Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Buck had no idea what time it was. Hell, he had no idea what day it was.
All he knew was that Mandy still hadn’t woken up.
She’d made it through the surgery to lessen the pressure on her brain, but she’d been in a medically induced coma ever since.
The doctors wanted to give her brain time to heal. For the swelling to go down.
But every day that went by was one more Buck spent in hell.
He wasn’t eating very much, definitely wasn’t sleeping enough.
He wasn’t thinking about his job, the upcoming mission, and even poor Rain had been neglected.
Thank goodness Laryn had stepped up and brought Rain to her and Casper’s place for the time being.
Buck couldn’t bring himself to leave the hospital. The nurses and doctors were well used to him by now, and had allowed him to spend much more than his allotted time in the ICU room with Mandy.
The beeping of the machines she was hooked up to were background noise. Buck barely heard them anymore. All his attention was on Mandy. She looked even smaller than usual in the big hospital bed with all the tubes attached to her body.
He sat next to her for hours, holding her hand and talking.
He talked nonstop. Retelling stories she’d already heard from him. Talking about the weather, about Rain, about his family. Anything he could think of.
And he told her how much he loved her. Over and over, he said the words out loud. Words he’d give anything to have said before she was attacked. She had to know how much she meant to him. That she was his world. That he loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone in his entire life.
But the longer Buck sat with her, the more despondent he became. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even flinched. The doctors said that was normal. That since she was in the medically induced coma, she wouldn’t be able to do anything other than heal, which was the point.
They also said the swelling had gone down, which was a relief, but the fact that she hadn’t moved even one little muscle was freaking Buck out, no matter what the doctors told him.
He was sitting with Mandy, as usual, when Obi-Wan came into the room. Buck was surprised to see him, since ICU didn’t normally allow more than one visitor at a time.
“The doctor said I had ten minutes,” Obi-Wan said, without beating around the bush. “I have news I think you, and Mandy, will want to hear. And since I knew you wouldn’t leave her side, I convinced the doctor to let me in.”
Buck nodded. His friends had been his rock.
He didn’t know what he’d have done without them.
Casper had talked to Colonel Burgess and gotten Buck’s emergency leave approved, Laryn had taken Rain in without question, Obi-Wan and the rest of the guys had taken turns bringing him food and clean clothes, and bullying him into showering when they could get away with it.
“What day is it?” Buck asked Obi-Wan.
“It’s been five days since you guys were attacked.”
Buck blinked in surprise. “Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wow. It feels like it’s been a lot longer.”
“Not surprising. Anyway, Buck…Blair is dead,” Obi-Wan said flatly.
Buck felt not one iota of regret at the news. In fact, he was relieved. Glad.
“What happened?”
“She was arrested under suspicion of murder and arrangements were being made to move her to a mental health facility in North Carolina. It was obvious to everyone that she wasn’t competent to stand trial, and that she was experiencing a complete mental breakdown.”
Buck growled.
“That doesn’t absolve her of guilt,” Obi-Wan said quickly.
“Nor does it make what she did okay, by any stretch. She wasn’t going to be freed anytime soon, even if she was deemed incompetent to stand trial.
But while she was in a local mental facility, she attacked one of the guards.
She’d taken one of the springs from her mattress and tried to use it as a weapon.
She had to be Tasered, and she apparently had a heart attack as a result.
Even though she was in her seventies, I guess she had the strength of the mentally ill behind her…
a Taser was the only way to subdue her.”
Buck nodded. He really was glad she was gone, that Mandy wouldn’t have to deal with her if she woke up…when she woke up. But other than that, he felt nothing.
“Tex is struggling. Wants to talk to you when you feel up to it.”
Buck wasn’t sure he wanted to talk to the infamous computer geek.
All he’d ever heard was how great the man was.
He’d done amazing things for Casper and Laryn.
Had been an integral part in getting Laryn out of Turkey alive and relatively unharmed.
But his Mandy was lying unconscious, and he had no idea if she’d be the same person she was before the attack when she woke up.
He didn’t fully blame Tex for that; the blame was just as much his own.
