Chapter Fifteen
Josh
The ceiling of the Kandahar surgical center looked different, or maybe I just didn’t remember it that well from the last time. I blinked, trying to clear the haze of drugs from my vision, simultaneously wishing for sobriety yet desperate to stay blessedly numb.
I raised my hand to my face but was stopped before my fingers reached the skin.
“You don’t want to do that yet.” The man’s voice was deep, comforting, familiar. “They just cleaned out the wounds. You’re not going to scar, but you go around shoving bacteria in there and all bets are off, son.” His grip was cool but firm as he lowered my hand.
“How long have I been here?” I asked, realizing I wasn’t quite with it enough to turn my head.
“About eighteen hours. Surgery took a little longer than we thought, but you’ll have full use of your leg.” A wave of déjà vu swept over me.
“Good. And my arm?” The drugs were strong and threatened to pull me back under.
“It’ll take some recovery time, but you’ll be okay there, too. You were a lucky guy, Josh. I think you’ll still be able to play hockey after recovery.”
I forced my eyelids open, blinking at the halogen lights above me. “How did you know I play hockey?” As if that’s even important anymore.
“I’ve seen you play.”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I already knew what he was going to say. It was the same conversation I’d had with him four years ago. I forced my head to turn and saw him sitting in the chair next to my bed, leaned back with his hands folded in his lap. His scrub cap sat over a pair of piercing blue eyes I knew well, and his mouth held a kind smile.
This wasn’t real. I was still asleep, no doubt drugged from the surgery they’d wheeled me into.
For just this moment, I was okay with that.
“Where?” I asked him, knowing that was the line of the script I was reading.
“My daughter went to high school with you. She was quite the fan. Took me with her to see you play.”
“Your daughter?” I asked, my heart burning with the love I hadn’t known then.
“December Howard. You probably don’t know her. She was a few years your junior.”
“I know December,” I whispered. “I love her. I’m marrying her. You raised such a flawless woman.” But he didn’t hear the last lines, because they hadn’t been spoken four years ago.
“You do? She’s a senior this year, hoping to go to Vanderbilt in the fall, but she has an asshat boyfriend who’s pushing her toward CU.”
“She’ll break up with him,” I promised. “He’ll hurt her, but she’ll heal. She’ll go to Vanderbilt, and she’ll graduate. She’s happy.”
“You know how those high school boys are.” He laughed, having heard none of what I’d just said, then stood to take my vitals. He looked off in the distance as he listened to my lungs.
“She misses you every day. She doesn’t say it—keeps everything pretty close to the vest—but I see it in her eyes,” I said as he moved his stethoscope. “I love her with every cell in my body. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her, sir.”
“I hope she makes the right decision for her,” he said. “She’s too good of a girl to get trapped beneath a man’s dreams. She deserves her own. He won’t give her that, and she’s too young to see it.”
“I see it,” I whispered. “God, I see it.” I forced my fifty-pound eyelids open again, but I was losing the battle.
“Don’t you worry, PFC, you’ll play hockey again. I took really good care of you.”
“Thank you, sir.” My world faded, leaving only the sensation of his hand on my forehead.
“You’re going to be okay, Josh. I swear it. You both will.”
“Lieutenant Walker?” A woman called to me from the black. “Can you hear me? Can you open your eyes for me?”
A blood pressure cuff went off on my left arm, squeezing to an unpleasant pressure. It was nothing compared to the overall ache coursing through my body. The left side of my chest felt like I’d been beaten in a bar brawl by at least six professional wrestlers. “Yes,” I croaked.
“Here,” she said and lifted a straw to my lips. I took in giant sips of cool, crisp water, washing away the taste of dead skunk in my mouth. I blinked, looking up to see a nurse hovering over me.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice closer to normal.
She smiled. “Can you tell me your name and birthday?”
I turned my head to the chair next to me, half expecting to see Doc Howard sitting there, but it was empty, of course. I was drugged, not insane.
