Fidel Costales of San Jose was at work when his daughter Ann called to tell him his other daughter had been shot in Iraq.

``She asked me if I was sitting down,'' the Solectron technician said. ``Then the whole world fell on me.''

But Sunday the world once again seemed right. His injured daughter, a nursing student who in early April had part of her left arm blown off with a bullet from an Iraqi insurgent's AK-47, was sitting at a shaded picnic table in her grandparents' back yard in Palo Alto.

Children and family greeted her, Sgt. Fidela ``Lala'' Costales, with kisses and ``Loves and Hugs'' balloons. Her Purple Heart sat on the table.

The 24-year-old Army reservist was home for a special Memorial Day holiday weekend. The past several weeks she's been receiving occupational therapy at Madigan Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash. Her arm is being slowly reconstructed at Harborview Hospital in downtown Seattle.

Like many reservists, Costales never expected to see action in the Middle East when she signed up for an eight-year hitch in the Army Reserve after graduating in 1997 from San Jose's Oak Grove High School.

In 2002, she was promoted to sergeant. She barely had finished two semesters as a nursing student at San Jose State University when the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division was called to active duty in April 2003. She was sent to Iraq in November.

The 5-foot-3-inch, 115-pound nurse became a gunner -- a soldier whose job is to stick her body out of the top of a Humvee. ``She was an easy target,'' said her dad, a Filipino immigrant.

Her 22-member company's main job was to oversee the Iraqis who are building schools in and around Mosul, a relatively safe city in northern Iraq, outside the Sunni Triangle. She spent most of her days being warmly greeted by Iraqis, most of them children eager to talk to Americans.

``It was nice being on top of the Humvee because I got to throw them candy,'' she said.

On April 5, however, she was standing in the lead Humvee in a convoy of three when her team of soldiers was ambushed outside Mosul. At first, she didn't realize she was shot. But then she saw the blood gushing over her uniform and a fellow soldier soaked in blood.

It got worse.

She was rushed to a field hospital that soon came under mortar attack. All soldiers who could walk left the tent -- a routine procedure. Costales remained alone in the tent on a stretcher for an hour, the mental anguish dulled only slightly by morphine.

``OK. I'm dead. I'm dead,'' she recalled thinking. ``Then I'd hear another mortar round and knew that I was dead. Then suddenly it was quiet and everyone came back.''

She was sent to Germany via Kuwait, eventually landing April 15 at Travis Air Force Base near Sacramento. Her family got to see her for a night before she was flown to Washington state, where doctors tried to make her arm whole again by inserting a steel plate that ties the disconnected bones together.

The only other soldier in her company injured was Maj. A.J. Serenil, her commander and a San Jose police officer. Also being treated in Washington for less severe injuries, he visits her after every operation.

Costales says the war has turned sour for many U.S. soldiers. She is particularly angered by the scandal at Abu Ghurayb prison, where Iraqi prisoners were tortured and subjected to sexual humiliation and perversion.

``They disgraced us,'' she said of her fellow reservists. ``They disgraced me.''

Costales disagrees vehemently with TV's talking heads who argue that reservists weren't properly trained on how to treat prisoners.

``We were completely briefed on all the rules,'' she said.

Her doctors tell Costales her prognosis is good. She hopes to return to nursing school.

She had hoped to become an Army nurse -- even if it meant she found herself in another desert in another strange land. But now she'll probably be discharged from the Army for medical reasons.

``I wanted to be able to treat wounded soldiers the way that I've been treated,'' she said.

Sunday was a clear and sunny May day. But Costales felt guilt with the warmth of friends and family.

``Here I am relaxing while my guys are still getting shot at,'' she said. ``It doesn't feel right.''