Brenda smiled at Lois’s attempt at humor. She gripped Lois’ hand fiercely, as another labor contraction hit her full strength.

"That’s it, Brenda, go with the pain and push now. Just a few more minutes, and you’ll know whether you have a son or a daughter," Dr. Meadows said with encouragement.

Brenda forced her body to relax as the contraction ended. "Can you see the head yet?"

She just about finished the sentence when another contraction hit. "I can now! That’s great. OK, give me one more push…" the doctor busily worked on Brenda as Lois peeked over the drape to try to see the new baby.

Dr. Meadows stood up with an angry, howling baby. "Congratulations, Mrs. Cerullo, you and your husband have a beautiful baby boy."

Brenda leaned back and smiled angelically at Lois. "A son. I knew it was a boy."

Lois hugged Brenda and looked at the doctor. "Is he OK?"

"I’ll say, and he’s a heavy one, too. Got some great lungs."

"I think he takes after his Aunt Lois, there." Brenda looked at Lois. "Will you go tell Pops so he can send Louie the fax?"

"It’ll be my pleasure," she said happily, and left the room as Dr. Meadows laid the baby on Brenda’s stomach to bond.

"Hello there, my precious. Daddy and I have been waiting for you for so long. Anthony Louis Cerullo. Your daddy and I love you very much."

"Where did you tell me your husband was stationed, Brenda?" Dr. Meadows asked as she worked on Brenda.

"At the Air Force Base in Dhofar, Oman," Brenda said mechanically. At Dr. Meadows’ quizzical look, Brenda laughed. "Sorry, don’t feel bad. Most people have never heard of it. It’s a little country in the Middle East on the Arabian peninsula. Lots of oil wells and camels."

Brenda was not really thinking about Dr. Meadows’ question, though. She was too busy examining her new son. Louie would be so proud of him.

******

The nursing staff brought Anthony in to see Brenda twice that night, and although she couldn’t start nursing him yet, they bonded and cuddled as she examined every finger and toe.

"Your daddy is so sad that he couldn’t be here to see you," Brenda explained to Anthony softly, "but he had to go far away to be a pilot for a little while. He got this job right after we found out about you, and he really hated to leave. But after he finishes this job, he’s coming home to us and we can be a real family, just the three of us. See, when your daddy went away, your Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Carmine insisted that you and I come live with them. So we’ll be living with them until daddy gets home, but when he does, we’ll find a home just for our little family."

Brenda got some sleep that night, and when morning arrived, she was enjoying her last chance of having some peace and quiet before they sent her home with the new baby. She was just about to turn on the TV when Gloria and Carmine Cerullo came through the door.

"Good morning!" Brenda chirped. "Did you see him yet this morning? They haven’t brought him in to me yet, but I imagine they …" Suddenly she stopped, seeing their pained, pale faces. "What is it! Has something happened to Anthony?"

She immediately swung her legs out of the bed, ignoring the pain from the healing episiotomy, and was going to head for the nursery when Gloria came over to stop her. "No, no Brenda. It’s not Anthony."

Brenda looked from Gloria to Carmine and back again, and could tell that something was dreadfully wrong. They both looked anxious and drawn. "What’s wrong, then? Is it Lois? Tell me!"

Carmine came over and sat on the bed with Brenda, putting his arm around her. "Now, Brenda, we’re probably worrying for nothing, but there was some very upsetting news this morning." He looked at Gloria, and after she nodded quickly, he went on. "The Air Force Base at Dhofar was bombed this morning."

Brenda suddenly couldn’t breathe. Who had sucked all the air out of the room? Her heart, which she thought had stopped beating momentarily, began to race.

"Louie?" she asked quietly.

"We don’t know yet, sweetheart," Gloria said softly.

"Tell me the truth!" Brenda spat, thinking they were sparing her knowing something horrible.

Carmine shook his head. "That IS the truth, Brenda. We haven’t heard anything yet. The news reports coming out of there are so confused, it’s just mass chaos over there. We’re not even sure what part of the base was bombed, or if Louie was out on a mission at the time…"

"Turn on the television," Brenda said without emotion.

"Oh, honey, I don’t know if you should see…"

"Turn it on!" she insisted vehemently. When they still sat motionless, she grabbed the remote next to the bed and turned on the power. She lay in the bed transfixed, staring at the carnage on the screen.

