Home Front by Kristin Hannah

Author:Kristin Hannah [Hannah, Kristin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, Family Life, Contemporary Women
ISBN: 9781429942218
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2012-01-31T08:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

It was one of those foggy days in Seattle, where it seemed there was no sky at all, just layers and layers of gray. Jolene could hear the ferry’s foghorn in the distance, rippling like the water it floated above; a seagull cawed.

Betsy loves feeding those gulls. How many times had they stood on the ferry deck, hand in hand, lashed by a cold wind, throwing food to the beady-eyed birds who seemed to float so effortlessly?

A car horn honked.

She frowned, confused.

The sound changed, became an insistent beep-beep-beep.

She realized suddenly that her eyes were closed. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. No. There was something in her mouth.

She came awake slowly, fought to open her eyes.

Overhead, instead of sky, was a white ceiling tracked with harsh lighting. She blinked. There were machines clustered around her, tall stands with monitor heads, like thin washed-out mourners, clucking and beeping.

The something in her mouth was a tube. Another tube went into her chest from the machine to her right.

A giant sucking sound came and went, rising and falling.

She heard footsteps, then a door opened, closed.

She needed to think. Where was she? What had happened?

A tall man in a white coat came to her bedside. He was wearing purple gloves and a white mask over his nose and mouth. He pushed back the curtains that created a semicircle of privacy.

A bed. Yes. That was it. She was in a bed.

“Chief,” the man said. “You’re awake.”

She tried to speak, but the tube made her gag.

Pain. She was in pain. It came to her suddenly, swallowed her; had it been there all along? Beside her, a monitor started to beep faster.

“Calm down, Chief,” the stranger said through his mask. “You’ve been in a terrible accident. Do you remember? Your helicopter was shot down.”

His voice drew out the word, elongated it: ac-ci-dent.

Smoke. Burning bits of metal. Tami.

Adrenaline surged through her. Pain spiked—where was it coming from? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t isolate it.

She wanted to ask about Tami, about her crew, but she couldn’t make anything work. She stared up at the stranger, thinking please …

She imagined herself reaching out, grabbing the man’s arm, demanding to know how her crew was, but she couldn’t do any of it. She thought of Tami, remembered holding her, promising her they’d be okay.

Blood on her face … everywhere.

The man did something to the bag hanging by her bed, and, slowly, the fog came back, rolled around her, softened the view until she was far away from here. She was on her own back porch, with her feet up on the railing, listening to the high squeak of Lulu’s voice as she ran around the yard and to the even, reliable whooshing of the distant waves.

* * *

Pain snapped her awake.

Jolene opened her eyes, gasping, desperate to fill her lungs with air. The tube was out of her mouth now. How long had she been here, drifting in and out of consciousness?

She couldn’t track the passing of time. When she woke, it was a barely there kind of waking; she was foggy, confused.

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