“What happened?”
Mrs. Alvarez answered.
“You called.”
I frowned.
“I called hundreds of people that week.”
“You called me twice.”
That stirred a memory.
A voice on a temporary phone.
An older woman trying to sound cheerful.
“You were waiting for your daughter,” I said.
Mrs. Alvarez nodded.
“And I had lost my medication bag during the transfer.”
Now I remembered.
One of our medical officers had arranged replacements.
“That was Captain Reeves,” I said.
“She handled it.”
“Yes.
Because you asked her to.”
I smiled faintly.
“That was my job.”
Mrs. Alvarez tilted her head.
“You said exactly that seven years ago.”
Ethan looked at me.
She continued.
“A few months later, the Army sent me a form asking about my experience.
I wrote a long letter instead.”
I could imagine that.
“I wrote that Colonel Bennett—although you were not a colonel then—had treated me as though I were the only person on her list when I knew very well there were thousands.”
