“Wait.” Jase reached out and touched his shoulder. “I want to apologize.”
Carey gaped. “For what?”
It was Jase’s turn to clear his throat. “For, uh, what I did last night. For coming on to you while we were dancing.”
Carey could feel his cheeks turn red, but he forced himself not to look away. “It’s okay,” he rasped. “And I’m sorry about the hints.”
Before Jase could reply, Carey used the chair to pull himself to standing and crutched toward the kitchen as fast as his leg could carry him. He grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured himself some coffee, almost dropping the pot when he heard Jase’s soft voice behind him.
“What do they mean? The hints.”
Stirring his coffee so hard it sloshed on the counter, Carey doggedly kept his back turned. “Like I said, curiosity maybe?”
“About being with a man?” Jase took a step closer. “Or being with me?”
Carey shook his head, remembering his failed “experiment” in the car, how he’d tried to imagine kissing Gabe. “Does it matter? Whatever’s going on with me, I’m not going to use you to figure it out. Again.”
Jase settled his hip against the counter next to him as Carey viciously wiped up the spill with a paper towel. “If I’m willing, you’re not using me. And by the way, I also didn’t feel used back then. At all.”
Letting out a bitter snort, Carey said, “I treated you like shit.”
“That’s not how I look at it. You’d just been through a life-changing trauma, one that you’re lucky to have survived. Instead of holding it all in, it was like—it was like you were finally letting yourself fall apart and mourn what you’d lost.”
“When I threw that plate down, I was trying to make you leave,” Carey admitted. “Like everyone else did my whole life. But you didn’t.”
Chuckling, Jase crossed his arms over his chest. “I have six younger brothers and sisters, you know,” he said drily. “Tantrums don’t faze me.”
An unwilling laugh bubbled in Carey’s chest. “It was the mother of all tantrums, that’s for sure. But what happened after—”
“Sex is a basic human need,” Jase said quietly. “A way to feel connected, alive. After what you’d been through, you needed it with someone you knew wouldn’t hurt you, who had your best interests at heart.” He paused. “I’ll always feel honored you trusted me to be that person, that you felt safe enough with me to show me what you needed.”
His eyes stinging, Carey glanced at him. “I’m—” Sudden pain shot through his support leg, and he clutched onto the counter. “Shit. Help me to the chair?”
With a soft exclamation, Jase lowered him to sitting before kneeling in front of him. “You okay?”
“Cramp,” Carey gasped. “Fuck.”
Lifting his foot, Jase braced it on his thigh, strong fingers expertly massaging the knots in his calf. “Jesus, is it always this bad?” He cast a stricken look up at him. “Was it the yoga?”
It probably was, the different use of the muscle, but Carey wasn’t about to say that. “Nah,” he panted. “It’s just one of those things, like the phantom pain.”
When the cramp finally eased its grip, Carey slumped back in the chair with a groan. Jase kept up the massage, his free hand cradling his ankle. His head was bowed, the vulnerability of his exposed nape shooting a bolt of tenderness through Carey.
Reaching out, he brushed his fingers over Jase’s damp, sweaty hair. “You’ve been a better friend to me than I deserve. What do you get out of it, I wonder?”
Jase lifted his head, his eyes unreadable. “More than you’ll ever know.” He let go of Carey’s leg and sat back on his heels. “But I promise, I won’t push you again for something you’re not ready for, okay?”
When Carey gave a hesitant nod, Jase got to his feet. “Gonna go for a run, and then we’ll figure out the rest of the day.”
After he’d changed into running clothes and the door had closed behind him, Carey sat where he was, his forgotten mug of coffee growing cold on the counter.
For the first time, he saw that long-ago night through Jase’s eyes instead of his own. In pain, and grieving the loss of his leg, he’d turned in desperation to the one person he trusted, the one person who’d shown time and time again that he cared, that he wouldn’t leave.
But then Carey had pushed him away. Refused to talk about it. Let the awkwardness grow until Jase had had no choice but to remove himself from the situation so that Carey could focus on healing.