Where there were usually happy game-show contestants, all the networks had interrupted their programming to carry coverage of the act of terrorism. Brenda flipped through the channels, searching for anything that looked familiar or official. She saw the President giving a statement, calling the act an "outrage, a cowardly attack against peaceful forces." Changing the channel again, she heard that emergency workers were being called in to search for survivors.

As the news camera panned around the scene, Brenda covered her mouth with her hands to stifle the gasp. Bodies of the victims were lined up on the ground, next to the heap of rubble that used to be the officers’ quarters. Brenda didn’t even realize that the low wailing sound she heard was coming from her own mouth.

Gloria rushed over to the bed, hugging Brenda close and turning off the TV. "Brenda, honey, there’s no confirmation of anything yet. They say there may be some survivors. We have to hold out hope. I’m sure the Air Force will send us word soon."

But the official word didn’t come until three days later, delivered to the Cerullo home by an official car. Brenda looked out and saw the car pull up. She had been expecting it, and she waved off Gloria and Carmine when they tried to intercept the officer that came to the door. She opened it and took a deep breath, knowing already what she was going to hear.

"Mrs. Louis Cerullo?"

"Yes."

"I’m Captain Dulles, and it is my sad duty to inform you…."

*****

Louie was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. The entire family was flown to Washington from Port Charles at the expense of the Air Force. The President and First Lady were there, and they expressed their condolences to Brenda, but they may as well have been mannequins for as much as Brenda noticed.

She had closed herself up in a protective ball, and she showed little or no emotion. Gloria held Anthony while Brenda was handed the flag that had draped Louie’s casket, and while she wanted to scream in grief, she held her face in a tight grimace, and conducted herself the way she knew Louie would have wanted her to. She was a proper Air Force wife.

She didn’t want to go on living. But she knew that she had to, because Anthony needed her. Anthony was the only living part of Louie she had left, and she was ecstatic for that. She made a vow as she heard the minister recite the closing prayer.

"I’ll keep you alive in my heart forever, Louie. I love you, and I’ll never love anyone else as long as I live. You’ll always be with Anthony and me because I won’t let you go."

*~*~*~*~*

It was like he was living inside a cloud. The light was filtered through a white, fluffy haze. It would try to intrude on his peace and solitude, but then he would sink back into the haze again. It was quiet and there was no pain inside the cloud.

But soon, the intrusions on his peace in the cloud came more frequently. Shapes of people pushed their way into the cloud, drawing him back with them through the mist into the light. But the light hurt. Gradually, they wouldn’t let him go back into the mist, and he remained in the light.

He realized he was lying in a bed and was breathing. He was alive. But he wasn’t sure of anything else.

"Lieutenant Jacks, can you hear me?"

He tried to answer, but no sound would come out of his throat. The cloud seemed to have gone down there and was choking him. When he tried harder to answer, pain shot through all parts of his body.

Maybe he could just move his hand rather than talk. He tried to lift his right hand, but it was attached to something.

"No, don’t move your hand, Lieutenant. You have an IV there. How do you feel?"

{Stupid question, lady. How do you think I feel?}

He opened his eyes just a little, and could see a woman in white standing next to his bed, writing on a clipboard.

"Where?" He barely croaked out the word.

"You’re in a military hospital at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. You’ve been in a terrible accident. Let me go get the doctor. He’ll be pleased you’re awake."

Jax watched the woman leave the room. Germany? The last thing he remembered was going out with the colonel’s daughter and hitting every nightclub in Dhofar.

He tried to focus his eyes, and raised his hand to his face. He pulled it back like it was burned when he felt bandages covering most of the left side of his face. What the hell had happened? As he tried to focus his vision to look down at the rest of his body, he raised his head off the pillow.

Just as the doctor and nurse were coming back into Jax’s room, they heard the scream. Nurses from every part of the floor came running.

"Hold him still while I give him this shot!" the doctor was shouting. "If he keeps thrashing around like that, he’ll ruin what little we’ve been able to fix so far!"

Jax felt his arm being held by more women in white, and then after a sharp sting, he felt himself going back into the white mist again. Better to stay there this time.

