PORT JERVIS, N.Y. (AP) -- In their rambling farmhouse in the mountains, 78 miles from her husband's New York City firehouse, Christine Dewhurst prays every night that her illness will somehow keep him from going to war.
``How many ways can you die for your country?'' she asks, rocking their 6-month-old daughter, Julia. ``Hasn't he seen enough death and destruction? Isn't serving in one catastrophe enough for one family?''
Her 31-year-old husband shifts uncomfortably. Christine feels his struggle _ as a firefighter, as a Marine, as the husband of a wife with multiple sclerosis and father of a new baby.
She knows that it is precisely because he survived Sept. 11, 2001, that firefighter Michael Dewhurst, who is also a sergeant in the Marine reserves, feels an obligation to fight if he is called.
``If I go to the Gulf, I think in a strange way, it will be some kind of payback for all the friends I lost,'' says Michael, who raced into the burning towers on that glorious September morning, and then spent months picking through the rubble of ground zero, carrying out the bones of his comrades. ``I'll be thinking of their names, seeing their faces. They will be my inspiration.''
``It is not directly connected,'' he says. ``And yet there is a connection.''
His wife, a former banker for Goldman Sachs, who lost so many friends in the World Trade Center that she stopped counting, doesn't see any connection. Ideologically, she is opposed to war, though because of her husband she would never protest publicly. She is afraid of more terrorist attacks. She worries about chemical weapons, about friendly fire.
She is terrified her precious Michael won't come home.
When the couple first met, through an Internet dating service three years ago, Christine had only a vague idea of what being a reserve in the Marines entailed. ``Little miss banker meet strapping weekend warrior,'' she thought. But he was gentle and thoughtful. And she was a physical fitness fan. She could handle it.
Michael made her soup when she was sick. And he taught her Marine slogans which they chant jogging together.
``Cold is merely the absence of heat...
``Pain is weakness leaving the body.''
But there is no easy slogan for the decision Michael might have to make if the dreaded letter from the military arrives. Christine is convinced that if he tells his superiors about her illness _ a neurological disorder that, when not in remission, leaves her severely debilitated and lands her in the hospital several times a year _ he won't be asked to go. Surely a husband's first duty is to care for his sick wife and family, she says.
But Marines don't make excuses, or look for ways out. Firefighters don't run from fires.
And so Michael wrestles daily with the decision he will face if he is called.
His brother, a New York City police officer and Marine reservist, was called up last week.
In her heart Christine knows Michael would like to join him.
Technically, Michael is considered ``inactive'' meaning that, because he didn't renew his military contract when it came up last January (Christine begged him not to) he is no longer assigned to a specific unit.
But before the paperwork went through, the military put a freeze on any reserves leaving the service, meaning he could be called up any day.
Michael has 11 years of training _ including nine as an infantryman and ``tank killer'' with the 2nd Battalion, 25th Marine, 4th Marine Division out of Garden City, N.Y.; he practiced door-to-door fighting in mock military cities. He spent the next two years with a hazardous materials unit.
Even at the time, Christine shuddered at the descriptions of training using deadly chemicals. Now she has nightmares about her husband in hand-to-hand combat in Baghdad.
``We married in a time of peace,'' she cries. ``I never expected to have to deal with war.''
And yet war has haunted their married life, which began two weeks before Sept. 11.
They missed their honeymoon because of the terrorist attacks: They had planned to hike the Grand Canyon later in September.
They spent the first six months of marriage attending funerals of friends.
The timing of Christine's pregnancy _ a high risk one because of her illness _ was influenced by the possibility of war. She wanted a baby before Michael was shipped overseas.
Even their home, their beautiful 200-year-old ``fixer-up'' farmhouse became theirs partly as a result of the attacks. They bid on it on Sept. 10, 2001. A week later, the seller said that because of 9-11 she wanted a firefighter to have it.
It has become their oasis. Just an hour and a half's drive from the city, it has seemed worlds away from the horrors of ground zero, from the looming horrors in Iraq.
And yet, the shadow of war stretches even to these peaceful hills.
It arrives in the weekly letters from the military, encouraging the couple to get their affairs in order _ to prepare wills, to discuss whether to take Michael off life support if he is too injured to make decisions for himself, to decide where he should be buried.
It lingers in the phone calls Christine gets every time a firefighter-reservist is called up. Of the 300 reservists in New York's fire department, 58 have been called so far.
And it is present in the tears that still flow freely when they think of all the friends they will never see again.
``Sept. 11 was my first real experience of being in a combat zone,'' Michael says, describing the shock of stumbling into the rubble of the towers, clinging to his hose, feeling unsure for the first time in his professional life of what to do, or where to turn, or how to help.
In his mind he can still see the ash that covered buildings and bodies, the flames that spurted from dust-coated cars, the dazed survivors, the suffocating smoke.
He remembers thinking, ``So this is what war looks like.''
And he remembers long days digging through the pile, and certain moments in particular _ the day they found the remains of Michael Curtin, an emergency service officer with the police department and one of Michael's training sergeants in the Marines.
Michael Dewhurst saluted with tears as the body was carried out, draped with the American flag, and the bright red flag of the Marines.
He wept again when they found the body of Sean Tallon, who had trained with Michael's platoon. Michael had taught Tallon about shoulder launch missiles, and how to blow up tanks. He helped him get a job as a firefighter.
So many connections. So many brothers. How do you not fight for them? How do you not go?
``If I was single,'' Michael tells the guys at Engine 5. ``I wouldn't hesitate.''
And then his wife stops by with the baby. And she looks so proud of her firefighter-Marine husband. And she looks so scared.
And Michael Dewhurst drives his family home to wrestle with his soul another day.
