The Woman Left Behind: A Novel

by Linda Howard

  She didn’t care. Everything was at a distance, and that was okay. She didn’t want to think, or feel. She closed her eyes and drifted off again.

  The next time she woke, she was more aware, but still not quite with it. The white tent was gone, and there was a droning noise that annoyed her. She moved fretfully, frowned when her hand caught on something, lifted it to stare at the IV in the back of her hand. She frowned again, because her hand was stained and dirty.

  A big hand caught hers, lowered it beside her. Levi crouched beside her, his face swimming into focus. He looked terrible, unshaven, dirty, his gaze somehow savage. “You’re okay,” he said.

  She considered that. She remembered running through the desert, remembered the desolation and despair. She remembered a lot, she just didn’t care about most of it. “Voodoo?” she croaked. “Crutch?”

  “They’re holding on. We’re on our way to Germany.”

  That was all she needed to know. Escaping was easy, because she was tired, so very tired. She simply had to close her eyes to shut him out, and she did.

  Twenty-Two

  She was treated in a military hospital in Germany. Jina lay quietly in bed, mostly staring at the ceiling and not interested enough to even look out the window. A massive exhaustion weighed down on her, killing her desire to do anything other than breathe.

  Maybe she should call her mom. Vaguely she felt as if she needed to, just to connect with someone or something again, but not only would she have to figure out how to make an international call, she’d have to talk. She didn’t want to talk, not to anyone. There was an invisible wall around her and she felt safe inside it, safe and empty and alone. Too many words would dissolve the wall, leaving her vulnerable again.

  Maybe she’d call later, when she could stand words again and isolation didn’t feel so necessary.

  A brief hard tap on the door caught her attention, followed immediately by Levi pushing the door open and entering, as if it wouldn’t occur to him to wait until she said, “Come in.” Maybe he knew she wouldn’t say it. More likely, he simply didn’t care.

  He looked better than he had on the flight; he’d showered, shaved, had on clean clothes, and had gotten some sleep. The expression in his eyes was still not civilized. Something angry and violent lurked just below the surface, bubbling against his iron control.

  She wanted to be left alone. Why was he here? She didn’t want him here.

  There was a chair for visitors, but, being Levi, he didn’t take it. He hitched his ass on the side of her bed, half sitting, and bridged her body with one muscular arm braced on the other side of her hip. Now Jina moved her gaze to the window. Funny—somehow she’d expected to see the stark, desolate landscape of sunbaked Syria, and instead she saw a gray sky and a drizzle of rain on the glass. Germany; she was in Germany. Her body was here, but her mind hadn’t caught up.

  “They’re both out of surgery,” he said after a long moment of waiting for her to look at him. She could feel him willing her to obey his will, as if he could use some Jedi mind trick on her eyeballs.

  Crutch. Voodoo. For them, she slowly turned her head, looked at him. “Will they make it?” Her voice was thin and scratchy, her throat still dry feeling despite all the fluids that had been pumped into her.

  “Touch and go.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “They’re both in ICU. Voodoo has a better shot than Crutch, but he took a lot of damage to his leg.”

  She nodded, and once more looked out the window. Who knew devastation felt so empty? She’d always thought it was great pain, but instead it was . . . nothing, all emotion gone. She felt as empty as the desert, bleak and scorched.

  “We’re flying out in a couple of hours,” he said. “We have to get back ASAP. You’ll be released tomorrow, and I’ve arranged a flight home for you. Everything is taken care of.”

  She nodded again. So they were leaving her behind again. Different circumstances, and illogical on her part to think that, but there it was. They were leaving, and she wasn’t. She could have traveled with them, with some help.

  All in all, she thought, she was in fairly good shape after going through the ordeal she’d faced. Her feet would heal. She didn’t have any broken bones, and a wonderful nurse had washed her hair for her. She hadn’t had a shower yet, because of her feet, but she’d washed off several times and had finally felt clean.

