The Dream
“Dearest Evelyn,


It’s been two years since I’ve seen your face. This deployment has put us both through some of the most heart wrenching pain. My love for you is the only thing that has kept me from going insane. Your letters remind me of your warm embrace and I can’t wait to come home. Well, time to pick up my gun and get back to work.









Forever your love,











Brock”

The tears ran down her cheeks as she reread his last letters to her. The truth hasn’t sunk in for her yet. “He’s still going to come home. They haven’t found the body yet, he’s just missing. He’ll come home and we will be happy just like before” she thought to herself. She constantly checked the news for updates and called the marine base to see if there was any new information. This cycle continued for two years.

It was about three weeks after she gave up on checking for updates when a marine approached a camp claiming to be Sargent Hill. They immediately transported him back home and contacted her. The phone dropped to the floor and she couldn’t believe that he had been found.

She arrived at the base hospital at approximately at sixteen hundred hours the next morning. As the doors opened to reveal the man she believed she loved she dropped to her knees and burst into tears.
He was lying in the bed, his face in bandages. The doctors had put him in a medical induced coma to help ease his pain. She ran to his side and kissed his hand.

“It’s alright now. I’m here to take care of you,” she whispers to him.

Every day for six months she was right by his bedside.

One day she was resting with her head by his hand when she felt him move.

“Brock, sweetie, are you awake?” she asked excitedly.

“Evelyn? “He managed to expel.

“Nurse! Nurse! Nurse! He’s awake! Shhhhh, Brock, don’t waste your energy.”

Just then he reached for her hand, and she turned around and looked at him.

“Ma’am, I am not Sargent Hill. My name is Private Michaels. Your fiancé died telling me to make sure you knew how much he loved you. I’m so sorry, ma’am.”

She couldn’t believe what she had been told. She fell to her knees still holding the stranger’s hand. She slowly tries to stand but loses her balance. She finally made her way to a nearby chair.

“Private Michaels, did my fiancé say anything else before he died?” she asked holding back tears.
“Yes ma’am. He also told me to remind you that happiness is what you make of it. He wanted you to know it is okay to live the life you two had planned with another man. He just wanted you to be happy.”
Hearing this she politely thanked the man and promised to visit regularly just like before. She left the room and headed toward home.

When she got home she sat in her room caressing the picture of them from high school. She looks up to the sky and says
“How could I possibly go on without you Brock? You are my world, tell me what to do.”
She breaks into tears holding the only thing she had left to feel his presence, she gripped tightly to his pillow and drifts to sleep.