Somewhere in Afghanistan

The winter sun began to rise in the East over the compound wall, spilling reds, oranges and yellows over the horizon, as the caravan of armored personnel carriers and humvees passed through the main gate. The humvees veered off toward the motor pool as the personnel carriers abruptly stopped in front of the medical tents, stirring up large clouds of dust.

A dozen medical staff members began pulling a handful of injured Marines out of the back of the armored vehicles. The ones that could walk, with or without assistance, were led to the triage area while those on stretchers were taken directly into the surgical tent. 

The orange-juice colored sunrise had faded into a yellow early-morning glow by the time Sergeant Justin Norris had made his way back to the barracks from the motor pool. Lingering outside the makeshift wooden housing structures were several Marines preparing for their morning workout before breakfast.

Curious about the details of the mission, the Marines began peppering Justin with questions. He was rather tired and hungry since he had little to eat and no sleep since the caravan left on its mission nearly 18 hours prior.

"Everything went smooth - like clockwork - until we started back to camp. Then, like always, we went through that goddam valley pass where it was like a freaking shooting gallery," Justin said annoyed, slamming his tactical gear to the ground. "Why we keep going through that pass, is beyond me. And why they insist on sending us through there at night is just idiotic."

"I thought they were supposed to clear that pass with artillery, drones and air power before you went through there?" one of the Marines asked.

"Apparently not!" Justin quipped angrily, pointing emphatically at the personnel carriers being hosed out to clean out the blood and debris.

"I'm so glad that was my last damn time going outside the wire before I get the hell on outta here. I'm tired of this shit! I'm so ready to be back home!" Justin exclaimed.

"Did you at least get any good shots?" another Marine asked. Justin unslung his camera from shoulder and tossed it to him. The crowd gathered around the camera making various groans of disgust or shrieks of surprise as they flipped through the photos on the camera's small display. "How do you get some of these shots, man?"

"How can you take some of these shots,  man? Sheesh!" a different Marine asked with his hand nearly covering his mouth.

Justin was a military journalist but spent most of his time taking pictures of firefights, the wounded and any possible top secret intelligence they may encounter on their patrols. He is there to visually document as much of the operation as possible. His photographs of dead and wounded soldiers, both Marines and enemies, have developed somewhat of a cult following in camp. Some things were meant to be classified but Justin had no problem sharing his photos with his platoon mates, anyway. It's not like they all hadn't seen the same thing on their own patrols or missions.

He had a little more than a week to go on this current tour, his third, before heading back stateside to Camp Pendleton. This tour was fairly routine, with the exception that this was the first time he deployed as a single father. His son had been living with his ex-wife over the past six months and he had heard little from her and she rarely answered his calls when he tried to talk to his son. Justin was definitely looking forward to a long Christmas break, which was only a couple of months away, to spend with his son and his family in Iowa.

"How many honeys do you have waiting for you when you get back home?" the Marine asked returning Justin's camera.

"What? Honeys? None, man! Are you kidding me?"

"C'mon! Nothing? No booty calls? No old flames dying to rekindle something for an old war dog coming home? Are you serious?" the Marine asked dumbfounded.

"Sorry, I'm not like you guys," Justin responded. "I haven't been juggling dozens of women trying to set up a hundred hook-ups when I get home, like you guys. The last thing I want to do is hook up with some random girl I've only chatted with online for the past few months. God only knows how crazy, ugly or manly - and by that I mean actually a man - they might be."

"You've been here for six months and haven't met any girls or set up any hook-ups? What the hell, man?"

"Gee, I wonder!" Justin sarcastically quipped, gesturing emphatically at the bulletin board located in the center of the square between all the barracks. The board, called the "hog board," was overflowing with layer upon layer of letters and photographs. Brokenhearted Marines ceremoniously posted "Dear John" letters and photos of ex-girlfriends and wives in all manner of nudity, from partial to full, as a way of achieving some sort of closure when a relationship ended while deployed. It also served as a source of entertainment and voyeurism for everyone else to enjoy. 

