Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(9)

“What, what, Doctor?” Amy Sullivan, the assisting surgeon, asked.

I wasn’t in a cave. There was no hungry lion. It was fine. The numbers were good. The ventilator was just…

“Can someone check the ventilator?”

“Ventilator checks out,” the tech’s voice came from behind me.

“You can tell that in two seconds? Can I have a swab, please?” I prepped for the graft. “Does it sound normal to you?” I said quietly to Amy.

“Yeah. Are you all right?”

I was sweating. My heart was racing. My adrenal glands were firing on all cylinders. This didn’t happen to me. I always put the right feelings in the right boxes and slid the deadbolt closed until I needed them. I didn’t make up stories, and I didn’t hear voices in the equipment.

But the feeling of being besieged was as familiar as it was real, and I knew how to handle it.

This was war, and I could do my job in the middle of it.

“I’m fine. Let’s put this guy’s heart back in.”



* * *



The feeling followed me that night to our first anniversary dinner. When I saw her outside the restaurant, I kissed her and held her hand while we waited for our table. I decided not to ruin the evening. When I took her hand over the table and she tucked her foot between mine, I decided she didn’t need to know at all. What was I supposed to say? “I was sure there was something but there wasn’t?” Or, “Can you please diagnose me before bed?”

Being married to a psychiatrist had upsides. She prescribed sleeping pills when I needed them. In Fallujah, when I was in the field hospital OR for eight days without rest, she’d managed vitamins and enough amphetamine to keep me sharp enough to not kill anyone. When we were deployed together, I never worried about her getting killed. But nothing kept me sane at home like loving her. She avoided her comfort zone, never got bored or was boring. She was serious but not dull. She was a bulwark against my worst impulses, and my God, my God I loved her more than I thought I could love anything.

Her opinion meant everything to me. She’d never think I was weak, yet I was terrified she would.

Truth incoming.

I didn’t want her to tell me it was nothing, even though I hoped it was.

I didn’t want her to have some easy cure, but I didn’t want to continue like this.

I didn’t want to become a patient in my own marriage.

I wanted it to go away by itself. Prove it was a bad day and that I could handle it at the same time.

But it didn’t. The second night with no relief from the feeling something was there, as Greyson breathed softly next to me, I lay awake in the silent dark, trying to isolate the problem. If I could build a wall around this feeling, hem it in, maybe I could identify it and throw it away. Pick the shrapnel out of my own guts to plink plink in the tray, shard by shard, observe them without the crust of shit and blood.

I must have been seconds from sleep. The shadows got deeper, outlines shifting with the passage of the moon in the window, taking on new, more threatening shapes.

Threatening, and yet… not.

My shrapnel had a shape, and it was compassion. A silent empathy and gentleness just this side of sweet. The Thing watching me, wanting me, the violent pressure on my mind I’d just gotten a shape around had a personality, and it was kind.

My body jolted with a cortisol flood, waking Greyson. She sat up on one arm. Her long straight hair covered her face in a veil. “Caden?”

“It’s okay,” I said. “Just a dream.”

Why the fuck did I say that?

“Can you tell me—?”

“No.”

Twisting to her side, she lay down facing me, hands tucked under her pillow. She stayed silent for a few seconds. “You should write it down.”

“Go to sleep.” I stroked her hair away from her face.

When I’d met her, she kept her hair just long enough to keep in a ponytail, but short enough to care for easily. Now that we were civilians, she was letting it grow.

I loved her so much, I wanted to marry her every single day for the rest of my life.

Then a realization hit me like Reveille in the morning.

The Thing? The pressure? The entity that had its own personality that was all gentle kindness?

The Thing loved her too.

Maybe my mental weakness came from being tired, or hiding things from Greyson. Maybe I was jealous of a figment of my imagination. Maybe I wanted to show it who was in charge here.

For all those reasons, and some more complex instinct, I ran my hand down her back. She wore satin nightgowns, a civilian pleasure she reserved for herself and me. She sighed when my palm landed on her ass.

“Doctor?” One eye opened under the web of hair that covered her face. “Do you know what time it is?”

“It’s time for you to get on your hands and knees.”

“Excuse me?”

I got up on my knees and grabbed her hips on either side, lifting them over the mattress. She flopped onto her hands, half twisted.

I bent my body over hers, reaching around her waist and talking softly in her ear. “If ‘excuse me’ means no, then say no.”

She swiped her hand around her head to get the hair off her face, looking back at me with an unfiltered gaze. “It doesn’t mean no, but…”