Midnight Exposure (Midnight #1)(85)
“Yes.”
The warm liquid oozing over his fingers brought him back to the guy bleeding out on the pavement—and vivid memories he’d rather not have. “Call them. If you don’t have a phone, mine’s in my jacket pocket. Right side.”
She dug his cell out and made the call while Danny tried to keep his grip on reality. He was in Maine, not Iraq. That was snow on the ground, not sand. “How far’s the hospital?”
“Forty minutes.”
Danny was no medic, but he had plenty of experience watching guys bleed to death. Which brought him back to his private horror show. The shakes started deep in his gut and radiated outward as the blood kept coming. “He doesn’t have forty minutes. Tell them you need a medevac.”
Cold sweat broke out in the wake of the tremors. He concentrated on her voice, brave despite her terror. The sound of it washed over him like a rush of warm water. “What’s your name?”
“Mandy.” Her voice quivered.
Mandy.
“Please keep talking to me, Mandy.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Reed raised the head of the bed. His eyelids were lead curtains, and the long set of stitches across his ribs pulled. He glanced at the next bed, where Scott slept off the stress and the residual effects of the tranquilizer Nathan had slipped him. The other two boys were down the hall. Like Scott, Brandon was out cold. John was in worse shape, malnourished, dehydrated, and traumatized, but he was alive.
The sound of his son’s deep breathing threatened to lull Reed back to sleep. He forced his eyes open. No sleeping as long as Nathan was still on the loose.
Footsteps scraped. Reed tensed. The man who tapped lightly on the door frame was a stranger. Though his hair was black, his eyes were the same striking shade of turquoise as Jayne’s.
He stepped into the room and glanced at Reed’s sleeping roommate. “I’m Conor Sullivan,” he said in a low voice.
“Jayne’s not alone, is she?” Reed held out a hand.
Conor shook it. Jayne’s brother was tall and lanky like his sister. “Pat’s with her. He won’t leave her alone.”
Reed relaxed. “She’s all right?”
“Mild concussion. They’re keeping her overnight for observation. Thanks for saving her.”
“She saved herself. She’s amazing.” Reed hadn’t meant to blurt that out, but the emergency room doc had shot him full of something before he’d gone to work closing the wound. Plus, Reed had lost more than a few drops of blood. His eyes ached. He blinked hard.
Conor digested Reed’s comment for a few seconds. “Why don’t you get some sleep, Reed?”
Reed gave his head a quick shake. His eyes were pulled to his son’s sleeping form. “Not as long as Nathan is out there.”
“Jaynie sent me to watch over you two.” Conor crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall. “Go ahead and close your eyes. You rescued my sister. You and your son are with us now, and we take care of our own.”
Danny moved through the hospital corridors. Machines beeped. The bite of antiseptic and the stench of human misery competed for top billing in his nose—and mind. Pain radiated from his injured hand. Images of explosions and shock and blood rushed through his head. Screams echoed in his ears, the inhuman screaming of men who bodies had been blown to pieces. Or whose friends had been blown to pieces.
Danny had been bleeding out too fast to scream, but the horror was clear as a desert day.
The petite brunette was sitting alone in the surgical waiting room.
Mandy.
Danny hesitated at the threshold, just looking at her. What could he possibly do for her? She was wholesome, lovely, and perfect, while he was damaged inside and out.
She was silent, her eyes blank and her body too still. Numb disbelief. That state when the mind cannot process the horrors presented to it.
That Danny could understand.
He stepped into the room. When she didn’t move, Danny lowered his body into the chair next to her. “Any word?”
She turned to look at him. The deep blue of her eyes swam with sadness. Danny shifted on the upholstered seat.
“Ms. Brown?” A green-scrubbed surgeon stepped into the room. “He made it out of surgery. You can see him for a few minutes.”
Mandy rose, hesitantly, as if afraid of what she was going to see. “Is he going to be all right?”
The doctor stopped and rubbed a hand over a weary face. “Honestly, I don’t know. Right now his chances are fifty-fifty. If he makes it till morning, we’ll reassess.”
Danny tagged along behind the doctor and Mandy. No one challenged his presence. In the intensive care unit, Danny waited outside the glass cubicle while Mandy went inside.
“Five minutes.” The doctor stepped out.
At a counter along the wall, a nurse was reading machines and typing into a laptop. In the bed, Jed was fully automated. Tubes, wires, ventilator. The whole shebang. Danny had seen better color on a corpse. A monitor shrieked. Danny and Mandy both jumped.
The nurse adjusted a dial, and the machine went quiet.
Beep, beep, hiss.
Mandy walked to the bedside and reached out. Her hand hovered a few inches over the sheets like she was looking for a place to touch Jed that wasn’t connected to something. A sob hitched her breath. She pressed a fist to her mouth.