“Eleven months. This is my third deployment.”
“Fine. Look, I’m not talking about this. I have time. Lots of time. I got two kids living on base in New Jersey, and they’re fine. Just fine. Everyone’s fine.” His chin quivered. He bent his head right, then left, as if exercising his neck, fighting whatever emotion was overtaking him.
“How long you been here?”
“Five months, and I know you’re trying to do the math in your head. I know what you think, and I don’t care. This baby’s not mine.”
“How do you know it’s not yours?”
“It’s not my wife’s either. Am I fit to serve or not?”
I clicked my pen and held it over my clipboard. “Let’s go over a few questions, okay?”
“Fine.”
The stress test was ridiculous. It was on the nose and had no cross-questions to confirm validity. It read like the US Army was covering its collective ass.
“Do you feel depressed or sad?”
“No.”
“Do you have suicidal thoughts?”
“No.”
“Do your legs or hands shake involuntarily?”
“No.”
“Do you feel scared or startled for no reason?”
“No.”
I ran down the questions, and he answered them all as if nothing about the war had gotten under his skin. He could have just gone home tomorrow and played ball with the kids, no problem. He was speaking in complete sentences that made sense. He could probably shoot straight. My job was done.
“All right.” I slid the pen into its holder at the top of the clipboard. “I can’t keep you from going back. But I can delay you.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because you’re holding a sonogram of someone else’s baby.”
“This isn’t your business, lady.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Major. Sorry, ma’am. This is personal.”
“Keep in mind, Santa Claus didn’t leave this rank in my stocking. It was earned. I got it because I know better. Now you can tell me what’s going on, or I can delay your return to your unit until I’m sure you’re not on a mission to right some wrong.”
He pressed his head into his pillow and exhaled deeply. “It’s Grady’s kid.”
“He’s a buddy of yours?”
“Yeah. He’s still there. His leg’s pinned under a Jeep.”
“And he’s still there?”
I found it hard to believe that Corporal Thompson, a medic with a sense of duty a mile wide, had left a living man behind.
“Yes. When I tried to pull him away, his top came right off his bottom. I pulled him, and only a torso came. He was held together with like…” He couldn’t find the words, but my mind filled in his spinal cord, intestines—everything must have been spilling out. Pfc. Sanchez didn’t need an anatomy lesson. “He was screaming, ‘Go in my pocket, go in my pocket, find my girl, find my girl.’ Over and over… but the medevac was taking off, and Thompson pulled me away.”
Either Grady was dead or so beyond help Thompson had had to make a hard calculation.
“He’s alive,” Sanchez continued. “I told him I’d come back. I swore it. But he gave me this and told me to find his wife. Tell her he loved her and the baby… I’m supposed to be the godfather. I had to run. Because the chopper was taking off. I had to leave him there. I can’t hang around here while he’s under the Jeep. You understand? I have to get him out.”
“What happens if you go back and he didn’t make it?”
“Just shut up!” He caught himself.
“It’s all right.”
“Please. I know you’re an officer, but you really need to get me out of here.”
I stood. I hated to leave him like that, but I couldn’t force him to tolerate my presence, and I couldn’t heal him in the few hours he had before he was sent back to his unit. I’d had enough time to assess that he needed to go home, but what then? Deny him the closure of knowing Grady had died even though he’d done his best?
I didn’t know which was worse. Keeping him for a week to recuperate, during which time he’d be convinced that every ticking minute brought his friend closer to death, or sending him back to where he’d be forced to confront the truth under the most stressful circumstances.
The fact was the choice wasn’t mine. Like every other guy who wanted to go back out, he’d answered every question on the evaluation to ensure that outcome.
So, out he goes.
Jenn was at the computer station, managing piles of paperwork that would have frightened a less organized person. Her russet skin had lost some of its perfect sheen in the last few days.
“How is he?” she asked.
“Not good.”
“He had to be dragged off a dead guy who was cut in two.”
“That’s not how he remembers it.”
Jenn shook her head, and as I joined her in commiserating the misery of war, I saw Caden still sitting at Jaskowitz’s bedside.
* * *
“They’re staking positions,” Colonel Brogue said as we walked across the campus to the command quarters. “We have those assholes on the ropes.”
“Did they give you a timeline?”
“Of course not.”
“I haven’t heard choppers in a few hours.”
“Hold your breath, Major. There’s another push when the sun sets.”
He shot me a wave and picked up his pace. I was dismissed.
* * *
DAY FIVE
13:15:00
The OR was empty except for Caden and a nurse with a single patient. I went in.
“Captain,” I said.
He nodded without looking up.
“We have a break,” I said. “No more casualties for a few hours.”
“Thank God,” the nurse said.
“You look tired,” Caden said to her, tying a knot with one hand and holding the thread taut.
She snipped it. “We all are.”
“Go lie down,” he said. “I’ll close.”
