Diva (Jit'Suku Chronicles)

by Bianca D’Arc

  On those rare occasions when he was able to get a message out to her, he was sure to tell her how much he enjoyed hearing her voice and her music. He never said the L word, but she understood he was being as careful as she was about what he said on a recording that could easily go astray.

  It had been weeks since his last message, but she held out hope that any day now, she’d be hearing from him…

  *

  John saw it coming. He knew the moment of inattention that had probably cost him his life. Everything slowed. It might have been a cliché, but in that moment of certainty that he’d royally screwed the pooch, he saw everything in sharp detail.

  The decoy round. The distraction. The real attack…and the result.

  He lay in a pool of his own blood, feeling his strength drain away as the firefight raged around him. His men had formed a loose ring around his position and were killing everything in sight.

  Good men.

  He figured he was going to die, but it would be a good death, surrounded by his brothers. His only regret was Maggie.

  At some point in time later—how much later, he would never know—he was roused by pain as someone did something to his injuries. First aid, his tired mind told him.

  He opened his eyes and saw Pete applying pressure bandages and tourniquets to his legs. John couldn’t see the damage. He was flat on his back. But he saw the men gathered around. Jase was at his side, so John reached out to his best friend.

  “Jase,” John used the last of his strength to grab his XO by the shirt. “If I don’t make it—”

  “Don’t talk like that, Captain. You’ll be good as new as soon as the medics get through with you.”

  John shook his head, fading fast.

  “If I don’t make it, tell Maggie I love her.”

  The medics came then, and took John off, leaving a stunned unit behind. But they didn’t remain behind for long. The men of Unit G-18 haunted the hospital wing until their captain was out of surgery and for days after.

  “Who’s Maggie?” PeeWee asked after the docs broke the bad news that John was in a coma.

  Silence met the question, but Jase stepped forward, speaking low. “Diva. I heard John call her Maggie when she jumped into his arms after that concert. That must be her real name.”

  “We need to tell her what’s happened.” Pete suggested. They all knew about the discs that arrived by special courier for John every few weeks and the return letters he sent back, though they no longer teased him about it. They all had some sympathy for a love that could never be.

  “He needs her, Jase. We’ve got to try to call her.”

  The XO looked from their unconscious leader to the men and back again.

  “He’ll kill us when he wakes up,” Jase observed.

  “If he wakes up, I’ll gladly let him take his best shot,” PeeWee said staunchly.

  Jase nodded. “You’re right. I’ll make the call. I just hope, for his sake, we can get through.”

  Diva mysteriously took ill a day later and had to cancel several concerts. A day after that, a bedraggled little woman with a highly-ranked military escort arrived quietly at Sector HQ and headed straight for the hospital wing.

  When she entered the critical care unit where John was being kept, Jase saw her first. This woman looked quite different from the glamorous Diva he’d met that night after her concert. For one thing, her eyes were clouded with sorrow and worry as she made a beeline for the bed, all but ignoring the men who sat vigil by their commander's side in the small room.

  “John,” she whispered, stroking his face and kissing his brow. “Oh, God, John.” Tears fell from her eyes as Jase motioned quietly for the men to vacate the area. He stayed behind only long enough to be certain Diva would be all right, then left, stationing himself outside the door to assure the two left within the small room of privacy.

  Maggie was devastated to see big, strong John Starbridge so pale and nearly lifeless on the hospital bed. She stroked his face and kissed his pale features, praying all the while that he would wake up and smile that roguish smile at her.

  But he didn’t.

  Her John was in a coma.

  For two days, she sat at his side, leaving only when the medical personnel came to do their jobs. Each time, Jase or one of the others would be waiting just outside the door to escort her to a private meal and to catch a few minutes of rest. But she'd make them take her back to John as soon as possible. She had to be with him and couldn't waste time sleeping.

  On the third day, Jase brought a portable disc player.

  “I thought he might like to hear some of his favorite music.”

  The thought gave her an idea. Maggie commed her ship, now docked with the station, and had her guitar sent down. Jase brought it to her personally, less than an hour later.

  She played and sang for John, drawing a bit of a crowd at first, but Jase and the other men of Unit G-18 sent the curious away. They guarded their captain—and her—very well. Every one of them had found a moment to thank her for coming and express how much they thought her letters and discs had meant to John over the past year. Their words were touching and clearly heartfelt, and Maggie realized how much John was loved by this band of brothers he claimed as family.

  Maggie was near tears once more as she sang the song she’d written in memory of her father, praying the words for the fallen hero would not come to be about John as well. She finished the last notes of the song and bent her head in prayer.

  A slight rustle from the bed made her look up—straight into John’s open eyes.

  “That’s one of the most beautiful songs you ever wrote, Maggie mine.”

  “John!”

  She lunged out of the chair, laying the guitar aside as she bent to kiss John’s face. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as John raised one weak hand to stroke back her hair and dry her tears.

  “Don’t cry, Maggie. I’m okay.”

