The captain stared at my name for another second. “Elliot Delaney,” he repeated. Then he asked whether I had served with Staff Sergeant Thomas Mercer. My chest tightened. Mercer had been in my unit during my final deployment. He was one of the men evacuated after the same attack that eventually cost me my leg. I had not spoken to him in years.
The captain swallowed hard. “Thomas is my younger brother.” He told me Mercer had spent years telling his family about the officer who refused evacuation until everyone else was accounted for. I barely remembered it that way. Those days existed in fragments for me—dust, shouting, hospital lights. But apparently Mercer remembered enough for both of us. The captain reached out and shook my hand.
...
