Hard Beat

Until there is nothing left.

Beaux.

You promised you’d always come back to me.

Chapter 21

I struggle to swim above the water. I claw my way to just beneath the surface with lungs burning, the sky in sight, only to be yanked back down. And I struggle against it less and less because when I’m swallowed by the darkness again, I can go back to the rooftop with Beaux, blowing bubbles, making love. It’s so much easier to be here in the warmth of the hot sun and the sweet taste of her kiss than to endure the ache in my head when I try to open my eyes.

I can’t keep track of how many times I resurface, but the penlight in my eyes and the cool burn of something like ice being injected into the top of my hand are a

Next time.

But then the minute I’m firmly ensconced back in the depths of my subconscious, the look on Beaux’s face as she realized what was happening flashes before me.

I never told her I loved her. It’s on constant refrain in my mind when I come to and the only thing I know for sure before the darkness steals my thoughts from me once again.

The void of sound and pain is so soothing that when I reach the surface the next time, the beeping that’s muffled in my ears confuses me for a moment. The bright light that hits my eyes as I break free from the weight of the water holding me down causes me to squint and then blink rapidly as I try to focus on the room around me.

“Ta

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. “Ta

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 fuck 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, Ta

“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.

“Ta

“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 perso

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 ru

“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.”

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 fuck 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.”