“Lieutenant?” she prompted.
I took a deep breath and focused on the nurse. “Joshua Walker, September twenty-third.”
“Good.”
December. Her name rushed through me, soothed me, and then instantly my stomach dropped. God, she had to be losing her mind. Had they told her? They usually waited until we could call, but with helicopter crashes, those were too televised to delay notification until a soldier could call home.
God, had they gone to the house? She must have relived her worst nightmare.
“Ma’am? Can I call my fiancée? She’s got to be scared. My mom, too.”
“I understand. The transport airplane is here to take you to Landstuhl, so let’s get you ready, and see if there’s time for those phone calls before we move you.” She picked up my chart and gave me a rundown on everything I’d fucked up in the last twenty-four hours.
Dislocated shoulder. Radius and ulna buckle fractured.
I looked down to see the splint covering the lower portion of my right arm, cradled against my chest in a blue sling. That’s not so bad. But she kept going.
Six-inch gash on my thigh, and I hadn’t done them any favors by ripping the metal out in the field and then walking on it. Yeah, but I lived. I’d had exploratory surgery on that, with both internal stitches and over thirty external ones. It took all my willpower not to rip back the blanket to see if I’d at least had the luck to bisect the gunshot scar that was already there.
“But the shocker was your spleen. It ruptured, which we didn’t catch until you were here.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Her smile was apologetic. “You were pretty heavily drugged. But we took it out, and you’re going to be okay. You’ll need a couple months to recover, but you will.”
“Jagger? I mean, Lieutenant Bateman? Specialist Rizzo?”
“I’ll take it from here,” Lieutenant Colonel Dolan, our battalion commander, answered, filling the small doorway of my curtained partition. Cover in hand, he ran his hand over his shaved skull, over his eyes, and down to his mustache. “I’m glad to see you’re okay, Lieutenant.”
“Sir,” I answered. “The other guys?”
“Rizzo’s okay. A little banged up, but okay.” He took Doc Howard’s chair.
“Bateman?” I forced out and held my breath. He hadn’t been awake, even after they medevac’d us.
“He’s pretty mangled, but alive. He’ll need some pins to salvage his legs, but they fixed all the internal bleeding in surgery. He’s not awake yet.”
My breath released on a ragged sigh, and my eyes closed in a silent prayer of thanks to God. Jagger was okay.
“You saved his life, son.”
“At the expense of Captain Trivette and”—I took a steadying breath and tried to keep from losing my shit—“Lieutenant Carter.” Will. You got Will killed.
He nodded slowly. “You were close to Carter?”
“Yes, sir. We went through flight school together, both Primary and Advanced Course. We were friends.” Against all odds.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
He lives for them. Will’s whispered order echoed through me.
I nodded, unable to say anything else about it. There was no opening that Pandora’s box. Not here. Not now. “The other Apache pilot?”
He shook his head. “No. CW3 Thorne didn’t survive.”
I nodded again like a fucking bobble-head doll. “Yeah, that’s what we thought, but everything out there went pretty quickly.”
The nurse came back in and smiled at us both. “Sir, we need to ready him for transport.”
“Of course.” He stood and turned to me in the doorway. “Lieutenant, I know today has been tragic for you, for the entire battalion, but you accomplished your mission. It took a great deal of bravery to do what your crew did. You can be proud. I know I am.”
“Thank you, sir.” My words were lip service, and we both knew it. I’d killed Will and Captain Trivette because of my single-minded need to save Jagger.
I wasn’t even sure I could regret it, which made me ten times worse of a person.
Will had died protecting me. How the fuck was I ever going to repay that? Earn that?
The nurse squeezed my left hand and pushed a drug into my IV. “This dose should get you through to Landstuhl. Transport is here, and you’re up next to go.”
“My phone?” I asked, my voice raised in panic. I had to call Ember. There was nothing as important, including oxygen.
