Sleight of Hand (Outbreak Task Force)

by Julie Rowe

  She stumbled out of the changing room.

  Henry took one look at her, and said, “Nap time.”

  “Gunner?” she asked. She’d prop her eyelids open with toothpicks if she had to, but she was going to be there when he woke up. She would allow no other outcome.

  “He’s still in surgery and will be for at least a few hours.”

  Swaying, she stared at Henry, trying to read his face for any hint he might only be telling her what she wanted to hear. If he was, she couldn’t tell.

  “Where can I sleep?”

  “The doctor’s ready room. They have a couple of cots in there.” He led the way.

  The cots were pretty cushy. Both had thick mattresses with good pillows and more blankets than she’d use. She stood next to one of the cots and looked at Henry expectantly.

  “I’ll wake you as soon as they decide they’re done,” he said.

  She waited.

  “My word on it.”

  She nodded and lay down. Sleep ambushed her before her head even hit the pillow.

  …

  Joy rose to alertness due to someone shaking her shoulder.

  She batted at the offending hand. “Fuck off. I’m not on duty for another couple of hours.”

  “Joy, it’s Henry. Gunner will be out of surgery soon.”

  Henry? There wasn’t a Henry on her combat rescue team. Memories came rushing in. Gunner. The CDC. E.coli outbreak. Gunner, covered in blood. Gunner.

  “Is he okay?” she asked as she bolted upright. The room spun, and she bent over, hoping that would take care of the disorientation.

  “He’s alive. That’s all I know.”

  “Better than dead,” she whispered.

  After a long pause, Henry said softly, “Some injuries are hard to come back from.”

  She glanced at his face and saw something bleak and weary in his gaze.

  Shit. He’d lost a leg serving his country, but maybe he’d lost more than that.

  “I’m going to be so irritating,” Joy told Henry, pushing energy into her voice. “He’ll speed up his recovery just to get away from me.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Henry asked.

  “Doesn’t what?”

  The veteran solder looked at her with the same winter-killed soul in his gaze as she had inside her. “Want to get away from you.”

  Everything came to a stop. She was a wasteland, frozen and barren. She and Gunner were coworkers, friends with benefits sometimes, but anything else was a momentary mirage made of snow and ice.

  “This is Gunner we’re talking about.” She forced a smile onto her face. “I know how to push his buttons. His physical therapist is going to love having me around.”

  Henry frowned and opened his mouth.

  “Besides, Gunner is a workaholic like the rest of us,” she said before the lab tech could speak. “You watch. He’ll be back and growling at everyone before you know it.”

  Henry’s frown didn’t go away. “That’s not what I meant.”

  She broke eye contact to study her hands. Geez, three of her fingernails were torn. “Oh?”

  “You’re…together.” Despite the small pause between words, it wasn’t a question.

  “We’re partners,” she agreed.

  “No,” Henry muttered with some strength. “You’re together.”

  Had the room just gotten smaller all of a sudden? She couldn’t take in a deep enough breath and had to force air into her lungs. “Henry, that wouldn’t be a good idea for either of us.”

  “Why not?”

  Sorrow nearly flattened her, and she allowed a tiny bit of it to show on her face. “We’ve both lost so much. Too much.” Her voice ran away, leaving her whispering, “Letting anyone else all the way in might let all the monsters out.”

  Henry looked at her for another moment or two, and the bleak hopelessness in his gaze felt like her own.

  She cleared her throat, pushed off the cot, and stood. “Will they let me be there when he comes out of the anesthetic?”

  “They know you’re a nurse and his partner, so probably. As long as you don’t cause a ruckus.” She followed Henry down the hall. She didn’t even remember the walk to the room.

  “A ruckus?” she asked, all innocence. “Who, me?”

  “If you start giving orders, they’re going to kick you out.”

  “I’d like to see them try,” she muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “I’ll be as sweet as pie.”

  He gave her a sidelong glance, shook his head. “Keep it frosty.”

  She smiled sweetly, but she had to force her muscles. It hurt.

  He took her into a waiting room and spoke with a nurse in scrubs identical to the set she was wearing.

  “Are you Joy?” she asked. “Mr. Anderson listed you as his emergency contact. Are you his wife?”

  “Partner.” Let the nurse infer what she wanted from that. “How is he?”

  “He’s stable. The bullet nicked his bowel and liver, but we were able to stop the bleeding and clean things up. He’d lost some blood from a previous wound and more from the damage to his liver. He had to give him ten units of blood. We may have to give him more, so we’re keeping a close eye on him.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “We’re going to move him shortly into an ICU room. You can sit with him there.”

  “Thank you.”

  The nurse took her into an ICU with patient rooms radiating from a central nursing station. One room was empty of a bed, but it had a chair in the corner. She sat while Henry stood not far away, his arms crossed over his chest.

  “You don’t have to wait,” Joy told him.

  “Yes, I do. Orders.”

  “From Rodrigues?”

  “Yeah. She’s territorial about her people. Doesn’t like it when she isn’t certain of their status.” He rocked back and forth on his feet. Anyone who didn’t know him wouldn’t be able to tell he had a prosthetic leg.

