Love is Always Write Anthology Bonus Volume

thigh. And that back of yours needs strict rest in a body brace. It's a miracle you came through it without more nerve damage. But by the time you see that harbor in Seattle you should be over the very worst of it. We'll have you back to wherever is home for Easter."
    Daniel is my home. "What about the others? My shipmates? Do you know...?"
    "There were a lot of injured." The doctor sighed. "You'll have company on that trip home. Of the men who came through it all right, some of the officers are already gone. The other sailors will ship out soon, I expect. I'll send a corpsman over with that list and I know some of the men have been visiting friends here in sickbay. You can ask around– I think everyone's accounted for, one way or another."
    "Thank you," Jacob said faintly.
    The doctor bent and squeezed his shoulder. "Don't worry, son. You're out of it now and you'll live to tell the tale. You'll even have a couple of nice scars to impress the girls back home."
    The doctor moved on down the row, and Jacob tried not to listen to him explaining stump care to the man in the next bed whose bandage-swathed leg ended just below the knee.
    Jacob was lucky. He knew that. He had a sudden memory of Doc's body crumpled against the bulkhead. Doc, with his patient and caring hands, dead in an instant. Jacob closed his eyes to blot that picture out. As long as Daniel was alive, then Jacob was among the lucky ones for sure. But he shut his mind off and counted, by twos and by threes, fumbled and misdirected by the morphine haze, as he waited for the corpsman and the list.
    After the man had come and gone he cried, as quietly as he could, without moving his aching body.
    The tears ran down his cheeks and into his ears. His chest ached with it, with pain for all the names that were not on that list, and with joy because that one most vital one was safely there. After a long time he slept.
    The next time he opened his eyes, Daniel was looking down at him. His face was almost perfectly calm but those hazel eyes were intense and bright.
    "Daniel," Jacob said in a moment of perfect contentment. It was Daniel, looking sunburned and drawn tight, but perfectly Daniel.
    "Hey, Trip." Daniel blinked and managed a smile. "That's better. You were sleeping like a baby last time I was here."
    "You should have woken me."
    "You were pretty out of it. You needed the rest."
    For a minute they looked at each other. That time in the water was still a jumble to Jacob, but he remembered bits and pieces. "You found me. You stayed with me."
    "Pure luck." Daniel's voice was casual, with a glance at the beds on either side. The look in his eyes was not.
    Jacob breathed, "Yeah." Luck didn't come any purer than that.
    "I can't stay long," Daniel said. "They're handing out reassignments this afternoon."
    "You're leaving." Jacob cleared his throat and glanced at his neighbors too. On his left, the bed that had held the man with one leg was empty. On his right, the man with burned hands slept deep in drugged oblivion. "I'm glad you're okay but... I'm going home."
    "I know." Daniel looked as lost as Jacob could ever remember. "What do we do now?"
    Jacob tried to think through the morphine haze. "We write."
    "Well of course but," Daniel dropped his voice, speaking almost under his breath, even though that guy in the next bed was dead to the world. "We can't say much. The censors read 'em."
    "So we use a code. Just so we know..."
    "Sure. Like the weather." Daniel's smile was a ghost of its usual self. "When I say it's sunny that means I want your hot mouth on me."
    Jacob rolled his eyes left and right. It was probably safe.
    "When I say it's rainy I want to suck you. When I talk about snow, I want you deep inside me till I feel you all the way up in my throat."
    "Jesus," Jacob breathed. "The mouth on you."
    "You corrupted me."
    "Not likely. So what do I write about if I want you to, you know, do me?"
    "Earthquake. And about as likely."
    "Oh God, don't make me laugh." He bit his lip hard against the pain in his back.
    "Sorry. I'm really sorry."
    "No. It was good."
    Daniel looked down at him seriously. "You'll send me your address, wherever you end up. You'll let me know if you move. If you get a telephone you'll send me the number."
    "Sure."
    "And write about how you do in whatever hospital you end up in. How your back is. It would be normal to tell a pal that kind of stuff."
    "You're the one going back out there against the Japs." And I'm so damned scared for you.