Home Front(73)

She needed to think. Where was she? What had happened?

A tall man in a white coat came to her bedside. He was wearing purple gloves and a white mask over his nose and mouth. He pushed back the curtains that created a semicircle of privacy.

A bed. Yes. That was it. She was in a bed.

“Chief,” the man said. “You’re awake.”

She tried to speak, but the tube made her gag.

Pain. She was in pain. It came to her suddenly, swallowed her; had it been there all along? Beside her, a monitor started to beep faster.

“Calm down, Chief,” the stranger said through his mask. “You’ve been in a terrible accident. Do you remember? Your helicopter was shot down.”

His voice drew out the word, elongated it: ac-ci-dent.

Smoke. Burning bits of metal. Tami.

Adrenaline surged through her. Pain spiked—where was it coming from? She couldn’t tell, couldn’t isolate it.

She wanted to ask about Tami, about her crew, but she couldn’t make anything work. She stared up at the stranger, thinking please …

She imagined herself reaching out, grabbing the man’s arm, demanding to know how her crew was, but she couldn’t do any of it. She thought of Tami, remembered holding her, promising her they’d be okay.

Blood on her face … everywhere.

The man did something to the bag hanging by her bed, and, slowly, the fog came back, rolled around her, softened the view until she was far away from here. She was on her own back porch, with her feet up on the railing, listening to the high squeak of Lulu’s voice as she ran around the yard and to the even, reliable whooshing of the distant waves.

*



Pain snapped her awake.

Jolene opened her eyes, gasping, desperate to fill her lungs with air. The tube was out of her mouth now. How long had she been here, drifting in and out of consciousness?

She couldn’t track the passing of time. When she woke, it was a barely there kind of waking; she was foggy, confused. A few times nurses had come into her room, and she’d pleaded with them for news, but all she ever got were poor you looks of sadness and a promise to call the captain, but if he’d ever came back, she’d been asleep.

She was awake now, though. Her bed was angled up a little, and some of the machines were gone. The overhead lights were harsh, unforgiving. In the small window to the right she could see that it was rainy. For a muddy, drawn-out second, she thought she was home …

She studied the room—saw the small metal chair positioned by the window, and a TV tucked up in the corner between the wall and the ceiling, and gray-painted walls. Then she slowly looked down. Her right arm was in a white plaster cast from elbow to wrist. But that wasn’t what got her attention.

Her right leg hardly looked like a leg at all. It was positioned on top of the crisp white covers, bent just a little at the knee. From midthigh down it was a swollen, blackened, festering mess; it looked like an overcooked sausage against the snowy sheets. Four big metal screws held it together, kept it a leg at all. A hose connected the leg to a vacuum of some kind that sucked fluids from the wound, collected them in a plastic bag. At the ankle, splinters of bone jutted out. And the smell … it was terrible, part burn, part rot.

She gagged at the sight of it, clamped a hand over her mouth; bile pushed up her throat. “Oh, my God…” she whispered.

Her door opened, and a tall man in a white coat walked into the room. “You’re awake,” he said, pulling a mask up over his mouth and nose.

He came up to the other side of the bed, stood beside her. “I’m Captain Sands.”

“H-how’s my crew?”

“Chief, you need to stay calm.”

Jolene struggled to move, but she had no strength in her upper body. The meager effort left her breathing hard, sweating. “My crew … and Tami,” she asked quietly, looking up. “Chief Flynn?”

“Chief Flynn is upstairs.”

“She’s alive,” Jolene said, slumping back into the pillows. “Thank God. Can I talk to her?”

“Not yet, Chief. She suffered a traumatic brain injury. We’re monitoring her very closely.”

“Hix?”

“Sergeant Hix is here, too. He took some shrapnel to his thigh, but he’s healing quickly. Your other gunner, Owen Smith, didn’t survive the crash. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, my God.” Smitty. She remembered his bright smile … and the gaping hole in his chest. I’m holding this space for you, Chief. I’d want to talk to my mom.

“Now, Chief, can we talk about you?” the doctor asked gently.

She looked up at him blearily, hating the pity she saw in his eyes. “I’m dying. Is that what you’re going to tell me?”

“You were seriously injured, Jolene. I won’t lie to you about that. Infection is the biggest concern in blast injuries like yours. Everything gets embedded—dirt, glass, bits of metal. We’re worried about gangrene in your leg. We’re debriding it every day. And you lost so much blood, we’re concerned about your liver and kidney function. You’re also scheduled for surgery today on your right hand. Shrapnel damaged a nerve in your wrist. We’re hopeful you’ll regain some use of it, though.”

Some use of it.

“The wounds on your face should heal in time, but we’re watching them closely. Again, it’s the blast injuries.”