Dear Sam,

Why does your time keep getting extended? It’s been so much longer now than it ever should have been. I miss you so much it hurts. At night I swear I can feel your arms around me, but when I open my eyes I’m still all alone. Oh, Sam, I want you back more than anything in the world. Please come home soon…


She set the felt-tipped pen down on her desk and wrapped her arms around herself. She always felt so cold and empty when Sam was gone. She’d felt this cold and empty for fifteen months.

Elizabeth stared out the window at the frost-bitten ground. Winter was approaching, bringing icy winds and heavy gray clouds. The first snowflakes had not yet fallen, but they would soon.


And Sam still wouldn’t be home.

He’d left for Iraq fifteen months ago. She’d known he would have to go - he was in the Army, after all – and she’d accepted it. But he was supposed to be gone only eleven months. His time had been extended twice because of a shortage of available officers with skills similar to his; it had been four extra months already, and he wouldn’t be back for three more.

A stray sob escaped her as she put her head in her hands. It wasn’t fair. Why should they have to suffer when so many other soldiers were already happily back in their houses, kissing their wives and preparing to decorate for Christmas? All she wanted was to hug him around his neck, tangle her fingers in his hair, kiss his rough, warm lips.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. She could do this. She’d promised him she’d write to him until he returned, so that’s what she would do. She had to keep his faith strong, keep him from losing hope.

“Only a few more months, darling,” she whispered as she picked up her pen again. “Only a few more months.”


“How is she?” I asked, keeping my gaze fixed on the small television screen displaying a recording of my sister. It was on fast forward, making her movements look quick and jerky, like a broken toy.

“Not much better, but not any worse,” he said after a pause. I turned my head to look at him and adjusted my position in my chair, trying to get comfortable. But Dr. Hawkins had not bothered to buy a nice seat for his visitors, and it was impossible.

I leaned forward. “Is she…still writing letters?”

He nodded gravely, settling back into his plush maroon armchair. He had apparently cared enough to buy himself a nice chair. “I’m afraid so. A new one almost every day.”

I sighed in frustration. “That’s even more than she was writing last time I came.”

“I’m aware.”

Now my anger bubbled up inside me. Maybe the chairs were part of it and maybe not, but his attitude definitely was. I had never liked the doctor to begin with, and every time I spoke with him my dislike grew. I jumped up and slammed my hands hard on his desk. “How has there not been some improvement? After Sam died and she had her nervous breakdown, you know I wanted to keep her with me. The only reason I agreed to have her sent to a psychiatric hospital like this one was because everyone said it would help! But it’s been two months, Dr. Hawkins, and nothing has changed!”

He pulled off his glasses and again wiped them on his shirt, though when he returned them to his nose they were even cloudier than before. “Please sit down, Rachel.”

I glared at him but slowly sank into the rock-hard chair, never taking my eyes off his face.

“I know there hasn’t been much improvement with your sister. But like I told you, some patients take longer to respond than others, and some - ”

“But she hasn’t responded at all!” I interrupted him furiously. “She still believes Sam is alive in Iraq and that he’s receiving all the letters she writes!” Suddenly I remembered the day we’d heard the news of his death in battle, and all the ferocity left me. I felt deflated, like a punctured balloon, and slowly leaned against the chair’s back to steady myself. “Have you – have you even tried explaining it all to her again?” I asked, quieter this time.

He sighed. “Of course we have.”

“Then why hasn’t there been at least a little change?” I said, keeping my eyes closed, as if that would block out the world.

“Like her diagnosis said, it seems that her husband’s death was so sudden and devastating that her mind convinced itself it couldn’t possibly be real, and that he was actually still alive, just unable to come home yet. She still firmly believes it, and it may take quite a bit of time and work to bring her around.”

Now I opened my eyes and watched the screen again. The video was on repeat, showing hour after hour of Elizabeth writing letters at her desk, staring out the window, crying in her sleep. Watching it, I could tell she still thought she was living in her red brick townhouse in Georgia. She doesn’t even know where she is, I thought in despair.

It was my turn to sigh. “So what do we do?”

He tried again to clean his wire-rimmed glasses off using his shirt. That habit was driving me crazy. “We keep working, and we wait, and we hope.”

I let my gaze drift to the grandfather clock in the corner, observing the slow swinging of the pendulum back and forth, back and forth. “And what does she do while we do that?”

He smiled grimly. “Well, I suppose until we manage to break through, she’ll simply keep writing to Sam.”