Dawn of Valor

by Lindsay McKenna

  Biting back a cry as Chase’s hand squeezed hers until the bones ground together, Rachel froze. The drug to halt his pain was wearing off. Checking the medication chart hanging at the end of his cot, Rachel saw it was time to give him another shot. She called to an orderly, asking him to get the necessary items.

  Barely aware of the bite of the hypodermic needle, Chase rolled his head back and forth, the pain nearly unbearable. Rachel’s voice entered his hazy awareness, only to fade away. I love you, I love you. Afraid he was dying, Chase tried to form the words on his lips, tried to force out how he felt. The pain crashed over him, and with a groan, Chase surrendered to the blackness.

  Chapter Eleven

  The third time Chase awoke, he had clarity. Sweat was dribbling into his eyes, and he lifted his hand to wipe it away. He was incredibly weak, barely able to lift his arm from the cot.

  “Chase?”

  He looked up and to the left. Rachel’s face was drawn, shadows accentuating her beautiful bone structure. Exhaustion haunted her eyes. A light from the end of the tent made everything look ghostly. Chase surveyed his surroundings then moved his gaze back to Rachel. She looked so damned good.

  “Where?”

  Wringing out a cloth, Rachel got up, gently dabbing the sweat from Chase’s tense face. “You’re here at the MASH unit. You got shot down two days ago.”

  Her voice was as tremulous as he felt. Fragments slowly began to surface between the bearable waves of pain drifting up his leg. “Yeah. Two days ago?” His voice was little more than a croak, and he was dying of thirst. Rachel must have read his mind because she set the cloth aside and slid her arm beneath his shoulders.

  “You’ve been through a six-hour operation and slept all day yesterday. Here, drink as much as you want.” Rachel supported Chase’s head against her neck and shoulder as he noisily slurped water from the glass. Her scent was welcome against the smells of anesthesia and alcohol that surrounded him.

  “Thanks,” he whispered. Unable to support himself any longer, Chase leaned against Rachel. “Do you know how many times I dreamed of you holding me? Hell of a way to get held, isn’t it? I have to get shot down and wounded.”

  It was four in the morning, and the ward was quiet except for an occasional snore or moan from a patient. Rachel winced inwardly as she made Chase comfortable on the cot. “You have a terrible sense of humor, Captain, but am I ever glad to hear you teasing me again.”

  A vague smile pulled at the corner of Chase’s compressed mouth. Rachel picked up his wrist to take his pulse. Her fingers were warm and his were cold. More memory tumbled back as Rachel walked to the end of the cot and picked up a clipboard. He watched as she duly recorded his pulse rate. In the gray shadowy world of the ward, she looked clean and wholesome, soothing the clutching fear inside him.

  “Am I going to live?” he asked when she came back and sat down, facing him.

  Tears suddenly sprang to Rachel’s eyes as he slid his hand those few inches, placing his fingers across hers. “Yes. You had two of the best surgeons.”

  A ragged sigh pulled from Chase, his narrowed eyes on her. “My leg. I remember a lot of pain—thinking it felt like it was being torn off.” Automatically he felt downward, reassured that it was still attached.

  Taking his other hand, Rachel whispered, “It’s all right, Chase, you have your leg.” She tried to prepare herself for the eventuality that he no longer loved her. Rachel wanted to cry because she was a novice at love and didn’t know how to handle the terrible rift she’d created with Chase. His eyes were dark with drugs and pain, and she could read nothing beyond that to give her any inkling of his real feelings for her. His teasing could be a cover-up for how he really felt.

  Chase slowly flexed his fingers, feeling the softness of her hand on his. Rachel’s tears glimmered like drops of dew down her cheeks. “I want the bottom line on my wound,” he croaked. “What happened?”

  Trying to muster a brave front for Chase’s benefit, Rachel gave him a detailed explanation. “Dr. Thornton says the next forty-eight hours are critical.”

  “Critical? To what?”

  Rachel lowered her lashes, holding his hand tightly. “To whether you keep your leg.”

  Chase stared at her, digesting her strained words. Immediately he rejected the idea. “No one’s taking my leg. No one.”

  “It’s not that simple, Chase—”

  “Like hell it isn’t!” he exploded softly.

  “You’re getting upset. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “I never want you to lie to me.”