  “Oh, John, I was so worried.” She tried to smile, but the relief in her heart was too great. Only tears would do. “Don’t ever scare me like that again. Please, John. Never again.”

  John was silent as the doctor came in, alerted by the change on the monitors that John was awake. Maggie stood as Jase put his hands on her shoulders.

  “Let them check him over, ma’am. Then, you can come back in and yell at him for scaring us all, okay?”

  Maggie had to laugh but couldn’t leave John without a final kiss. She kissed his lips, not caring that everyone was watching. The time for hiding her feelings for this brave man were at an end.

  She let Jase lead her away, leaning on him for support as her knees threatened to buckle from relief. John was out of the coma. She felt in her heart all would be well, though the doctors still had to confirm it.

  Thankfully, the medic overseeing John’s care didn’t make them wait too long to hear the news. He came into the waiting room where John’s unit had gathered around Maggie, protecting her, but also sharing in her anxiety about John’s condition. The news was good. The medic seemed optimistic that, now John was awake and able to answer their questions, he would make a full recovery in short order.

  They’d been most worried about possible brain damage that they hadn’t been able to assess until John came out of the coma and started talking. He was undergoing further testing now that would determine the rest of the course his treatment would take.

  Maggie gripped Jase’s arm as the medic spoke to them all. Relief coursed through her veins with every sentence indicating John’s prognosis was good. John would be all right. It was a huge relief.

  Oh, it would be a few days before they could implement all the techniques that would bring him back to full readiness, but they now knew he’d come through the coma with no lasting brain injury. As far as medicine had advanced, they still needed input from the patient on certain things—the delicate state of the brain’s cognitive function being the most important.

  John was whisked away for further treatment before anyon
e could get back in to see him, but that was just as well. Jase shepherded Maggie around, getting her to eat dinner and then guarding her door while she got a few hours of sleep. He was an angel in well-worn fatigues while she came down from the anxiety-high she never wanted to experience again.

  After sleeping and before going to see if John was able to have visitors, Maggie—in her persona as Diva—made a few calls to the highest levels of John’s chain of command. The least she could do was get his unit’s downtime extended until John was able to return to duty with them. From what the medics had been saying, it would only be a matter of days, now that he was able to communicate with them.

  A few days off from the front was the least she could do for this band of brothers that had taken her under their wing for their leader’s sake. She knew each of the men through John’s descriptions of them and their off-duty antics. He never talked about the action they’d seen except in the most roundabout terms, but he did fill his messages with amusing, and sometimes deeply touching, stories about his best friends in the whole world—his family—the men of his unit.

  Jase was stationed outside her door when she finally emerged.

  “Have you been here all this time?” she asked him, noting the rigid stance of his powerful body. He’d been standing guard at parade rest, as if he was on duty.

  Maybe he was. Maybe someone higher up had commanded she be guarded, but she didn’t think so. Few people had known she was even there before she placed those calls minutes ago. She thought perhaps it was Jase’s own initiative that had put him outside her door, guarding her in place of his captain. Caring for her welfare as he thought perhaps John would want her to be cared for in his absence.

  She was truly touched by the gesture.

  “We’ve been rotating the duty,” Jase informed her. “I just went on watch while PeeWee hit the rack.”

  “I’m honored you and your men would go to such trouble for me,” she replied, knowing that any other response would demean their gesture. “How long was I out? I don’t have a chrono, and I had trouble figuring the conversion from my ship’s time to this base’s.”

  “You were offline for fourteen hours,” Jase told her in an easy voice as they began walking down the utilitarian hallway that looked like all the other hallways on this military base.

  “What?” She stopped in her tracks, taken completely off guard. “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Ma’am.” Jase turned to meet her gaze, his blue eyes filled with unexpected compassion and understanding. “You were dead on your feet, and the captain has been with the medics all this time. No visitors. If they’d sent him back to a visiting room, I’d have alerted you, but as it was…”

  She took in his words, nodding slowly as her mind caught up. “Oh. I must’ve looked really terrible, huh?” She smiled at him, and he responded with a tentative grin of his own.

  “You’d have to work pretty hard to look bad, ma’am, if you don’t mind my saying so.” His smile grew wider and friendlier, but not flirtatious. This was the smile of someone who wanted to be a friend. Someone who knew her heart was already engaged elsewhere.

  “It’s kind of you to say it, but I don’t believe a word of it, XO.” She patted his arm in a companionable way as they began walking again down the long corridor. “Are you leading me back to the mess? I should probably eat. And then, maybe we can shake those medics up a bit and see what’s going on with John.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Maybe you’ll have better luck getting intel out of them than me. Docs are pretty much universally tight-lipped the galaxy over, I’ve found. Never tell us much, even when they’re working on our own chassis.”

  She laughed. “It’s pretty much the same in the civ world. Only you pay a lot more for the privilege of being kept in the dark.”

