For a long time he didn't buy the book, even though he was in it-page 56. He remembers the day so clearly that he's afraid that seeing the picture will displace the image in his mind.
They were all laughing, he, Mark, Erika, Tomas. And Jennifer. Jennifer loudest of all. The camera was almost never off her neck, hardly out of her hands. Even naked in his bunk the camera was on the chair within arm's reach. He'd joke that it was watching them, or that she was recording it to blackmail him.
He'd thought it ridiculous that she was taking their pictures, his especially. Just an off-duty doctor. "Save it for the heroes. Save it for the children. Hell, save it for the flowers on the hills," he'd said.
"You guys are heroes," she'd said. "You save lives. I want to get all the images of war. The ones that are tragic, yes, but the ones that are uplifting too.
Tomas had said that she should get some of them in action, working on the wounded. She'd said she get those too.
Four days later the truck she was in hit an IED.
She'd been uploading pictures to Reuters as she went, so most of her work was saved. Those amazing pictures of children playing a form of kickball with the soldiers contrasted with the bombed out buildings behind them. The sun over the mountains with the tents in the foreground. And the soldiers. Soldiers, whole and smiling. And soldiers in beds, on crutches, shipping back, some smiling for her camera, others not.
But he was happy that they'd had enough to compile the book that she'd always wanted. It was a piece of her that would live on.
*dedicated to Tim Hetherington and to Christie Sullivan, a Reuters photographer and childhood friend of my husband's who was killed in the Bosnian War and to all the others killed in war.