“The people on the rescue helicopter.”
Dana read the names.
An injured soldier. Two medics. A crew chief. A journalist. A local interpreter.
Six lives.
One of the medics had written a note tucked beneath the frame.
THANK YOU FOR THE CORRIDOR HOME.
Dana stood there for a long time.
Then she removed Ethan’s dog tags from around her neck.
Jack tensed.
She did not hang them on the memorial.
Instead, she held them in both hands, pressed the cool metal once to her lips, and put them back on.
“Not yet,” she said.
Jack nodded.
“No deadline.”
She visited again two weeks later.
Then again.
Eventually she agreed to speak to young pilots about decision-making under uncertainty. She refused every suggestion that she return to active duty. The Air Force had been one life, and she was not ready to make it her whole life again.
But she stopped treating the sky as if it had betrayed her.
The next spring, Jack took her to a small civilian airfield outside Richmond. A restored two-seat trainer waited on the ramp.
Dana stared at it.
“Absolutely not.”
“We’re not going tactical.”
“Still no.”
“You can sit right seat. I fly.”
She looked at the canopy.
Her hands had begun to shake.
Jack saw it and stepped back.
“We can leave.”
That mattered more than encouragement would have.
Dana stood there listening to the wind move across the hangars.