  She sat very still, seeing the anger and determination in his blue eyes. “What we share,” she began in a low voice, “is built on misconceptions on my part, Chase, but never lies.”

  He flinched, turning his head away from her. The idea of losing his leg was too much to deal with. “I’m sorry….”

  “Chase, no matter what happens, I—”

  “I’m not,” he gritted through his teeth, “going to lose my leg.”

  Rachel clung to his hand, watching the sweat form on his brow, his face naked with pain. She swallowed all her admissions, though they were begging to be said. Chase was fighting it with every breath he took. Leaning forward, she murmured, “What can I do to help you?”

  Dragging in a deep, halting breath, Chase uttered, “Believe in me, Rachel.” He met and held the gaze that so clearly broadcast her suffering for him. He loved her so damn much that the pain of knowing that outstripped the agony of his leg. She was fragile, he could see it in her eyes and in the tortured line of her beautiful mouth. Chase wanted to say so much, but the darkness was pulling at him, and he lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  Chase pulled out of sleep, the pain awakening him. He had no idea what time it was, only that it was daylight. Rachel was gone, the chair beside his cot empty. Orderlies and nurses moved quietly up and down the aisle, attending to their duties. A doctor in a green smock came into view.

  “Captain, I’m Dr. Doug Thornton.” He held out his hand.

  Chase shook his hand weakly. “You’re the guy that saved my neck?”

  Doug grinned and sat down, a clipboard resting on his thigh. “I am, and leg would be more like it. You’re looking better. How are you feeling?”

  “Like hell right now, but I’m not losing my leg, doc.”

  The doctor frowned. “Rachel must have told you the status of your injury.”

  Eyes narrowed, Chase nodded. “I asked her to cut to the bottom line.” He made a weak jab at his leg, tightly bandaged beneath the blankets. “There’s no way in hell I’m losing it. I know I’m in bad shape, but I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it.”

  Doug scratched his thinning blond hair. “It’s not that easy, Captain. I admire your fighting spirit, but I can’t guarantee you’ll keep the limb. Damage was maximum.” He glanced down at the chart, noting the temperature and blood pressure readings that had been taken every two hours. “You’re coming back strong, but I want to caution you on your optimism.”

  Glaring at the doctor, Chase bit back, “Not only will I keep this leg, doc, but I’ll be back in the cockpit of a plane in six months.”

  Doug grinned and patted Chase’s shoulder. “Okay, Captain. Let’s take this one day at a time. I’m in your corner and rooting for you.” He rose and placed the clipboard on the hook at the end of the cot.

  “Where’s Rachel?” Chase asked.

  “Sleeping right now.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s quite a lady you’ve got, Captain. I hope you appreciate her. She slept in that chair, held your hand, gave you the necessary shots and took care of you. Right now, Rachel’s under orders to rest.” He smiled good-naturedly. “I don’t need my best surgery nurse half-asleep at the operating table.”

  Chase was restless under a driving need to speak at length with her as soon as possible. “When can I see her, doc?”

  Doug glanced at his watch. “It’s 1400. Rachel is due in at midnight. Sh
e’ll be the chief duty nurse until 0800 tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks,” Chase muttered, closing his eyes. Ten hours was too long to wait to see Rachel, to talk with her. Chase hungered to kiss her, to tell her how much he loved her. Clenching his fist, he focused tiredly on the image of her face. Midnight couldn’t come too soon.

  The ward was eerily quiet as Rachel padded softly down the main aisle. As chief duty nurse, she made rounds once an hour, checking on the twenty men who slept in the cots. With every step, her heart pounded a little harder at the base of her throat. Down on the right, Chase slept in his cot.

  Slowing to a halt, Rachel took in Chase’s darkly shadowed features. Relief flooded through her. Despite his pallor, she could see the determination to fight his injury mirrored in the set of his jaw and the line of his mouth. Chase might be trussed up with IVs and dressings, but he was battling back. Warmth spread through Rachel’s breast as she walked to his bedside and sat down. As if sensing her arrival, Chase stirred. His lashes fluttered, then opened, revealing drowsy blue eyes.

  Chase’s heart exploded with an incredible sensation of joy as a soft, shy smile shadowed Rachel’s lips. It was her eyes, gloriously green and lustrous, that drew him out of his pain-filled sleep.

