Rescuing Mary

by Susan Stoker

  “I love you, Mary,” Truck said. “I asked you to marry me because I love you. Not because of my insurance. Well, that too, but it was a convenient way to get you to say yes and to save your life.”

  “You remember,” Mary said.

  “All of it,” Truck confirmed. “Every second. You’re mine, Mary Laughlin. There’s a wedding certificate somewhere that proves it. And I’m not letting you go. Ever.”

  Mary licked her lips and tried not to break down. She ducked her head and slipped her wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand. Then she reached for Truck’s hand and put his ring back on his finger as well. He clasped her hand with his before she could pull away.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Mary nodded. “You took the worst of it.”

  “Good.” His eyes moved from hers to someone above her head. “I assume all the gangbangers are taken care of?”

  “Of course,” Blade reassured him.

  “And Jennifer?” Mary asked. “She was in on it. She was dating Deuce.”

  “The cops have her in custody,” Blade said.

  “Good,” Mary breathed.

  “The paramedics should be here soon,” Blade told her, and the second the words were out of his mouth, they heard sirens from the open door of the vault.

  “We have to stop meeting in here like this,” Truck told Mary, gazing into her eyes once more.

  “I’m quitting. Effective right now,” Mary returned.

  “Good.”

  “Make way!” a feminine voice said. “Paramedics!”

  “Oh, fuck no,” Mary exclaimed. “No fucking way is she putting one hand on my man!”

  The Deltas all chuckled but Mary was serious. When Ruth stepped into the vault, Mary stood and put her hands on her hips. “No. Turn the fuck around.”

  “Move aside,” the other woman said snottily. “I need to see the patient.”

  Mary’s hands curled into claws and she would’ve leapt on the woman, but Truck’s teammates moved too quickly. Beatle grabbed her around the waist and Hollywood took hold of Ruth’s arm and moved her backward and out of the vault altogether. Mary heard him informing her in no uncertain terms that she was going to see to the wounded gang members, not Truck.

  “My Mary,” Truck murmured and pulled on the leg of her pants.

  She immediately forgot about Ruth and went back to her knees next to Truck. His eyes were only open in slits and it was obvious he was still in a great deal of pain. “Shit, sorry, Truck. I forgot about your head. I didn’t mean to yell.”

  He smiled at her. “I love seeing you get all protective and jealous over me.”

  Mary rolled her eyes. “Whatever,” she denied.

  A man dressed in a navy-blue shirt and a pair of khakis entered the room with his medical kit. “Everyone step away from the patient,” he said in a tone that meant business.

  Everyone but Mary and Ghost moved away from Truck, giving the paramedic room.

  “Who’re you?” he asked, looking at Mary.

  “My wife,” Truck answered for her. “She goes where I go.”

  “Fine, but I need to examine you first.”

  And with that, Ghost proceeded to tell him what he knew about Truck’s injury.

  Within five minutes, Truck was loaded on a gurney and was ready to be transported to the hospital. Mary refused to let go of his hand, and couldn’t take her eyes away from their rings on their fingers.

  Just as they were about to walk out of the vault, Truck called out, “Beatle?”

  “Yeah, man?” Beatle answered.

  “Be a pal and pick up my wife’s boobs and make sure they get sterilized and returned to her at the hospital, would ya?”

  Mary couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped at the looks on the others’ faces.

  For the first time since her surgery, Mary didn’t give one shit about what she looked like without her boob inserts or what others might think of her. She and Truck were alive, and he remembered. Everything else was unimportant.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Truck had been in the hospital for two days, which was two days longer than he wanted to be there. He was the worst patient, and Mary was about ready to strangle him. She’d spent almost every minute of those two days with him, refusing to leave his side. The doctors had taken MRIs and bloodwork and put him through a battery of tests to make sure his brain wasn’t irreparably damaged.

  But it seemed like Beatle was right. Truck had a hard head, thank God.

