29. Connor
CHAPTER 29
CONNOR
I never knew how cold a desert could get. All those stories about trying to stay cool in the sweltering triple-digit heat hadn’t prepared me for this. For the kind of cold that makes my jaw ache with fatigue from my teeth chattering for so long.
Everything tastes like sand and copper. My hands shake as I try to keep the Marine on the broken concrete in front of me from bleeding out, but I don’t have enough hands for all his wounds. The tourniquet on his thigh is helping the worst of it, but there’s still more. Too much blood coming too fast from too many places. The blood soaking through my clothes turns cold against my skin. My teeth want to chatter harder, but I clench them to keep them still.
I want to call out for a bag of blood, but I can’t. I can’t speak. Can’t find the words.
Can’t stop the bleeding.
Then the whole world shifts. I can’t see. Can’t hear. I know someone’s screaming but I can’t hear them.
It’s me.
I’m the one.
There’s more blood now, and it’s mine. And it’s still cold. And it’s everywhere. And I can’t call out for help. For blood. For?—
* * *
“Connor.” Alex’s voice broke through the noise. “You’re safe. In Spain. You’re safe in bed.”
Spain? Bed?
But I was just in…
Everything around me started to disintegrate, fading from a vivid image to near darkness.
“Connor. You’re safe.” He was stroking my hair. That tightness around me—that was his other arm. “Wherever you were—you’re not there anymore. We’re in a hotel in Spain.”
The darkness…
My closed eyelids in the dark room.
In the dark hotel room.
In Spain.
I pushed out a ragged breath as I opened my eyes. The room was mostly dark, not pitch black like my bedroom would be. Because we were in a hotel room. Our hotel room in Córdoba. Thousands of miles and years removed from the horrors that still haunted me.
The air conditioner alternately rattled and hummed, further separating this place from my bedroom in Sanlúcar, but firmly settling me into this room.
Alex’s warmth oriented me. Grounded me. His fingers carded through my hair again, and I shivered as I closed my eyes. My mouth was parched, but I managed, “Sorry.”
The arm around me loosened a little. “Don’t be sorry. Are you okay?”
I nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see me and murmured, “I will be.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really.” I swallowed bile. “I don’t know if that’s healthy, but… no.”
“It’s okay.” Those fingers through my hair were the most soothing thing ever. “Whatever you need. We don’t have to talk about anything.”
I closed my eyes and pressed into him. My jaw still ached and my teeth hurt. I must’ve been clenching them for real while I’d been dreaming; that happened sometimes.
The cold blood I’d felt soaking through my clothes turned out to be sweat making the sheets stick to my skin.
“Ugh.” I peeled them away. “I’m sweating like crazy. I need a damn shower.”
“Do you want me to join you?”
It wasn’t a come-on. If anything, his voice was laced with concern. As if he wasn’t sure he should let me out of his sight.
“I’m okay,” I whispered as I started to sit up. “I’ve already woken you up. Go back to sleep; I’ll be quiet.”
“I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about you.” He got up. “And I’m sweaty too.”
“Shit. Sorry about?—”
He touched my waist in the darkness. “It’s okay. Come on.” He gently steered me toward the bathroom. “Shower.”
The shower helped. Having him in there with me, even though the stall was tight for two people, also helped. Nothing brought me back into the here and now like his affectionate hands soaping up my body while I did the same for him. This stark white bathroom could not be further from anything I ever showered in over there, and there’d never been water this hot or with this much pressure. I didn’t have that constant hypervigilance and crippling fatigue. No sand in my boots or under my clothes. I was naked and didn’t feel the least bit vulnerable or exposed. I was wrapped up in someone’s arms like I never could’ve been in a warzone.
I was safe. I was here. I was in Spain. In Córdoba. In a hotel. In this shower.
In Alex’s arms.
I was safe.
Though the dream had long since dissipated, the metallic tang of blood remained in my mouth.
I drew back a little and touched my lip, and the salt of my finger stung. “Shit. I think I bit my lip.”
“You okay?” Alex studied me. “I don’t see anything.”
“Yeah.” I felt around with my tongue. “Yeah, just… It’s not bad. It’s on the inside, I think. Just stings a little.”
He grimaced. “I’ve done that. It sucks.”
I grunted in agreement. “It’ll be fine, though.”
Alex nodded. “Do you want to go back to bed?”
“Yeah. Might as well not hog all the hot water in the hotel.”
He gave a tired but genuine laugh that did more to bring me back to earth than anything else had.
Oh my God, you’re beautiful.
Somehow, I didn’t let those words come tumbling out or let my stupid face give me away. We got out of the shower and returned to bed, this time taking the other bed since the sheets were sweaty. As soon as we were under the covers in the darkness, Alex gathered me in his arms, and we lay like that for a long time.