"The last thing I need," Justin continued, "is being stuck in another bad relationship where we stay together for the wrong reasons, because of a kid, pity, or some fantasy girls have about having Marines or military guys as boyfriends or husbands. Or worse, I don't want her staying around just waiting until something better comes along. I don't ever want to go through that, again!"

Back in the United States

Twilight began to fall behind Omaha skyline.  There was a damp hint in the air as the sun began to set in the late-September sky.

Betty Nelson parked her car under the glow of a light at the far end of the Qwest Center parking lot.  She was taking her two daughters, who were visiting from California, to see famed psychic medium Gaylord Hist.

Hist was known for his popular cable television show where he claimed to be a medium, able to communicate with the deceased, and would attempt to put audience members in communication with lost friends and family.

“Do you think we parked far enough away, mom?” quipped Kari, the youngest of Betty’s two daughters.

“It’ll be dark out when the show is over and you can never be too careful about protecting yourself these days,” Betty replied.

“And why are we seeing this quack, again?” Summer, the oldest daughter, asked.

“Because my two daughters are finally home at the same time and I wanted us to spend some quality time together.”

“And you think spending an evening listening to some guy who talks to dead people is the best way to do that?” Summer added.

“Can you girls just give me a break?  You know Hist’s show is my favorite and I’ve wanted to see one of his shows in person for a long time.  So, can we please just try to enjoy this evening together?” Betty pleaded.

“Well this isn’t exactly how I planned to spend my time home for my 10-year reunion. But, whatever will make you happy, mom,” Kari said.  “And next time we all plan to go out together, mom, let us help you get ready.”

“Oh, please, Kari.  It’s not mom’s faulty she hasn’t bought any new clothes in the past two decades,” Summer said.

“Very funny, girls,” Betty retorted.  “I buy new clothes all the time.”

“Sure.  Underwear, sweats and house dresses.  But nothing to go out in,” Kari said.

“Well, I don’t have many opportunities to go out anymore,” Betty said.

“No one would ever guess,” Kari snickered.

“Well, I don’t have all the money you Hollywood girls do to buy new clothes and shoes every day,” Betty said.

“Neither does Kari, mom,” Summer said.  “Why do you think she still lives with me?”

“Hey!  That’s only until I get settled in and get a full-time gig.  Not all of us can be as lucky as you, Summer Elizabeth,” Kari said full of jealousy.

Summer Elizabeth Nelson, or Summer Elizabeth as she is known by most of the world, has been a Hollywood actress since she left home after high school 15 years ago.  Known for her young-adult oriented comedic movies when she first broke into the movie industry, Summer began to grow out of the teen scene, and soon the job offers and auditions fell off.  There was a period in her career where the only time she was photographed or mentioned in the popular gossip and entertainment magazines was during times of scandal or turmoil.  Her life and career recently began to rebound with a series of television commercials and television cameos.

Her sister, Kari, moved to California five years ago to escape small-town life and distance herself from their mother.  The more success Summer achieved, the more pressure Betty placed on Kari to live up to her sister.  Summer tried to help Kari develop a career of her own, but was only able to get her work in commercials and small speaking parts on television shows.  Summer’s agent felt Kari’s target area was modeling, although Kari resisted.

Both daughters are very attractive. It is that attractiveness which afforded Summer the opportunity to follow her dreams of Hollywood in the first place. Summer is tall, as women go (not quite six feet tall), with wavy, sandy-blonde hair and eyes as blue as a crisp May day.  Kari is more petite, although more voluptuous, with dark brown hair and green eyes.

In the auditorium, the ladies took their seats along the center aisle near the front of the floor-level seating.

“Mom, you’re sitting on the aisle," Summer said.  "This guy walks around the crowd during his shows and I am not getting snagged.”

“Fine.  It’s a better view of the show, anyway,” Betty said.

