Walter Reed's World of Hurt, Hope

"How you doing?" he asks.

"Fine," they invariably say.

"How you doing?" he asks a second time.

"Fine," they repeat.

"Baloney," he says.

At which point family members usually cry. "You have to permit them to feel their hurt," he says.

Wagner, 56, is a retired Army colonel who joined up during the Vietnam War. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, he tried to volunteer anew, ultimately connecting with the command at Walter Reed and moving from Arizona to run interference for soldiers' families. At the assistance center -- established in response to the casualties' protracted presence -- he has been asked to secure everything from a massage to mortgage money. When all guest accommodations on post are filled, he persuades local hotels to provide rooms at no charge. "I need you to be a good American here," he tells hotel managers.

Still, 12-hour days consumed with strangers' needs are draining. Last fall, he finally realized how tired he was, "tired of seeing the wounded come in, young men and women in the prime of their lives, coming back ripped apart. . . . It was overload, burnout, whatever you want to call it."

The stress, he says, "wears on everybody in this hospital."

Wagner has learned how to take time off, how to get on his Harley and ride out of the city, into rural stretches of Maryland. He's reached a different place, not necessarily numb to the pain around him but able to put it in a broader context. "This is our normal," he says. "Our mission."

When he leaves the hospital grounds, which will receive soldiers until Walter Reed moves to Bethesda in several years, he finds himself looking for people with missing limbs. Their absence seems strange.

Her parents back in Washington state worry, but they don't press her for details. "How's life on the ward?" her mother will say, vaguely enough.