Yet he’d never given up on their friendship. He’d kept it alive from afar, through phone calls and texts, his unwavering support and encouragement a constant presence while Carey had slowly put his life back together.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. They were finally in a good place, he and Jase, with fulfilling lives, bright futures, and a friendship that had endured and deepened. When Carey thought of Jase, he thought of gratitude, warmth, caring, and happiness—all of those things, all the time.
Now those feelings were shifting into something different, feelings that had the power to change everything.
And change was the one thing that scared him to death.
Jase’s feet pounded the pavement, his breaths coming in the measured pants of the serious runner.
Off to his right, the Pacific Ocean glittered like diamonds, the sky overhead a brilliant blue and scudded with puffy white clouds.
Yet Jase saw none of it. Instead, his senses were filled with the stench of dust and sweat, and an unrelenting, scorching heat. He wasn’t wearing black nylon shorts and well-worn sneakers anymore, but a salt-stiffened battle dress uniform with a sixty-pound ruck on his back, a loaded M4 slung over his shoulder.
The shushing of the ocean receded into the distance, replaced by the whoomp of an explosion and the shouts of the Marines in his unit.
“Come with me, Doc,” the platoon sergeant ordered, and Jase jogged after him into the newly breached compound.
All around him, Marines and their Army Ranger counterparts were moving from house to house, kicking in doors and marching all the fighting-age males out to be photographed, fingerprinted, and compared to known insurgents.
Jase found himself guarding a house full of noncombatants, mostly women, children, and men too old to fight. He shifted uncomfortably in the doorway, broiling hot in his heavy uniform and Kevlar, his weapon held loosely in his hands.
The occupants of the one-room house sat quietly, although a few of the younger kids were crying. Jase reached into his waist pouch and pulled out a piece of candy, which he offered to a little girl in a too-big nightgown, her bare feet dirty, her hair tangled about her face.
Soon he was swarmed with clamoring kids, and chuckling, he handed out the treats until they were all gone.
“Sorry, bud,” he said to a boy of around eleven or twelve who’d come up for seconds. “I’m all out.”
The boy sneered. “Fuck you. Gimme more shit.”
Jase’s mouth fell open, and the Marine guarding the door on the other side of the room laughed. “These kids, man. Grow up pretty fast around here.”
The boy pointed at the Marine, then Jase. “Fuck you, and you. You my bitch.” He plopped down against the wall again, arms crossed over his chest, sulking.
Out in the main compound, the Marines and Rangers were about to clear the last house. It’d been a textbook op from beginning to end, with little to no resistance.
Fuck, yeah. We’ll be back in time for mid-rats, Jase thought in anticipation. Midnight rations were the only time the chow hall served a combo of breakfast and dinner, and his mouth watered—meatloaf with a side of pancakes sounded pretty fuckin’ amazing right then.
Suddenly, the sharp crack of gunfire split the air. Jase whirled in the doorway and took a knee, his weapon pointed in the direction of a house about a hundred yards away. With a jolt of adrenaline, he saw muzzle flashes coming from the roof.
The insurgents were taking a stand.
They shot wildly, with
no trigger discipline, basically spraying and praying. In contrast, the Rangers advanced steadily, laying down suppressive fire for the Marines who ran toward the house. The breacher placed a charge, and the resulting explosion blew the door off its hinges, the overpressure washing over Jase and almost knocking him down, even as far away as he was.
Time slowed down as Jase’s training kicked in. He keyed into the troop net. “This is Medic One. CCP in southwest corner house. Over.”
Muttered responses came back as the Marines acknowledged. Anyone injured would make their way or be brought to Jase in this house, the casualty collection point. Seeing that the Marines and Rangers had the enemy fully engaged, Jase ducked back inside and readied his med bag. The women and children were huddled against the wall, silent now.
In the heart of the compound, the battle raged on, the insurgents well-entrenched and ready for a fight.
“Cease-fire! Cease-fire! Hold your fuckin’ fire!”
Jase’s earpiece rang with the calls. He ran back outside, his breath freezing in his lungs at what he saw.
A woman, her face twisted with fear, tottered across the dusty, smoking courtyard, a blanket-wrapped baby clutched in her arms.
