Yes, it's been seven years. This unfinished story has always bothered me, though, and I'm going to finish it now. Please let me know what you think!

What do you say to a friend you watched die 65 years ago? …Do you tell him that you let his murderer walk away?

Reiben, unsure of the customs surrounding such circumstances, stiffly extended his right hand. Wade immediately grabbed it and pulled Reiben into a bone-crushing hug, patting him on the back.

"You have no idea how long I've been waiting for you, buddy," Wade said as he pulled away.

"You've been waiting all these years? Just for me?"

"You're the last one of us to come home, Reiben. I knew I'd have to be here to patch you up when you did."

"…I'm the last?"

"Sure took you an awful long time. I was afraid I'd missed you. But Upham promised he'd pass you on to me, so I kept waiting."

"You talked to Upham?"

"I talked to everyone, Reiben. But Upham, he had the most to say. I heard he wrote a book about us. He said someone made it into a big movie."

"Yeah, well…that movie wasn't really accurate."

"What about me? Did they get me right?"

"Yeah, they got you just fine. Everyone cries when you die. But Upham…he just didn't get me right, okay?"

"He said he based the book off of all the diaries he kept while he was with us."

"I'm not saying he didn't tell the right story, I'm saying he didn't tell the whole story. All he put in that book were all the bad things about me. He left out all the good stuff."

"What good stuff?" Wade asked with a small grin.

And suddenly Reiben felt 24 again. He grabbed Wade's pack and wrapped his arm around Wade's neck, overpowering him.

"You wanna say that to me again?" he asked with a laugh.

Wade backed up with incredible speed and slammed Reiben into the concrete wall. Neither man felt any pain, but both leaned against the wall as they doubled over with laughter.

"You've still got it, Reiben," Wade said. As he laughed, a man stuck his head out the door of the building Wade had come from.

"We've got fresh soldiers!" the man shouted. Wade nodded ominously.

Reiben leaned his back against the wall, understanding that the fun was over.

"So you said you've gotta patch me up?" he asked wearily.

"Just because I died doesn't mean I stopped being your medic," Wade said seriously. "You're hurting, Reiben. It's my job to make that stop."

"No one can make it stop."

"…Do you trust me?" Wade hopped up the stairs to the entranceway and extended his hand for Reiben. Reiben looked at it apprehensively, but finally took Wade's hand and allowed Wade to pull him inside.

Inside was chaos. Wounded soldiers in all manner of uniforms lay in cots while other soldiers, mostly nurses and medics, worked feverishly to save them. Save them from what? Reiben glanced around. Don't they know they're dead?

Before Reiben could take in any more information, two soldiers who looked like they had just stepped off of a battlefield in Vietnam came racing into the room, carrying a gurney holding another soldier, this one clearly from a desert. Iraq, Afghanistan?

"What is this place?" Reiben asked in horror, covering his ears against the shouting, the cries for mothers, and the endless screaming. He backed himself into an empty corner and turned his eyes from the mess before him. Because this was no longer heaven. This was war. What war, he didn't know. But he knew a war when he saw one.

"It's my liver. Oh, God, it's my liver!"

"Tell us what we can do to help, Doc. Tell us what we can do!"

"More…morphine…"

Reiben screamed to drown out the voices in his head. He closed his eyes to escape the warzone, only to be confronted with images of blood, dismembered limbs, bullet holes, and faces wracked with pain. Dying faces. Wade's face.

Wade is dead.

"Reiben!" Wade yelled, pulling him to his feet and across the room. "Reiben, I need your help!"

Wade dragged Reiben in front of a bloody cot occupied by a man with guts spilling out of his abdomen. The man screamed, seemingly unaware of his death, and desperately tried to pull his organs back inside of him. Reiben turned in an attempt to catch his breath, but Wade pulled him back immediately.

"Soldier! Soldier, what's your name?" Wade asked the man. Getting no response, he grasped for the man's dog tags. "Rooney! I'm Wade, I'm a medic. You're gonna be okay!"