“No, I have it.”
“Major Frazier’s scrubbed.”
She looked at me as if checking to see if I knew what I was doing. I didn’t.
“Shoo, Lieutenant,” Caden said.
I wanted to talk to him alone anyway, so I nodded to her.
She exhaled deeply. “Thank you.” The doors swung as she backed out.
“Clamp,” he said.
I handed it to him. “I’d check it before using it. I’m not a nurse.”
“I did.”
“So, after this, how about taking a load off?”
“Probably should. How you holding up? I saw you getting an earful from a Pfc. in the recovery room.”
“Yeah. It was a hard story to hear. I can only imagine how hard it was to tell.”
“Really?” He sounded surprised.
“Really. Why’s that hard to believe?”
“I’d think you’d heard it all.”
“You never hear it all.”
“Little detachment goes a long way. Can you pull this back here?”
I didn’t think I could, but he was waiting, so I built a quick wall between what I had to do and giving a shit about it and pulled the organ away.
“Thank you,” he said, looking at me.
I turned away before my skin went pink.
He seemed rough with the bone and gristle, as if he was working on a slab of meat, but he found a sliver of metal that had barely shown up in the scan. I bit my tongue against telling him to take it easy.
“So,” I started. “The aural hallucinations?”
“I’ve been tired before. I can tell the difference between reality and deliria.”
“They saying anything fun?”
“Jumbles of words. Had it in residency too. And in the ER on 9/11. And 9/12.”
“I hesitate to mention this,” I said.
“She who hesitates is… something.” He smiled, joking. “Go
ahead, mention it. I know you want to tell me how handsome I am under pressure.”
“You’ve looked better.”
“Swab this here so I can see what I’m doing, would you?”
It was hard to look at the inside of a man’s thigh, watch the blood flow through the veins. We weren’t built to see the inner workings of our bodies so clearly. We were built to die under these circumstances.
“Don’t think about it too hard,” he said, reading my mind. He reached under a raw piece of human meat to remove a shard of metal. “That way lies madness. But you probably know all about that.” Plink. The shrapnel dropped into a tray. He examined the scan.
“The human mind is nothing if not surprising.”
“Get in here with a sponge so I can sew up the artery.”
I did it.
“Thanks. Tell me what surprised you today,” he said.
“You surprise me.”
“Your strategy is textbook. Stroking my ego’s the best way to keep me awake.” He reached across the body and took his own threader. “Just keep it clean over here.”
It took a second to realize he was talking about part of the leg, not my language when speaking about him.
“I’m not trying to do either. Nothing I say is going to get you to rest, and from what I can see, the last thing your ego needs is a good stroke.”
His mask stretched when he smirked. “You’re doing great, Greyson.” He stitched the artery. “Tell me why my ego surprises you then.”
“It doesn’t. But earlier today I couldn’t find you in here, and I thought maybe you’d finally taken a nap. But you weren’t in your bunk.”
“You checked my bunk?”
“Yes. Does that bother you?”
“If I knew you were coming, I would have covered the bed in rose petals.”
I willed him to not look up and see how my cheeks reddened, but he defied my silent wish.
“I saw you in recovery,” I continued. “You sat with a Corporal Jaskowitz for half an hour. What were you talking about?”
“I was telling him what to do when he got home. He needs to do physical therapy, and I know for a fact the VA won’t tell him that.”
The mask couldn’t contain my involuntary laugh.
“What?” he asked.
“I thought you were, I don’t know, talking to him about his emotional well-being.”
“That’s your job.”
“I guess I’m not as surprised as I was.”
“You can’t separate a man’s physical health from his mind’s health. He goes home and doesn’t fight for it, he’s going to take a year and a half to get back on his feet. He’s going to get frustrated and depressed. I did more for his mental health than a month of talking about his feelings.”
He pulled the thread, and our eyes met over a stitched up femoral artery.
“You’re right,” I said.
His eyebrows went up the tiniest bit for the shortest moment of time. “You just surprised me.”
“Worth it then.”
He took the clamp off the artery. The stitches held.
“Let’s clean this up and close. Then, since I have a few hours, I’ll lie down.”
“I’ll alert the media.”
He laughed.
* * *
DAY FIVE
15:45:00
He stopped just outside the medical tent and squinted in the sunlight as if the blue of his eyes couldn’t compete with the depth of the sky. He rocked back and forth slightly, then with more curve to the pendulum.
I grabbed him under the arm before he fell.
“I’m fine.” When I tried to take away my support, he put his hand over mine. “Stay.”
“I’ll walk you to your bunk.” We started in that direction.
“I haven’t had a chance to arrange the rose petals.”
“None required.”
“You’re too easy.” He shook the fog out of his head. “Didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know. And you’re too fucked up to do anything about it now anyway.”
“Most days, I’d take that as a challenge.”
“But not today.”