“Get back! Get back!”
The screams came in English and Pashto as Americans and Afghans alike waved their arms at her. Inexorably, the woman kept coming toward a knot of Marines clustered behind a low wall.
“She says the baby is hurt,” the platoon’s Afghan interpreter gasped into the comms.
The woman kept moving, her face reflecting genuine fear and anguish. Then the platoon sergeant’s voice echoed in Jase’s earpiece. “Tell her to stop,” he ordered the interpreter, his voice low and controlled. “Tell her not to approach.”
Even as Jase’s heart ached, he knew it was the right call. The enemy was notorious for using women and children as bait. She could be booby-trapped, with an explosive vest under her dress, which would explode the minute she joined the Marines behind the wall.
The terp shouted in Pashto for the woman to go back, but she kept coming, closer and closer. Suddenly her body jerked, and fell in a heap. Jase looked wildly around. Had she been shot by a Marine sniper, or an insurgent impatient that their ruse seemed to be failing?
The baby hit the ground, fists waving, screaming, as the exchange of gunfire rang out again. Bullets kicked up the dust near the baby’s blanket and snapped overhead with the sharp, sick sound of rubber bands.
Suddenly a Marine broke free of the wall and ran toward the baby. Jase’s stomach hollowed in fear as he recognized that graceful stride, those long legs.
Carey.
“Cover him!” he screamed into the comms, aiming his weapon at the rooftop and letting loose a stream of suppressive fire.
Ducking low, Carey scooped up the baby, tucked it under his arm like a football, and darted back toward safety. As he approached the wall, another Marine jumped up to help him. Suddenly an object dropped from the baby’s blanket and fell at Carey’s feet.
“Grenade!”
In the split second before it exploded, Carey tossed the baby to the other Marine and desperately threw himself to the side.
Boom!
Shrapnel peppered the wall, rained down in little plops into the dirt. On the ground, Carey thrashed in agony, his mouth open in a silent scream. The gunfire, relentless and ferocious, kept the Marines nearby pinned down and unable to help him.
Waves of horror buffeted Jase. He was about to watch his best friend die before his eyes. All he could see of Carey’s left leg was a mass of ground-up flesh, arterial blood spurting upward with every pounding beat of his heart.
Somehow Carey managed to drag himself, slowly, painfully, behind the wall. Jase slung his med bag over his shoulder, prepared to sprint for it, but the Marine with him shouted, “Doc, wait! You’ll be chewed to hamburger before you ever get there!”
It was true. He’d never make it.
Helplessness burned in Jase’s throat. He could see Carey fumbling at his breast pocket, and a tiny flame of hope started flickering.
“Yes, get your tourniquet,” he screamed. “Remember what I taught you!”
With shaking hands, Carey got the tourniquet strap on high around his thigh, over his uniform. He pulled it tight, then cranked down the windlass, his cry echoing to Jase’s ears.
“Good,” Jase muttered. “Good. If it’s on right, it should hurt.”
Then Carey flopped back in the dirt, panting.
Jase needed to get to him. He couldn’t just sit there. Muscles coiled, he was about to brave the gunfire, consequences be damned, when the courtyard suddenly went silent.
“Shooters on the roof neutralized,” a gruff voice said over the comms, and the air instantly started ringing out with shouts of “Move, move, move!”
Casualties streamed toward Jase’s location. The Ranger medic joined him, and they began a grim triage. Two of the Afghan Army guys were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets. Carey, borne between two dusty, blood-streaked Marines, was carried up and laid gently on a litter.
Jase knelt beside him to make his assessment, horror washing through him. Carey’s lower left leg was twisted into a spiral fracture from the knee down, his foot pointing a hundred eighty degrees the wrong way. Degloved by the shrapnel, his flesh hung in gruesome sheets, exposing muscle and bone. Still more shrapnel riddled his upper thigh, his femoral artery nicked. Blood soaked him from the waist down.
Grabbing his trauma shears, Jase slit Carey’s pant leg up to the site of the tourniquet. “It’s placed a little too low, bud. I’m gonna move it, okay?” He loosened the windlass, and immediately bright red blood spurted into the air. Working quickly, Jase cut the rest of the pants off and repositioned the tourniquet strap. Before he cranked it back down, he grabbed Carey’s penis and moved it well out of the way.
