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you off this street.”
    “You’re gonna help me?” Miller’s voice broke.
    Chris put his hand on Miller’s shoulder and looked him directly in the eyes. “Absolutely.”
    Sara led the way back to the ambulance. The crowd was completely gone.
    “You’ve got this under control?” the cop asked, waiting for Chris’s or Sara’s confirmation.
    “Yeah, we’re fine,” Sara told him.
    The cop gave them a wave and headed for his patrol car. Only the tall stranger who had helped with the crowd remained. For a second, he caught Chris’s gaze, gave a little nod, then he, too, turned away and left.
    Chris and Sara exchanged curious looks, and she shrugged in response to his unspoken question. Maybe he had been a Good Samaritan who was just passing by and stopped to help. But it was clear he wasn’t part of the crowd.
    “I’ll ride in the back,” Chris volunteered, and tossed Sara the keys. He helped Miller climb into the back of the ambulance and settled him down on the cot.
    “Are you taking me to the VA hospital? I don’t like it there,” Miller complained.
    “No, they don’t take emergency deliveries, so we’re going to Denver Health,” Chris explained. “They’ll take good care of you there.”
    Miller relaxed back against the thin mattress as the last bit of his energy drained away. Chris hooked him up to an IV and started some fluids flowing into the man’s dehydrated body.
    Several minutes later, they pulled into the brightly lit dock area where the ambulances unloaded patients, and Sara backed into a space. Interns came out and helped unload the gurney, and Chris walked next to it to the room where they transferred Miller to a hospital bed.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow, man,” he told Miller.
    The man’s fingers closed weakly around Chris’s arm. “Don’t forget,” he whispered.
    “I will
never
forget,” Chris assured his friend.
    Miller’s hand fell back to the bed. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”
    “You can call me Chris. I’m not your officer anymore.”
    “Sure thing, Lieutenant,” Miller said with a weak smile.
    Chris took the gurney back to the ambulance, and he and Sara drove over to the garage, where they sanitized the bus and replenished their supplies.
    “So what was that all about?” Sara asked. “Old friend of yours?”
    “Not really. He took a bullet during an attack, and I stayed with him. He almost lost his arm.”
    “In Afghanistan?”
    “Outside of Marjah. The Taliban was pretty solid in the area. We’d take it and lose it and take it again.” Chris fell silent for a moment as the memories flooded back. The bullets passing so close he could feel the disturbance of the air by his ears. The explosions of bombs and IEDs that shook the ground. The hollow thump of a Stinger missile leaving its launcher and the terror of not knowing where it was going to land, but by the whistling sound, aware that it was going to be too close for comfort. His ears ringing from the noise. His nostrils filled with the smell of blood and fear and sweat and dust. His heart pounding in his chest beneath the full battle rattle that consisted of about fifty pounds of body armor and protective gear as he ran from victim to victim, carrying his medical kit and trying to get to every soldier who had been wounded before it was too late or before he caught a bullet. He remembered Miller, lying on the hot sand, his blood pooling under his right shoulder and pieces of flesh and bone splattered around. Miller had been conscious, but in shock, so he hadn’t really been aware of the incredible pain…pain that would probably be with him for the rest of his life. That is, if he survived the battle.
    Chris had pulled the wound closed and slowed the bleeding. But he hadn’t been able to leave until the enemy had been pushed back, offering a blessed, if temporary, moment of quiet and calm. For several days, because there had been so many injuries, Miller had had to stay in the on-base hospital, waiting his turn