  The night he’d been admitted, Mary had told him about Macie. How she’d shown up out of the blue at the bank before everything had gone down, and how she lived in nearby Lampasas and wanted to meet with Truck. He’d wanted to call her right then, but Mary realized she didn’t have Macie’s number. She’d given her number to Truck’s sister, but hadn’t gotten Macie’s in return.

  But it turned out that not having Macie’s number wasn’t an issue. She’d shown up at eight in the morning, before official visiting hours, having heard about the incident at the bank, probably from her hacker friend, and had burst into tears when she’d seen Truck lying in bed. She’d been extremely nervous at first, but eventually, with Truck’s obvious enjoyment at seeing her, she’d relaxed. Mary had left them alone to talk and when she’d returned forty-five minutes later, they’d still been catching up.

  Macie left when Truck’s commander, Colt, had shown up. The other man had been glad to meet Macie as well, especially since he’d put out the initial feelers to try to locate her. Mary noticed the instant attraction the two seemed to have toward each other, but because Macie looked so nervous and unsure of herself, she didn’t say anything about it. Truck’s sister had left after they’d exchanged numbers, with Truck promising to call and catch up when he got home from the hospital. The long, heartfelt hug the siblings had given each other made tears form in Mary’s eyes.

  Then there had been a nonstop parade of people in to see Truck ever since his sister had left.

  Truck tried to bribe Beatle to sneak him out of the hospital, but luckily Mary had returned from getting something to eat in the cafeteria just in time to put the kibosh on the “great escape.”

  Then Emily and Fletch had come by to see him. Rayne was at their house watching over the new baby so they could visit.

  Annie had marched over to the side of Truck’s bed and asked, “Do you know me now?”

  Truck smiled. “Yeah, squirt. I know you.”

  “You ’member?”

  “Yes.”

  And with that, Annie crawled onto Truck’s bed and lay down next to him. She once again put her little hand over his cheek and snuggled in.

  Mary would never forget the look on Truck’s face. She’d seen the exact same look when she was sick and hurting, and he’d snuggled next to her at night. Love.

  The adults didn’t try to make Annie move, they simply had a conversation as if she wasn’t breaking hospital policy by lying in Truck’s bed. Mary couldn’t exactly protest, as she’d done the same thing the night before, crawled right up beside Truck and held him as tightly as he’d held her.

  “We’re postponing the baby-naming party one week,” Emily informed them.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Truck protested.

  “Yeah, we do. We’re not having it without you, so deal,” Fletch said. “But no longer. I don’t care if you go out and get yourself run over, we’re not putting it off again. I can’t keep calling my son ‘Baby Fletch’ forever.”

  Everyone chuckled and Annie lifted her head and looked at Truck. “His name is awesome.”

  “You know what it is, squirt?”

  She nodded.

  “I’ll give ya a hundred bucks if you tell me right now,” Truck teased.

  But Annie shook her head. “Nope. My lips are sealed,” she said, and pretended to zip them closed. Then she lowered herself back down next to Truck once more.

  After another forty-five minutes of chitchat, the Fletchers left.

  Mar
y was thankful for the steady stream of visitors who had come to see Truck. It kept him occupied and less grouchy. Kassie and Hollywood had also been there, and had brought Kate. Mary thought she was going to melt into a puddle of goo when Truck had taken the tiny infant into his arms. He looked down at her reverently and whispered, “No dating until you’re twenty-five, little one.”

  Kassie and Mary had laughed, but Hollywood and Truck didn’t. “I told her thirty,” Hollywood informed his teammate.

  “Sounds about right,” Truck responded. Then told his friend, “She’s perfect. Congratulations.”

  Hollywood beamed and had put his arm around his wife and responded, “Thanks.”

  When Harley and Coach visited, Harley let Truck try out the latest video game she was developing. That killed two full hours, allowing Mary to get a much-needed shower and break from her grumpy alpha man who was ready to go home.

  Casey, Beatle, Blade, and Wendy all stopped by together. Wendy’s brother, Jackson, had tagged along. They talked a little bit about the large group wedding they were planning, but Mary changed the subject quickly, not ready to talk about wedding ceremonies yet.