Carey let out a breathless chuckle. “If I die, man, your last memory of me is gonna be that you touched my dick.”
His words were slurred, and Jase realized that the massive hemorrhaging was taking its toll as the remaining blood in his body shunted toward his internal organs. He had to get fluid in him, now.
“Your veins are collapsing,” he grunted, “so no IV. I’m gonna have to hit you with the FAST1.”
Carey attempted to shoot him a thumb’s up, but his fine motor skills were decreasing fast. He was going into shock.
Swiftly, efficiently, Jase cut Carey’s BDU blouse and T-shirt off, baring his chest. Then he moved behind his head and straddled it with his knees. “Not trying to rest my balls on your forehead or anything,” he cracked, hoping to distract him. Carey shot him a ghost of a smile.
Feeling for Carey’s sternal notch, he stuck the adhesive target patch on his sternum, popped the cap on the intraosseous device, placed the six needles against the bone, and bore down.
With a pop, the primary needle embedded itself in his bone marrow, leaving the port protruding. Jase flushed the tubing with a syringe, then hooked Carey up to a bag of saline, which he injected twenty milligrams of ketamine into, along with some powerful antibiotic.
“A little hydration and pain relief for ya, bud.”
With Carey more relaxed, his agony somewhat eased, Jase worked on wrapping and dressing what remained of his leg. The horrifying wound was full of shrapnel and other debris, and Jase knew that his fight now would be against infection.
He needed Level One trauma care immediately.
When Carey was as comfortable as Jase could possibly make him, he turned to help with the other wounded. The Afghan woman was dead, shot cleanly through the head. She was indeed found to be wearing a suicide vest, so her body lay undisturbed in the courtyard for the explosive ordnance guys to arrive and disarm it.
“She was wired to blow, a backup grenade in the baby’s blanket. Son of a bitch,” one of the Rangers muttered. It turned out the woman’s husband had been murdered, her older children held at gunpoint by the insurgents with threats to kill them all if she di
dn’t martyr herself for the cause.
It was her house the insurgents had taken over.
Jase gazed at the lifeless body in the courtyard, knowing he should feel sad, but ruthlessly stuffing his feelings away deep in a mental box. No time for grief. No time for pity. Just complete the mission and get his guys home.
At his feet, Carey barely clung to life. His vitals were low, and he’d drifted into unconsciousness.
“How long till the medevac gets here?” Jase called out.
“On-station in five,” the comms guy answered. “They only have room for one, though. Second helo is fifteen minutes out.”
Jase glanced to the next litter over. One of the Rangers had been shot in the face, the bullet having entered through the back of his neck before exiting under his left eye. It was a gruesome wound that left his cheekbone exposed, along with his muscles and nerves, but he was awake and talking, the bleeding under control.
When the medevac chopper blades could be heard in the distance, Jase charged over to the Ranger medic. “Everett goes first. He’s critical.”
“What?” The Ranger gestured at his guy. “Look at Chapman. His goddamn face is gone!”
“He’s more stable,” Jase argued. “He can wait for the next.”
They went back and forth a few more times, until Chapman called out, “Let the jarhead go first. I’m good.”
“Chappy…”
“I’m good,” Chapman repeated. “This dude is brave as fuck. Let ‘im go.”
Jase knew that the Ranger medic was only looking out for his guy like Jase was looking out for Carey, but he still found himself shaking with anger and delayed reaction. Carey was approaching the end of the so-called golden hour of trauma care, and he was deteriorating fast.
Jase jogged alongside the litter as he was carried toward the waiting chopper. The flight medic ran out to meet them, took one look at Carey’s waxy face and said, “No way. This guy ain’t gonna make it. Don’t waste the space on him.”
Before he knew what he was doing, Jase had launched himself at the man. He grabbed him by the lapels of his flight suit and shook him hard. “Everett goes now!” he shouted. “You got that, fuckstick?”
Everything Changes Page 9