“Make it through this final exercise and you pass.” Charlie held out his hand to me to help me up from the chair.
It had been an interesting week, to say the least. I had not seen Charlie off base since he gave me that little soliloquy regarding how he treated me in comparison to his other trainees. I get it: the ball was in my court. If I wanted to fix things between us, I had that ability.
And I did want to fix things. I so did. But I’m stubborn and fickle, and royally confused. I was in no place to tell him what I wanted out of our relationship, if I wanted a relationship at all.
My scrapes and bruises had abated, and I looked mostly back to my normal self. After completing the fifty-meter swim, the rest of my training was in the medical realm. Charlie wasn’t the medic on his team, but he had been trained enough to be able to take me through these first few lessons.
I had been practicing intubation techniques on dolls for years now, so I passed that test with flying colors. He walked me through a chest seal accompanied by a needle decompression, which was what I was most nervous about, but luckily my in-depth studies had helped me remain calm when I performed the procedure on the dummy. After one walk-through and one try on my own, I also passed that test.
The hardest thing to do all week was put in an IV.
“You want me to put this in you?” I almost freaked out when Charlie sat in the chair in front of me. “I thought I’d get to use the medical doll?”
“It’s a whole different ball game doing the procedure on a real person, believe me.” He held out his arm, asking me to start.
“No, no, I do believe you. And I’m freaking out.” I took a step back, hoping he’d change his mind.
Instead, he laughed at me. “You’ll be fine, Hannah. You know what you’re doing.”
His faith in me was a little too strong. One the first try, he ended up bleeding. Everywhere. On the second, it took four attempts before I even found the vein. And then he started bleeding. Everywhere.
We took a break for lunch. He needed to eat something so he wouldn’t pass out if my next few tries were anything like the two before.
I, on the other hand, didn’t eat anything. I thought I was going to throw up. It’s a lot different when you’re just reading about procedures in books and practicing on dolls. Real people bleed. And they can bleed a lot.
“Okay, this time, I need you to take a breath. You know what you’re doing. Just do it.” He wasn’t nervous. So why was I?
I got it perfect on try five. And luckily, I did it perfect again the next morning. I still wasn’t comfortable, but at least I knew what I was doing, and I wasn’t draining Charlie of all his blood.
But the last test was sure to be the hardest of them all. It was called Trauma Patient Assessment, and it happened out on the field. Of the thirty women, five of us were training to be Medical Sergeants, and when we came in the morning of the last day, we were given a time slot for our final assessment.
The five training officers had come together to create different scenarios for each of us. We wouldn’t know the details of the scenario until we were out in the field, in the midst of it.
We sat in the green room, preparing for our final task. The nerves in the room were outstanding, but I made sure to focus on me and only me. And then, at oh nine hundred hours, it was my turn.
“Good luck.” Charlie sweetly whispered in my ear. “You’re going to be great.”
It was all I needed. I hate admitting that, but as long as I knew he was on my side, rooting for me, I felt as though I could fly.
Blank rounds of ammunition were going off around us. It was hard to hear anything, let alone concentrate on the task at hand. Charlie stayed at my side, as he was my instructor and was meant to follow my every move, while the other four trainers acted as my teammates. The sound of another round went off, and my attention was instantly drawn to the trainer that fell to his knees. Keeping low to the ground, I raced from my spot under cover, and made my way to his side. The first thing from there was to get him to safety. He happened to be the largest of the group, which I feel as though was done on purpose, but I was surprising strong for my size, and surprisingly even stronger with adrenaline racing through my veins, so I grabbed him by his feet and drug him behind a tree. Through the rules of the exercise I was able to determine that he had sustained a bullet wound to the chest, needing me to perform a chest seal. Luckily, after the chest seal, his breathing returned to normal, so a needle decompression wasn’t necessary. I also had to fashion a splint for the leg he fractured during the fall.
When he was all bandaged and braced up, I loudly ordered (as guns were still firing) another teammate to help me carry the injured soldier to the truck so we could get him to a hospital. This required us to carry him, which was no easy feat. I hooked my arms under his shoulders and used my legs to lift up. It was a slow process, but we eventually moved him to a makeshift stretcher and then carried him up the hill to the medical truck.
As soon as I ordered the driver to head to the hospital, I started hooking the soldier up to a saline drip. The bullet wound, had it been real, would have caused him to lose a good deal of blood, and the IV was necessary.
But I wasn’t scared. The whole thing was rather exciting, and I performed the procedure as if I had done a thousand of them.
After the drip was in place, Charlie told the driver to stop driving. With a smile and a nod, he congratulated me on passing my final test.
I had made it through the first two weeks. I was going into the real Special Forces Medical Sergeant training program.
