Hard Beat(74)

“Tanner? Can you hear me, Tanner?”

I feel like I’m on the wrong end of a megaphone, sound siphoned through a pinhole, but at least the roaring pain in my head has dulled to a nagging ache behind my eyes and at the base of my skull. My eyelids are heavy, wanting to droop back down, but between my name being called again and my sudden awareness of everything, I force my eyes open as confusion gives way to worry.

And dread.

“Beaux. Where’s…?” My voice breaks as I try to make the question sound as urgent as it is in my head, but I know at best I sound groggy.

Patient brown eyes assess me as I look around and place myself in the military combat hospital on the forward operating base. “Tanner, do you know where you are?” I start to nod and stop immediately as the pain radiates through my head. “Don’t move. The pain will ebb slowly. You took a pretty big hit to the head. Have a slight concussion. So much better than we’d expect with the blow we were told you took,” he says as he writes something down on the chart in his hand. “You’re a lucky man. We gave you some sedatives to allow your brain to rest for a bit, so it may feel like you’re having a hard time waking up.”

I don’t care about me, I want to yell. How is Beaux? Where is she? Tell me she’s okay!

“You’ve been here a little over a day with a concussion and some minor scrapes and stitches. You’re likely to be sore with how close you were to the blast zone, but you’re lucky those are your only injuries.”

I try to process that I’ve been here over a day. At least twenty-four hours. A lot can happen in twenty-four hours. And while his words are delivered in a soothing Southern accent, they make me even more upset because if I’m lucky and I was that close to the epicenter, what the f*ck does that mean for Beaux? Emotions riot through me, so many of them that I can’t pinpoint one to grab and hold on to other than my need to know that she’s all right.

“Where is she?” I ask, trying to sit up. All I can focus on through the stabbing pain in my head from my sudden movement is that I need to see her.

“Whoa! Lie back down, Tanner,” he says with his hands on my shoulders, pressing me back down as I continue to resist, unable to accept that he’s not answering me. “You need rest.”

“No, I need to know where she is.” It feels like I’m asking for the umpteenth time and this only adds more panic to the fear lying deep down in the darkness I just broke free from. The one I think I intentionally left behind because it can’t be true; she can’t be dead.

And when the actual thought crosses my mind, when I allow myself to think the worst for the first time instead of wrestling against it, all of my fight leaves me. I let the doctor push me back to the pillow as I search the expression on his face and his eyes that won’t meet mine for the answer I most fear.

“Tanner!” Sarge’s voice booms into the empty space, and the relief in his voice and concern in his eyes are a dead giveaway of how serious the situation is. “Doc told me you were coming around, so —”

“Where’s Beaux?” I demand, not caring or wanting to talk about myself. The fact that his steps falter gives me enough of an answer.

“She took a big hit,” he says softly. The man I’ve always known to have a stiff upper lip doesn’t have one right now. That doesn’t sit well with me.

“Where is she?” I grit out, wanting to shake him and tell him to tell me something I don’t already know. I may feel like I’ve been knocked around by a baseball bat to the back of the head, but I’m not stupid, I know stalling when I see it, and I don’t think he gets that internally I’ve been shredded to pieces waiting for an answer.

“She’s on her way to Landstuhl,” he says, voice quiet, tone grave.

I hang my head for a moment and close my eyes as I absorb his answer. The single comment brings me unfathomable relief because God, yes, she’s alive and then uncontrollable fear, because if she’s on her way to the largest military medical center outside of the United States, then she’s most likely critical. The U.S. military doesn’t just fly people there for scrapes and bruises. Let alone nonmilitary personnel.

The air whooshes from my lungs from the elephant-sized amount of pressure sitting on it. I try to process the situation, come to terms with possibilities I don’t want to face again.

“Get me on a plane to Germany.” As I make the demand, I start to rip leads off from under my hospital gown, making the machines around me beep with obnoxious warnings. The doctor whose name I don’t even know yet steps forward and tries to stop me. Despite the pounding in my head and how my muscles feel like I just went a hundred rounds in the gym, I grip his biceps and hold him at arm’s length. By now I’m running on pure adrenaline.

“We need to monitor you, sir. You —”

“I’m alive, right? That’s all you need to know.” I dismiss the doctor without a further thought, loosening my grip on him before I turn my eyes back to Sarge. “How is she?”

He visibly works a swallow down his throat. “You guys are lucky you were wearing armor.”

“That’s not telling me shit, Sarge.” No one can mistake the warning tone in my voice.

“She’s critical. Unconscious. A few broken bones. They were mostly concerned about brain injuries at first, but after a few scary moments, they got her stabilized here before putting her on a transport to LRMC.”