Outskirts Press, INC.

John Douglas is a high school junior whose father, a US Army Colonel, is listed, officially, as MIA in the Iraq theatre of operations.  That fact weights heavily on the young high school junior athlete and haunts his dreams.  During his varsity basketball season JD, as his friends call him, and his mother receive the news that his father was, in fact, killed in action in Iraq and the body is returned home for burial.  At the same time, the young athlete breaks his right arm in a basketball game that takes him out of action for six weeks and he finds out his girl friend is moving out of town due to her father's army transfer.  These events drive him into a deep depression and his tortured nightmares return.

JD helps a new transfer student, who is a paraplegic, out of a tight spot at the high school on the new student's first day there.  Because of the loss of the use of his legs, the wheelchair bound student also suffers from depression and questions the value in living.  Events lead the two students to begin a friendship that leads to both of them learning new life lessons.

Still, even now, the dream haunted his sleep.  He didn’t want to dream the dream; it forced itself upon him.  The dream was always the same, always – except that night, for the first time since it began, the dream was more real than ever before.  Late that night, as his grieving mind sought solace as he slept, the dream came.  He tossed his head back and forth, moaning a soft “No, No…” against, what one part of his brain knew was coming.  He again saw his father’s helicopter take a hit from a ground fired missile, nose over and drop to the ground in a fast, twirling 360 degree turn.  But then, because of all of the new intel that was made available by the survival of Major Taylor, JD saw the helicopter crash, saw his father’s body dragged away, and then his mind pictured his father being tortured again and again and again by electric shock.  He could hear his father screaming; he could feel his pain.  His head jerked back and forth.  He moaned agonizingly.  Then, his mind saw his father standing far, far away.  He called out to his father in his sleep, “Dad!”