Author’s Note; All references to military operations and legal things are figments of my imagination. All references to literary agents and publishers are pure made up BS. Remember, this story is fiction.

This episode all started when I medically mustered out of the army. It was September 7, 2006. I arrived back in Grand Rapids at 3:30 in the afternoon. My parents were there as well as my little sister. Jane was 16 at the time, while I was a ripe old 24. After handshakes, hugs and hellos, Jane took my hand and we went to baggage claim.

I was being badgered by mom and Jane about my service time. My father, who had served during a couple of nasty Central American and Caribbean adventures told everyone that I didn’t want to talk about my war now. He knew of my injuries, and even was able to come and visit. I came to understand that he hadn’t told the rest of the family about the extent.

I thanked him and told everyone I would tell them when I had some time to decompress.

As we were walking toward the luggage carousels, a girl I had known somewhat in high school spotted me. Her name in high school was Connie Bigelow, and while at the time she wasn’t the best looking, she was one of the popular girl set in high school, she was a beauty now. When she saw me, she called out, screamed, ran to us, and grabbed me and Jane in a hug. She grabbed me so hard, I lost my cane and fell over.

Of course when I went down the two girls went down, and in the melee I lost my fake leg. That got mom and Jane to crying, and Connie looked like she was trying to find a hole nearby to crawl in.

I hugged Connie close and softly said, “Connie, you didn’t do anything to hurt me. This was done by the assholes over there. Don’t be upset, I just need help to get up.”

After I got to my feet and retrieved my foot, I told everyone that I would explain how I got hurt when we were at the house. I asked Connie if she wanted to hear about it. When she nodded, I told her to go get her car and we would meet her at the airport exit.

About that time, all kinds of hell broke loose. Someone had their camera phone going and called the police as soon as my leg went flying. I explained that I was knocked over by an old high school friend that I hadn’t seen it several years.

After they verified everyone’s ID and talked to everyone separately, we were allowed to leave. One good thing was that the delay allowed me to reinstall my prosthesis.

Once we got to the house, it was past dinner time, so I called for a large order of pizzas to be delivered. My dad wanted to pay, but I insisted. The pizzas came, and after everyone got done eating and got something to drink, we went into the family room.

I sat on the couch, and Jane pushed me into the middle then Connie sat next to me on the other side. I started;

“Ok, I can’t give you a lot of details, because of the need for secrecy, but I was hurt somewhere where I never was, near Afghanistan. What not even dad knows is that I was on an operation as a detached asset for a three letter agency. We were a four man team, including an agency interpreter. Our mission was to take out a warlord who was supplying drugs to some U.S. distributors. He also sold information to the insurgents. We were to eliminate him and recover or destroy some important documents.

We did eliminate him, and recovered a briefcase with the documents. We also recovered an additional case.

During our extraction the chopper was hit by an RPG from one of the warlord’s soldiers. During the crash, three of the team, and the two pilots were killed. I had a shattered leg and miscellaneous cuts and bruises. We had overhead cover, but every time one of the rescue birds came in they took fire. I grabbed the cases and managed to hobble and drag myself away far enough that I was safe to pick up. As I was getting into the helicopter the flight sergeant grabbed my leg and the bone came through the skin. The sergeant put a tourniquet on to stop the bleeding, but every time he loosened it to allow some blood flow back to the foot I started to bleed badly. By the time the chopper got back to the base hospital, the leg below the tourniquet was dead.

I was evaced to Walter Reed, and that is where I have been for the last 14 months. As I was rehabbing I was visited by that unnamed agency’s rep, and he told me that since the operation was not sanctioned by the military, and that as three military personnel and an agent were killed or injured, it was classified TOP SECRET, and I was not going to get a big military disability. I just had to sign on the dotted line and I would be out. I refused and demanded a general court martial for ‘going off the reservation’.

That caused all kinds of problems for several ranking officers. So when I talked to a JAG officer he told me that the Army wasn’t going to charge as I wasn’t the leader. He added that I could not be denied a disability pension as the injury happened while I was serving. So that is how I got a wooden leg.”

I did not mention that they offered a substantial cash award from the agency for my injuries when I demanded the court martial again. They tripled the cash. I signed. I will receive the proceeds from a trust the JAG office helped me set up for the rest of my life, with enough left over that any of my future kids will be rich also. It also turned out that the extra case was mine, and it had over $1,000,000 in cash.

Well, nobody but my father understood ‘TOP SECRET’ and I was bombarded with questions.

I hollered; “Stop, what part of ‘TOP SECRET’ needs explanation here?”

That quieted the crowd. Connie decided to head for home. She handed me a slip of paper and told me to call her. I thought that was odd, because when we were in high school she wouldn’t acknowledge my right to exist.

Things were quiet for a few days, and about a week after I had gotten home, Connie called.

“Why haven’t you called?” she asked, “I was feeling a connection that I must have not seen in high school.”

“Speaking of high school,” I responded; “are the snooty bitches still together? I remember being treated like I was something that the entire group walked through and needed new shoes so they could throw the ones they had on away.”

All I heard was silence for a long second then. “We really were like that weren’t we?”

“Yes you all were, and I have no fond desire to relive those painful moments.”

This time the silence was with a whispered “I’m sorry, good bye.” and then more silence as the call ended.

Well, that solved that awkward situation well. NOT!

