I died at thirty.
Before that, they pinned bright metal to my chest and called me a hero. Hot lights. Cameras. A general's hand shook when he fixed the ribbon. Behind the curtain waited twelve folded flags in glass cases—names I carried like extra ribs.
Medals don't weigh much. What made them necessary does.
My first ribbon came at nineteen. Urban rescue. Bad intel. A kid with a rifle, hands shaking so hard the barrel jittered. I took the gun, found his little sister crouched in a tub with gray water, told her, "It's over." It wasn't, but she needed the lie for ten minutes.
After that: winter mountains, desert roads, rooftops bucking under rotor wash. Three a.m. briefings. Coffee strong enough to make your hands forget how to shake. A citation called it adaptive leadership. Truth was simpler—make hard choices, don't flinch where anyone can see.
A reporter once asked how it felt to be Earth's greatest war hero.
"Like heavy boots," I said.
She laughed. I wasn't joking.
I kept my medals in a shoebox, not a case. Inside the lid I taped dates, not ceremonies—days I couldn't fix. My radioman bleeding into my lap and asking if there were dogs in heaven. A gym turned clinic where a boy with one shoe refused to cry because his sister watched. The list grew.
The last operation got a clean name: Iron Gate. Three buses hijacked near a border town. Thirty-seven civilians. Twenty-plus hostiles, better armed than the map said. A storm coming fast enough to ground air. We rolled anyway.
We went in through a broken aqueduct, water to the waist. Night air that bit. On the comm, Kade—my second—kept the rookies steady.
"After this, noodles," he said. "Red chili. I want to see God."
"You met Him when you married Jess," I told him.
"Wrathful and merciful," he said, and I could hear his grin.
We surfaced in a maintenance room. Two guards down clean. The third turned too soon, shouted, and quiet broke. After that: flashes, smoke, and those long seconds when all you can hear is your own heartbeat.
Kade took a round through the shoulder and kept moving. He put himself between a girl and a doorway, smiling like they'd met at a cafe. I don't know what she saw in my face.
We made a corridor with our bodies. Civilians flowed through. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. Thirty-three. We were beating the folder's odds.
"Keep moving," I said. "Keep—"
The charge under Bus Two went off ugly. The world lifted. Sound turned into one torn sheet. A mother reached up like she could catch air. I threw myself over Kade and a boy. Heat, brick, glass, the old habit of counting heartbeats until the ring faded.
"Boss?" Kade mouthed. "We good?"
"We're good," I said.
Close enough. We dragged, pushed, herded. Thirty-seven people crossed a clinic threshold under yellow lights that made everyone seasick. A doctor with coffee breath looked at the blood on my collar and said, "You did well."
The debrief was short; the report was boxes. "Enemy neutralized: 18." "Civilians: 37, no fatalities." "Friendly casualties: 2 critical, 4 moderate." Words that never look like faces.
In the shower, the water ran pink, then red, then clear. Little pieces of other things went down the drain. I stood there until the hot ran out.
Sepsis doesn't kick doors. It slips in. Fever turned my bones to glass. The ward smelled like antiseptic. Machines beeped like polite guests. Nurses moved like white ghosts.
They let my family in between checks.
Lila came first. My wife. Hair in a hurried bun, the same blue sweater she wore on our first date, sleeves pushed to her elbows. Tired eyes. Hands that knew where every bruise would hurt least to touch. She sat on the edge of the bed and breathed slow until I matched her.
"You promised noodles," she said softly.
"I'm a man of my word," I said. My voice rasped. "Kade is the one who owes us."
"We'll make him pay," she said, trying to smile.
Our son toddled in like he owned the place, because three-year-olds don't understand hospitals. Max clutched a plastic dinosaur by the tail and set it on my chest. "Soldier," he announced. "Rawr."
"Brigadier Rawr," I corrected. "Very senior."
Our daughter, Nora, six going on sixty, came after, careful steps, the strap of her pink backpack crossing her small chest like a sash. She had a book under one arm and a solemn look she learned from her mother.
"You look tired," she said, blunt as children are.
"I am," I said. "But I like your braids."
She brightened. "Mom did them."
"I'll file a commendation," I told Lila.
Nora climbed onto the chair and opened her book. She read while Lila traced circles on my wrist with her thumb. Max drove the dinosaur up my arm, making quiet sound effects so the nurse wouldn't scold him. When the nurse did anyway, Lila smiled and said, "Just one more minute." The nurse relented. She always did for Lila.
We talked about small things. Max's new shoes with lights in the soles. Nora's spelling test. The plant in our kitchen that refused to die no matter how much we forgot it. Lila told me the sink still leaked and the landlord still said he'd fix it. Normal things. The kind that stitch up hours.
When they had to go, Nora stood on the bed rail and kissed my forehead like a serious person performing a ritual. "Daddy," she said, "we can have noodles when you get home."
"Deal," I said.
Max said, "Rawr," which meant everything, and Lila kissed me in the careful way of people afraid to break wires. She pressed her forehead to mine for a breath. "Come back," she whispered. "No medals. Just you."
"I'll try," I said. It was the only honest promise I had left.
Kade stopped by later, pale under his tan, sling snug across his chest. "Noodles," he said, because we didn't know how to be sentimental without a joke.
"You owe the whole team," I told him.
"After," he said. We lied to each other and it was kind.
The priest came by and asked if I wanted to confess.
"I don't remember all the sins," I said.
"That's God's job," he said, and smiled.
My mother called. We said the kinds of things you say when everything true is too heavy to name. "Eat," she said. "Sleep."
"I will," I lied. She heard it and loved me anyway.
The fever had dreams with teeth. Ceiling tiles turned into maps. Shadows chased each other along the curtain rails. I dreamed of the bathtub and gray water. I dreamed of noodles steaming hot enough to fog glasses. When I reached, I found tubing instead.
An aide with a clipboard came by during a clear hour. "If a book gets written," she said, "what do you want people to know about you?"
"That I was useful," I said.
She waited. There wasn't anything else I could say that felt true.
The night my body quit, it did it gently. Beeps stretched thin. Air tasted like coins. My chest filled with sand. Breathing turned into a trick my ribs had forgotten.
I thought about Lila's smile when she pretended not to cry. About Max's dinosaur and Nora's braids. About rain on a tin roof. About seven idiots laughing over cards. About joy—a small word I kept out of reach.
If there's a morning after this, I thought, I'm going to live it. No medals. No permission. Just… live.
Hands pressed my chest. People called numbers. The machine sang a long, flat line.
Dark.
Not eyelid dark. Under-the-world dark. Quiet that hummed.
Then: drip.
Another: drip.
Water on stone.
Cold soaked into my palm. Grit. Not sheets. Pebbles stuck to my skin. A draft slid across my face—cool, damp, smelling of rock and something green.
I opened my eyes. At first the dark inside and outside were the same. Then a thin scar of pale light showed in the ceiling—stone cracked, letting in a hint of day. Edges formed: low ceiling, rough walls, an uneven floor.
I was on the ground. In a cave.
My heartbeat thudded too loud in my ears. I lifted my hand. No tape. No IV. My skin felt wrong. I reached up to my brow. The old scar wasn't there. My wrist looked slimmer, bones fine under skin that didn't feel like mine.
Shock hit clean and cold.
A shallow puddle near my hand caught the pale light. Dark water, still as glass. It showed the thin ceiling crack… and a face.
Not my face.
Narrower jaw. Nose unbroken. Eyes too clear, framed by lashes I never had. Younger. A stranger stared up from the water's skin.
My breath fogged the air and broke the reflection into ripples.
The puddle stilled.
The stranger stared back.