Would he even be able to walk? “Medical discharge” could mean anything, and in the week since Eddie received the Army’s cryptic letter he had feared the worst. Would he be crippled? Blind? Disfigured? In a wheelchair, on crutches, or missing an arm, a leg, an eye? The fact that they hadn’t received a letter from Jack himself only amplified his anxiety. “At least he’s still alive,” Toni said, reading her father’s face perfectly. The train braked to a halt and within minutes was disgorging passengers, largely civilian with a scattering of khaki-clad soldiers or white-uniformed naval personnel. Some of these did, in fact, wear visible badges of injury: an eye patch, crutches, a face half swathed in bandages, the absence of a limb. Eddie braced himself for the worst. “Look!” Toni cried, pointing. “There he is!” Emerging from a train door about fifty feet down the track was Jack, carrying a duffel bag and wearing his khaki-and-olive-drab Army uniform and garrison cap.
