Carol wasn't in the mood for jokes, so she let Hal's comment slide. She was much more interested in wallowing and self-loathing at the moment. And that, she would commiserate over an expensive bottle of scotch any day. "Seems like a lifetime ago... But I think about it every single day. How after a week of being tortured, I was beaten nearly to death with a sledgehammer." Carol took a sip of her drink and let that ruminative - that this is what it meant to sit and drink with her. She told Hal tonight wasn't good...
"So. Yeah. No. It wasn't luck, you could say. It was that bastard that shot me down and tried to have me killed. You take a lot of cheap shots at me drinking - this is why I drink."
Carol refrained from saying how she thought she might not have come back from the war and that in some small way she wished she hadn't if this is what living was life after the fact. And how every time she got into a cockpit she hoped it was her last.