  Of course Ghost and Rayne stopped in, and Chase and Sadie followed quickly behind them. Mary could tell Truck was enjoying seeing his friends, especially now that his memory had fully returned. But she could also tell when he started to get tired.

  It wasn’t until all seven of the Deltas from the other team showed up—and spent an hour harassing Truck for not being able to overpower all of the gang members singlehandedly and for having to be rescued—that Mary decided it was enough.

  She shooed everyone out of the room, telling them it was time for Truck to take a nap.

  Of course, that made all of the other Deltas laugh even harder and start up with the mommy jokes, but throughout it all, Truck didn’t seem to give one little shit.

  He’d simply said, “I’d much rather spend my time with Mary than with you assholes.”

  But it was the conversation with her doctor that had been the most emotional for Mary.

  He’d heard she was in the hospital and had taken the time to track her down. He’d wanted to talk about her reconstruction, since she’d skipped her appointment.

  The three of them, Mary, Truck, and her doctor, had a long conversation about her options. Truck asked a million questions about safety and long-term repercussions of having the implants inserted. He wanted to know the odds of the cancer returning, and whether having silicone implants would make those odds worse, or if they would somehow impede detection if the cancer did return.

  By the time the doctor left, Mary still hadn’t made a decision but she’d realized exactly how much she’d kept from Truck—and how amazing it was to have someone to talk to about it all. She’d kept a lot of things about her sickness from him, having felt awkward and uncomfortable sharing intimate details. Heck, she wasn’t comfortable peeing without shutting the door; she wasn’t going to discuss how she sometimes forgot what state Las Vegas was in when she got hot flashes, or ask him for help when the drain she had in suddenly started leaking all over her shirt.

  When Truck had asked the doctor about sex and children, it hit home to Mary that she’d been treating Truck unfairly for months. She’d been holding back. Scared that he didn’t really want to be with her. That he might think he cared about her, but if he knew all the gritty details about her disease, he’d bail.

  He’d made it more than clear that he loved her and she was it for him. Mary just hadn’t been paying attention. She’d been too convinced that he’d leave her, too busy keeping her shields up just in case he decided she wasn’t worth the effort, like every other man in her life had.

  She owed him an apology, but she had to get him home and settled first.

  “Ready to go?” his doctor asked in a cheery voice as he came into Truck’s hospital room late in the afternoon of his second day.

  “A day and a half ago,” Truck grumbled.

  Mary hid her smile. Truck had been bitching about the fact that the doctor hadn’t signed him out yet for the last hour and a half.

  “You were incredibly lucky,” the doctor said, not fazed in the least by his grumpy patient. “Pulling those wires right before the explosion saved your life. Only the upper explosives went off, blowing the table from where it was bolted to the floor. When it crashed into you, it protected you from the worst of the blast, but landing on your head wasn’t exactly the ideal outcome. Since your noggin took two pretty intense hits only a few weeks apart, you need to be extremely careful for the next three months.”

  “Shit,” Truck said.

  “That’s right. You’re grounded. No missions for at least that long. We’ll do another MRI in two months and make sure the bruising on your brain is gone and that everything looks okay in there. Then we’ll give it another month just to be on the safe side. If you start having any of the side effects we talked about yesterday, you need to get in here to see me ASAP. I’m serious about this, Ford. Traumatic brain injury isn’t something to mess around with. Blackouts, anxiety, aggression, repetition of words or actions, dilated pupils, nausea, sensitivity to light or sound, blurred vision—”

  “I remember, Doc,” Truck said, interrupting the litany of symptoms of a TBI.

  “Right.” He turned to Mary. “Just keep your eye on him. Soldiers frequently try to hide their symptoms because they feel like they should just tough it out or because they’re embarrassed.”

  “Don’t worry, I will,” Mary told him.

  “Good. Now, Ford, do you still have a headache?”

  Truck nodded reluctantly.