  They chatted companionably through breakfast in the mess, where the rest of the unit seemed to have already gathered, creating a little buffer zone between her and the rest of those eating at this hour. Her presence was becoming known—especially considering those calls she’d made earlier. She had known that was going to happen and was prepared to deal with the fallout. John was more important than her retaining her anonymity on this base. He was more important than just about anything.

  She noted a few lingering looks, but the presence of an entire unit of SO soldiers between her and the rest of the world was quite a deterrent. She ate her fill, which wasn’t much compared to the guys. She lingered over a cup of coffee until she was certain they had all finished eating, and then, they rose as one, headed for the med bay.

  Battle was about to be engaged if those medics didn’t start coughing up information on John.

  Chapter Seven

  John was duly impressed. When Diva started throwing her weight around, she got results. After being poked, prodded and pushed around for a full day without seeing any of his team or Maggie, he was deposited in a private room with no further explanation. A few minutes later, Maggie swept in, Jase and the rest of the guys behind her. The guys crowded around his bed, remaining silent while Maggie and Jase stood on either side, right next to him.

  Damn, it was good to see them. All of them, of course, but especially Maggie. He’d almost thought maybe he’d dreamed her presence when he’d finally woken up.

  “How are you feeling, Cap?” Jase asked, very obviously giving Maggie time to get her emotions under control. Her eyes were bright with tears she seemed unwilling to let fall.

  “Can’t feel much yet,” he replied honestly. “They’ve got me on some pretty strong pain blockers, from what I’ve been able to gather.”

  “They didn’t tell you?” Maggie sounded mad, and when he looked up at her, he could see the righteous indignation on her face.

  “That’s standard treatment, honey. Don’t worry. I’ve been in the med bay before. I’m used to the hurry-up-and-wait with no information.” He tried to smile, but his muscles weren’t working right, even the ones in his face, courtesy of the pain block drugs.

  “That doesn’t make it right, John,” she said quietly. “I’m here now, and we’re going to get some answers. First, though, I wanted to see you—for all of us to see you,” she clarified, gesturing to the group who’d come in with her.

  “I’ve never had a private room before. You’re spoiling me,” he complained with a lopsided smile that she replied to in kind.

  “What use is it being Diva if I can’t use that power for good once in a while?” She shrugged, and he wished he could kiss her right then and there, but he couldn’t move. He was both too weak and too banged up to move under his own power at the moment. “Now that I’ve seen you for myself, I’m going to tackle the medics and get some straight answers about what’s going to happen.” He saw the light of determination in her eyes and almost pitied the medics for a moment. “And I got your unit some time off for good behavior. We’ll all be here for you until you’re good to go again, Captain.”

  The men behind her shifted on their feet. From the looks on their faces, John guessed she hadn’t told the guys about her string-pulling.

  “That’s kind of you, ma’am. It always feels wrong to leave one of us behind in the med bay,” Jase said quietly from John’s other side.

  “And this time at least, you won’t have to.” Maggie nodded at Jase and then looked at the guys all around. “I’ve been assured that except when you’re actively being treated in other parts of the facility, this will be your assigned room. XO, I assume you’re going to set up some kind of rotation so that someone can be with John at all times?”

  “Of course, ma’am,” Jase replied, smiling at Maggie. John knew he was smiling too. This small woman had the strength of will of any ten generals. “Cap, we just wanted to see you, but we’ll leave you in the capable hands of your lady now. PeeWee’s on first watch and will be just outside the door.” With that, all the guys stood straighter and walked out after giving John encouraging nods and smiles.

  “Ma’am,” Jase tipped Maggie a lazy salut
e before following them all out and leaving John and her alone.

  “Thanks for…all this,” John said, feeling the drugs dissipating a tiny bit, allowing some of the pain to hit him. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to steal some of his breath. He must’ve been a bit more banged up than he thought.

  “It’s the least I could do, John. I’m going to make sure you get the best care possible. And I’ll take care of your guys too, as much as I’m able.”

  “That means a lot to me, Maggie. They’re my family,” he said simply, hoping she understood the wealth of feeling he couldn’t quite express. “Thank you.”

  She bent closer to him, placing one soft hand on his brow. “You don’t ever have to thank me for caring for you, John Starbridge.” She lowered her lips to his for a light, chaste kiss.

  When she straightened, her eyes were bright again with unshed tears, but his Maggie was made of strong stuff. She caressed his cheek and then drew back her hand.

  “Now. I expect there will be some regen time for you in the immediate future. Even I can see that. I’m going to go talk to the medics and find out their plans for you. I’ll come back and brief you so you’ll know what to expect. But if they take you in the meantime, PeeWee will keep track of you, and I’ll be monitoring your whereabouts through the medics and nurses. I’ll be watching over you, John, even when you don’t see me, okay?”

  “You don’t have to go to so much trouble, Maggie mine,” he said, thoroughly touched that she would.

  “It’s no trouble,” she assured him. “I’ll be back shortly.” She looked like she made herself move away toward the door, her every motion sending messages of reluctance. With a last smile, she turned and left.