But, she’d pushed that idea from her mind at the moment she was contemplating the body that night.  It had been all but ignored by the emergency techs, and this bothered her.  She’d debated with herself as she stood to one side, while the emergency techs strapped the young woman to a gurney, hurriedly transporting her to the ambulance.

“At the end of the day, don’t we owe this final act of respect to one another?,”  she’d thought as she contemplated the body of the young man, clearly abandoned by the emergency techs.

“Is this not a compact we make with each other, human-to-human, that we don’t abandon each other at death’s door?  That we pay respect to the idea of what being a human being means at the final moment when, perhaps, we arrive at the end of conscious existence?  When we need someone the most, to attend the moment when we each inevitably cross from consciousness to the end of consciousness?”

She’d convinced the techs to carry the body to the side of the road, away from the fumes of spilt fuel, and watched as they sped away, leaving her with the body.  And as she waited with the body by a lonely, dark, roadside — something she believed was the moral thing to do, thus felt she was forced to act accordingly – she realized later that her former fearless self had also passed.  In its place arrived a new person – more acutely aware of life, and its limits. 

How do I tell Tina? 

Tina said nothing, and patiently waited for Bette to continue. 

“The second mission was not as uneventful as you may have assumed, T, since I hadn’t told you what happened,” she started.  Tina tensed. “We were fired upon with what I think were basically rockets, and, for a moment there, I thought that I had finally stretched my luck too far.  But the skill of Brom’s team, particularly the one driving, and the team leader who was shouting instructions at everybody, and the superlative armor around the vehicles, enabled us to survive the attack.  So we all managed to make it back to the camp perimeter.” Simple.  Just the facts. 

Tina remained quiet, but her face was bloodless, and the hand that held Bette’s had turned clammy. As she ran her other hand through her hair, it was shaking. “You didn’t tell me,” the blonde said, after a few minutes.