He ran his hand up my back. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Sorry I woke you up.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He stroked a gentle hand over my shoulder and down my arm. “Did something trigger the nightmare? Or was it just random?”
“I think it was just random. I don’t…” I thought about it for a moment. “I can’t think of anything that might’ve set it off. We’ve talked about that—how sometimes it doesn’t need a trigger.”
“Oh, I know. I had a whole night full of flashbacks after the command’s Christmas party one year. Still have no idea why, but that was a rough night.”
As much as I didn’t want to imagine him going through an ordeal that awful—the original trauma or the subsequent nightmares—it eased something in me to be reassured that he understood. Like maybe I wasn’t doing this wrong, as if there was any right way to have PTSD.
I hadn’t wanted to talk about my dream, but the words came anyway. “During my first tour, we were called out to a convoy that had hit an IED. I remember this one Marine—he was alive, but he was bleeding from everywhere. Just… everywhere.”
“Shit,” Alex whispered, and he held me a little closer.
I closed my eyes. “I had a tourniquet on him, and I’d gone through every QuikClot in my kit already. One of the other corpsmen had gone to get more, and he was getting some blood because this kid needed a transfusion.” I shivered as a chill went through me. “And that’s when the mortar hit us.”
Alex stiffened beside me.
I swallowed. “I don’t remember much after that. I woke up on a Medevac, drugged out of my head and completely disoriented. But… when I dream about it…”
His hand traced over my shoulder. “You remember?”
“I… think so? Like I don’t know if it’s an actual memory, or if my mind is just filling in the gaps. It’s always a little different, and it’s…” Cold water trickled through my veins. “It’s fucking terrifying every time.”
“I believe that,” he whispered, and I thought he might’ve shuddered. Or maybe he was just getting comfortable.
“What I do remember,” I went on, “was waking up in the hospital in Germany. I’d… They said I’d been awake a few times on the way back to base and on the flight out, but I was on a lot of drugs and I was concussed, so…” I shrugged.
“Holy shit. How bad were you hurt?”
“I was cut up pretty bad. I think I had almost a hundred stitches, all told?”
Alex whistled. “Wow.”
“I also broke my collarbone and fractured three ribs, which was why I was in so damn much pain. Between those and all the bruises…”
“Yeah, that sounds like the aftermath of an explosion.” He shuddered and pulled me even closer. “I’m glad you’re okay now.”
“I’m lucky, in all honesty. The bruises and fractures healed. So did all the lacerations. The concussion was bad, but I haven’t had a lot of long-term problems from TBI. I had some balance issues there for a while, and I even had a little trouble speaking for a year or two. Like I’d stumble over or forget a word. But all things considered, I made a full recovery.”
“You’re very lucky.” He kissed my temple. “I know a lot of people who weren’t.”
“Me too.”
“Did you ever—” He tensed. “I… never mind.”
“What?”
“I, uh… I don’t want to drag up more bad memories.”
“Eh, they’re already here.” I ran my hand up his chest. “What’s on your mind?”
“I just wondered, um…” He swallowed. “Did you ever find out what happened to the Marine?”
I exhaled, not at all surprised by the question but still hit in the gut by that particular memory. “He didn’t make it. He might’ve had a chance—I’ll never know for sure. What I do know is that the mortar finished him off.”
“Jesus,” Alex breathed. “Either way, though, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. It took a long time to reconcile with the guilt. I just… I don’t know. There was absolutely nothing I could’ve done to stop the mortar, and I could’ve died as easily as he did. I might not have been able to save him even if hadn’t been hit by that mortar. But I still felt guilty for a long, long time.” I paused. “Sometimes I still do.”
“I think that comes with the territory,” Alex said softly. “Not just of being in a combat situation, but the medical profession. We’ve all had our hands on patients when they died, and even when there was no earthly chance of them surviving, it’s hard not to wonder if we could’ve done something differently.”
I closed my eyes and released a long breath. There was something intensely comforting about hearing my own thoughts rolling off someone else’s tongue. Especially when that someone was Alex, even if I was afraid to look too closely at why his feelings mattered that much to me.
“That’s exactly it,” I said. “It’s the ‘what ifs’ that get to me.”
“Me too. I was so glad to come back from deployment and start working toward my radiology designation. I still see some awful shit, but I’m not up to my elbows in it, you know?”
“I get that. My emergency rotation was by far the hardest part of medical school.”
“Worse than combat?”
I thought about that. “Not necessarily worse? But it fucked with my head in some of the same ways. And some different ways. In combat, you kind of have an idea what you’re going to see most of the time. Like there’s definitely things you don’t expect, but the ways people get hurt in warzones usually fall into the same general box, you know?”
Alex nodded.
“Right. But an emergency room in a major city?” I whistled and shook my head. “It’s… everything. And every one . I wasn’t just treating soldiers anymore. It was kids and little old ladies, you know? And it’s everything from a new mom who’s freaking out because her baby’s spiking a fever to parents who are about to hear the worst news of their lives. It was… It was a lot.”