I was feeling a little embarrassed about the venom I felt, and spewed. I stewed about it for another week, when I decided to try to apologize. I called, and when Connie picked up I started right in. “Connie, what happened in high school was a long time ago. I’m sorry I vented on you. Is there some way I can make it up to you short of ‘a long walk off a short pier’?

She laughed, “That wouldn’t work, you were a great swimmer in high school and with a fake leg you would just swim in circles.”

Then I started laughing, “At least my injury doesn’t seem to turn you off. Why is that, so far everyone outside of you and my family treats me like an amputation is contagious?”

“My dad’s brother lost an arm in a car accident, so I have been around amputees all my life. I know that he doesn’t want to be treated like a pariah so we always have called him ‘lefty’. That’s the arm he lost. He always comes up like I am going to get a one arm hug, and then acts like he is reaching with the stump. He never wears his appliance around family. Now as to making your apologies, how about you take me to dinner?”

“That works for me, I need to check my social calendar for any conflicts. Nope, no conflicts, oops, no social calendar. I will make some calls and get back to you. Is Friday evening good?”

“Yes, that will be fine.”

I made reservations for dinner for two for the coming Friday evening. Connie was pleased, and said she would be ready when I got there.

Before I could take her anywhere, I had to buy some wheels. It had to have enough leg room for my appliance to be out of the way. A pickup seemed to be the best choice for me and so I bought a top of the line 2005 F-150. Then because it was not a date car, I bought a Crown Victoria that was an off lease from 2004. Now I had to figure out how to garage them.

She was ready, and beautiful as always. We had a wonderful dinner, and we caught up on everything that happened except for my military service. I was reluctant to say too much. I still had visions of the dead and dying from us and from the insurgents.

During the after dinner conversation Connie told me that when she went to college she got the kind of treatment she and her friends gave the not so popular kids in high school. She discovered what it was like to not be in the main orbit of the social scene.

I took her back to her home and received a nice, but chaste kiss at her door. “Please call me, I had a good time tonight and would like to do it again.”

“OK, I would like to do that; especially with you.”

We went to many different events, shows, movies, and most of the dating things for almost two years. I finally got off the pot and asked Connie to marry me and she agreed.

As I was going to college to get my degree in secondary education and financial planning, we decided that the wedding would be in the summer between my junior and senior year.

We went into planning mode. We decided that we (meaning me) would pay for everything. The two families were fine with that as Connie’s former upper middle class family had been financially destroyed by the 08 crash. My dad was and had always been a semiskilled factory worker, and with Janey wanting to become a doctor, there was not a lot of extra money laying around.

As I was finishing school the summer before the wedding, I was surprised with a request from Connie for a prenuptial agreement. Surprised, but I was not against the idea. My lawyer warned me to let him look it over before I signed it.

Connie’s lawyer thought that was a bad idea. I made sure that Connie understood that we both needed to agree on this, or it would not be signed. She actually chewed out the lawyer’s ass and ripped his document up.

She yelled at him; “Are you trying to screw my fiancé in that document? Is that the reason you don’t want another lawyer to look at it? Write a new, fair document or we will use his lawyer and you can forget about any future work for us.”

Well, Connie had secretly grabbed a copy of the proposed prenup. We took it to my attorney. He agreed with Connie. The asshole was trying to put the screws to me in a divorce. Connie got a different lawyer. Between the two attorneys, we got a fair document that protected both of us in case there was a divorce in the future. It had two penalty clauses, adultery and abuse punished the guilty with forfeiture of all martial assets.

From there the planning went smoothly.

The wedding planning over, the wedding coming up my friends wanted to throw me a bachelor party. I declined. Connie got a bachelorette party, and as I was to find out later, a couple of the ‘snooty bitches’ were there and things got raunchy. Connie participated in it all, even the blowjob contest. The male strippers didn’t protest. I found out about it much later.

The wedding was great, aren’t all of them.

We honeymooned in Oregon, and spent a lot of the time on the coast. We came back to our hometown just as I was going to start my senior year. I had, as I said, a lot of money socked away, but wanted to use my education for more than a plaque on the ‘I Love Me’ wall. My degree was going to be in education and a minor in creative writing.

I got a teaching position at a local academy for high school girls who were training to be elite athletes. Most were figure skater or skiers, but there were fencers, gymnasts and track athletes too.

The school was in session year round because of the training schedule. The girls were taught three hours a day, and trained three to five hours in their sports specialty. My classes were largely tutoring in English and basic financial management. It was set up so that the girls would have a sound foundation for when their sports careers were over. Most of them would not be multimillionaires from sports, but the tuition for the school was steep, so they also probably wouldn’t go hungry either. There were no scholarships, so family or sponsors kicked in a bundle every year for their kids to participate in the program.

Connie had been working as an administrative assistant since graduating college, and had moved from a junior manager’s aide to AA to the Vice president of production. She was actually making three times my salary, and between us we were well onto the upper middle class as far as income.

I had a lot of free time, so I started writing. I wrote mostly ‘bodice rippers and corny westerns. I didn’t think they were worth sending to a literary agent much less a publishing house.

Well, Connie found my stash of stories and sent them to a friend in Chicago, and I was summoned to the offices of Garcia, Colton, and Clements, Literary Agents, Inc. They proceeded to inform me that they had sent my stories to a publisher that they had worked with that published ‘summer time beach lounging trashy novels’ and that they had a contract for me to publish all six of the finished novels and a contract for three more over the next five years. The contract was signed and a very large check was handed to me. I was dumbfounded, and overwhelmed at the same time.