“Definitely not today.”
“Good to know your limits.”
His trailer was neat, standard issue with few memories of home. The air was stale after less than a week. I laid him on the bed and took his boots off as if he was a drunk.
“Can you come get me when casualties come?”
“Someone will come, I’m sure.”
“I want it to be you.”
I sat on the edge of his bed and took his pulse. Ninety-five. High but not a heart attack.
“What was it you hesitated to mention?” His eyes were closed, and his voice was barely a whisper.
I had to scan my memory of the past hour to recall that I had been about to tell him about the vial Defense sent. “How much I like you.”
“Like you too.”
“And that you’re a fool for pushing yourself so hard, but I can’t help but admire it.”
I got up to leave, but I didn’t quite make it to the door.
“Major.”
“Yes?”
“Please don’t go.”
“I have to.” But I went back to him.
“I keep seeing their faces. Then their wounds. And the screaming. I keep hearing the screams.” He turned away from the wall and held his hand out to me. “I’m too tired to try anything. All this… in my head. It’s just sensory overload. But it’s bad. Stay. Please.”
I sat on the edge of the bed, not intending to do more than that, but he pulled me down with him. My body was strong enough to resist, but my heart was weak. After days of talking to men who never admitted a need or a weakness, Caden’s raw humanity touched me. He was fearless in so many things that I hadn’t expected vulnerability.
I curled into him, my shoulder blades to his chest, and let him put his arms around me. Against my back, he wept from exhaustion and pain. From tension and sorrow. I had to wipe my own eyes and swallow a hard lump of sobs.
Eventually, his body stopped shaking, and he slept. I waited until his breathing changed and his arms were dead weights before I slipped out of them. Kneeling by the bed, I touched his cheek. His tears had dried, but his black lashes were still stuck together.
“You’re not cut out for this, Captain,” I said softly.
Maybe no one was.
I put a blanket over him and left.
* * *
DAY FIVE
20:43:00
The first chopper had come in an hour before, but we had enough doctors to take care of them. I’d kept a close eye on the time and peeked in on Caden’s bunk twice. Five hours of solid sleep. He’d need another few days’ worth to catch up, but he wouldn’t get it. The last push into Fallujah was brutal, and they were coming faster than they could be admitted.
“Where’s St. John?” Colonel Brogue shouted in triage.
“Resting,” a nurse replied, getting her gloves on.
“Someone get him.”
“I’ll do it.” I jumped up.
“Quick. We have more coming.”
I ran to Caden’s trailer, and when there was no answer to my knock, I went in. He was still on his back with his hands crossed over his chest. He didn’t react to the light being turned on. I sat on the edge of his bed and leaned into his chest. Breathing steady. He didn’t move when I took his pulse or when I let my hand linger over his before pulling away.
“Caden,” I said.
No answer. He was out.
“Caden.” I tapped his cheek. “Come on. Casualties.”
I tapped his cheek harder. Nothing. I pinched his forearm gently, then harder.
He groaned.
“I’m sorry. They need you.”
Deep suck of breath.
“Casualties,” I repeated.
He swallowed.
“Okay,” he said thickly, eyes clamping tight before opening.
“Let me help you.”
I took his wrists and pulled him up. He was dead weight, but I managed to swing his legs over the side of the bed and get him sitting. His shoulders hunched, and his head hung.
“Wake up.”
“Can’t.”
“I’ll help you. Come on.”
I pulled his arms, got him up a little, but he sat back down.
“Melatonin.”
He named the hormone responsible for sleep. If his blood was flooded with it, he wouldn’t be able to get up no matter how hard he tried.
“Do you want something to help you wake up?”
He dropped back until his head was against the wall. “Slap me.”
“What?”
He didn’t answer. His eyes closed again. I patted his cheek, but his breathing got the slow cadence of sleep again. I slapped harder.
“Adrenaline,” he whispered.
He wanted me to slap him hard enough that the need to fight or run would release adrenaline, which would override the melatonin. He was using his own body like a pharmacy.
Fine. I planted my knees on either side of him. “I apologize in advance.”
I slapped him hard. He grunted. I slapped him again. Deep, waking breath. The next slap was hard enough to make my hand hurt, so the next one was a backhand. That got him up. My hand was back for another.
“Stop. We’re good.”
“You sure?”
He rested his hands on my hips, making me realize I was straddling him. “Any more and you’re going to turn me on. Oops, too late.”
“A cold shower’s going to cure you of two problems then.”
Standing, I held my hand out to help him up. He stumbled to standing, looking around as if the idea of three-dimensional space confused him.
“Oh, man.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
* * *
I was worried about him. On the way to the showers, he’d seemed disoriented, struggling to put together one coherent thought after another. He’d make a sharp comeback to something I said, then go silent or forget what he’d said. Waiting for him outside the showers, I called out to Ronin as he passed.
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 26