Perhaps in some respects he was more dead than alive, but he had lived through his half-decade term. Physically he would recover from the bouts of abuse thrust upon him by the sadistic guards and those injuries incurred from his long years of labor. Mentally and emotionally, though, he possessed deeper wounds, scars that would never heal. His cell mates were men of sinister character, individuals whom a man of Ehron Lee’s former gentle nature would never have acknowledged let alone form a friendship with. But under their shared circumstances, they had become his closest companions. While he would never express it, Ehron Lee could inwardly admit that the strange physically and psychologically afflicted Woody Milo and, particularly, the brutish Ward Crawford had helped him to endure those terrible years. He could go further. They had become his blood brothers. Throughout that period he never spoke of his wife, and neither was a mention made of her by either Ward or Woody.