  She’d been treated for severe dehydration and she felt much better. Her feet were bandaged and walking wasn’t fun, but she could manage to hobble around, get to the toilet by herself. At least the catheter was out, now that they no longer needed to measure her urine output to make certain her kidneys hadn’t shut down.

  She could have handled the flight, gone with them, even if they were hitching a ride on another cargo plane. Instead he’d opted to leave her to fly by herself, twenty-four hours later.

  Been there, done that, forget the damn T-shirt because she didn’t want it.

  He took her hand, the one that didn’t have the IV needle in it, rubbed his thumb across the backs of her fingers. “I’d take you with us if I could,” he said.

  Sure.

  “That’s okay.” She pulled her hand free and looked down at the sheet. Why was he touching her? He shouldn’t be touching her, there was no point. He needed to leave, go do whatever he was supposed to be doing. She was positive holding her hand wasn’t on that list. “Can I see Crutch and Voodoo?”

  He paused. “I’ll see if they’ll let someone wheel you in.”

  “That’s okay,” she said again. “I’ll ask a nurse.” Don’t do me any favors, Levi.

  He checked the time, then stood. “I’ll see you when you get back.” He stood beside the bed looking down at her; she could feel that Jedi thing again, compelling her to look at him, but she set her jaw and kept her gaze on the sheet. She’d already seen enough of him, so damn big and tough and battle-weary, that intense dark gaze on her, his presence almost like a punch in the stomach.

  She wanted him to go. He was the one she most didn’t want to see. None of the other guys had come back for her, either, but Levi was the one who had kissed her and held her, and he was the one who had made the decision to leave her behind. When she thought of the others, she was okay; when faced with Levi, everything in her wanted to shut down.

  Because he was Levi and his will was a force of nature, he cupped her chin in one big, rough hand and turned her face toward him. She stubbornly kept her gaze down, though it felt stupid, but neither did she feel cooperative. His thumb rubbed over her mouth and he made an impatient sound, then bent down and pressed a quick, hard kiss to her mouth, staying just long enough to give her a touch of his tongue. “We’ll talk,” he said—was that a promise, or a threat?—and strolled out, his broad shoulders barely fitting through the door.

  Maybe, maybe not. Three days ago—a lifetime ago—that touch, that kiss, would have had her heart pounding and her thoughts racing around like a crazed squirrel.

  He’d left her behind. He’d kissed her and put his tongue in her mouth, then he’d left her anyway.

  And she was so tired. She didn’t want to think about anything, deal with anything, not even that something about Levi had changed and she didn’t have the energy to figure out what it was. Maybe when she got home she’d feel more like herself.

  The next time a nurse came in, Jina asked about going to critical care to check on her pals. “I don’t see why not,” she said, then looked at Jina’s bandaged feet. “I don’t think you want to walk that far on those puppies, though, so I’ll see what I can do about a wheelchair just before the next visitation period.”

  But then she forgot, and Jina had to ask someone else. Finally she got that wheelchair, though, and an orderly took her to the ICU. Voodoo’s cubicle was first. He opened his eyes when she wheeled inside, and she almost collapsed with relief. He was pale, he had tubes running into his chest, an oxygen cannula in his nose, an IV stand strung with multiple plastic bags, and his left leg was immobilized.
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  Still, he said, “Hey.” He sounded heavily drugged, which he was, barely out of sedation.

  “Hey, yourself.” So far this was a very profound conversation.

  His bleary gaze went to the wheelchair. “What’s up . . . with that?”

  “Oh. I hurt my feet. Not bad. I’m going home tomorrow.”

  “Damn boots.”

  “Yeah, the damn boots. They won’t cause any more trouble, though; they’re gone.” That was positively chatty of her, the most she’d said at one time in . . . had it really only been a day? A little more than a day? She felt as if weeks had passed.

  He lifted a hand, reached for her. She rolled closer and took it. “I was . . . mostly out,” he said with difficulty, “but I know . . . you were . . .” The words drifted off, then he rallied and finished, “Glad you’re all right.”

