was gonna fight the whole way I woulda taken my chances with the bus.”

      Bruce and Mitzi exchanged censuring looks.

      He managed not to slam anything as he got out of the car, got the wheelchair from the trunk and pulled it alongside Henry’s open door. The old-timer barely had the upper-body strength to transfer himself into the chair. Once he did, Bruce shut the car door and wheeled Henry over to the dip in the curb.

      “I can take it from here,” Mitzi insisted.

      Bruce eased off the handles. “You’re going in?”

      “You can wait in the car in the farthest spot in the parking lot, for all I care. But I have business inside and you’re the one who insisted on driving.”

      “How long do you think you’ll be?”

      She shrugged. “Half hour maybe.”

      “That long?”

      “Just

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