Hard Beat(75)

I hang on to the few positive words I can, hold them close to my vest, and don’t let go. “You said stable.”

“No, I said she was critical but stable,” he says as I stare at him, my jaw clenched and heart racing as I try to figure out what exactly that means.

“We were concerned about the possibility of a traumatic brain injury at first. Her brain was swelling from taking the brunt of the blast. We got her broken arm taken care of, wrapped up her ribs, took some scans of her head, and once we saw the pressure inside was ebbing off, we opted to transport her to Landstuhl where they can give her the treatment she might need since we’re limited in our capacity here.”

I try to wrap my head around the one term that scares the f*ck out of me. “Brain injury?” I swear my voice sounds like I’m scraping it from the back of my throat; it’s that difficult to find the words.

“Yes, but that can refer to many things, so let’s hold off on jumping to conclusions. She was responsive to stimuli, which is huge, and the swelling stopped, so that’s the biggest positive. We were just concerned about a few things and thought we’d better be safe than sorry, put in a request to send her off, and got the okay, so we did.”

There’s an iota of relief from the constant worry that floods me, but it does nothing to abate my need to see her, hold her hand, breathe in the same air as her. “Thank you,” I whisper with an acknowledging nod, “and I’m sorry about…” The doctor waves his hand in a never-mind gesture in regard to my apology for how I struggled against him.

When I eye Sarge again, the look on his face says he already knows I’m not going to back down. “Tell me you’ve got some way to get me to her or else give me a goddamn phone so that I can manage it.”

A war of wills happens between us before his eyes flicker over toward the doctor and then back toward me. “I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not doing shit until the doc clears you to leave.” Then Sarge and the doc meet each other’s eyes in a silent agreement. They’d better not be f*cking with me right now or I’ll walk out of this sterile prison on my own accord and get to her any way I can. I have to see her. It’s the only way I think I’ll be able to stop this ache in my chest that has nothing to do with the blast.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours to get me there,” I demand even though I know I don’t have a single leg to stand on. I’m not military personnel. He is under no obligation to get me to Germany to see her, and yet I feel so f*cking helpless right now that I do the only thing I can: boss him around with the hope that it will work.

“You need to rest now,” the doctor says as he looks up from his clipboard, the stern warning reinforced by the look in his eyes. Shit, now that I know Sarge is going to work on getting me to Beaux, that she’s currently stable, I realize just how f*cking much my head is pounding.

So I let my head fall back against the pillow and inhale a deep breath as I close my eyes. I instantly feel better without the bright light of the room, but my mind still wanders.

Still worries.

Still relives that look on her face as she ran toward me, knowing I wasn’t going to make it to save her in time.





Chapter 22





T

here’s a lot of time to think on a seven-hour flight.

A lot of time to look at the same five photographs of Beaux from the morning of our embed mission over and over. Her silhouette against the sky, her cautious smile, and the selfie we took together that shows two people in love.

Except only one of them knows it.

I try to sleep to escape the pain in my body and the more prevalent ache in my heart, but the deep rumble of the C-17 Globemaster III transport vibrates through my chest in a way that prevents me from getting any real rest. I feel like I’ve been in the center of a tornado, both mind and body battered and bruised and heart put through a wringer. Thank God that Sarge was able to pull some strings so I could hitch a ride on a plane of medical evacuees heading to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany just beyond my twenty-four-hour time frame.

From my tiny little jump seat at the front of the plane so that I’m out of the way of the critical care team taking care of wounded soldiers, I can overhear the medics relaying to one another they need to buckle up for landing.

I owe Sarge big-time. I’m sure he’s breaking every rule in the military handbook to get me on this flight, but I think he blames himself a bit for what happened. And he shouldn’t. It’s not his job to watch Beaux or me on an embed. It’s not his responsibility to know Beaux has a soft spot for dogs and that she was going to see a wounded animal and want to help.

No. That’s my job. And once again I failed – and I have berated myself over it left and right in the past thirty hours. I’ve gone over the entire chain of events and blame myself for getting caught up in my conversation with Rosco without looking around more, not that that would have solved anything. Beaux made it clear on more occasions than I care to count that she’s stubborn and has a mind of her own.

I just have to hope she uses that obstinacy right now to fight like hell to overcome her injuries.

The frustrating part is that I don’t even have enough energy to be mad at Beaux for not following the rules, because all I want is to see her. The measly bits of information I’ve gotten haven’t told me shit.