Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Adan Hospital, Kuwait
A distant sound broke through the fuzziness in his brain, dragging him up from the dark toward wakefulness.
What the hell was that?
Was that coughing?
Where the fuck am I?
Shaun opened his eyes to slits, glancing first to the right. Okay, that was some serious-looking equipment.
What the hell happened?
The only thing he remembered was Drax shooting the asshole who tried to pull his finger out of Zen…
“Zenko?”
“Jesus, Shaw. Nurse!” A large hand reached out and pressed the call button. Shaun stared up in confusion at the man standing next to his bed, yelling over his shoulder for the nurse.
The door to the room flew open, and two nurses rushed through the door. Shaun slapped away the hands that reached out to him.
“Fuck off.”
“Sir, you have to let us help you.”
“Fuck right off.” Shaun didn’t care that his voice was croaky as shit. Why was he fucking tied to the bed? Why the fuck couldn’t he move? A pinch in his hand when he tugged drew his gaze to his hand. Was that a fucking drip? Jesus, he wasn’t the one who’d been injured. Where the hell was Zenko?
“Stay fucking put.” Massive hands landed on his shoulders, pushing him back to a reclining position. “Swear to fuck, Shaw, let the nurse look at you.”
“Cade?”
“Yeah, brother, it’s me.”
“Fuck.” What the hell was his Ghost teammate doing here? Cade never ever went into the field unless shit really hit the fan and they were down a couple of members due to injury or worse, they’d lost someone. “Who is out?”
“Don’t worry about that now,” Cade told him. “Let the nurse look at you, and then I’ll fill you in, got it?”
Shaun nodded, but before Cade could pull back, Shaun wrapped his fingers around his friend’s wrist. His grip might be weak as water, but it still had the desired effect, and Cade paused.
“Yeah?”
“Zen…” Shaun’s voice cracked on the name, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “Zenko?”
“Still alive and fighting like hell,” Cade told him. “Your man is one tough bastard.”
Relief blasted through him.
“Yeah, yeah, he is… thank fuck for that.”
Now that he knew Zenko was alive, he didn’t want to be stuck in this bed for a moment longer than necessary. He wanted to be where Zenko was, even if that was in an ICU unit where they would cover him head to toe in scrubs and shit. Didn’t fucking matter; he needed eyes on his man now.
“Do your thing.” He knew grunting at the nurses probably wasn’t the kindest or nicest thing he’d done this century.
But right this second any delay was just too fucking much.
Still, he allowed himself to be poked, prodded, and checked to ensure he was recovering from whatever the hell was wrong with him.
Finally, after being thoroughly checked, pulse taken, machines monitored, and IV bag changed, the nurses departed with a stern warning to Cade to make sure that Shaun remained in bed until the doctor had examined him.
The second the door closed behind them, Shaun looked to Cade for answers.
“Spill it, Cade.”
He didn’t like the serious look on Cade’s face at all. What the fuck had happened? He looked over at the door and frowned; he’d expected Rock, Grif, and the others to appear the second they had heard Cade yelling for the nurse. That they still weren’t here was not good.
Nope, not good at all.
Cade stood and walked to the window; his head bowed as he leaned against the frame with one arm over his head. “How much do you remember about Allie and Lexi?”
“Shit.” The memory of Rock, Grif, and Allie heading stateside from Croatia slammed into him. “Did they find her?”
“Yeah, they found her,” Cade muttered.
“Oh, shit.” He could tell from his face that something seriously fucked-up had happened during their search for Allie’s missing daughter. “Swear to fuck, Cade, if you don’t spit it out, I’m going to get out of this bed and beat you with the IV pole.”
Cade heaved a heavy sigh as if he was sucking up the strength to give Shaun the intel he knew needed to be passed on, but he really didn’t want to be the one to do it.
“The Ghosts are out of commission for the next few months.” He paused before adding, “Maybe for good.”
“What?”
Shaun started to interrupt, but Cade held up his hand and spoke over him.
“Lexi is good and back with her family.” He ran his hand over the back of his neck, digging his fingers into the muscles there. “But the situation was a complete and utter goat fuck.” He paused again and blew out yet another heavy breath. “We lost someone.”
“Who?”
The door opened hard and Castiel and Reese raced into the room, pushing a wheelchair in front of them.