"He's dead, Wade!" Reiben shouted.

"Everything heals!" Wade shouted back cryptically. "Hold him still!"

"No way. No. I'm done with this shit. You can't just drag me back to war after all these years! I did my part, I'm done!"

"Well, he's not done!" Wade pointed to Rooney, writhing on the cot. "Now hold him still!"

"Fuck this, Wade! I'm – "

"This is where I've been waiting, Reiben!" Wade shouted, grabbing Reiben's uniform and pulling him closer. "While you've been off living, I've been waiting for you here for the last sixty-five years! I've never stopped being a soldier! Now, are you on my squad, or not?" Reiben didn't move, trying to register this new information. "Are you on my squad, Reiben?!"

Numbly, Reiben nodded his head yes. "I never left," he whispered.

"Then hold him still!"

Reiben did as he was told, watching in bewilderment as he held Rooney down. Wade worked furiously to stitch the man up, talking to him in comforting tones as he did so. It all passed in a blur for Reiben, who drowned out all the noise until Wade finally pulled him back, away from the cot. Rooney was lying still, his face no longer showing pain or fright. As Wade began to walk away, Rooney's hand shot out and stopped him.

"I died," Rooney whispered. "So why am I still hurt?"

"Every wound needs to heal," Wade answered softly. "Otherwise we'd never move on."

After promising Rooney that he'd return later, Wade led Reiben back to the entranceway. Through a door on the other side of the large room, more soldiers came running in carrying gurneys with a seemingly endless number of wounded soldiers.

"What's going on?" Reiben asked quietly as they crossed the street.

"That's the soldier station," Wade explained. "Every soldier that dies in war comes in through that station. That's where I…that's where I came in."

Reiben watched Wade carefully. Unlike Wade, Reiben had no memory of his own death. One night he went to sleep, and the next morning he simply didn't wake up. But Wade…Wade suffered. He called out for his mother. He begged for death because the pain was just too much. Wade cleared his throat as if to put those thoughts behind him.

"Once I was stabilized, they brought me here," he said as they entered a large building filled with cots. The cots held soldiers in various states of repair. Some were joking around, playing cards. Others sat still with the thousand-yard stare in their eyes. Some laughed. Some cried. But all were safe.

"This is the new section," Wade quickly explained, gesturing toward the soldiers before them, all wearing desert camouflage. Reiben was surprised to see female soldiers as well. "This is the biggest section. We get new soldiers every day."

The two men jogged up a staircase and entered another room, ducking under a sign that read "The Jungle."

"Vietnam," Wade said with a soft smile. "These kids sure know how to party."

Young men – too young, Reiben thought – raced in wheelchairs, played cards loudly, and danced to the music coming from an old radio. The Beatles came on and everyone stopped suddenly, as if on cue.

"Hey, Jude," the men began singing. "Don't be afraid… Take a sad song and make it better…"

Reiben wanted to stay longer and watch the excited young men dance to the popular song of their time, but Wade's smile faded and he led Reiben down another hall. This time they entered a much smaller room. Reiben swallowed hard as he heard the music drifting from this room's radio.

"He was a famous trumpet man from out Chicago way. He had a boogie style that no one else could play."

Reiben felt Ethel in his arms. Remembered swinging back and forth with that beautiful girl from down the street. Remembered the pride he felt wearing his brand new, freshly ironed dress uniform. He felt the same sudden urge he'd felt sixty-five years ago, could see himself dipping Ethel during the song and asking her to marry him when he came home from the war. "I'll wait for you, Ricky," she'd whispered in his ear.

"He was the top man at his craft. But then his number came up and he was gone with the draft."

He'd started the war with a picture of Ethel in his backpack and sweet letters to look forward to as often as the war would allow. But before he'd even seen combat, he got the Dear John letter. Another neighborhood boy had come home from the war, and suddenly Ethel didn't much feel like waiting for Ricky Reiben anymore.

