When I can finally see through the dust and pain enough to make out the best path to Johnson, my body is on the edge of losing consciousness.  The pain is climbing higher and higher.

With my leg useless to handle my weight, I flip to my stomach and make the painful crawl forward.  It takes way too long to get to Johnson, and I know that, if I don’t hurry the fuck up, none of us will make it out of here.  The car that exploded just seconds before could start a chain reaction with the two that are parked next to it.  Not only that, but you can never assume that the area is free of more danger than just a car bomb.

The streets were empty when we made our way in earlier, but I saw the threat just seconds before the homemade bomb was triggered.  Before I could scream out my warning—it was too late.

“Johnson, you hear me, brother?” I wheeze when I get to his side.

He doesn’t respond, and after checking for a pulse, I know he needs a medic immediately.  Before I assess the situation further, I look around for Morris.  He was closest to the blast, but until I know for sure, I won’t leave either of them behind.

I’m about to give up hope when I see him, and I know there is no way possible that he’s alive.  There is a large piece of metal impaling him directly through the chest.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I crawl as quickly as my mangled body allows towards him and drag him back with me, moving away from the flames.

It takes me what feels like weeks in between bouts of vomiting my own blood, stopping numerous times during our evacuation to fire round after round at the camouflaged threat around us, and having to pause because my vision is starting to tunnel in and out, but I manage to pull my brothers for almost a mile before I hear the motor of an incoming truck.  With no choice but to keep my path, I can only pray that it’s one of our own.  They know by now that help was needed.  With signals down, I was unable to call it in, but there is no fucking way they missed that explosion.

I vaguely hear orders being called out and feet rushing around.  The only thing I can think is, Thank fuck they’re American, before I pass out.

Chapter 4—Maddox—Past

The first thing I feel when I start to wake up is pain.  An unbearable pain I never thought possible is searing through my whole body.  My eyes hurt, my arm is killing me, and my ribs and chest scream with every breath I attempt to take, but the worst pain is coming from my leg.

What the hell happened to me?  I try to remember where I was last, but my head seems to be filled with nothing but dark holes.  I attempt to open my eyes again, blinking fiercely at the pain from the bright lights.

I groan and try to move my arm to my eyes, coming up short when it smacks me in the head with a bone-crushing force.  What the hell?  Peeking through my eyelids, I see a bulky cast covering my arm from hand to shoulder.

Then it hits me.  Johnson, Morris, and the bomb.

With a renewed rush of strength, I push my body to listen and open my eyes to look around the barren hospital room.

Where the hell am I?

I locate the call button and wait for someone to come and explain some things to me.  Did Johnson make it?  Did Morris’s body make it home?  Where am I?  And why the hell am I in so much pain?

An hour later, I feel like my world is coming to an end.  The only thing getting me through is the thought of Mercy and our child.  The nurse just left with the promise to call my family—well, Mercy—and let her know that I’m awake.  It’s been almost a month since I got here.

As I fight the sleep that my body is demanding, I also battle with the fact that I’ve lost a chunk of my life.  Numerous surgeries to mend my broken body have left me with a badly broken but healing arm, seven broken ribs, and one foot.

After the rest of our team found me dragging Johnson and Morris, we were taken the military outpost.  I was airlifted to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center next to the US air base in Ramstein, Germany, as soon as I was stable enough to be moved.

Despite my best efforts, Johnson and Morris didn’t make it.  I can’t even get past the part that I’m now going to have to learn how to walk again—not when my brothers didn’t make it out alive.   All because I was fucked up in the head from my problems at home.  I missed the danger, and because of that, their families are husbandless and fatherless.

Hours later, I wake with a jolt.  It takes me a second to realize that the screaming echoing throughout the room is coming from my own mouth.  I’m soaked through with sweat from my nightmare of the bombing, but what has me screaming isn’t reliving that hell.  No, what woke me is the sensation that my foot is being sawed off.  My whole leg feels like I’ve dipped it into a shredder.