The show progressed in its normally scripted fashion; the arena was dark except for the single spotlight, laser show and pyrotechnics. Hist performed several parlor tricks making the event feel more like a magic show than a supernatural experience; until it came time for his signature finale.

Centering himself on the front edge of the stage, Hist raised his arms from his sides with his palms facing up until they were extended at shoulder level. He slowly lifted his head from looking straight down to straight up as the lights simultaneously grew brighter.

Snapping his arms back down to his sides with a choreographed pyrotechnic show of lights and smoke, Hist droned his trademark phrase, “It’s time.”

Giddy with anticipation, Betty leaned over and grabbed Kari’s arm, “This is where he walks around and tells people things they thought were deep secrets.”

“Great. Maybe he can tell us what you’ve been putting in the meatloaf all these years,” Kari smirked. “If that’s not a mystery, I don’t know what is.”

Hist positioned himself at the front of the aisle where Betty and the girls were sitting and asked the crowd to participate in an exercise.

“I want you each to take a piece of paper – any piece of paper – and write down a name on it for me,” he asked in his deep, booming voice. “I want you to write down the name of someone very important to you who has passed on to the next world, but it can’t be a relative. I need a challenge, and if you write down a relative ... it's too easy. Again, write down the name of someone dear to you – not related to you - who has recently passed on and put it away where no one else can see it.”

Betty scrambled to find some small notepad pieces of paper and handed them to the girls. “Here! Now don’t tell me who you wrote down.”

“Mom, this is …” Kari began before her mother held up her finger in silent protest.

Reluctantly, the girls participated. Summer and Kari put the folded pieces of paper in their pockets in order to play along.

Hist proceeded through the crowd talking about departed friends and lovers as if he were intimate friends with everyone in the crowd.

“These are all plants,” Summer whispered to her mother. “Nobody can know all that without meeting these people first.”

Moments later, Hist passed Betty’s row and Summer exhaled a sigh of relief.

“Tristen has been trying to contact you.”

Summer spun around in her chair to see Hist standing directly behind her. “What did you say?” she asked with a shaky voice.

“Your friend Tristen is trying to contact you,” he repeated.

Summer was in shock. Tristen was a friend of hers from Santa Monica who was killed in a motorcycle accident just a few months ago.

“He wants you to know that soon you will be happy, and the man you've been waiting for all of your life will find you,” Hist continued. “He also says, don’t let yourself get in the way of happiness this time.”

Summer barely heard anything Hist said because her head was spinning in disbelief. How did he know she knew someone named Tristen who had recently died? It wasn’t in the papers. Nobody would have known she even knew the guy.

“What? When?” Summer stammered.

Hist paused for a second. “Christmas. He says Christmas.” He then asked Summer to pull out the piece of paper on which she wrote the name.

Hist directed Summer to give the paper to an elder gentlemen sitting across the aisle and asked him to read the name on the paper aloud.

“Tristen,” the man announced into Hist’s lapel microphone. “It says Tristen. Wow!”

As the crowd streamed into the parking lot following the parking lot, Betty, Summer and Kari remained silent. They had not spoken since Hist revealed the name on Summer’s paper.

The silent march continued until Kari opened the back door of the car and stood contemplating for a moment before blurting, “What was that all about?”

Betty looked at Summer with a concerned look, but did not say anything.

“I don’t know,” Summer shrugged. “I really do not know. And I really don’t want to talk about it, either.”

The car ride back to Ida Grove was eerily silent, with the exception of token conversations about stopping for food, other drivers on the road and the unseasonably cool weather for the end of September.

Christmas Eve …

The impact of the landing gear on the tarmac jolted Justin from his sleep. Justin has learned from his ten years of being a Marine that sleeping on long flights, whether across country or internationally, is the best way to fight boredom. Several times he has managed to fall asleep before the plane even took off and not wake up until the plane has landed.