The nurse handed me a Ziploc bag from the table across my little room. “Here are some of your personal effects. Your uniform was beyond repair. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said, digging through the small bag to reach my international cell phone. One new text message.
December: I bet you’re flying, but I wanted to tell you a quick I love you.
When had she sent it? While I was still in the air? On the ground? In the firefight?
Two soldiers came in, checked my chart, my bracelet, and confirmed my name while my suddenly noncompliant fingers fumbled with the numbers. They popped the brakes on my bed and began wheeling as the phone dialed.
Four rings and voicemail.
They wheeled me out, through the hallway, and the déjà vu hit again, taking me back four years. My eyelids and I resumed our drug-induced battle.
“Hi, you’ve reached Ember. I’m sorry I can’t get to the phone, but leave a message and I’ll call you back. If this is Josh, I love you, I miss you, and I wish I could kiss you!”
We came to Doc Howard’s picture, taking me over the very same floor he’d taken his last breath on.
Beep.
I locked eyes with him, even though he drifted in and out of focus as the meds took full effect. “Hey, baby. I’m okay. Banged up, but okay.” I stayed with him until we wheeled past. I’ll take care of her. I swear, she won’t be trapped under my dream. “December, I love you. Hold tight, I’m coming home to you.”
I managed to hit end before falling asleep.
The drugs started to wear off as we descended into Ramstein Air Force Base. I even felt us touch down. I fought to open my eyes, but the next thing I felt was being lifted into the transport vehicle.
I pried my lids open and turned to the side. I heard nurses talking. The vehicle was lit well enough to see Jagger across from me. He had an IV bag and looked like shit, but I probably wasn’t ready for a beauty pageant, either. He made it. No ventilator, so he was breathing on his own. He’ll see his baby born.
I blinked, the task way more difficult than it should have been, and tried to sober up. I needed to call Ember. Needed to hear her voice and tell her that I was okay, that I wasn’t going to die on her.
“We’re approaching the gate,” one of the nurses said.
“I seem to have misplaced my ID card,” I said quietly with a small tilt to my lips.
“Oh, this one has jokes.” One of them laughed. He leaned over me and then checked the drip on my IV. “You’ll be just fine, Lieutenant.”
As soon as I talked to her, I would be. “What time is it?”
“A little after two a.m. on Monday morning.”
Fuck, we’d crashed over twenty-four hours ago. “What the hell have you guys been giving me? Time-suck painkillers?”
He laughed. “Ah, you’re on the good stuff, son. But don’t get too used to it.”
Hell no. I wanted off it as soon as possible.
We parked at the hospital’s intake bay, and they started the unload process. I flexed my stomach in preparation to move and groaned, falling back to the bed.
“No, no, don’t move. Not yet,” the nurse said.
Yeah, that wasn’t going to be a fucking problem. Every part of me hurt, from the sharp throbbing in my leg to the ever-present ache in my chest where they’d removed my spleen. I couldn’t wait to see what I’d done to myself.
What would Ember think? The scars had never bothered her before, but these?
My thoughts cut short as they lowered me to the ground and began to wheel me through the hospital. “Can you put me next to Lieutenant Bateman?” I asked yet another nurse.
“I’ll see what we can do,” she said in a sugar-sweet voice. “Are you hungry? It’s the middle of the night, but I’ll see what I can get together for you.”
I shook my head. “The idea of food makes me want to hurl.”
Her smile was bright against her skin. “Well, let’s not do that, shall we? We can work on that in the morning.”
The lights above me passed at measured intervals, feeling more like a strobe-light than the last club I’d been to. An elevator ride and long hallway later, she wheeled me into my room.
There was a window to my left and a bathroom door straight in front of me. I didn’t have to pee…great, that could only mean one thing. “When do I get to pee on my own?” I asked her.
She gave me a knowing half smile. “As soon as you’re ready.”
“Yeah, can we make that happen now?”
She nodded. “Let me get the doctor. We’ll finish your intake, make sure you can get yourself to the bathroom on crutches, and solve that problem.”
