Shot Throught the Heart

forty-two

The team didn't stay for much longer that day. They were kind of kicked out by the nurses when they came to check up on me and noticed everyone in the room. Morgan only got to stay because she had her own follow up appointment to attend. When I tried to go with her, Major Collins showed up and gave me a look and I knew she wouldn't let me leave the room. With a kiss, Morgan was gone and I laid back in bed for a few moments before I looked over at Annabelle.

"You look like you have some news for me." I said taking in her features.

"I do, because of your actions and all the intelligence we were able to pull off the servers from the computers you found in that building, we were able to turn the information over to Ukrainian forces and they were able to use a lot of it to expel most of the remaining Russian troops from there country. Also because of your quick thinking and action plan, the convoy made it out of the country safely and your team eliminated basically all the remaining Russian soldiers at the plant. When the convoy commander got all of the civilians to Poland, he started to ask about your team. It wasn't long before he was showing your face to anybody in American camos, wanting to know about what happened to you. When the President of Ukraine came during the night to see all of civilians that were rescued, the convoy commander told him about what you did. You're a hero to them." Major Collins said and pushed a copy of news paper in front of me.

When I picked it up, sitting on the cover page is the picture the convoy commander dragged me into. Throughout the news paper, there are other pictures of Gold team along with Alpha and Bravo team assisting everyone out of the bunker onto the waiting trucks. Almost everyone had smiles on there faces as we loaded them onto trucks to get out of the plant. If only we new what was going to happen only a few short minutes after that.

"I don't know how, but the go pro you were wearing recorded everything from the moment you left the alamo until you got into the helicopter. I used the footage as part of your official debrief, when you are released, we'll conduct a formal one in addition to that. The footage has been reviewed by basically everyone in command along with the president of the United States. We only made one small edit to the video. We cut the audio from after the explosion happened." Major Collins said. It took a second for me to remember that I wore a go-pro on the raid that night.

Now, almost three weeks removed from the mission, that night is still a bit hazy in my memory. Even though my short term memory improved to almost normal, parts of that night are lost in my mind. Maybe getting to watch the video back will help jog the missing part of my memory. While I have been doing PT to help get my body moving again, I have also been doing a lot of memory puzzles to try and work on my short term memory.

"Thank you for that." I said and finally put the paper down to look at her.

"I've fielded phone calls from a lot of people over the past three weeks but one that stuck out was from the President of Ukraine himself. He wants to met you in person and present you with a medal along with a unit citation for Gold Team. I've been pushing it off until you've recovered enough to entertain the conversation." Major Collins said and sat back in the seat.

"I'm no hero Annabelle. I did what I had to do to give the convoy enough time to try and get some distance in between them and the incoming Russian military. Anybody would have made that call." I said trying to reason with her, having a hard time believing that the President of the country wanted to see me.

"And while we could argue semantics forever, I was not going to argue with the President of the country we were just operating in. The meeting would be taking place in Poland, all three teams would go for it, shake some hands and then you'll be on the next flight out to the states in time for Christmas." Major Collins said.