  “I made it. Now you have to make it, too.” She laid his hand back on the bed.

  “Planning on it.” A barely there smile touched his mouth. He lifted his hand again, made a fist. She smiled, too, as she fist-bumped him.

  “See you back home, buddy.”

  She rolled herself down the corridor to where Crutch was. He was asleep, or unconscious. Jina watched him for a minute. He was breathing regularly, but his temp was a hundred and three and his blood pressure was up. Crutch had gone long hours before he was treated with anything but the most basic care. He was strong, but it was still touch-and-go.

  Looking at him, looking at Voodoo, she didn’t know if either of them would ever be able to rejoin the team.

  Life changed on a dime. Even people who lived ordinary lives were at the whim of chance: an auto accident, a fall, a walk in the wrong place at the wrong time, and nothing was ever the same again. For them, the members of the GO-Teams, fate was tempted every time they answered the phone.

  Donnelly was dead. Voodoo and Crutch had come close. She herself had come through the disastrous mission without any lasting harm, but the balance could so easily have tipped the other way and she could have died in the Syrian desert. She’d been terrified during parachute training, at the time more than half convinced she wouldn’t survive, but that had been a walk in the park compared to the desert. Another mile—even another half mile—and she wouldn’t have made it. Five more minutes, and she wouldn’t have made it. The helicopter would have lifted off and she wouldn’t have been on it.

  The orderly stopped chatting with the ICU nurses and took her back to her room. Once more lying in bed, her feet aching, she looked out the window and thought about the mission. A spark of interest lit, and she seized on it with relief, glad to feel something other than sad emptiness. When she got home and talked to the others, she’d find out what they thought had happened, but she’d gone over it herself and it was obvious Yasser and Mamoon had been hostile. When Mamoon had seen the computer screen and realized she would be able to alert the team to the ambush, he’d gone outside and consulted with others who had been well hidden, perhaps in the very wadi she’d used for escape, but somewhere Tweety hadn’t been able to see even in infrared. Perhaps they’d been able to contact the ambush team. Or they hadn’t been able to contact them, and their solution had been to set off the explosion that burned the truck and hopefully killed her, as a way to warn them something had gone wrong. Maybe they’d thought the team would immediately turn back, leaving them vulnerable to attack from the rear.

  She didn’t know why the attack had been planned as it was, if there had truly been an informant or if he had already been dead. There was a possibility they’d never know exactly what had happened, or why, but the GO-Teams had analysts who would go through every bit of information and advance the most likely theory.

  In the end, she didn’t have to know why. She had information from her part of the mission, what had happened and how, but she didn’t know why, and in a way she was done with it. It was as if there was a line of demarcation in her mind, and what had happened in the before didn’t matter in the after.

  The next day, she was put on a hospital flight home. Her feet were completely wrapped in what she considered a surplus of gauze, the bandages extending halfway up her shins. She wore the shapeless paper booties surgeons wore and was taken on board the plane by wheelchair. Her feet were better, still very sore and achy and no way would she have wanted to put on a pair of shoes, but she thought the wheelchair was a little bit of overkill, kind of like the bandages. She could have walked on board, though slowly.

  It was a long flight. Pretty much they all were, because the GO-Teams didn’t operate domestically. She slept some, read some, and still felt like crap when the plane landed at Andrews. She was rolled off the plane, then kind of abandoned while the more seriously sick or injured were unloaded.

  She’d been officially released, so really she’d hitched a ride on the med flight and wasn’t one of the patients. She was pondering the logistics of getting home—she had no cash for a taxi, her car was elsewhere, and she wasn’t exactly in good-enough shape to drive anyway while she was still on pain meds for another couple of days. She’d have to borrow a phone and call . . . someone, though she didn’t know who—

  “Babe!”

  She turned toward the call and saw Terisa coming toward her, a visitor’s tag clipped to her blouse. A few seconds later she was enveloped in a warm hug, and for the first time since being rescued she felt tears sting her eyes. Fiercely she returned the hug. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said into Terisa’s shoulder and blinked back tears.

