Chapter 25 #2
Oliver blinked slowly and looked up at Aberlour kneeling next to him. He opened his mouth to reply, but instead he coughed. A broken kind of sound, like a gurgle and a cough combined. Blood ran from his mouth and his eyes shot wide open in complete panic.
“Marcus!” Abe yelled to catch his medic’s attention, as Marcus was focused intently on searching his pack for more bandages to cover the bullet wound.
“Internal bleeding,” Marcus said, followed by vicious cursing. “Keep him awake,” he ordered Aberlour, as he continued to pack the wound.
“You hear that, Oli? You have to stay awake! Stay with me!” Aberlour pleaded urgently, gripping Oli’s shoulders to get him to look at him again.
“Cold,” he responded faintly, his eyes filled with confusion and pain. “Cold, Abe. Wh—” but he coughed up blood again as he struggled to breathe.
“Oli, hold on! For fuck’s sake, where’s the damned chopper?” Aberlour yelled.
JD ran to the landing zone they’d reconned a few hours before to guide the incoming chopper.
“Carlos, help us move him,” Marcus ordered, positioning Oliver for transport while maintaining pressure on the bandages.
Aberlour supported his upper torso.
“Go!” Marcus said as they all lifted Oli at the same time.
It seemed to take forever to reach the medevac chopper and get him situated so the medics could start emergency treatment.
There was talk of blood transfusion and oxygen levels, but it was all a jumbled blur for Aberlour. His attention remained solely on Oli as he sat next to his head and held his hand. All the while, Oli struggled to maintain eye contact.
“We’re almost home, O,” Aberlour said encouragingly, trying to sound convincing.
Oli didn’t speak. The corners of his mouth pulled slightly in the ghost of a smile before—
“Oliver!” Aberlour cried out as his eyes drifted closed and he went limp.
Marcus threw his arms around Aberlour to keep him from jumping onto the gurney as the medics began resuscitation procedures.
The setting, along with the nervous hum running through his veins made the situation all too familiar to Aberlour. Except this time, instead of Carlos lying on an operating room table, it was Darling.
His Darling.
Aberlour stumbled to the nearest trashcan and emptied his stomach, not for the first time.
All that came out were the two sips of coffee he’d managed to swallow—the rest was all grief and worry, which crawled right back into him as he straightened up.
When he stood up and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, he caught Ghost’s inquisitive look but looked away.
The medevac chopper had flown them straight to the US military hospital in Ramstein, Germany, where a team of four trauma surgeons instantly whisked Oliver off to get him stabilized and begin operating on him. That had been eight hours ago.
Everyone but Aberlour had come and gone from the waiting room.
He’d parked his ass in one of the hard plastic chairs and refused to move until they got news—any news—about Oliver’s condition.
The Major General issued a summons, but Aberlour had flat out refused to see him.
Worried that Aberlour was putting their careers at risk by defying a direct order, Marcus hastily agreed to go in his place.
Aberlour had no doubts whatsoever that there would be consequences for his disobedience.
But he just couldn’t find a single fuck to give while Oliver was just down the hall from the waiting room, fighting for his life while the trauma team was doing everything possible to save him.
Every painful thud of his heart told him he had to stay right there, and that somehow, some way, Oliver might know he was there, waiting for him to come back to him.
Nothing else in this world mattered. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing.
“You should get some sleep.” JD had just walked into the room, looking a lot better than he had a couple of hours ago. He offered Abe a bottle of water.
“I’m fine,” he answered curtly, refusing to take the water.
“Fuck off!” Carlos growled angrily. Everyone turned to face him, looking surprised at his outburst. He’d come and gone a few times, growing increasingly haggard each time.
“Excuse me?” Aberlour gave him a chance to retract his comment.
Abruptly, Ghost sat up in his chair, looking back and forth between them, prepared to intervene.
“Oli nearly died. You’re not fine! Stop trying to push us away. You’re not fine, Abe! You haven’t been fine since he hooked up with Abby!”
All eyes turned towards Aberlour. Waiting—for confirmation, information, a breakdown—something. Something Aberlour couldn’t give them. He gritted his teeth in frustration.
Wordlessly, he snatched the bottle of water out of JD’s hand and turned away, blatantly ignoring his team.
“Fucker!” Carlos snarled.
About two hours later, the waiting room door opened. Aberlour leaped out of his chair, thinking it might be one of the medical team coming in to give them an update. His heart hammered away in his chest in anticipation. But in walked none other than that fucking Abigail, instead.
