Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(30)
Oh shit. Oh, please God, no. Leo was no doctor, but he’d been in the field long enough to know a punctured liver when he saw one.
Doc glanced up at him, his expression a terrible perversion of its usual wholesome Midwestern self. And with that one look, he confirmed what Leo hadn’t allowed himself to contemplate since the moment they dragged Rusty into the helicopter. Their friend and teammate, their brother in everything but blood, wasn’t going to walk away from this one.
Leo let his head drop back on the column of his neck, gritting his jaw so hard it was a wonder his teeth didn’t crumble. And for the first time in his life, he cursed God or Fate or whoever the hell else might be responsible for this unforgivable mistake. And it was a mistake. Because Rusty was the best of them. The man they all counted on to keep them sane, keep them grounded when things went pear-shaped and the bottom dropped out from under their asses.
This wasn’t supposed to be happening. It couldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t be happening!
Fuck you! he silently yelled to everyone and no one in particular. Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuuuuuuck you!
If he’d been screaming the words aloud, he would have shredded his vocal cords, flayed his throat raw. But he held them in until they exploded inside his chest like a handful of live grenades, burning and flaming until his heart and lungs were reduced to ashes.
And that’s when he felt it…the warm liquid pouring down his face.
For a moment, he thought maybe he’d been grazed by a bullet. But, no. A second later he knew it wasn’t blood that coursed unchecked over his cheeks. Like Bran, he could no more stop the tears spilling from his eyes than the mighty Mississippi could stop itself from spilling into the Gulf.
“LT! Madre de Dios!” Romeo called back again after Mad Dog finally laid off the trigger on the big sawgun. “How the hell is he?”
Leo lowered his head and turned to Romeo. He didn’t need to speak the awful words aloud. His tears and the agony on his face said it all.
Romeo’s mouth fell open, his nostrils flaring wide as his own eyes welled with wetness. And for a couple of seconds, the two of them shared the soul-shredding knowledge that these were Rusty’s last minutes. The moment stretched and contracted, taking an eternity and simultaneously seeming over in the blink of an eye. Using his hands to wipe the moisture from his cheeks, Romeo jerked his chin in a quick downward motion of understanding, casting Rusty one last, lingering look before turning back to the helicopter’s controls.
There was nothing Romeo could do for Rusty now. Nothing any of them could do except maybe try to make him comfortable.
It was as if Doc had read Leo’s mind. When Leo swung back around, he found the man reaching into his medical go-bag and pulling out two syringes of morphine.
“N-not yet, Doc,” Rusty garbled when he saw what was in Doc’s hands “Not until you all p-promise me t-to—”
Again, Rusty was unable to go on, coughing up life-sustaining blood that flecked the front of Leo’s grubby fatigues. With each convulsion, Leo could feel warm, sticky fluid spurt against the hands he was still using to plug as many holes as he could, though doing so only prolonged the inevitable.
“Anything, man,” he whispered to Rusty, his choked voice a parody of its usual timbre. Then he realized Rusty hadn’t heard him above the rhythmic hum of the overhead rotors, so he tried again, this time yelling, “We’ll promise you anything you want!”
“Don’t re-up,” Rusty pleaded, referring to the practice of signing another contract with the military after one’s old contract expired. “Don’t let them have one more…m-minute of your time,” he managed to finish after dragging in a shallow, hacking breath.
And even though great gusts of wind were howling through the chopper’s open door, Leo recognized that sound for exactly what it was. He’d read somewhere that it was referred to as a “rale.” Which pretty accurately summed the sound up since it was a cross between a hair-raising wheeze and a bone-rattling clatter. But regardless of what name you gave it, the fact remained that terrible noise meant just one thing. Death…that bloody, fickle, heartless bastard was hovering somewhere nearby.
Chills erupted up the length of Leo’s spine in opposition to the heat of the air around him. He sucked in a tortured breath that brought with it the smells of sweat, aviation fuel, and the iron-rich tanginess of vast amounts of congealing blood. Shuddering at the terrible clarity of it all, he knew this moment, right here, right now, would forever be etched into his brain, scored into his soul as if it’d been carved there with an oyster knife.
“Promise me,” Rusty insisted, his voice steadier in these, his last few moments. It usually happened that way, the body filled with one final burst of energy, the mind brimming with a strange terminal lucidity. “Promise me you won’t bleed anymore for the flag.” As if to prove his point, he swiped a hand through the puddle of blood on the chopper’s floor and lifted it up. Rivulets of the stuff ran down his wrist.
Christ almighty! Leo understood for the first time in his life what it was to be heartbroken. And what surprised him most was that the condition came with actual physical pain. His chest hurt so bad he could barely draw a breath.
“Promise me you’ll all quit the Navy and live your l-lives. Live them for me b-because I—” Rusty couldn’t go on then, tormented as he was with a spasm of coughing.