Justin returned from deployment to Afghanistan just a few weeks ago, but thanks to expedited post-deployment routines, his unit was released in time to return to their families for the holidays.

In the immediate haze after awakening from sleep, Justin blinked his eyes repeatedly in an effort to moisten and adjust his contact lenses as he worked his way to the aisle from his window seat. Being more than six-feet tall, Justin has to shuffle his way to the aisle as he slumps over to clear the overhead storage compartments.

Once in the aisle, Justin stands upright and stretches his arms upward toward the ceiling of the place, placing the palms of his hands on the ceiling with his elbows still slightly bent. As he pushes upward on the ceiling, he hears and feels several vertebrae in his upper back pop – a welcomed relief after a four-hour plane ride from San Diego to Omaha.

Normally he would not take so much time before grabbing his backpack and departing the plane, but there were only a handful of passengers on his flight and no one seemed to be in a hurry.

Justin grabbed his baseball cap out of his bag and quickly scooped it on his head and began walking toward the open doorway at the front of the plane.

At the door, the flight attendant flashed her professional smile and gave the customary, “Thank you. Have a good evening and Happy Holidays.”

Instead of just nodding and proceeding out the door, Justin slowed and said, “Thanks, but isn’t the flight kind of empty for a Christmas Eve flight? I thought this was one of the busier travel days?”

“I know,” she responded. “It is kind of strange. But at least we beat the storm. That would have been ugly.”

“Storm?” he asked.

“Yes. There’s a huge front coming in any minute now,” she said. “There’s supposed to be a lot of snow, bad winds and ice. They were talking about re-routing us if we didn’t make it in as soon as we did. They’re already canceling flights for later. We were supposed to head to Chicago tonight, but they’re grounding us here.”

“Wow,” Justin said a little stunned. He didn’t even bother to check the weather when he departed San Diego. After a few years of near-perfect weather, checking the weather before you go anywhere is an afterthought. “I hope I make it out of town before it all hits. I still have a ways to drive tonight.”

“Well, good luck, sir! And have a good Christmas,” the flight attendant said as Justin entered the jet way.

“Thanks. You, too,” he responded.

After grabbing his suitcase from the luggage carousel, Justin called his brother to tell him he had landed and to get an update on the holiday plans as he headed toward the car rental kiosks.

“Where are you at?” Justin’s brother Trent asked.

 “I just got into Omaha and now I’m standing in line to get my rental car,” Justin responded.

 “I hope you aren’t there too long,” Trent said. “A bad storm is coming through. It is already snowing pretty good here and is only going to get worse.”

 “Well, the line is moving pretty good, but there are a lot of people around with all the flight cancellations,” Justin responded as he scanned the area.

Off to the left of the line snaking around to the rental car dealers was a large crowd of peopl clamoring around someone obviously important.

“Somebody important is here,” Justin said to his brother.

“Do you know who?” Justin asked.

“No. I can’t see really well with all the people in the way. It looks like a girl, though.”

Just then a rental car agent hollered for the next person in line.

“Well, bro, I’ll let you go for now. I have to get my car. I’ll call you when I get on the road,” Justin said as he grabbed his bags and approached the counter.

As Justin went through the process of getting his car, he asked the clerk about all the commotion.

“Some actress, I think,” the agent answered. “I’m not sure. I heard someone say she was big in movies when she was a teenager, but now she’s thirty-something and doing bit parts. I guess she’s from around here somewhere.”

The agent handed him his keys and Justin headed toward the exit leading to the shuttle area. As he passed the crowd of people asking for pictures and autographs from the mystery celebrity, Justin tried to sneak a peak to see who it was, but all he could make out was her wavy sandy-blonde hair before the automatic door opened and a blast of freezing cold air caught him on the side of the face.

As he walked from the shuttle to his car, Justin noticed some large snowflakes began falling. They weren’t falling rapidly and they were melting immediately upon impact with the ground.

By the time he had managed to get from the airport garage to the interstate, only about a ten-minute journey, the snow and wind had picked up considerably.