  “How long—” he cleared his throat, frowning.

  “I’ve been here less than a minute.” Rachel tried to mask her tautly strung nerves, but the wobble in her voice gave her away. “Sure you don’t have radar?”

  Reaching out, Chase took a chance and opened his fingers in invitation. Rachel lifted her slender hand, hesitated momentarily, then placed it in his larger one. “So much strength and courage in such a small person,” he whispered, his fingers closing around hers.

  “In some ways, we’re a lot alike,” Rachel returned softly, leaning forward and blotting his brow with the cloth.

  “Yeah?” Just hearing her voice, allowing it to wash through him, helped stabilize Chase’s spinning agony-filled world. “How?”

  Rachel held his ravaged gaze. “We’re both stubborn, we speak our mind, and we have courage.”

  “Good traits.” Chase squeezed her hand gently. “How are you doing?”

  A small lump formed in Rachel’s throat. “I’m doing okay—worrying about you, mostly.”

  “You look tired.”

  “You look wonderful.”

  He held her gaze, sparkling with undeniable warmth for him alone. Or was he misreading Rachel again? “Did you hear me muttering earlier?”

  Rachel placed the cloth on the stand, continuing to hold his hand. “No. What were you saying?”

  “That I wanted to talk to you, I had to see you.”

  She stroked his fingers gently, unable to hold his burning, intense gaze despite the fever in his eyes. “Chase…my God, I don’t know where to begin,” Rachel whispered, choking back a sob. Her fingers closed tightly over his hand, and she took nearly a minute before she could speak again. “I—I was wrong about so many things, Chase. About you. I was confused, and I made so many awful choices that affected us.”

  Chase saw the tears drift down her waxen cheeks, wishing he could sit up and smooth them away with his thumbs. “Look at me, Angel Eyes….”

  It hurt to lift her head, and it hurt even more to hold his dark blue gaze. A sob made her tremble, and she felt his hand weakly squeeze hers. “I—I made some assumptions about you, Chase, that may not be true. And I based everything, my reactions, on them.”

  “What assumptions?” he coaxed, caught in the matrix of her tears, her utter vulnerability toward him.

  “At the time we were caught behind enemy lines, I thought you were just like every other guy.”

  Chase managed a one-cornered grimace. “I was—at first.”

  “But,” Rachel rasped, “that changed. I know when it did, looking back. When I led that patrol away from you and came back at the end of the day, things were different. Only, I was too shaken and worried to realize it. But, I know you did.”

  He closed his eyes. “Yeah, lying there in those rocks and brush for five hours wondering if you were alive, captured or dead played havoc on me. It forced me to get in touch with how I really felt about you.”

  Chewing on her lower lip, Rachel grew silent. “This is so hard, Chase…I’m finding out how naive I am when it comes to love. I never had a steady boyfriend before I met you. I had men who were friends, but nothing serious.” She saw the tenderness in his eyes, and it gave her the courage to go on. “I hope I’m not going to embarrass both of us again by saying something stupid, but I thought—I mean, I—well,” Rachel gave him a hopeless look. “Oh, Chase, I’m going to make a fool of myself again. But, did you fall in love with me at that time?”

  Chase saw the fragility and indecision in Rachel’s beautiful green eyes. His voice grew raw with feeling. “Didn’t you hear me screaming in my sleep? Over and over again, I was calling for you, telling you not to leave me. That I loved you.”

  Rachel’s breath snagged, and she stared thunderstruck at Chase. Had she heard right? Or were her spongy mind and shredded emotions playing some dreadful trick on her? And then the cold wash of reality hit her. Chase had used the word love in the past tense, not the present. Rachel didn’t blame him for not loving her now. Her voice was barely above a hoarse whisper. “I don’t blame you for how you must feel about me now. I misunderstood your advances. I thought you were trying to get me in bed without a commitment. That’s why I reacted the way I did.”

  “I see.” Chase grimaced. “Angel Eyes, we’re both to blame, not just you.” He forced a slight smile through the waves of pain. “I messed up first, by going after you purely on a physical level. Then, as I spent time with you, I fell in love with your spirit and fire. You never gave up, and you were just as stubborn as I was. I respected all those things about you. But, let’s face it, I wasn’t exactly a gentleman out there.”

