Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(93)

“You stay with me, Wes, do you hear?” I told him, as I took off my own rucksack. “You fucking stay with me. Don’t die on me, or I’ll fucking kill you.”

I thought I’d vomit from pain as my rucksack strap brushed my left elbow.

“Medic!” I screamed, as I worked to get my aid kit open. “Help me, please, I need a medic!”

Each platoon had one. I hoped ours—Wilson—wasn’t dead, but we’d each been trained in combat lifesaving. I dug into my rucksack and found my CAT. One handed, I fought to slip the belt-like tourniquet up Wes’s right leg, until it was above the wound. I turned the clip around and around, tightening the belt until the clip wouldn’t turn any more. The bright red blood stopped flowing out of the ragged hole in his leg. I strapped the clip into place.

“Medic,” I screamed. “For fuck’s sake, help me! I need a medic!”

I went to my aid kit again, and grabbed my XSTAT. A lifetime ago, we’d laughingly called them the tampon shots. I tore the package off the over-sized syringe with my teeth, and put the nozzle at the gunshot on Wes’s hip. I depressed the plunger and the absorbent sponges filled the gaping wound, and were instantly soaked with blood.

I winced at the sight of his other wounds—a hole in his lower back, another higher, under his body armor. They needed tending but I didn’t have the training, and I was fighting for consciousness. Dizziness and weakness flooded me. My vision grayed out and then came back again. I could do nothing else for him.

I sat on my ass, hard, exhausted. I sucked in a deep breath and put everything I had behind it.

“Medic!” I screamed so loud my voice turned ragged at the end. Tears flooded my eyes again. My words turned small against the noise of war. “Jesus Christ, someone help him.”

A dull, deep pain throbbed in my arm, as I moved to where Wes’s head lay, his cheek on the sand. I weakly slapped at his ashen skin.

“Wake up, Wes,” I said hoarsely. “Wake up, right the fuck now. Don’t you die, Wes. Please…”

I slumped back against the rubble. There were no more gunshots sounding around us; through the tinny ringing in in my ears, I heard shouts, a woman’s cries. I didn’t know if we’d won or lost, only that each ticking second was bringing Wes closer to death.

I took his slack hand in mine and held it. My head lolled against the wall of rubble.

“You hold on, okay?” I said. “Listen to me. My voice. Don’t go away, Wes. You stay and listen, okay?”

I shut my eyes for a moment, tears squeezed out. Then I sucked in a breath, pushed the grief back.

“Remember the time you and I…we were about…fourteen…We ran into Kayla Murphy at the 7-11 after school? She was with some friends, and she smiled at you…You’d had a crush on her forever. You told our buddies about it in Jason Kingsley’s rec room later that night. We were sitting around…talking about the girls we liked…and trying to be tough.”

I swallowed hard, my throat felt like I’d swallowed glass and sand.

“We were all…boasting about whose ass we wanted to tap, and ‘fucking that pussy’…As if we weren’t all virgins.” I chuckled tiredly. “But not you. You were shooting darts, and you…you had a crush on Kayla Murphy. I remember it…you kept shooting while telling us you wanted to kiss her… You said, ‘in the little well of her collarbone, where her heart beats.’”

In my dimming vision, I saw shapes running toward us. Silhouettes of men. Our men.

“All the guys just stared at you,” I said, “and you turned around…a dart in your hand, like ‘oh fuck, what did I just say?’ But instead of taking it back or making a joke… you shrugged and said, ‘Yep, that’s what I’d do.’ And kept shooting those damn darts.”

I chuckled, as Wilson, Jeffries and a couple other guys surrounded us. Wilson, the medic, went to work on Wes immediately while Jeffries—his voice distant—told me a chopper was inbound.

I kept talking to Wes and holding his hand.

“The other guys…they had no idea what to make of that. They stared at you then burst out laughing, remember? They thought… you were kidding. I laughed too, but I knew you weren’t kidding. You weren’t fucking kidding at all, were you, Wes?”

Time wandered away from me and when it came back, Wilson and his team had bandaged Wes’s midsection, and were now giving a three-count to turn him over and lay him on his back, on the stretcher.

They’d removed his body armor, and something fell out of the vest pocket. A bent, bloodstained notebook. The chopper arrived; sand and wind and shouts buffeted me, but I reached for the notebook and snatched it just as it flapped on the sand, like a wounded bird about to take off.

Wilson was trying to tend to my arm while telling me to get ready to get in the chopper. I ignored him. While they loaded Wes, I flipped the pages of the notebook. Through my hazy vision, I read the poem there, scratched in ink, tearstained, and smudged with blood.

Wes’s words.

Wes’s tears.

Wes’s blood.

At the bottom, his signature. His name, not mine. Like a confession.

“Yes, Wes,” I said, tears streaming down my own cheeks. “The truth. This is the truth.”

We climbed into the chopper, and more medics worked frantically over my best friend. Saline drip and an oxygen mask, but I saw one shake his head grimly.