Bye, Mr. Ex! novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Card

I stood in the kitchen doorway in his shirt and did not say a word.

The card on the table was the size of a postcard, yellowed and creased, with brown stains along one edge.

It was a field casualty card, the kind that hangs from a litter strap.

Jonas had the corner of a hospital sticker pinched between his thumb and finger, and he had peeled it back.

Under it was a line of blue ink, blurred by seven years of folding.

"I've carried this since the night I woke up in Landstuhl," he said without looking up. "I've never read it all the way down."

"Jonas."

"A nurse stuck a label over the bottom. Tonight I was lying there with you counting, and I thought, there has to be something."

His voice was flat.

"So I came out here and I peeled it."

He turned the card around and slid it across the table.

TREATED BY: PICKENS, S. SPC. 68W.

Beneath it, in the same shaking hand, a line of numbers: tourniquet time, morphine, a note that said *continuous verbal coaching, 11 min, LT conscious*.

I put my fingertip on the word *coaching*.

"I wrote that on the deck," I said. "With my eyebrow bleeding into my eye."

Jonas looked at me for a long time.

"You've known who I was since the dinner."

"Since before the dinner."

"You knew in the hallway."

"I knew in the hallway."

"And on the flight line. When he put his hand on my shoulder and called himself the man who pulled me out."

"Yes."

"You stood right there."

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