AN: Chapter by MinaBR.

Thank you to SunflowerFran3759 for betaing this chapter.


Afghanistan was a ticking bomb. The feeling of uneasiness never really left us, but on that particular day, it was exceptionally nasty. I tried to plaster a smile on my face – an attempt to lighten up the mood. It didn't really work; the heat was excruciating and the air reeked of fear. Crossing the desert is always a risk, bomber men are always lurking, waiting for an opportunity to take some of the "infidels" with them. I won't pretend to understand the intricacies of foreign politics, but it's obvious that our interference is unwelcomed.

The convoy had been making slow progress; the conditions of the road were beyond poor. I remember looking at the landscape and thinking that it wasn't as pretty as home. From then on, everything is a blur. Sounds of explosions and gun-shots, followed by intense pain, but fortunately I lost consciousness and woke up some time later in a campaign hospital.

I was surrounded by people who looked like the enemy, but didn't act as such. Their medicine wasn't really advanced, and it took me months to recover from a head wound that would have healed much sooner, had I been treated by an American doctor. But no Americans ever came, and no one around me seemed to understand my language. It turned out that my case slipped through the cracks of an inefficient bureaucracy. No one reported my admittance in the hospital to the Army, so I was reported as missing in combat.

For a month and a half I had nothing to keep me company but my own thoughts. Going over my life, I finally realize that I've been living in denial. My family was built on lies and blackmail. My wife, the woman I've loved through all of my life, had spent the past eight years pining for another man, the same man who had been deprived of his child. For the first time, I put myself in his place, and it pains me to admit that I've been extremely unfair to him. I've manipulated her. It was a shameful act, but there was still time to atone for my sins.

The day I left Afghanistan, I made a vow to give back to Bella the choice I had so carelessly taken away from her, eight years ago.

And now, here I stand, releasing her from the promise she should never had forced to make.