  A tiny flicker of hope sprang to life in Rachel’s heart as she absorbed his shadowy, bearded features into her. “I didn’t realize you’d fallen in love with me, Chase.”

  “I finally figured that out.” He squeezed her fingers. “I tried to make up for it when I got here, but by that time, the damage had been done. All I could do was deploy defensive strategy, and that didn’t work, either.”

  “I didn’t let it work.”

  “No, but I didn’t blame you.” Chase raised his other hand, resting his arm across his sweaty, wrinkled brow. “I really blew it when I gave you the silk robe and then kissed you. Hell, Rachel, I found myself up and across the room before I realized what had happened.” He managed a thin smile. “When you smiled like that, I just melted inside. It was the first time I’d seen how you really felt about me. It was the proof I was looking for. And then, I tripped all over myself like a teenager and kissed you.”

  “It surprised me, too,” she admitted.

  “But did you like it?”

  Rachel managed a grin, the hope burning stronger in her heart. “Yes.”

  “Good. That brings us back to you,” he said, holding her tear-filled gaze. “How do you feel about me?”

  She lowered her lashes, placing her other hand across his. “Annie helped me put things in perspective, Chase. I didn’t realize it, but I was in love with you.” There, the admission was finally out in the open. Rachel was afraid to lift her lashes to see what kind of impact the words had on Chase, expecting the worst.

  “Was?” Chase goaded in a rasp. “What’s this was? If you were then, why can’t you be now? I know we’ve had some fights, but—”

  Rachel smiled, meeting his desperate gaze. “I love you, Chase Trayhern, then and now.”

  Disgruntled, he relaxed and took a long, unsteady breath. “Whew…that was too close,” he whispered. His voice deepened, holding her uncertain gaze. “Let’s make this official: I love you, too. Then, and now and in the future. Okay?”

  Rachel’s heart contracted, and a shower of joy shimmered through her. The moments spun gently between them as he wa
tched her from beneath hooded eyelids, monitoring her reaction.

  “Look at me, Rachel.”

  Blinking back tears, she lifted her chin, holding Chase’s dark, narrowed eyes. “I swore that if God let you live, I’d tell you how I really felt, Chase.”

  “After you told me never to come back, I didn’t know what to do,” Chase admitted quietly. “I figured the only chance I had left was to leave you alone and hope like hell that you would eventually sort things out. There was nothing I could say under the circumstances that would clear me of the impression you had of me.”

  “I know.” Rachel gave a small sigh, feeling so much weight slide off her shoulders. “Let’s never let this happen again, Chase. No matter what, we have to promise to talk—to stay at it until the issue’s resolved.”

  Chase stared at her for a long time, digesting her admittance. He began to understand what kind of hell Rachel had gone through. “That’s a promise. I figured once we were stateside, I’d find you and try to start over. I’d keep my hands to myself until after I married you.”

  A gasp escaped Rachel, and she pressed her hand against her breast, stunned. Marriage? “A-are you—”

  “Yeah, I am. Will you be my wife?” Chase couldn’t breathe, all his raw feelings boiling to the surface. He prayed that Rachel would say yes. She blanched, turning pale, and he grew afraid. Before she could speak, he blurted, “Look, I know I’m not whole like before. If—if I lose this leg—”

  “No!” she cried softly, “you won’t lose your leg. Don’t even say it, Chase.” Rachel laid her head against his shoulder, resting her arm across his chest. “I believe you’ll beat the odds, darling.”

  Chase murmured her name, sliding his hand up across her back, tangling his fingers through her hair. “Listen to me, Rachel,” he began thickly. “If I did lose my leg, I’d be a cripple the rest of my life. My career in the service would be over. I’d have to scrape for a living some other way. I wouldn’t be able to provide you with the things you deserve, that our children deserve….”

  She fought the sobs that wanted to tear from her, holding Chase tightly. Finally Rachel gathered her strewn emotions and sat up. With trembling fingers, she caressed Chase’s damp cheek. “I’ll love you with or without legs. And if the worst happens, you’ll create a job for yourself. You’re not the kind of man to give up and quit—no matter what the odds are.” Giving him a broken smile, Rachel leaned down. For the first time, she shyly initiated a kiss between them.