Vietnam, 1968

A light was on at the nurse's station, but it was nearly pitch dark at the opposite end of the tent. Joe lay on his cot, staring up at the deep shadows in the tent's folds. It hurt to move too much. His legs ached, too, except they didn't. Phantom pains, the doctors had called them. They had said it would be best just to keep still as much as possible.

That was easy for them to say. They could walk freely about. They could run, fog, jump, stand on their tiptoes and cross their legs. Joe couldn't do any of that. He never would ever again.

His parents didn't know yet. He didn't know how he'd break it to them that their son was a damn cripple. He could just imagine the horror on Betsy's face.

He reached under the mattress near his head. His hand wrapped around the barrel of a gun. He slowly pulled it out. He couldn't even see it in the darkness, but he could feel it easily enough.

"Is that it, then? You're just going to give up?"

Joe jumped and had to bite down heard to stifle a yell of pain. "Jesus!" he hissed. He turned to the left. A black silhouette, outlined by a light somewhere outside the tent, stood under the awning of an open tent flap. Two cots filled with sleeping marines lay between Joe and the stranger. The man's voice had carried easily, but it didn't appear to have woken anyone else.

"Who're you?" asked Joe.

The stranger crossed his arms and leaned against a support pole. "Isn't that a question you should be asking yourself?" He sounded British, which only puzzled Joe further. As far as he'd known, there weren't any British troops at the MASH unit. "Who are you, Joseph Dawson? Are you someone who gives up, or are you a survivor?"

"How the hell do you know my name?"

He could practically feel the man's grin. "I know more about you than you realize. Of course, if you pull that trigger and end your life tonight, I won't ever have met you, and this little conversation of ours would never have happened. Either that or the resulting paradox would cause the universe to be ripped apart, but never mind about that. So. You've got a gun. You're hurting, and you want the pain to end. I can understand that, easily."

There was grief in his voice. Joe had heard that tone more times than he'd ever wanted to, both here and back home.

"But that's just it. It's easy to give in. It's easy not to face tomorrow. Life isn't easy, my friend. Things happen, horrible, unbearable things, and it's up to those of us who are left behind to move past it, to find a reason to keep going."

"And what reason is that?" Joe bit back angrily. "Don't know if you noticed, pal, but half of me has been blown to bits!"

The stranger was silent for a long while. "You can go on," he finally said, quietly. "If you give yourself half the chance. This isn't the end for you, Joseph Dawson. There is so much more in store for you."

Joe's hand tightened around the barrel of the gun. His finger stayed off the trigger. "What are you, my fucking fairy godmother?"

He chuckled. "Something along those lines, I guess you could say." He paused. "Give it a day."

Joe frowned. "What?"

"Just a day. If you don't find a reason to live on by tomorrow night, then do it. Kill yourself. A mere 24 hours. Think you could manage that?"

"Doctor!"

A woman screamed the word from somewhere else in the camp. The stranger's head whipped to the left.

"24 hours!" he called into the tent. He turned and rushed off, disappearing from view.

Joe stared at the spot vacated by the British man, apparently a doctor. He caught a hint of something bright blue out of the corner of his vision, and his eyes slid past the empty spot and settled a little off to the right. Peaking out behind the far corner of another tent, half within a field of light, was a tall, rectangular blue box.

He wasn't sure why he put the gun back in its hiding place. He lay awake for most of the night, replaying the conversation over and over again in his mind.

He dozed off, and when he woke again, the sky was considerably lighter. A noise he hadn't heard in a year, one so unique he'd never forgotten it, grated through the air.

He lifted his head and glanced out the tent flap. The blue box was gone.