Nora Malone has waited eight months for her fiance, Ryan Walsh, to return from his second deployment to Afghanistan. When she meets him at the bus station after his discharge from the army, he looks the same as he did before, and he has no visible wounds. But soon she notices symptoms of a problem: he has frequent nightmares from which he wakes up screaming, he is easily startled, and he has trouble focusing on tasks. Her mother, who has agreed to let Ryan stay with them while he looks for a job and finds an apartment, also notices these symptoms and thinks Ryan needs medical attention. Ryan insists there is nothing wrong with him, citing the authority of the doctor who examined him before his discharge and said he was in perfect health. Nora wants to believe him, but when her mother accidently startles him and he reacts like he's still in combat, attacking her, Ryan can no longer deny that there is a problem. Nora, who has spent the past three years dealing with the acrimonious separation of her parents, now has to deal with her fiance's invisible wound."