Chapter Eleven
Petra
Petra stood outside the eye hospital waiting for Hawkeye, who had left to use the restroom and collect the SUV. He said he’d meet her out front.
And since she had nothing else to do but wait, she was ruminating.
Of course, she was.
She could take any little thing and chew on it all day long.
Right now, she was reliving the scene when she’d been half awake in the pre-dawn gloom, nervous about how today would unfold. She stayed still as Cooper stuck his nose onto her mattress and chuffed.
“Cooper, I know,” Hawkeye’s voice was so soft that she strained to hear even with her sensitive ears. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she? I hate to do this.” He put his hand on her back and squatted by her side. “Petra? Petra, hey, can you wake up just a little bit?”
“Mmm.” She opened her lashes only enough to take in the shadowy shapes of the room.
“I’m taking Cooper out for about twenty minutes. Do you feel okay being alone for that long? Do you need me to get Levi to take Cooper instead?”
“Uhm. No. I’m good. Thank you.”
Cooper, I know. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?
“Me and my wonky eyeball, beautiful,” Petra said to the seagull who was stalking the crust of bread near Petra’s foot. “Can you imagine?”
The guy standing next to Petra turned her way. “What did you say?”
She pointed at the SUV that was rounding toward the front doors. “Just wondering where my ride is,” she said, stepping closer to the curb.
This morning, once she heard the door shut behind Cooper and Hawkeye, Petra rolled out of bed and made it to the bathroom to see how she woke up looking beautiful, radiantly rested.
And no.
Nope.
Nopity-nope-nope-nope. She was not, in fact, a radiant beauty. Her hair looked like she’d fought through a windstorm. Her skin was dry and dull from the seven hours of flight time. And she had a wonky eye.
“As wonky as yesterday?” she had wondered, leaning toward the mirror and assessing her pupil size. It wasn’t even, but it was ever so slightly better. There was a tiny blue ring.
Petra had slogged her way back to bed in the hopes that there was still time for a beauty sleep miracle and crashed right back out until Hawkeye brought breakfast.
And after all that, after everything that had happened in the last few hours, the conclusion of the Misadventure of the Alien Eyeball turned out to be so anti-climactic.
At precisely eight o’clock, Petra arrived at the reception desk and was shown immediately back to the doctor.
In her hand, she held the motion sickness patch in a bag, and Hawkeye’s theory on her lips, along with the taste of his kisses.
“There’s a circle of iris,” the doctor said, accepting the vial of drops the nurse gave her at the hospital. “What color are your eyes normally?”
“It depends on my clothes. On my passport, it says gray. My eyes can also look greenish some days or pale blue. It depends on the color reflection.”
“Okay, you’re within the normal spectrum of your iris color. There’s some reactivity, as you noted. This was discovered yesterday afternoon, not yet twenty-four hours?”
“That’s right.”
“I’m going with your theory. I see nothing here that fits neatly with any other diagnosis. However, if it’s not completely cleared up by the forty-eight-hour mark, I’d like to see you back.”
“I’ll be home Monday. Can I wait until then to see my ophthalmologist?” Petra asked, sliding damp palms down her lap. This had been scary; she could admit that to herself.
The doctor leaned his shoulder against the wall, considering her, then said, “If you’re not back to normal, I’d like to run more tests before you get on a plane with the pressure changes. I say that as a precaution. I think it was the patch. We need a backup plan if it doesn’t pan out the way we think it will.”
Think it will. Hawkeye hadn’t made love to her this morning for fear of changing pressures.
Would she keep that last bit to herself?
Just how horny was she for Hawkeye? She wondered as he pulled up beside her.
Pretty damned horny, she thought, as she tugged the door open and climbed in.
Yeah, she’d be willing to take the risk of eyeball pressure changes for him to give her an orgasm.
Or two.
Petra reached for the seatbelt and then leaned over to kiss Hawkeye before snapping it in place. “Thank you for bringing me.”
They started their thirty-minute trek back to the hotel, where Reaper told her to stay for her time on the island. Petra turned to Hawkeye. “Okay – that was an unexpected adventure.”
“I can imagine you felt like you got rolled by a wave. Everyone telling you that you were in danger.”
“Believe it or not, I’m happy about it all around. Mostly, I’m glad that you figured out my medical mystery, otherwise it would have hung over my head in perpetuity.”
“I get that.” He glanced at the phone navigation display and took a left out of the parking area. “If no one figured it out, you’d always be looking at that eye wondering if it would happen again and if it was a missed sign of something dangerous.”
Petra pulled her lips flat as she nodded. He was right. “I have professional-grade ruminating skills. I’m grateful for all the people who helped me in ways big and small—from Levi helping me on the airplane stairs to Halo managing Cooper. Reaper giving up this room. The people on the plane who didn’t complain, not out loud anyway. Kind, competent people all around, not the least of them you.” She knitted her fingers together as she watched the scenery fly by from behind the polarized lenses the doctor wanted her to wear. “And I’m glad I had a hand in all of this, too.”
“If you’re up to sharing, I’d like to hear.”