  “I don’t think it’s anything to be worried about right now. They should dissipate after a week or so. I’d like for you to stay in bed for another week, just to let your brain heal.”

  “Not happening,” Truck said. At the same time Mary said, “I’ll see to it.”

  The doctor grinned. “I don’t envy you, young lady. Here’s his prescription for painkillers. He’ll need to come back in about a week to get those staples looked at and hopefully removed. They can get wet, but not immersed. No washing your hair, just brief rinses.”

  Mary nodded, knowing the next week was going to be tough on both her and Truck. Ways to keep him entertained ran through her head even as the doctor kept talking about what to expect in the upcoming week. She could have Annie come over after school, and make sure the guys took turns visiting him as well.

  “If anything happens that concerns you, don’t hesitate to contact me,” the doctor said, and he handed Mary a business card. “That’s my answering service, but just tell them that it’s an emergency and they’ll get to me right away and I’ll call you back. Okay?”

  Mary nodded, relieved that she’d have access to someone if Truck needed it.

  “I’m fine,” Truck said again.

  “Right. And in case I didn’t say it before…thank you for your service, and good job on stopping those assholes at the bank.” Then the doctor turned and walked out of the room. Before Mary could say anything, his head popped back in. “And wait for the nurse with the wheelchair, Laughlin. I know you manly types don’t like to be pushed out of here, but it’s policy. Give her a break, okay?” Then he disappeared once more.

  Mary chuckled at the look on Truck’s face. “It won’t be so bad,” she soothed.

  It took the nurse another half hour to appear and once they were finally on their way, Mary breathed a sigh of relief. She’d brought up the subject of Truck going back to her apartment once he was out of the hospital, so she could look after him, but he’d said he was going home to his place in no uncertain terms, and she was coming with him.

  Mary didn’t protest too hard, since that’s exactly where she wanted to be. She’d have to go back to her place and get her things. But first she’d get Truck settled, make him some dinner and, once he was asleep, she’d run back to her apartment. He’d never even know she was gone, especially when she forced him to take one of the
pain pills the doctor prescribed.

  She parked, and by the time she went around to help Truck out, he was already standing by the door.

  Mary frowned. “You’re supposed to let me help you,” she told him, wrapping her arm around his waist.

  “Why? My legs are just fine. It’s my head that was hurt.”

  “Because,” Mary groused. She ignored Truck’s chuckle and walked with him to his apartment. She let him unlock the door, and when he held it open for her to go in ahead of him, she didn’t even complain.

  The second Mary walked into his apartment, she gasped.

  She vaguely heard him close the door, but she didn’t wait for him. With her mouth open in shock, she walked into his living area.

  “How…when?” she stammered.

  Truck pulled her back against his chest and rested his chin on top of her head. “When you were showering at the hospital, I talked to Ghost. He said the girls got your stuff packed up and helped you move out of my place after I lost my memory, so I told him he could move you back in, thank you very much. The guys did all the laboring, and the girls put everything away.”

  Mary’s eyes filled with tears as she looked around. All of her things were back. The picture of her and Rayne was on the bookshelf. Her favorite blanket was on the back of the couch. Her knickknacks were everywhere, and she even saw that her coffeepot was on the counter in the kitchen.

  “Truck—”

  “You’re my wife,” Truck interrupted. “You belong here with me. The second I walked in here after losing my memory, I knew something was wrong. It felt all wrong. It was too empty, too…something. You were missing, Mare. You and all your things. You’ve made this place a home for me. They might have removed your things, but your presence could never be removed from my life. That first night, when I lay in my bed alone, I felt off, but I couldn’t figure out why.”

  Mary took a deep breath then turned in Truck’s arms and looked up at him. “Are you sure?”

  Instead of answering her, Truck said, “I found your journal.”

  “What?”

  “I was really frustrated when you left that last time, and I kinda went a little crazy. I kicked things and knocked them over like a little kid. I flipped my mattress, and it dislodged your journal that was hidden under it.”