Chapter Twenty-One
Charlie
“Don’t continue with the program.” I stood in her doorway, begging for her to consider my plea.
Hannah looked absolutely beautiful standing there with the setting sun highlighting her face. She didn’t invite me in, just stared at me with her big brown eyes. She was wearing a gray and purple dress and had her hair pinned partially up with curls landing on her cheeks. Her look was classy, and lovely, and she exuded a type of radiance that made me finally fully realize that I could only be so lucky to end up with this woman.
But she wasn’t looking at me the way I was looking at her.
“Really, Charlie? This is the best you can do?” She threw up her hands as she turned back into her apartment, leaving the door open for me to follow her. “What? Did you lose a bet or something and now you had to come here and threaten me so you and your band of brothers could keep the estrogen out of your little club forever?”
“No, it’s not like that at all.” I stepped into her.
But she took a step back at my advance. “Then what’s it like? Enlighten me, why don’t you?”
I looked for a place to sit, as I had no idea where to start, and I was beginning to feel light-headed.
The couch was a close enough option, so I took two large strides into the living room and plopped down, motioning for her to join me. Rather willingly, she did, but she still kept her distance.
I still couldn’t figure out what had happened between us the last few days, and I searched her face for an answer. Things were going so well, until all of a sudden she decided that she hated me. And to top it all off, she refused to talk to me outside of the training aspect of our relationship. Did she expect me to be a mind reader?
“Do you have a good excuse for bursting in here with all that nonsense? Or are you just going to stare at me?”
Was it really so bad if I just wanted to stare at her?
I looked away at her accusation, finding it within me to tell her how I really felt.
“I don’t want you to have to go through what I go through. This job… it’s not… fun.” That wasn’t what I wanted to say; it just came out that way.
“I didn’t sign up for this thinking it would be fun, Charlie.” She angled herself slightly toward me. “I want my life to mean something. It’s why I want to be a doctor. And this is the path that was laid out in front of me. So I took it
.”
I hummed a bit before continuing. “I couldn’t live with myself if you got hurt.”
I looked up at her, expecting to see the face of the girl who had been angry with me for the past week, but to my surprise, she was gone. Instead, the soft smile of the beauty I had fallen for was sitting across from me.
“Charlie…” She took my hand in hers. “I don’t want to fight you any more. I had come here for one reason, and for one reason only, and it wasn’t to fall in love. You weren’t in my plan, and so, I didn’t know what to do with you. And I understand that I took that out on you, and I blamed you for that, but it was all I could do to keep my head straight about what I needed to do here.”
It was weird to have a girl talk to me in such a way. I wasn’t used to having real conversations about real feelings in a real relationship. It was strange, and uncomfortable, and my first instinct was to tell her that she was crazy and that this would never work out, even if she wanted it to, and that her gut was right—she should stay away from me because I was going to be sure to hurt her.
But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words, because in that moment, I didn’t want to think about our future. I wanted her now, and I needed to have her now.
So instead of talking, I kissed her. It was slow at first; I just needed a taste. But then I needed more and more until my fingers were wrapped in her hair and I was pulling the zipper of her dress down her back.
“I’m meeting… my mom to… celebrate.” She whispered between kisses, but not trying to pull away from me.
“That’s fine.” I slid her straps from her shoulders.
“No, Charlie, I have to leave in like five minutes.” Her hands cradled my cheeks as she began to lead the kiss.
“I won’t be that long.” I wrapped my hands around her hips and lifted her into my arms. I carried her down the hall and threw her on her bed before I climbed over top of her.
As I slowly slid her dress from her body, I trailed behind with small kisses, wanting to taste every inch of her on my lips. I slipped my tongue under her panty line, teasing her with each flick. My mouth took her fully, and she arched up, allowing me to taste even more of her deliciousness. I held her hips up, giving myself a better angle to tease her as my cock grew harder and harder with the thought of what was about to come. Her breathing began to quicken as her cries became louder, and I knew it was only a matter of seconds before I would taste her orgasm. My tongue flicked faster and faster, and I pushed my finger inside of her, playing with her G-spot. Her cries stopped, as did her breath, and I felt her contract around my finger in complete release.
With a smile, I came to my knees and pushed my hardness into her. She cried again, but I remained slow and steady. We watched our bodies come together and separate and come together again. With each thrust, we caught each other’s eyes, and then we’d go back to watching our sex.
And we did that until we needed each other’s lips again. Our kisses were deliberate and meaningful, and neither of us wanted to pull away unless it was to stare into the other’s eyes. And then, when I couldn’t take it any longer, I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her tight to my chest as I pushed one final time into her, allowing my seed to release. She clung hard to me, keeping me inside of her while she clenched around me.