  “It’s my off day, so I volunteered to meet your plane,” Terisa said. “The guys are all tied up at headquarters. The shit hit the fan over what happened, though Marcus has been his usual lock-jawed self and I don’t know any of the operational details, just that Voodoo and Crutch were hit bad, and your feet are hurt and you can’t walk. Your car has been collected and taken home, I’ve gone shopping and stocked your fridge with food—girl, seriously, you had nothing to eat but crackers. Anyway, if you want to stay at home and rest for a few days, you can, or if you want to get out of the house, all you have to do is call. If I didn’t have to work tomorrow, I’d take you home with me, though I figure you’d rather have peace and quiet and a chance to get yourself back.”

  “You don’t know how much I appreciate this.” Had Terisa somehow guessed how she felt? As a nurse she routinely saw people who had been through traumatic experiences, so maybe she knew getting back to normal took time. Had Boom told her that she’d saved herself by running for hours, on bleeding feet, through the desert?

  She didn’t want to think about that. And she didn’t want to get back to normal, she preferred the disconnect.

  Instead she focused on the mundane, because that was safer. She hadn’t gotten as far as thinking about the food situation at home—usually lousy, these days—or how she would function until she was cleared to drive, which would be when she no longer needed pain medication. She could always order in pizza, she supposed, but the driving would have to wait. “Have you heard how Voodoo and Crutch are doing? I saw them yesterday, talked to Voodoo some, but Crutch wasn’t awake.”

  “Voodoo has been upgraded from critical to serious, and if he keeps improving, he’ll be moved to a regular room tomorrow. Crutch is still critical, his fever is still up, but his vitals are stabilizing.” Terisa’s tone was the businesslike one of an experienced nurse. She shook her head, her gaze worried. “He has a long way to go before he’s out of the woods. Whether or not either of them will be able to work again . . .” She gave a brief tilt of her head, indicating that was unlikely.

  Unspoken was the reality that the team was on stand-down for the foreseeable future, at least for the missions that required full strength, because a third of the team was injured and unable. Jina thought of the team without those two, and it didn’t feel right. A team was a whole, and family of sorts; losing them would leave a huge gap.

  Losing her . . . wouldn’t leave as large a gap. She had been an add-on. She’d thought she’d become comp
letely accepted as a teammate, but she’d been wrong.

  Terisa took Jina home, fixed a sandwich for her, and made her eat. When she was satisfied that the basic needs had been met, she left and Jina tumbled into bed. She didn’t care about resetting her internal clock, because she didn’t have to hit the training field tomorrow. She could sleep if she wanted to, and she did.

  She slept for hours, woke up hungry, and hobbled her way to the kitchen to eat a cinnamon roll. Thank God Terisa had included some junk food, because even nuking some instant oatmeal was beyond her. She went back to bed then woke up in the early hours, made some coffee, took a basin bath, and put on regular clothes. It was good to wear something other than the hospital scrubs she’d been given in Germany.

  At seven o’clock, her phone rang. She reached for it, recognized Levi’s number, and jerked her hand back. But he was still her team leader, and now that she was home there was likely debriefing to be done, debriefing that wouldn’t wait for a little thing like not being able to drive. Reluctantly she answered.

  “Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?” He didn’t even say hello, but she gave a mental shrug; it wasn’t as if she didn’t know who was calling.

  “Yes.” She didn’t tell him she was already dressed.

  “Mac is sending a car. There’ll be a wheelchair.”

  She disconnected, and wondered if seven a.m. was too early to start drinking. She didn’t feel like doing this and hated like poison to be rolled through headquarters as if she was an invalid—though technically she was an invalid. Okay, literally she was; that didn’t mean she liked it.

  She also didn’t like wearing the paper booties, which were getting ragged anyway, so she tried to put on her only pair of bedroom slippers. Forget that; besides, Caleigh had bought them for her a couple of Christmases ago, and they had moose heads bobbing on the toes. Better she wear paper booties than moose heads.