Homefront Hero by Allie Pleiter Read Free Book Online Page B

fabulously fortunate .” John launched himself up off the bench and hobbled to the bars on the wall nearby. Did Madison think he didn’t know that? And if those lines—those horrid steel lines that felt like they were slicing his leg off from the inside out while he dangled—had severed his leg, where would he have been? Falling thousands of feet out of the sky to drown in the ocean. If he lived through the fall. The mere thought of that terrifying, helpless hanging sensation, those minutes of absolute dread that felt like hours of twisting over what he was certain would be the site of his death, sent that icy sensation through his chest again. He hated this sniper-fire fear of that memory which could attack him without warning. A wrong comment or even the slightest hint of falling—and he slipped all the time these days—would catapult him back to those moments in the sky. Somehow he knew that if he ever had to hang upside down again for any reason—some exercise or calisthenic someone dreamed up to rehabilitate him—he’d stop breathing altogether. Die of remembered fright on the spot. Just the kind of way every war hero ought to behave.
    “For a talented spokesman, I wonder sometimes if I ought to punch you for the thoughtless things you say.” Madison cornered him against the wall and pinned him with severe eyes. “Look around you, son. Wake up and see just how fortunate you are. That imperfect leg you so despise is at least still there . You’ve your wits about you and the admiration of many. Take a walk with me over to another hall of the hospital—the one with no visitors—and see some of the ghosts we can barely call men. Complain to them as they sit in chairs mumbling because not only their arm but their mind is gone.”
    John was in no mood to be smothered by the silver lining of his own survival. Madison didn’t get like this often, and it bothered John to no end when the doctor lectured him on his advantages. He needed no reminding. “I know I ought to be glad I’m alive,” he mumbled with reluctance. That was, in fact, part of the problem. Part of the thing niggling at the back of his mind, taunting him on the edges of sleep. He was alive. He was fortunate. More than that, he was lauded and admired. He just never felt like he earned it. And that wasn’t the sort of thing one mentioned to anyone. Humility was one thing—and another one of those virtues not especially prized by Gallows men. Feeling like a fraud? That was another. “I let my frustration get the better of my mouth.”
    John had been down that particular hospital hallway. He knew soldiers who, once maimed, wanted nothing more than to get back out on the front lines so they could be shot down and end their misery. They wouldn’t put their families through the shame of suicide, yet they couldn’t face the prospect of a lifetime without a limb or an eye or whatever. Those men clamored back to the battlefield with a dangerous “death wish.”
    He wasn’t one of those. John wanted back in the battle so he could prove to himself he was the hero everyone seemed to think he was. Whatever he did—and honestly, he didn’t even clearly remember most of it—up there to those dirigible lines was sheer, terrorized survival, not heroism. Grab this or fall. Secure that or risk it ripping off and taking him with it. He climbed out onto that airship not because he wanted to be brave, but because it was try something or die. He was working only to save himself, and that other lives would benefit from his actions was the last thing on his mind. That wasn’t the kind of thing one ought to get a medal for. The fellows who had risked their lives to pull in wounded mates, who went back out into gunfire to drag their captain to safety? Those were the men who should be making speeches and wearing medals. He wasn’t here stirring up patriotism because he was brave. He was here because his name was Gallows, he had a silver tongue, took a good