“And my phone? I really need to call my fiancée.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Pretty little redhead?”
My mouth dropped. Had she gone through my wallet? Seen the picture on my kneeboard? “Yes.”
“Let’s get your intake finished, and then get you that call.”
The doctor came in, checked my vitals, poked at incisions that I wanted to punch him for, and gave me a general once-over. The trip to the bathroom was successful…and excruciating. My leg throbbed the minute it sank beneath heart-level, and that throb turned into a full-on screaming pressure the minute I stood, even with my weight on the opposite leg. It didn’t help that I’d dislocated the opposite shoulder and was basically hobbling with the full use of only one crutch.
I was a fucking mess. I looked briefly in the mirror as I left the bathroom. My face was ashen. There was a laceration above my eye and several scrapes along my right cheek. I’d gotten a glimpse of the white bandage that consumed my upper thigh. But I was alive.
Will wasn’t.
Captain Trivette wasn’t.
I struggled back to bed, accepting the nurse’s help because I was scared I’d end up on the fucking floor and tear something else. She raised my bed so I could sit up slightly, and her eyes sparkled with a grin. She was way too happy for three o’clock in the morning.
“How’s your pain level?”
“Four,” I answered through gritted teeth.
She arched a single eyebrow at me. “Liars don’t get phone calls.”
“Fine. Probably a seven.”
“Can you manage without pain meds a little longer? I have a feeling you’ll want a minute.”
“Yeah,” I answered quickly. I didn’t want to be drug-drunk when I talked to Ember.
“Okay, then give me just a second.” She walked to the door and opened it, making a “come here” motion to someone outside. Then she turned to me with a radiant smile. “She beat you here.”
My heart stopped as she walked through the door.
“December.” Thank you, God.
She cried my name and rushed to the right side of the bed. “Josh! You’re okay. You’re okay!” Her smile was water-logged, and the tears that fell from her eyes broke me in a way nothing else had.
She reached for my face but hesitated, uncertain. I grasped her hand with my left and pulled it to my cheek, leaning into it. “I was so scared,” she said, her lower lip trembling.
“I know, but I’m okay. I’m fine.” If I repeated it enough times, maybe she’d believe me. Hell, maybe I’d believe me.
She leaned down and brushed her lips against mine. I sank into her gentle kiss, savoring her taste, her soft sigh against my mouth—the small things about December I almost didn’t get to have again.
I’d almost died.
I’d almost left her alone in the world.
I’d almost been her sad story.
I lifted my left arm. “Come lay with me,” I whispered.
She looked up to the nurse, who hovered just outside the door.
“I think that might be against the rules.”
“I don’t give a fuck. Get in this bed.”
She walked around to my good side with an awkward laugh, her eyes darting over my body. “I…I don’t know where I can touch you.”
I grimaced, pain wracking my entire body as I moved over to the right. “I don’t know, either, but we’ll figure it out together, okay? But I’ll sleep ten times better with you in my arms.”
I knew the truth—she needed to be held just as much as I needed to hold her. I needed to feel her heartbeat, her warmth, hear her voice. I needed her to be real.
She nodded, kicked off her shoes, lifted the blanket, and crawled into bed next to me, careful not to touch any part of my chest. She fit perfectly beneath my arm as always, her scent filling me with home, belonging, love. I kissed the top of her head. “I love you. Everything else can be said in the morning, okay?”
She nodded. “I love you. Nothing else matters.”
The nurse came back in and clucked her tongue at us while she pushed pain meds through my IV. “If you pop those stitches, Lieutenant…”
Ember’s eyes flew wide. “You stay,” I ordered her. “She stays,” I told the nurse.
She waggled her finger at us. “For now.”
I smiled my thanks, and she left. I ran my thumb down Ember’s arm as my eyes started to droop again. For now was fine. For now was better than I had yesterday, or the month before.
For now was my forever.