Heading north on Interstate 29 toward his hometown of Sioux City, Iowa, Justin’s struggle with the wind and snow increased with each mile he traveled. Night had completely set in and visibility was almost zero. Justin guided the car down the interstate by peering through the corners of the windshield following the white or yellow lines.

Unable to see road signs until he was right up on them, Justin could make out the rest area just north of Missouri Valley from the glow of the parking lot’s pale yellow lights and the hulking shadows of the semi trailers outlined by running lights.

Justin wondered if he should have joined them at the rest area to wait the storm out, but he had already passed the exit and had the confidence of years of Midwest winter driving experience urging him on.

Just a short while further up the road, Justin’s cell phone rang. Without taking his eyes off the road to look at the caller, he reached into the passenger’s seat activating the phone's speaker phone with one hand. It was Trent calling for an update, since Justin forgot to call once he got on the road.

“I’m barely past Missouri Valley,” Justin answered. “The weather is insane. I can barely see the road. The snow is blowing so hard it’s like I’m in Star Wars going light speed.”

“Yeah, it’s crazy up here, too,” Trent said. “Some places have even lost power because the snow, ice and wind are knocking down power lines. So, be careful. Take your time. Just make sure you get here.”

“If it gets too bad, I’ll stop. Trust me,” Justin said trying to assure his brother. “But what worries me isn’t the weather; it’s these idiots who keep passing me flying down the road like the roads are fine. They’re crazy.”

Justin wrapped up the call quickly to avoid any unnecessary driving distractions. As his stress level rose, he reached over and turned down the radio in an effort to concentrate better on the road.

Just then he saw a bright red flurry of brake lights erupting ahead on the overpass. Brake lights scattered like fireflies on a muggy August night as panic-stricken drivers made evasive maneuvers trying to avoid something in the road.

What he couldn’t see through the blinding snow was a chain reaction that would alter his life forever.

The bridge over the river had become quite icy over the past hour. With temperatures plummeting over a matter of minutes, conditions on the road changed faster than the driver’s anticipated. The state road crews were also not able to keep up with the changing conditions, leaving the road dangerous to travel.

One of the cars Justin noticed streaking by him lost all traction as it tried to cross the bridge. It began to spin to the right, sending the tail of the car off the road and the nose of the car dangerously close to the traffic in the right lane. The spin slowed the car just enough to cause the car trailing it, which was following too close and too fast for the road conditions, to t-bone the car flush in the passenger-side door. The momentum sent both cars sliding helplessly to the left, off the road, into the easement between the north and southbound lanes.

In order to avoid the chaos unfolding before him, a seasoned trucker fought the urge to slam on the brakes of his eighteen-wheeler and opted for a quick evasive maneuver. He checked his mirrors on the right and saw what he judged to be enough room in front of the nearest car in the right lane. He slammed the wheel to the right, immediately launching the cab of the truck into a severe angle as the truck began to move into the right lane. As the driver went to jerk the wheel back to the left to straighten out the vehicle, the truck’s front tires hit an icy patch on the bridge. Despite the wheels being abruptly turned to the left, the truck continued on its course to the right – into the guard rail of the bridge.

 With the rear tires of the trailer still in the left lane and the cab grinding along the guardrail, the trailer was at an extremely awkward angle and began skipping along the ground as it succumbed to the force set in motion when the cab changed lanes.

At this point, the vehicle, which the truck driver thought was far enough back to allow him to attempt his lane change, was now approaching the trailer in its path. Seeing the trailer skipping toward her, while hearing the unimaginable squeal of tire rubber scraping the pavement, the car’s driver reacted in the only way available to her – veering off the side of the road into the ditch in hopes of escaping serious harm.

Justin saw the car bail off the side of the road as sparks flew from the truck’s cab grinding against the railing. He saw the tail end of the car bounce into the air as it plunged into the ditch. Without much contemplation, Justin pulled his car over on the side of the road short of the bridge and the chaos unfolding on the bridge. He left the car running with the thought of having a safe place to return after offering assistance to the car’s driver.