"He's in the army now, a-blowin' reveille. He's the boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B."

Now it floated throughout the boat on warped speakers. Reiben sat with Jackson and Wade. Wade tapped his foot while Jackson whistled.

"Why don't they turn this fucking music off?" Reiben asked in annoyance.

That's when Caparzo and Mellish started dancing, doing everything they could to pick on Reiben.

"They made him blow a bugle for his Uncle Sam," Mellish and Caparzo snapped their fingers as they danced and sang in Reiben's face while Jackson and Wade clapped. "It really brought him down because he couldn't jam…"

"Reiben," Wade said, pulling at Reiben's arm. "Reiben."

"What?" Reiben asked, trying to clear his head.

"I said, this is our war."

The spirit in the room was melancholy at best. There were around fifty men, all seemingly healthy, lying on cots or sitting at tables.

"This is where I waited," Wade continued. "Caparzo was already here. He asked about the girl…the little girl he died trying to save…I told him she was safe. I couldn't tell him that we left her."

"Why are these men still here?" Reiben asked slowly. "Any wounds they had must've healed by now."

"Everything heals, Reiben. Some things just take longer than others. Like you. You never healed."

"Well, you weren't there to patch me up, Doc."

"That's why I'm still here. I've been waiting."

"For what?"

"For you. Caparzo healed, and he moved on. But I had to wait. I'm your medic. I had to make sure you all healed."

"So, then…"

"They all came on the same day. Mellish was first. The Sarge, Captain Miller. And Jackson. He was…he was the worst."

"…Did you fix him, Doc?"

"His body was burned everywhere. I didn't know it was him until I saw his dog tags. But he was the strongest. He knew where he was. He knew he was safe. He'd been waiting for this."

"Where is he?"

"He healed. He moved on. You see, you get to choose what version of yourself you want to look like. When Jackson healed, you still couldn't tell it was him. Until one day, he just woke up as himself again. Looked exactly the same as the last time I saw him."

"So you healed them all?"

"All of my men. Except for you and Upham. You never came through that door. Not that day. Not the next. That's when we knew you were okay, that you'd made it. And we never saw a Private Ryan, either. We knew you two had finished the mission."

"Then where is everybody?"

"Captain Miller said he would stay here until all of his men came back. No man left behind. Sarge was so tired. He was happy to move on. Mellish…you should have seen him when he found Caparzo. They left a few days after Sarge."

"And Captain?"

"I told him to go. I said it was his job to lead you, but it was my job to take care of you when things went wrong. And I hadn't finished that job yet, not with the two of you still out there. I promised him I'd stay for you two. And he left."

"And you've been waiting ever since?"

"…There was one day… All of these people from New York City… they weren't soldiers, but the came through that door anyway. And I just kept thinking you'd be the next body coming in."

"That was…" Reiben sighed. "Yeah, that was a bad day."

"I begged God. I told him that you couldn't have fought your war and seen the things you saw…just to come home and die that way."

"Did Upham…?"

"Yeah. Dachau. He told me that they ordered you to search the camp for more survivors. He said you never talked about what you found."

"Don't you try to get me to say it, Wade. If I don't think about it, it doesn't hurt. Don't you understand?"

"That's what I'm here to teach you, Reiben. Everything heals."

"Not for those people I found. Not for those kids."

Wade lifted his uniform up to show Reiben the lengthy scar on his abdomen.

"Why…I thought you could go back to the way you looked before you were hurt?"

"You can," Wade said strongly. "But I don't want to. I survived this. This is proof that I'm healed. No one can ever take that away from me."

"You can't heal what's on the inside," Reiben said bitterly.

"Let me try. Please."

"…Why do I have to go through this again?" Reiben whispered, his eyes watering. The things he'd seen….The children that haunted his dreams…If he's in heaven, then why does it still hurt?"

"We don't just get soldiers here," Wade said quietly. "We got prisoners from the camps, too. The ones who weren't so lucky… The ones you found."