She glanced his way for a moment, then turned back to the passing houses. “I was thinking about how civilians would come in as volunteers at Quantico. We’d have some scenarios—terror events, mass shooters. The organizers would hand out signs that they would hang around their necks with the basics of their fictional medical situation.”
“At Quantico, it was the FBI doing this? Why?”
“FBI, yes. In the civilian world, law enforcement has to clear the scene before the medical first responders can go in. This isn’t army medics trying to stay under the strafe of bullets while they patch people up. At the FBI, we don’t give first aid of any kind until we secure the area. At that point, we could offer assistance with medical aid. The scenarios were set up to teach us to run by screaming, begging people.”
“Rough.”
“Incredibly. The adrenaline was insane. The volunteers were dedicated to their roles. They didn’t just have the sign hanging around their necks. They had moulage, a makeup technique used to apply mock injuries to a person making things more realistic for responders in training. They look like they’ve been shot or stabbed. They even have these latex limb stumps. The volunteers can bend their legs and pull them on. Put a jacket or bag over the bent real-world limb, pour out a puddle of theater blood, dim the lights, and the brain can believe the scene. And we’d have to run by, knowing they’d bleed out while we secured the building.”
“In battle, if you stop and help a fallen soldier, everyone falls. The faster you gain control, the faster help is available. But yeah, I get it. Theory and reality are different beasts. It’s hard as hell to do with a stranger. Nigh on impossible when it’s a brother. But you stick to your training.”
They came to a stop at the red light, and Petra could feel Hawkeye looking at her, so she turned his way. “When I went through training, we had these dummies that were very lifelike,” he said. “They’d be gurgling and spurting blood.” He screwed up like he was smelling spoiled meat. “It was a bit of a mindfuck to be trying to do a field trach on this dummy when it looked so real. And sometimes, it would just spontaneously start screaming or sit up. I’m telling you, whoever developed this animatronic thing wanted to plant the seeds of nightmares.”
“I happily didn’t have that as part of my military training,” Petra said, pulling out her seatbelt and adjusting it to fit better between her boobs. “I went through basic. I was hired to provide counseling support.”
“Before we stray too far down a new topic trail, let me bring you back to the thought you started with. You said you were happy with this situation. And then you lit into Quantico and volunteers in theatrical blood. Could you take me through that leap?”
“I think my situation was the best of all worlds.”
“Starting with the idea that you are probably okay,” Hawkeye said. “Yes.”
“If that’s the outcome, then it was an optimal exercise for everyone involved, right? Everyone—me, you, your team—everyone who came into contact with me believed that what was happening was an emergency.”
Hawkeye slowed as he edged past some kids playing kickball in the street. “Not just moulage and plastic leg stumps,” he said.
“Exactly, which does impact a human’s reactions. In this instance, the two systems—the airline and the emergency crew—got to practice with the belief that this was the real deal, but I wasn’t, in fact, at risk. You mentioned karma and helper people yesterday. Well, I might well have been an instrument of the universe. I’ll never know.”
“Another leap that needs more context, please,” Hawkeye said with a grin.
“Maybe the people involved in my rescue needed some practice in advance of a real emergency. Because of this seemingly false alarm, they’ll be ready to act and can perhaps save a future life.”
Hawkeye nodded.
“And you will surely tell your team about the motion sickness patch, and now they’ll know to ask.”
“Sort of in that same vein, last night when I was on the search engine looking for answers, I remembered this woman I used to date was fastidious about washing her hands anytime she touched her motions sickness patch,” Hawkeye said. “After reading that the medication could dilate the pupils, I wondered if that was why she did it.”
Petra held up a finger. “See, in my theory, she was fastidious in front of you to teach you what you needed to know in a future moment, this one. And I think you might even have locked onto that possibility and solved the mystery because her behavior made the patch stand out to you.”
“An interesting way to look at things. I’ll have to think about that.”
“It makes life easier if only in this way—when things go awry, I can see some way to make it useful.” She raised her brows for emphasis. “It’s not Pollyanna-like.”
“Pragmatic,” Hawkeye agreed. “Instead of sweeping the bad things or maybe bad feelings under the carpet, you’re adding the information to your life’s encyclopedia. You now have a motion sickness patch chapter.”
“And so do you.” Petra smiled. “So, what are your plans today? You’re surfing, right?”
“Dropping you off and getting out to the site. They already have the K9s down on the beach, playing ball and getting them used to the environmental sensory input. You?”
Petra looked at her watch. “I still have time. Tamika and I had planned to go on an off-road vehicle safari to the tidal pools.”
“I could drop you off somewhere on my way out to the beach,” Hawkeye offered.
“Thanks, but The Palm was my pickup point. One of the reasons I knew it was swanky. Tamika and I ended up making those Blue Fin reservations within walking distance.”
Hawkeye reached for her hand. “Do you have plans for dinner? I saw a place online that serves local specialties. Laid back. Outdoor eating on picnic tables. I’d like to hear about your adventures today.”
“Yes, thank you. But, to be honest, I’m hoping the adventure part of this trip is over.”
As she said that out loud, a shiver raced down Petra’s spine.