“You’ll stay here for a few months completing rehab with your new leg. After your release from the hospital, you’ll be medically discharged from the navy and return home with lifetime disability benefits,” Harris said, trying to sound positive.
Seven knew the words before they left Harris’s mouth. He anticipated the medical discharge and only questioned how the government would disguise and justify his actions in a place he was not supposed to be, doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.
His heart exploded in his chest. The ticket of adventure and intrigue that he had dreamed of his entire life was expired. He was now nothing more than a one-legged has-been with only one story to tell for the rest of his life, a story he wasn’t allowed to tell. Everything he had worked for and fantasized about was taken away by a single bullet that ruptured Big Bev’s fuel line and a second bullet that passed through the head of his friend. Seven could not fathom what his life was to become. He was crippled, soon to be out of the military, and sentenced to a normal, adventureless life. Harris’s mouth continued to flap about under his beard but Seven stopped caring after he heard the word “discharge.” He allowed Harris to complete his duty of delivering horrible news and he smiled politely but he couldn’t wait for the fat man to leave.
The next few days consisted of meeting his medical “team” that promised to fit him with a state-of-the-art prosthetic leg and rehab him into a fully functioning human being again. Seven put on a happy face for the medical staff but he couldn’t help but feel that his life was over. He made nightly calls to Gran, who finally, reluctantly, told him that the Colonel had suffered a massive stroke while Seven was in the German hospital. She advised him that the Colonel was awake but had lost the ability to speak. At Seven’s request she would place the phone next to the Colonel’s ear and allow Seven to speak to his idol. Neither Seven nor Gran were sure if any of the dialogue registered with the once great man.