A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8

A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 by Darrell Maloney

Book: A Long Road Back: Final Dawn: Book 8 by Darrell Maloney Read Free Book Online
Authors: Darrell Maloney
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to recover it. Landed it safely. Performed CPR on the pilot. Perhaps could have saved everyone’s lives.
         But that’s not the way it happened.
         The chopper crashed in heavy woods, killing almost everyone. One of Hannah’s dearest friends perished, and unknowingly saved Hannah’s legs by bearing the brunt of the weight of the fuselage with his shattered body. It was something he had no control over, but Hannah liked to think it was a final act of kindness on his part.
         For many long hours the two of them- Hannah and Joel, coaxed each other to fight. To live. To get out of there alive. For hours they tried to keep each other awake and alert. To focus on anything and everything they could think of to keep from dwelling on the pain.
         They were rescued, not because the search teams stumbled upon them on their own, but because of Joel’s bravery. Despite losing one leg outright and having to drag the other one behind him, he was able to retrieve a signal flare to draw the searchers’ attention.
         He was Hannah’s hero, not once but twice.
         It was a bond the two of them would share for the rest of their lives. For each of them knew instinctively that they wouldn’t be around if not for the other. They couldn’t not feel a new kinship.
         They were not unlike men who’d been to war together. Men who’d shared the same foxholes, who shared the same common belief that they’d never go home again. Unless it was in a box.
         Such an experience bonds men in a certain way. They are closer than brothers. And they stay that way for life, even as time and miles separate them.
         As Hannah campaigned hard to the others to let Joel come to the compound and join their ranks, she did so out of appreciation for what the man had done for her. And for her husband and son. For Joel’s selflessness, his heroism, had saved Hannah for Mark and for Markie as well. It was Joel’s actions which kept Mark from becoming a widower. And Markie from becoming motherless.
         Hannah owed Joel a debt of great gratitude. She owed him her life. And she owed him the chance to live a reasonably comfortable existence, even as he left the Army and underwent a long rehabilitation period. She wanted to be there to give him the same moral support, the same tough love he’d given to her during those long hours at the crash site, and then later in the hospital.
         She wanted to help him heal. To help him learn to walk on his new prosthetic legs.
         She wanted to help him adjust to life outside the Army.
         “He’s got no one else,” Hannah had explained to Mark and anyone else who would listen.
         “After everything he’s done for me, I can’t just let him go back to Atlanta where all his relatives are dead. Where most of his old friends are gone too. Where he’d have to learn to live all by himself with no one to help him.
         “It’s hard for able bodied men to survive out there. Even the strong are in competition for every bit of food, of water, of everything necessary for life. A man with two artificial legs wouldn’t have a chance. I cannot just ignore the fact that I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.
         “I won’t. I will repay him. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the only thing to do.”
         Hannah didn’t realize it, but she fought a lot harder than she had to. The other residents of the compound knew what Joel had done for her and appreciated his efforts. They were a lot more receptive to bringing Joel into their family than Hannah realized.
         Mark couldn’t help but wonder, though.
         Mark let his imagination run away from him.
         Mark wondered whether something else happened at that helicopter crash site, and in the hospital in the days following the rescue.
         Mark wondered whether his sweet Hannah had fallen in love with

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