With her boyfriend recuperating from an explosion in Afghanistan that took part of his left leg, Jennifer Mercado understood why he couldn’t be home for the birth of their daughter in Colorado Springs. She just hoped he would send flowers.
On Wednesday, a day after their child’s birth, Fort Carson soldier Sgt. Andrew Peden did her one better.
In a surprise that involved finagling leave from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., Peden arranged a flight to Colorado Springs and got a friend to push his wheelchair up to Mercado’s second-floor room at Memorial Hospital North. Then he delivered the flowers in person.
“I couldn’t even believe that it was real,” Mercado said of their reunion Wednesday.
“I was crying, and he was crying, and she was just chilling,” Mercado said, referring to the calmest person in the room: little Elizabeth Grace Peden, born at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday.
Peden, 28, was wounded March 24 while on a patrol in Afghanistan’s southern Kandahar province, where he deployed in December as a mid-tour replacement in the 4th Brigade Combat Team’s 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment.