His knees nearly gave out on him from sick disappointment.
She’d been crying and was an absolute mess. Her hair, her make-up, her outfit were in total disarray. She looked like a torn-up Barbie doll. Making a beeline for Aberlour, she fell into his arms, sobbing and blubbering incoherently.
“How is he?” Finally managing to speak clearly, she pulled back, looked up at him, and then glanced around the room.
Aberlour simply stared down at her in shock. None of this made any sense. How she could be here, at all, and even worse, why in the fucking hell did she have to collapse in his arms?
The overwhelming urge to lift her up and throw her across the room was sudden but not unwarranted. As if sensing Aberlour was mere seconds away from doing exactly that, Ghost rushed over and pulled her away from Aberlour.
“We don’t know yet,” Ghost said, voice low and soothing, running his hands up and down her arms gently.
“What happened?” She looked stressed as she waited for someone to fill her in on the details.
“An accident,” JD said, shooting Aberlour a worried glance. They couldn’t tell her anything. She shouldn’t even be here.
How the fuck was she here?
“Was it bad? What happened!” She repeated, borderline desperate, Ghost trying to calm her down as she began sobbing harshly.
Aberlour watched, feeling like he’d stumbled into a parallel universe. She shouldn’t be allowed into this US military facility. She had no right to be here. Not now. Not when—
The door to the medical suites opened, and Team Specter turned to see a female doctor enter the waiting room. Aberlour had never seen her before. She hadn’t been one of the four trauma surgeons who’d taken over the treatment of Oliver as soon as he’d arrived.
“Staff Sergeant Darling is alive,” she stated first thing.
Aberlour collapsed into the nearest chair. He’d have fallen to the floor if he hadn’t been standing right next to a chair. The doctor scrutinized him for a moment before she continued.
“He’s lucky to be alive. There was a lot of internal bleeding along with a collapsed lung. He’ll be out of action for a while, but he’ll make a complete recovery.”
Aberlour’s head felt like he was under water, trying to reach the surface of murky, dark waves, and failing. He was weak, confused, and overwhelmed.
He’d be fine. Oliver would be fine.
Aberlour wanted to cry, with relief, with fear, with—
Fuck.
“When can I see him,” Abby asked, her voice shrill in the quiet room. “I’m his emergency contact. I want to see him first—”
Then Aberlour wasn’t drowning anymore, he was burning. He was the flame of a crematorium, eradicating everything.
Abigail Dudson was Oliver’s emergency contact. Of course she was. Why was he so surprised? He’d changed his own contact form to list Marcus, after all, but he’d never considered that Oli might have done the same and chosen her.
The same raw exhaustion that had forced everything out of his stomach earlier now seized control of his hands.
They balled into tight fists, urging him to stand and grab her by the back of the neck.
Urging him to encircle her pretty little neck with his blood-stained hands and squeeze.
Squeeze until she was nothing but a bad memory, and a terrible joke.
A souvenir.
A very dead one.
“He should be awake in a couple of hours. You can see him then,” the surgeon replied, politely.
Aberlour stood suddenly, and without sparing any of them another look, walked out of the waiting room, his fists still balled, his anger screaming at him to turn back and finish her off. He needed to kill his fire. Needed to drown it somehow, and Aberlour only knew of one way to do it.
“Danke,” Aberlour told the bartender as she dropped yet another shot of ridiculously overpriced Tennessee whiskey in front of him. The bar was starting to look blurry, and he struggled to focus.
If he’d been stateside, the bartender would have cut him off, but this was Germany. As long as you paid your tab, you were allowed to get as shitfaced as you wanted. Even if it was well before noon.
He knocked back half of the double shot in one go, reserving what was left so he could nurse it along for awhile.
He could pretend all he wanted; alcohol wouldn’t numb this pain, but it had given his hands something to do other than ball up and find purchase in a wall—or a face.
It was also a nice distraction when he felt the slow burn work its magic down his throat and then the nice warming sensation when the elixir hit his gut.
Another point in his favor in choosing to spend his time at this fine establishment.
“This ain’t where you’re supposed to be.”
Aberlour rolled his shoulders and pointedly ignored Marcus as he sat down on the next bar stool.
“Nothing else to do but wait,” Abe replied tonelessly, staring in apparent fascination at the amber liquid in his glass.