Lynn Tucker, the way I've got it figured, has, at this moment, every reason to gripe, to come this close to flat cursing the government, which likely is the last thing she'd ever do.

It is shortly after noon on Tuesday, and she is nearly shouting to an administrative type at Craig Hospital, offering her credit card if it means she can get her boy home.

She knows, she later says, in a calmer moment, that none of it is the woman's fault. She loves Craig, she says, and believes it has saved her son's life.

Her anger is with the Department of Veterans Affairs people in Salem, Va., which had promised months ago to pay for today's scheduled transfer flight that will take her badly injured Marine son, Ben, home to Virginia.

Is it because he was not injured in Iraq, Lynn Tucker wonders?

What if it had been one of her twins, also Marines, now eagerly waiting at home for their older brother's arrival?

The twins came home from their second tour through one of Iraq's deadliest sectors only last Saturday.

So Lynn Tucker, 44 years old, waves her credit card at the woman, all the while staring at Ben, who can neither speak, move or even scratch his nose if it itched.

She is the kind of woman our government has appealed to during the past five years about the nobility of military service.

Lynn and Bobby Tucker's sons responded to those appeals, all three joining the Marines within weeks of each other, the now-20-year- old twins, Clay and Jonathan, agreeing only if they could serve together.

Ben, 22, who had spoken of becoming a Marine early in high school, had held out until a good friend he'd wanted to serve with finally was rejected because of a hearing problem. He signed up alone the week his younger brothers entered boot camp at Parris Island.

All three were home on leave, back home in Penhook, Va., on Nov. 5 of last year - the twins, now both lance corporals, having finished their first tour with the 3/8 Infantry in Fallujah.

Ben, a private with the 14th Marine Air Group, was outside that evening, riding dirt bikes with his friends. Nobody had seen him fall.

He suffered a massive, closed brain injury.

It was bad, but the subsequent operations at the VA hospital in Salem, Va., did allow him to feed himself, get around with the aid of a walker and communicate somewhat, his mother said.

She was with him the morning of Feb. 12 this year when he fell on a trip to the bathroom and struck his head.

It was a Sunday, she said. She begged the staff and the few medical personnel on call that morning to examine her son, she said, but no one came.

It wasn't until the next morning that Jesse B. Tucker, whom everyone calls Ben, began throwing up before going limp.

So there were more surgeries, more shunts and drain tubes to deal with the brain injury.

"My son cannot sit up now. He cannot talk or otherwise communicate with me," she said.

She wanted her boy out of the VA.

Only because he had a military life insurance policy was she able to move him first to Rose Medical Center for surgery and, later, Craig for rehabilitation. Her family otherwise could never have afforded the $14,000 it cost to bring him to Colorado.

"He is doing really well, healing properly," Lynn Tucker said. "He cannot speak or do any voluntary movements, but he is healing up nice."

She has learned so much at Craig, where Ben has been since June. She learned so much that she will care for him at her home in Penhook.

She just needs to get home. Today.

Marion McConnell, the public affairs officer at the VA in Salem, tells me she can say nothing about Pvt. Tucker because of privacy rules.

I tell her I understand the rules but that there is an injured Marine in Colorado who needs to get home to Virginia, who appears simply to be a victim of government miscommunication.

She agrees and promises she will place the necessary calls and make it happen.

"It has been so heartbreaking on so many fronts," Lynn Tucker says.

For 11 months she has sat in hospital rooms with her oldest son, sending him too many times to get his head sliced into.

And there were her other two sons, both in the midst of battle in separate companies with one Marine unit in bloody Ramadi, where they'd served during their most recent deployment.

"I have prayed so much," she said. "If I didn't have a strong faith in God, I don't know how I would have gotten through it all.

"That doesn't mean it has been easy. There have been so many nights I haven't slept, so many night I have cried. Despair would wash over me.

"Only my faith in God and support from my church, my family and friends got me through this. I owe so much to the people I love. I really do."

She will allow the VA back home to keep and diagnose Ben only until Friday. She is firm that she will take him home.

"He needs to be home now," she says. "It is time."

Postscript: Lynn Tucker called back Tuesday afternoon. "Your phone call helped," she said. "They say they will now pay for the flight home. I can put away my credit card."

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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