I pushed her hair from her face and couldn’t help but smile at the gorgeous, fascinating, strong-willed woman who allowed me to be part of her life.
We quickly cleaned ourselves off, and redressed, as we both had plans for the evening, and were both very, very late. I held her hand as I walked her to her car, but before getting in, she turned to me.
“Let’s not make this a big deal, okay?”
I looked at her, with obvious concern on my face, though I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. “A big deal?”
She squeezed my hand. “I can’t offer you more than this right now, but I also can’t quit you, so let’s just try the casual thing for a while.” She nodded, and I knew she wasn’t happy with the decision, though she knew it was the one she was supposed to make.
“Let’s do the casual thing for a while.” I agreed. “Barring anything crazy, I think that’s a good plan.”
Her face lit up, and she almost laughed. “Barring anything crazy.” With that, she kissed me goodbye, got in her car, and drove off.
I headed home with a different sense of hope than the one I had when I had stood in her doorway only a handful of minutes earlier.
Now the hope was that I might actually get to be with the girl who made me feel happier than I thought I ever could before.
Barring anything crazy, of course.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hannah
“Yeah, Mom, I’m just around the corner. Be there in a second.” I hung up the phone and sped through two yellow lights and one that would have definitely been considered red by most cops, feeling slightly bad that my mom had been sitting at the restaurant by herself for fifteen minutes, waiting for me.
“I’m here, I’m here!” I called across the not-yet crowded restaurant as I zig-zagged through the tables.
She stood to greet me with a hug. “Congratulations baby girl. I’m so very proud of you.”
“Thanks Mom.” I tried not to blush. I was pretty proud of myself too. “It’s just the prequalification to the prequalification though, so the battle is not nearly over.”
“I have no doubts.” She pulled me into her chest like she used to do when I was a child, even though now I was three inches taller than her. “You have never not succeeded at something you set your mind on, Hannah. As a mother, I couldn’t be prouder.”
I squeezed her hand, not wanting to get too sentimental, but still wanting her to know how much that meant to me.
“Let’s sit. I ordered champagne.” She led me to the table.
… to the table set for six people.
“Ha, did they run out of small tables?” I joked.
Mom twisted her cheeks before cocking her head up at me. “I invited a few friends.”
That didn’t make sense. Any high school friends that I still stayed in contact with had all since moved away, and all my college friends had gravitated to either the big cities or grad school.
“What friends?” I asked her, suddenly very worried.
But her attention had moved across the room, no longer on me. I followed her eyes, afraid of what I might see.
And I should have been afraid. I should have been deathly afraid; for the small group that just entered the restaurant was led by none other than Command Sergeant Major Max Reynolds himself.
“Mom, what is my boss doing here?”
But I didn’t actually need to ask. I knew exactly what was going on, I had just chosen not to pay attention to the evidence. Of course, I had assumed my mother was dating someone, for since I’d been home from college, she hadn’t tried to monopolize any of my time. She obviously didn’t speak of her new beau, which didn’t surprise me, as I supposed she didn’t want to upset me. Even almost six years later, talking about my father was still a sore subject between the both of us.
But now the pieces were all falling into place. She didn’t tell me she was dating someone for one reason, and one reason only: her boyfriend was my boss.
And now my little off-the-cuff meeting with him my second day on base, when he was just Max and I was just Hannah, made so much more sense. He wanted me to like him, to feel comfortable with him, so that when this very day came, I wouldn’t be completely opposed to their relationship.
I had been played.
I had been played badly.
“Command Sergeant--.” I went to salute him, but he cut me off.
“Please Hannah, call me Max.” He offered his hand out to mine, and I shyly took it.
“I have to admit, Sir, this is a little surprising, and well…” Words escaped me. “No, surprising seems to cover it.”
He politely laughed at my shock, and then went on to introduce my mother and me to his daugh
ters, Mary and Maggie. They were nice, sweet girls. Mary was a lawyer working out of New York who had just flown down for the weekend, and Maggie taught second grade at an elementary school only twenty minutes away. She was married with a three-year-old daughter, and another one on the way.
It was nice. It was cordial. But there was still a giant elephant in the room, and I needed to address it before I continued on with any more pleasantries. Without a bit of hesitation, I lifted my glass toward my mother and the Sergeant Major.
“It really means a lot to me that you all came out to celebrate my qualification into the Special Forces qualification course…” I just enjoyed the redundancy, so I had to keep saying it. “But I think we all know the real reason we’re here.” I winked at my mom. “Do you two have something to tell us?”
I wanted her to know it was okay to move on, that I wouldn’t hold it against her. Of course I missed my father, and of course she missed my father, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to be happy. And even in the short amount of time that we had all been together around that table, I could see she was exactly that.
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