And when I looked over at Sarge again — his head tipped back against the wall, utterly spent, the baby safe on his chest — I saw that something had slipped out from the collar of his shirt when he stood.

It hung now on a rusted beaded chain, catching the hard fluorescent light: a single tarnished silver dog tag, resting against his collarbone.

From where I stood I could see that it did not carry the usual stamp of name and rank and blood type. It carried one word, cut deep into the metal.

I couldn’t read it yet. But I knew, the way you know a thing before you have the proof, that whatever that word was, it was the reason he was in that chair.

Chapter 11 — Clara

The twelfth hour came on like a weight settling over the room. The NICU had gone down into its deep-night quiet, the lights dimmed to a soft twilight, the world reduced to the hum of the concentrators and the small green pulse of the monitors.

And by hour eleven I could see, plainly, that Sarge was in real pain.