"No…I can't…"

"They healed, Reiben. They healed. And the little boy…"

Reiben's head turned sharply. "How do you know about the little boy?" he snapped.

The little boy. The one who lay shivering in his brother's arms as the older boy begged Reiben to save his younger brother. The little boy that Reiben picked up and held in his arms. The little boy that Reiben tried to save. The little boy that died in Reiben's arms.

"…Because he waited, too," Wade said. He gestured towards the door, and the little boy tentatively stepped inside the room.

The little boy.

"…No," Reiben said in disbelief.

"American soldier," the little boy said. "You save me from the bad place. You bring me here."

"I didn't," Reiben said softly. "I didn't save you. I let you die."

"You make me stop hurting… You heal me."

"Healing doesn't bring back the dead, Reiben," Wade began. "It doesn't fix the past. It doesn't get rid of scars. But it takes away the pain. It allows you to stop hurting so that you can move on."

"Then why is he still here?" Reiben pointed to the boy.

"Efraim," the boy said. "My brother Efraim. I wait for him. I wait for you to tell me that you heal him, too."

"You killed my brother!" Efraim screamed at Reiben. "You were supposed to save us! Why didn't you? Why didn't you save us?"

"No," Reiben admitted with a heavy heart. "I didn't heal Efraim. But someone did. He lived. He's not hurting anymore."

A wide smile split across the boy's face.

"American soldier save us. You stop the hurting." The little boy ran into Reiben's arms, and Reiben held him the same way he had sixty-four years ago. Except this time the boy did not die. This time the boy cried tears of joy. This time he thanked Reiben.

Reiben buried his face against the boy's shoulder to hide his own tears. He felt the weight lift. His heart was so full of joy that it had no room left for pain. And he stopped hurting. He healed.

"I'm Ricky," he told the boy. "What's your name?"

"Immanuel," the boy answered. "I will tell Efraim… I will tell Efraim that Ricky the American save us. Ricky heal us."

"Tell Efraim… that Ricky lit a candle for you two every year, on the same day. Tell Efraim I tried to save you, but I couldn't. And tell him that I never forgot you."

"I go see Efraim now," Immanuel said. "I will tell him."

Reiben put Immanuel down. "You're leaving?"

"We all are," Wade said with a small smile.

"…Why?"

"Immanuel knows that his brother isn't suffering. He's healed. You know that Immanuel forgives you, that he's at peace. You've healed. And I know that I patched up every member of my squad. I'm healed."

"I'm not healed. There's still so many things wrong with me, Doc."

"That's why I have to bandage you up before we go."

"But I'm not… I'm not injured."

Wade takes white bandages from a nearby table. He tells Reiben to take off his shirt. And slowly, Wade and Immanuel wrapped the bandages around Reiben's upper chest.

"What is this for?" Reiben asked.

"To protect heart," Immanuel answered.

"I have to make sure it doesn't break again," Wade said, handing Reiben back his shirt. "Don't take it off until it's healed."

A bright light emanated from the doorway at the end of the room.

"I guess it's time to go, then," Wade said with a smile.

"Where are we going?" Reiben asked warily.

"To see the person we need to talk to the most. I'm going to see my mom."

"My brother," Immanuel said happily.

"Who will I see?" Reiben asked, afraid of the answer.

"Whoever it is that you need to talk to," Wade answered vaguely.

Wade hugged Reiben, and Immanuel took each of the men by the hand.

"I'll see you later, Reiben," Wade promised as the three of them stepped through the door together. "Tell him I say hi."

"Tell who?" Reiben tried to ask, but when he turned to look at Wade and Immanuel, he saw only light. He was alone. Slowly, the blinding light faded until he could just make out a brightly lit field. To his right was a river. Across the field was a large house. He started towards the house when he heard the distinct click of a rifle being loaded.

He was going to get shot? In heaven? Reiben raised his hands and turned around slowly.

"What in the hell took you so long to get here, city boy?" Jackson asked.