But he definitely wasn’t happy the man hadn’t been able to locate Blair before the woman found Mandy.
“She was under the radar, Buck. Didn’t have a phone, a car, credit cards.
She hitchhiked to Virginia and hung out near the base.
She never did find out where you lived, but she was able to talk to people around the base, until someone told her a lot of pilots liked to hang out at Anchor Point.
She was living in the park right around the corner, keeping watch.
Waiting and hoping you’d show up, so she could get to Mandy. Tex literally had no way to track her.”
Intellectually, Buck knew that. But rational or not, it still hurt that of all the people Tex had helped out of bad situations, Mandy was one of the few he couldn’t.
“How’s she doing?” Obi-Wan asked quietly, when Buck didn’t say anything.
He shrugged. “The same. No worse, no better.”
“What about the swelling?”
“The doctor says it’s going down.”
“That’s good news.”
“Yeah.”
“Are they going to ease her off the drugs to bring her out of the coma?”
“If she continues to do well, and the swelling goes down a little more, yes.”
“You know this wasn’t your fault…right, Buck?”
At his friend’s words, Buck’s eyes filled with tears. He didn’t want to cry. Wanted to stay strong for Mandy. But the concern in Obi-Wan’s voice did him in.
Once more, Obi-Wan took Buck’s hand in his and held on tight. He didn’t say anything, just stood by like a pillar of strength as Buck silently cried.
“I love her, man,” Buck said after a long moment, when he could speak again. “And I never told her.”
“She knows, Buck.”
“How? How can she know?”
“Because it was in your eyes every time you looked at her. Every time you made her breakfast or dinner. Every time you took Rain out, so she could stay in bed an extra five minutes. It was in every little thing you did for her. It’s not the words that matter, Buck…
it’s the actions. And you show her every single day that you love her.
And you know what else? She loves you right back. It’s as plain as day to all of us.”
Buck looked up at his friend then. “You think?”
“Yes.”
Buck took a deep breath, then looked back at the woman lying motionless on the bed in front of him.
Obi-Wan was right, of course. He had known that Mandy loved him.
Every day, she showed him without words how much she cared, the same way he proved that he loved her.
With actions. The way she always reached for him in her sleep.
How she looked to him anytime they got news about Blair.
How she clung to him when they heard about Bibi.
Taking another deep breath, Buck looked at his friend.
“I was thinking about making love to her when we got home, and not paying as much attention to our surroundings as I should have. You know how dark Anchor Point’s parking lot is.
I was just thinking that I should’ve left Mandy inside, and gone to get the car by myself, when Blair appeared out of nowhere. ”
“If it didn’t happen that night, it would’ve happened some other time.
Blair was patient. She wasn’t going to give up.
And so what if you were thinking about sex?
That doesn’t mean you were at fault. I’ve heard you tell Mandy more than once that what happened to her at the school, getting kidnapped, wasn’t her fault.
That what happened to little Bibi wasn’t her fault.
That all the fault lies with Blair. The same applies here.
Blair was the one responsible for this, not you. ”
“I’ve tried to tell myself that, but the bottom line is that I vowed to keep her safe, and she got hurt on my watch.”
“Life is a weird thing, Buck. You can make all the promises you want, but life still has a way of kicking you in the teeth when you least expect it. Let it go, man. For your own sanity. For her sake. She’s gonna need you to be her rock when she wakes up, and you can’t be strong for her if you’re kicking yourself for what happened.
Let me ask you this: you think Mandy’s going to blame you when she wakes up? ”
Buck didn’t even have to think about that. “No.”
“Exactly. Let it go. Concentrate on helping her get better. Blair is gone. Dead. She’s not a threat anymore.
You can’t live with that hanging over your head, and Mandy wouldn’t want you to.
You have your whole lives ahead of you. Do you want to live with regret, or with the joy and expectation of a happy, long life instead?
” Obi-Wan glanced at his watch. “With that, my time is up. I’d tell you to let us know when the doc is going to bring Mandy out of the coma, but…
you should know, Tex is monitoring the situation and keeping us in the loop. ”
“How is he monitoring the situation?” Buck asked with a frown.