  She wanted to get up and pace.

  Where was Gunner? Why was it taking so long?

  She couldn’t get the sight of Gunner, his chest covered with blood, the stain of it growing and spreading, out of her head. If he’d died… No, she could allow herself to think like that. He hadn’t died. He’d made it through surgery. He was going to be fine.

  Joy repeated the words in her head. He was going to be fine. He was going to be fine. Turning them into a mantra. It was the only thing keeping her from hyperventilating.

  Movement outside the room pulled her attention back into focus. Several people pushed a bed and equipment in Henry’s and her direction. She got to her feet, and the two of them moved back to give the staff enough space to get the bed into position with its attendant monitors and equipment hovering around it like orbiting satellites.

  Gunner was awake, looking around until he spotted her, then his gaze never left her face.

  Relief made her dizzy, and she had to force herself to stay where she was and not tackle-hug him.

  “You…okay?” His voice was rough.

  “I’m fine. Didn’t even get shot once.”

  He stared at her as if unsure of her answer. “The E.coli?”

  “Didn’t make it into the water.”

  “Good.” His eyes closed for a moment before they snapped open, and he frowned at her. “What happened?”

  “There was a second man. He caught me as I getting ready to make some noise.”

  “You didn’t get shot?”

  “No.” The word barely made it out of her mouth. Those moments before the police fired, when the bad guys shot at Gunner, sucked all her strength into a black hole inside her heart. It left her shaking, barely able to stay upright in the chair, tears running down her face. “You got shot.”

  He stared at her for a long second then said in a surprisingly hot tone, “You promised to stay safe, out of sight, out of their hands.”

  “I know, but….” She swallowed a hard bitter lump of self-disgust. �
��It was the only way to stop them.”

  “You didn’t stop them. You got caught.” His voice rose with every word.

  “I had to try. You were injured. I had better mobility, and I was armed.”

  “Do you know what it did to me to see that bastard put a gun to your head?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Do you know what it did to me to watch you get shot…twice?” she choked out.

  “I couldn’t watch you get shot and not do something about it.” He stopped talking to focus on breathing for a couple of seconds. “They would have shot you, the other hostage, and then themselves. I couldn’t let it happen, not again.”

  “Again?” His wife had been shot in front of him. So, what, he’d made a conscious decision to step into the line of fire, to try to save her, and he was willing to die to do it?

  She’d seen that kind of heroism on the battlefield, and in her teammates as they worked to save the lives of brutally injured fellow soldiers.

  She wasn’t sure she could live through that again. It was all mixed up in her head in a caustic combination of recent memories and old ones, playing over and over in her mind.

  It wouldn’t stop.

  She needed it to stop.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Thursday 3:57 a.m.

  Gunner watched all the color disappear out of Joy’s face, watched as her hands shook, watched as she took a step away from him, then another. His stomach, already turned inside out and upside down from the hours of surgery and worry about her, managed to wrap itself around his spine and squeeze.

  Shit, he’d said too much, but he was so angry at the terrorists, the stupid kids who drank too much beer, with damn near everyone. She’d put herself last, put herself in harm’s way…for him.

  “If you run,” he said, his voice wavering between gravel and gone, “I will find you.” He had to stop and take a breath. “And I will paddle your butt.”

  “TMI,” Henry said.

  Gunner didn’t look at him. If he took his gaze off of her, Joy was sure to bolt.

  She swallowed. “It was my fault you got shot.”

  “No,” he said, his voice strong and certain. “It’s the fault of those Free America From Oppression idiots. When are you going to accept that your life is valuable?”

  She took another step away from him.

  He tried to sit up, reach for her, tell her she wasn’t going anywhere until she understood her life wasn’t available for sacrifice for any reason. But he ran out of breath and couldn’t seem to catch up. A monitor began beeping, then another joined it as the world went fuzzy then dimmed.

  The quicksand of darkness sucked him down, but he fought its pull and resurfaced to find an unfamiliar woman calling his name.

  “Joy?” he asked.

  “Dr. Anderson, please don’t stress yourself. You’ve lost a lot of blood. If you try to get out of bed again, there might not be anyone here to catch you.”

  “Hang another unit of blood,” he said absently, looking around for Joy, but he couldn’t find her.

  “I’ll see what your doctor wants to do,” the nurse said then left.

  Gunner’s gaze found Henry. “What happened?”

  “You tried to get out of bed and chase down Joy. She ran faster than you.”

  “The story of my life,” Gunner said with as much sarcasm as he could muster.

  “You were a little hard on her.”

  “Henry, she believes her life has less value than everyone else’s. She really believes that. I think survivor’s guilt has been eating its way through her for a very long time.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it’s taken more than just a chunk out of me.” He sighed. He didn’t like all the noise from the monitors or the way his eyelids got heavier and heavier. He needed to stay awake so he could find Joy.

  “You plan on convincing her?” Henry asked.

  “Yes. Even if I have to tie her down and sit on her.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across his face. “I’d recommend using a bed for that.”

  “A joke?” Gunner asked. “You?”

