He could tell he was in trouble from the instant she first said it wasn't funny - no, it wasn't, and now that he was here, all he could feel was sick. Sick and broken, the two things he'd spent those past six months (and three days) feeling, but had tried to tell himself was pointless when he'd finally gotten into that cab and asked to be taken back to New Jersey. The best doctors in the Marine Corps had looked at his case, and said that they couldn't tell him whether or not his memory would return, that he was better off to go home and see if anything jogged his memory there, and given him his discharge. So he'd tried to look on the bright side of things - it was a fresh start, no way he could get sent back to the slowly- and brutally-advancing front and he'd just get home and remember and things would be all right again.

But that really didn't seem to be the case, and he couldn't fool himself into thinking it any longer now that he was being called on it. "I -" He glanced to the side, for the first time seeing the street sign a couple of houses down that did, indeed, confirm what she'd said. But where normally he might have felt triumph, there was no room for that now, not with this pretty girl looking at him with teary eyes and splotchy cheeks telling him he was joking and demanding to know what was wrong. And he had to tell her something. "I'm not joking," was all that came out for a second, as his hands dropped awkwardly to his sides and he tried to look her in the face. "I don't - I got hit." He gestured helplessly to his head. "I can't remember - they discharged me. Said I should go home, but all I have is this - " now he held up the crumpled copy of his enlistment form with the address on it, "and I was trying to find my way there."