******

They didn’t let him stay there for long, though. Time passed, and he began to measure it by routine tasks. When they changed his IV bottles, when they took his blood pressure, when he began to hear certain voices and recognize them.

He could hear the monitors and machines beeping. It was reassuring, but at the same time, it frightened him because he knew it meant his condition was very serious.

One day, a doctor who was taking his vital signs noticed that Jax was staring at him. "Well, Lieutenant Jacks, you’re awake. Are you aware where you are?"

Jax still couldn’t talk very well, but he managed to get out some mangled thoughts. "What kind….. of accident…..?"

"The Air Force base at Dhofar was bombed over a month ago. Some terrorist organization, apparently. You were one of the few survivors that they were able to find in the rubble."

"How …. bad am I?"

"Do you want the truth?" The doctor wasn’t one to mince words, and Jax wasn’t either. After Jax nodded gently, the doctor took a deep breath.

"When they brought you in here, we seriously doubted that you would survive the night. You were buried under a concrete wall that collapsed in the officers’ quarters. Nearly every bone on the left side of your body was broken. We’ve done some pretty miraculous things so far, but some of it will have to be repaired when you’re well enough to be sent back home."

"Am.. I .. paralyzed?"

"No. I think the fact that you were in such good physical shape before the accident contributed to your survival. But I’m not going to say it will be easy. You face several more surgeries, and months of physical therapy. It’s mostly up to you. Do you want to walk again, Lieutenant Jacks?"

"I intend to run," Jax said succinctly.

"Good," the doctor said, cracking a small smile. "Determination helps a great deal in recovery. I have to go check with the nurse on duty. I’ll see you in the triathlon."

Jax watched him leave the room. {No way I’ll see you there. You’ll never make the final cut. Too much body fat.}

******

John and Jane Jacks were finally allowed in to see their son the next day. Although Jax expected his mother to cry, he was shocked to see tears running down his father’s face.

Jax didn’t know that the tears had already started in the hallway before they saw him.

"John, you have to pull yourself together. The doctor said we mustn’t upset him. If you do, they won’t let us in to see him again!"

John Jacks sniffled a little and wiped at his eyes. "I’m sorry, Mother, but I can’t help but feel this is all my fault."

"YOUR fault? Have you joined an Islamic fundamentalist religion that I didn’t know about?"

John shook his head. "No. I mean, if I hadn’t been so rough on the boy, goading him on to do something purposeful with his life, maybe he wouldn’t have joined the Air Force and he wouldn’t have been there…"

Jane came over to embrace her husband. "John, you were only trying to help him. Jax couldn’t go on wasting his life, drinking and carousing it away all over the world. And he loved to fly so much. He thought it was a way to combine his favorite hobby with something that would make us proud."

But their brave speeches didn’t prepare them for the shock of seeing Jax, the left side of his body bandaged from head to toe.

"Gee, I must look worse than I thought for the old man to break down like that," Jax quipped as Jane tried to give him a hug.

"Actually," she said bravely, "you look much better than you did when they brought you in a month ago. At least now they’ll let us in to see you." She brushed the blonde hair back off the bandages on the left side of his face.

"Then I must have been in really bad shape then, because I feel like hell now," Jax replied dryly.

"You look wonderful to me, son," John said, coming over to squeeze Jax’s right hand. "We’ll get you back to the states as soon as you’re fit to travel, and we’ll have every specialist in the book work on putting you back together again. You’ll be right as rain in no time."

Jax seemed pre-occupied with other things, though. "I need you to do a favor for me, dad," he said quietly.

"Anything, son."

"I need you to check the casualty list. See if Lieutenant Louis Cerullo made it out alive."

"Mother, have you got a pen?" John asked Jane. "What was that name again?"

"Cerullo, Louis Cerullo. It’s really important."

"Jax," his mother cooed, "it’s sweet of you to worry about other people, but you really should concentrate on getting better yourself right now."

"Just DO it!" Jax nearly shouted, and his father wrote down the name.

"OK, son, I’ll check it as soon as I can. But why is it so important to you? Was he a friend of yours?"

Jax nodded slowly, and Jane was scared when she saw the look that came into his eyes. "Yes. And if he didn’t make it out alive, it’s all my fault."

*~*~*~*

"Pssst! Louie! Are you awake, mate?"

To be continued….