“That’s what I’ve heard,” he whispered. “I’ve never envied anyone who works in the ED. I mean, I have to come down sometimes for ultrasounds and X-rays and whatnot, and their patients come up to my department all the time. But it’s not the constant barrage.”
I nodded. “Seriously. I knew two shifts into that rotation that I would never be an emergency doctor.”
“But you’ve been to combat, haven’t you?”
“Only as a corpsman. As a physician, I’ve only ever been on shipboard deployments.”
“Was there ever a possibility? Of going boots-on-the-ground again, I mean?”
“There was,” I whispered, that old familiar prickle of fear creeping up my neck. “I got lucky, I guess.”
“You did. Me too—I did the three deployments into the desert, but thank God, the last sea duty rotation I did during active combat ops was on a boat. I’ll take that over going back to the Sandbox any day.”
“You and me both.”
“It’s funny,” Alex said. “My mom told me she was relieved I was going to be a corpsman. She thought that meant I’d be away from the fighting, you know?” He trailed his fingers up and down my arm. “I didn’t have the heart to tell her that being a corpsman means being a combat medic, and they’re not kidding about the combat part.” He paused. “I… really should’ve told her before I was deployed the first time. I just didn’t want her to worry more than she already would, you know?”
“I get that. My dad was in the Army, so my parents both knew exactly what it meant. The whole reason my dad encouraged me to join the Navy instead of the Army was that I’d probably be on a ship. Neither of us thought I’d end up boots on the ground.”
“I don’t think anyone expected that,” Alex said dryly.
Wasn’t that the truth.
I sighed. “Well, I made it through. So did you. Now we just have all these psychological souvenirs.”
He huffed a soft laugh. “Yeah. The gift that keeps on giving.”
“It’s like herpes, except in your head with IEDs.”
Alex snorted. “Okay, it’s probably time to go back to sleep.”
“Yeah. Probably.”
He stroked my cheek, and his tone was more serious. “You think you’ll be able to sleep?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You sure?”
“I mean… as sure as I ever am. Go to sleep, baby.”
He grunted softly and kissed the top of my head. He knew what I meant—when the dreams were this bad, there were usually more if I could get back to sleep at all.
“Go to sleep,” I said again. “Hopefully I won’t wake you up again.”
“If you do, it’s okay. I know how it goes.”
And a moment later, he’d fallen into that slow, steady breathing that meant he was asleep. Typical military—could fall asleep any time, any place, in about thirty seconds flat. I had that same superpower… usually.
Tonight, I just lay there and listened to him breathe over the hum and rattle of the room’s air conditioner. I closed my eyes and held on to him, savoring the comfort and the closeness of being in his arms.
The nightmare had been rough, but the rest of it? Showering, cuddling, and talking with Alex? That had almost been worth revisiting one of the worst days of my life.
I had never realized before I met him how much I’d needed this. Not just someone who could handle my nightmares, but someone who empathized because he’d been there too. I wouldn’t wish PTSD on anyone, but damn if there wasn’t something incredibly comforting about the warmth and understanding that came from someone who knew what I was seeing and feeling when the demons paid me a visit. Something about being able to tremble and catch my breath beside someone who knew just how horrible those dreams could really get. How real they could get and how awful the reality that spawned them had truly been.
My ex-wife had always done the best she could on nights like this. She’d hold me close, stroke my hair, and talk me down until my heartrate was closer to normal and my breathing had slowed. She’d never given me a second of grief the times I’d screamed or cried. For all the problems we had, I’d never stop being grateful for the nights she’d eased me back to earth after my past had visited my dreams.
But the more nights I spent beside Alex, the more I realized there was something to be said for being with someone who knew . Who understood . Aimee had done the best she could, and I didn’t hold anything against her.
But Alex? He was a godsend. It was like the difference between telling a therapist about what I’d seen and talking to a fellow veteran. The therapist might have more ideas about solutions, but the veteran understood on a visceral level what no one who hadn’t been there could ever grasp.
I hadn’t realized how badly I’d been needing that. How badly I’d needed someone to say, “I get it. It’s not just you.”
No wonder the nightmares had been harder to deal with by myself recently. The comfort I found in his arms made the nights apart harder than all the ones I’d spent alone between my separation and the first time Alex had slept over.
I sighed as I listened to him breathe. I knew damn well I was getting too close to him. That whatever lines we’d drawn between traveling fuck buddies and boyfriends had blurred beyond recognition.
None of that changed our situation. I couldn’t have him the way I realized I so, so desperately wanted him.
But tonight, I had him.
Tonight, I let myself feel all the things that were too dangerous to feel for someone I couldn’t have.
Tonight, I let myself love him.