DMV
Mid-August 2019. Huntsville, Alabama.
"Kade? You need to get your new license."
"I know. I just don't like taking time off."
"Well, you've been here long enough now that if you get stopped for driving with a North Carolina license, and you're not on active duty, you'll be wishing you'd taken the time off."
"I know. You're right, Wes. I'll run over there tomorrow morning first thing if that's okay."
"No time is a good time, but this has to be done, so sure, that'll be fine."
Kade Radliffe had recently completed his required five years in the US Army after graduating from West Point. He'd been Air Defense Artillery or ADA as the Army called it, and over those five years he'd served as a platoon leader, a battery XO (executive officer), a battalion training officer, and as commander of a Patriot missile battery assigned to the 108th Air Defense Brigade located at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He'd finished third in his class at West Point and was as smart as they came. Like many of his fellow, former cadets, Kade had married right after graduation in the West Point chapel.
The woman he married was Karen Hastings, a beautiful girl he'd met through a close friend during a winter break when his roommate and fellow cadet invited him to come to his place for Christmas. Kade had no family to call his own and no place to go, so he'd jumped on the opportunity to spend time with a close knit family.
Kade had beaten the odds by getting into West Point, but he'd done that all his life. He was born 10 weeks premature thanks to his birth mother being a drug addict who was also mentally incapable of raising him and yet he'd managed to survive. He was almost adopted twice, but both sets of parents passed and he'd bounced around the foster system until he was 18.
Reading had been his saving grace, and while most kids in his situation turned to drugs, alcohol or even suicide to dull or end the pain, Kade read. Voraciously. He attended school, but because he bounced around so much, he'd had to teach himself many things. One of them was math up through basic calculus, something he'd accomplished before he turned 16.
He moved three times during high school, but managed to spend his entire senior year in the same foster home, the closest thing to a break he'd caught, and by the time he graduated, Kade left with a 3.95 GPA. He'd also been captain of the chess and debate teams his last year of high school.
He looked athletic, but had never really played sports except during PE. He enjoyed them, but never having had a dad or an older brother to teach him, his interests had never gravitated that way.
Via a series of chance encounters, he met someone who knew someone who knew a member of congress, and after a short personal interview, Kade had the congressman's recommendation and was accepted to West Point.
Unlike nearly everyone else, he'd thrived during Plebe summer. He thought all of the yelling and threats were hilarious, and never took them personally. He just did everything he was told to do or say, and did so with a positive attitude. The same was true during that entire first year when the mental stress remained high from the constant harassment of upperclassmen on top of the grueling course load.
Even the academics were easier for him than most of his peers, and he left 'the Point' with a matching 3.95 GPA and a degree in aerospace engineering. He further put that education to use in the Patriot missile system and was always an 'above center mass' kind of guy on his Officer Evaluation Reports or OREs. Being 'center of mass' was where the average officer ended up, and because commanders could only place so many people in the 'above center mass' category, it wasn't a given. But Lieutenant and later Captain Radliffe had consistency ranked put there, and anyone who knew him was aware that he'd earned those high marks.
The only thing he hadn't done was serve in combat, and that was through no fault of his own. After finishing ADA training Kade was assigned the Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) of 14-Alpha within the ADA branch of the Army then sent to Fort Bragg.
Karen Radliffe told her new husband she was pregnant within a month of arriving at Bragg, and while Kade was extremely busy with his new career, he had never been so happy in all of his life. Having never had a family, the thought of having his own was something he'd dreamed about all of his life. He now had a beautiful wife, and in another seven or eight months, he would have a son or daughter to love the way he'd hoped to be loved but never experienced.
Of all the things he'd ever learned or read about, obstetric hemorrhage wasn't one of them. Nor did he know that some 800 women still died from it every year in the US while giving birth. About 70% of those deaths were preventable, but Karen's wasn't.
The post hospital at Fort Bragg had fully-stocked emergency carts containing the drugs and equipment necessary to immediately respond to a woman who was hemorrhaging. But as he learned, there were some cases where no doctor, no matter how talented he or she might be, could perform a miracle. Karen's was one of those cases.
So by the time their daughter, Katie, a beautiful little girl Karen had only been able to hold once for a few seconds, was just four days old, she and her father were attending a funeral for her mother.
The following months were a blur of anger, sadness, disbelief, and trying to find suitable care for Katie. Somehow, he'd balanced every one of the many balls he was juggling at the tender age of 23 until he left active duty at the age of 27, and still managed to be a top performer.
The one thing that kept him from going insane was knowing his sweet, little girl would be waiting for him no matter when he went to pick her up. She soon recognized his face, and her toothless little smile would light up the moment she saw her daddy and make everything else in the world seem unimportant.
Unwilling to stay in the Army and deploy for months at a time while leaving his daughter with anyone else, Kane began looking at contractor jobs, and one in particular caught his attention. A company called DCS needed a systems engineer to serve as part of an Integrated Product Team tasked with developing a replacement for the Patriot missile system. They competed with Raytheon, the industry leader in all things missiles, but after interviewing with DCS in Huntsville, Alabama, he was sold.
After just ten weeks on the job, Kade was already making a name for himself, and his team leader told him there was a very good chance he might become a deputy team leader within the next year. And that was just one of many reasons he hated taking time off for anything.
But his team chief was right. He had to get an Alabama driver's license within the next two weeks so a trip to the DMV, no matter how painful it might be, had to made. And although he maintained a positive outlook on everything he did, not even Kade Radliffe could get excited about going there.
That evening, he found out online what information the DMV required, got his paperwork together, then told his now 4-year old daughter they would be going somewhere together early the next morning.
Katie already looked so much like her mother that her dad sometimes found himself staring and wondering whether Karen was 'up there' watching them. He knew that if she was, she would be so very proud of their beautiful little girl. The big difference was that Katie's hair was still very blonde like her mother's had been when she was that age. But somewhere around the age of five, Karen's hair began turning dark, so Kade assumed that would likely happen with his daughter as well.
"Okay, Daddy!" she happily agreed, not caring where they went or why they were going as long as it was with her father.
Kade pulled into the DMV parking lot right at 0800 or oh-eight hundred hours as the Army called it, and got Katie out of her carseat.
"Where are we, Daddy?" she asked once he set her on the ground.
He took her hand then tried to explain.
"But you can already drive a car," Katie insisted.
"Yes, but we have to have something called a license, and only the DMV can give us one."
"Can I have one?" Katie innocently asked.
"Not quite yet, sweetie. You have to be 16 years old."
"But I'm big!" his daughter countered.
Kade laughed then told her she was as he opened the door and let her go in first. He laughed out loud when he drove up and saw a dozen or so people who'd been waiting for it to open file in ahead of him, so maybe the early bird wasn't going to catching any worms this warm, summer morning.
"There's lotsta peoples in here, Daddy," Katie announced when she saw them, too.
Her father ignored her grammar and pronunciation and scanned the room until he saw a sign that said 'Replacement Licenses'.
He went there and took a ticket then looked at the counter on the wall to see how many people were ahead of him.
"Seven?" he said out loud, knowing he'd be there a while in spite of having arrived within two minutes of it opening.
"What's wrong, Daddy?" Katie asked.
"Oh. Nothing. I just need to get to work."
"Don't you want to stay with me?"
"Of course, honey. But I have to work, too. But we're together now, right?"
Katie thought for a moment then looked up at her dad and said, "Yes, we are!"
"Okay, kiddo. Let's go find a seat, shall we?"
"Right there, Daddy!" she told him as she pointed to one.
"We need two of them together, don't we, sweetie?"
"No. I can sit on your lap, remember?"