He threw on his coat, hat and gloves as he made his way around his car. Squinting to see through the harshly blowing snow that was set aglow by his car’s headlights, he saw two things that concerned him. The first was that the car was not in a ditch, but on the bank of the river; stopped only by a natural shelf that extended about six feet before plunging into the river. The second was the faint orange glow against the snow underneath the car, which meant something inside the car had caught fire.

Justin hopped off the shoulder of the road intentionally sliding down the steep embankment, using his right hand to stabilize his weight against the ground while his left hand was in the air serving as a counter-balance. As he neared the car, he dug his feet into the snow, using them as natural brakes and began stutter-stepping the rest of the way down to the car. He braced himself against the car, using it to support his weight on the slippery snow-covered slope as he trudged through knee-high snowdrifts.

At the driver’s side window, Justin could see a woman’s figure slumped over the steering wheel. Her short, layered, wavy hair covered her face, which was facing away from him. He tried to open the door, but the impact of the crash bent the frame enough – coupled with the snowdrifts - to prevent the door from even budging slightly. Racing against the clock, Justin could hear the fire raging beneath the car as well as feel the heat radiating around his feet, and knew the situation was getting quickly out of hand.

He threw his elbow fruitlessly against the window in an attempt to break it. He stepped and lunged at the car this time as he thrust his elbow at the driver’s-side window. In an intense shattering noise, muffled by the howl of the wind, and a shower of broken glass accompanied the physical sting of breaking the window. Reaching in behind the girl with his right arm, Justin grabbed for the seat belt buckle attempting to free the victim from her car. As he grabbed the buckle housing, his upper arm ran across the shards of glass that remained in the door frame, tearing his coat and cutting the back of his arm. He fought the natural urge to recoil from the pain. He pressed the buckle release and gently reached his arm around the girl, easing her back into the seat. The seatbelt snapped back into place as Justin reached his left arm into the car to firmly grab the motionless victim.

With his arms wrapped around the girl in a sideways bear hug, Justin slid her body out of the broken car window as quickly, yet gently, as he could. He was unaware of the severity of the girl’s injuries, and he didn’t want to aggravate them further but he was desperately running out of time. Once he had her completely out of the car, Justin adjusted her in his arms; holding her upper body with his left arm and scooped up her legs with his right arm. As he began to lift her up to a carrying position, Justin noticed a slow flowing river of liquid making its way from the rear of the car toward the already fire-engulfed engine compartment.

Anticipating it to be a fuel leak, Justin adjusted the girl in his arms and prepared himself mentally to run as quickly as his body would allow. He could see the bridge about 20 yards in front of him and his goal was to make it under the bridge in an attempt to gain some sort of shelter from the storm while he tried to get help.

But the biting wind and freezing cold were consuming his thoughts and energy. He could feel the warm blood trickling down his right arm as he grimaced through the pain from the wounds caused by the broken window. He had to go now, he thought to himself, otherwise he probably wouldn’t make it and they would both die.

Sprinting toward the bridge was tougher than he first imagined. The deep snow slowed him down tremendously. The added weight of the girl's limp body took more out of him than he expected. With each step the pain in his arm grew, his lungs were on fire from inhaling the frozen air, and his thighs were burning from the stress of high-stepping through the snow while trying to support the added weight.

Justin desperately wanted to stop. But he couldn’t. He was a Marine and Marines don’t stop. They don’t quit. He forced himself to continue through the pain.

As he reached the bridge, and before he could begin to slow down, Justin heard a thunderous explosion. Instinctively, he arched his back in a protective manner to shield the girl’s body. Instantly, he felt a massive shock wave hit his body, followed by a quick, sharp pain in his right leg, which then went limp sending the pair crashing to the snow. Justin was unconscious before he ever hit the snow with the girl protected beneath him.