“We need to get him to Zenko; he’s crashing.”
“Get me up.” Shaun didn’t give a shit that he had just woken up, and he definitely couldn’t care less that the medical staff had instructed him to stay in bed.
Fuck that. He jumped out of bed before Reese had even finished the word crashing.
Good thing Cade was close enough to catch you, dumbass.
Castiel grabbed the IV bag off the pole and held it high as Cade stuffed Shaun into the chair. His ass was barely seated when Reese pushed him out the door and almost ran down the corridor.
Shit.
Shaun braced himself as best he could when the chair took a corner sideways on two wheels before slamming back to level with all four wheels on the floor.
“Don’t fucking dump him out, idiot,” Castiel instructed from where he ran beside the chair.
They rounded a corner and sped down a long corridor through three sets of double doors, the last of which Reese and Castiel spent minutes they didn’t have to spare arguing with a charge nurse to allow them entrance into the high dependency unit.
Shaun didn’t care if it was the nurse taking pity on them or if it was the urgency with which they moved that caused her to finally sigh and badge them through. The only thing he cared about was getting to Zenko.
Please be alive, please be alive.
“Fuck,” all four of them swore and then froze when they finally turned into the family area where a doctor was talking to Noble.
No, no, no… NOPE. Not Zenko… he couldn’t be…
If someone had told Shaun a week ago that he would see Noble Bauer cry, he would have laughed them out of the house.
Now, watching the man brace a hand against the wall to keep his knees from buckling as he spoke to the doctor, Shaun could feel the blood draining from his own face in unison with Noble’s.
Fuck, he was too late.
His hand slipped off the arm of the wheelchair when he tried to push himself upright, his legs folding under him before he had managed to get more than halfway out of the seat.
Cade caught him under one arm while Castiel grabbed the other, both men hauling him back before he hit the floor, but Shaun barely registered either of them.
His eyes stayed locked on Noble, on the hand braced against the wall and the doctor standing close enough to catch him if those massive legs finally gave out beneath him.
“No.” The word scraped painfully through Shaun’s throat as he fought Cade’s hold and tried again to stand. “No. Fuck you. Get me to him. Get me to Zenko right fucking now.”
“Shaw, stop fighting me.” Cade tightened his grip when Shaun nearly tipped the chair sideways in his attempt to escape it.
His voice had lost every trace of the careful tone he had used in Shaun’s room, his hand closing around the back of Shaun’s neck as he forced him to look away from Noble.
“He’s alive, brother. Do you hear me? Zenko is alive. ”
Shaun froze so suddenly Cade nearly lost his balance. For several seconds, the words refused to make sense against the sight across the family area, until Noble lifted his head and Shaun could see the tears running openly down the big man’s face.
“Then why the fuck is he crying?” He shoved Cade’s hand away and pointed toward Noble, his fingers shaking badly enough that he curled them into his palm. “Bauer doesn’t fucking cry, so don’t stand there and feed me bullshit because you think I can’t handle the truth. Is Zenko alive?”
“Yes,” Noble answered him this time, his voice rough and barely recognizable as he pushed away from the wall and crossed the short distance between them.
His shoulders were rigid beneath his shirt, but he made no attempt to wipe his face before crouching in front of Shaun.
“They lost him for a minute. Maybe a little longer. I don’t fucking know, Shaw. But they got him back. He’s alive.”
The world tilted hard enough that Shaun grabbed both wheels and squeezed until the metal hurt his palms.
“You lost him?” He heard the words leave his mouth but they sounded distant, almost as if someone else had spoken them. “His heart stopped?”
Noble nodded once, his jaw working before he could answer.
“Yeah. They got him back fast, but his blood pressure crashed afterward and they’re still trying to stabilize him.
The doctor says the next few hours matter.
” Noble drew in a breath that shook despite his obvious attempt to control it. “He’s still fighting, Shaw.”
“Of course he fucking is.” He forced his fingers to loosen from the wheels before he damaged them or himself, neither of which would get him any closer to Zenko. He glanced toward the double doors leading deeper into the unit and swallowed against the pressure closing his throat. “Take me to him.”
“The doctor said they’re still working on him.” Noble started to straighten when Shaun caught the front of his shirt and yanked him down again, using more desperation than strength to keep him there. “Shaw, listen to me.”