  “It’s been known to happen. I tell you what. You promise to do whatever is necessary to get well, and I’ll keep an eye on your girl. I’ll let you know where she is when you’re ready to break out the rope.”

  “Deal.”

  Gunner let sleep take him.

  …

  A week later, Henry picked Gunner up at the Atlanta hospital he’d been transferred to after being released from the ICU.

  Joy hadn’t come to see him. She’d sent flowers and coffee. That was it.

  That. Was. It.

  Gunner didn’t say anything when Henry showed up in the doorway of his hospital room. He didn’t say anything when the nurse explained the care he needed at home to Henry. He continued to not say anything as Henry wheeled him out to his vehicle. Only once both of them were inside and Henry was navigating his truck out of the parking lot did Gunner speak.

  “What’s been happening?” He wanted to ask where is she, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to like the answer to that one, so he asked something else.

  “Rodrigues told her not to see you until you were released from the hospital.”

  That didn’t make any fucking sense. “Why?”

  “Joy might not have been the one who got shot, but it wounded her just the same. She’s taken the last week to get intensive counseling. She promised Rodrigues she wouldn’t make any decisions until she’s ready to return to work.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” Gunner said, hanging onto his temper by the finest of threads.

  Henry sighed. “Joy tried to quit as soon as she got back to Atlanta. She tried to quit the next day and the day after that. Rodrigues finally told her to cut it out until after she had a chance to talk to you.” Henry looked at him, his face serious. “I think Rodrigues is hoping you can talk her out of leaving the CDC. If you’re flat on your back in a hospital bed, Joy might not listen to a word you say.”

  Gunner waited to be sure Henry was done talking.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Thanks for that sanitized, politically-correct explanation. Can I have the short, non-bullshit version now?”

  “She blames herself for you getting shot.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I made the decision to approach those assholes all by myself.”

  “Trauma doesn’t have to make sense. That doesn’t make it any less real to the one experiencing it.” Henry shrugged. “Rodrigues thought you’d have a better chance of convincing her you’re not going to die if you don’t look like you’re going to die.”

  Gunner grunted. “So, where is she?”

  “At her apartment.” The confidence with which he spoke caught Gunner’s attention.

  “You know that for certain?”

  Henry flashed a grin. “I live in the building, too, remember.”

  “Good. You can help me get to the second floor.”

  Henry nodded but didn’t comment as they went, not to Gunner’s apartment on the third floor, but to Joy’s door.

  Gunner knocked. He heard soft footfalls coming from inside the apartment. Then…nothing.

  “Open the door, Joy,” Gunner said. “I’m not leaving until we talk.”

  A few seconds went by. Twenty, then thirty.

  The deadbolt rattled, and the door opened.

  Henry swung Gunner’s go-bag inside, then he turned and walked briskly away.

  Gunner didn’t take his gaze off Joy’s pale face. Had she lost weight?

  She glanced at his go-bag sitting inside the apartment, then back at him.

  She spoke to his collarbone. “There’s nothing to say.”

  He stepped into her, forcing her to back up a step, two, then three. He closed the door behind himself and turned the deadbolt to secure it.

  She backed up a little faster and turned to face her sofa, all without looking at his face.

  That was gett
ing old fast.

  He limped slowly to the sofa and sat down.

  Her gaze sharpened. “How are your injuries? Any complications?”

  “No. They kept me a couple of extra days in case my liver squawked, but all my enzyme levels are good.”

  She nodded and seemed to deflate.

  This was not the Joy he knew. His Joy was strong, secure, and resilient, not this frail, fragile, reticent woman who wouldn’t look at him.

  Henry was right. She did blame herself for his injuries. It wasn’t rational, but pain was often the least rational thing a person experienced.

  He studied her, making no effort to hide it. She had lost weight. It had only been a week, but the weight loss was noticeable.

  He opened his mouth to demand she stop this ridiculous behavior, but she flinched.

  She flinched, before he could say anything.

  She flinched.

  Shit. His normal grumpy shit was not going to do. She was expecting that, anticipating it even, but she only thought she knew what he was going to say.

  “I don’t have any good tea in my apartment,” he said in a soft voice. He rubbed his face with one hand. “Shit, everything in my fridge has got to be moldy, too.”

  Her gaze moved as high as his nose.

  Just a little bit more.

  “I haven’t had a decent meal since those beignets we had in that cafe.” He waited.

  Her gaze flicked up, met his, then skittered away. “I could make some soup and toast,” she said tentatively.

  “That would be nice,” he said, working hard not to sound too triumphant.

  She stood and made her way into the kitchen. He couldn’t see her from where he was on the sofa, so he moved to her small dining table just off the kitchen.

  She pulled a can of soup out of a cupboard, opened it, and dumped the contents into a pot. “You didn’t come here because you’re hungry,” she said, her voice lifeless. “What do you want, Gunner?”

  “I want my Joy back.” He hadn’t meant to say that, hadn’t meant for it to come out with so much emphasis, but the words were out now. He’d just have to keep going. “It’s not your fault.”

  Her head jerked up, and her gaze hit his with enough force to stop his breathing for a couple of seconds.