Hunt had so many dreams. Some mundane. Some terrifying. The crooked insurgent haunted his dreams, not always. Sometimes he dreamed about restarting deployments, forced to repeat them over and over. Other times he dreamed about walking into his command and seeing pictures of fallen friends hung on the wall, his own picture hanging next to Austin’s. Voices would echo in the hallway. “They knew what they signed up for,” the voices would say. Hunt had said that for years.

Uncle Mike introduced a new dream. One that Hunt wasn’t prepared for.

A respirator helped Uncle Mike breathe as he lay dying. The machine forced warmed oxygen into his lungs. Asleep, he didn’t notice Hunt coming to his side. As Hunt whispered goodbye, he shot upright, grabbing the endotracheal tube taped over his mouth and yanking it out of his windpipe. Phlegm-covered plastic choked his dying words—“You have 30 minutes to finish.”

“What?” Hunt said.

Students shushed him like they were twelve. Papers shifted, and someone sneezed. Auditorium seats, staggered in tiers, funneled to a desk perched on a stage. The Teaching Assistant stopped writing ‘10:30’ on the whiteboard and crossed her arms. “You have 30 minutes to finish the exam,” she said…