After months away on duty, I came home expecting my wife’s embrace, but she flinched from my touch like I was a stranger. One night I lifted the blanket,

At the clinic, while you wait under fluorescent lights that make everyone look already half-gone, she says, “You should be…

“I need to finish in there,” he said. “Go,” I told him. “The harder it got,” I finished. “Yeah.” I…