I had been counting the days for four months.
An ordinary man with one extraordinary reason to wake up each morning: the thought of walking back through my front door and holding my newborn daughters for the very first time.
A week before, my mother had sent me their photograph. I carried it folded in the breast pocket of my uniform throughout the flight home, pulling it out so often that the crease had softened.
What my mother didn’t know—and what my wife, Mara, didn’t know—was that I was coming home with a prosthetic leg.
