22. Operation Save Zoe
CHAPTER 22
OPERATION: SAVE ZOE
LEDGER
I reach for Zoe . Her slipping foot changes her trajectory so quickly and drastically, though, that my hand only catches air as I watch her fall into the small space between the buildings, hitting the coupling of an exposed pipe on the way. And then, as she hits the ground, I hear a crunch I know can only come from a broken bone. The rain is coming down hard onto the roofs all around me, yet I can still hear my heart hammering in my ears and panic flooding my vision.
I slide from the roof into the small alley, trying to fit my body in the narrow space between the two buildings and maneuver my feet so that I can get to Zoe . The hood of her jacket has fallen off her head, and her eyes squint open enough to see me. She says the words, “ Finish the mission,” before she passes out.
I’m sure from the way she fell and landed that she doesn’t have a spinal cord injury. And she didn’t hit her head, so I know she isn’t passing out from a concussion. It must be from the pain. I manage to get a foot on one side of her and a knee on the other.
Just as I’m bending over to pick her up, I see something shine in the water pooling beside her. It’s her necklace. It must’ve caught on the coupling and broke. I know how important it is to her, so I grab it and shove it into my pocket, then work to pick her up.
The space is so small that I can’t turn my shoulders fully, so lifting her body when I’m not sure what, exactly, is injured and when every part of mine seems to be an obstacle isn’t easy.
I get her onto my shoulder, being extra careful with her legs and ankles, since I know one of them is likely broken. I can’t turn around, so I have to back my way out of the small space. Once we are free of the buildings, I hurry to the car as quickly as I can without bouncing her and causing her more pain.
The nearest hospital is close, and within five minutes, I’ve pulled into the parking lot and am carrying her, soaking wet, into an area that looks like their emergency room. The intake nurse doesn’t speak English or any of the other languages I speak, so I have to mime what happened.
They roll a bed out to us, and I lay Zoe gently on it, slip the comms unit out of her ear, and place a gentle kiss on her forehead. I whisper, “ You’ll be okay. Please , be okay.” I know she’s unconscious, but I’m hoping she still takes it in. I can’t lose her.
I pace the waiting room. Update Packston and Kella as much as I can. Leave a trail of water everywhere I walk. Talk to both my director and hers. Pace some more.
Finally , a doctor comes out. He doesn’t speak English , but I use my translation app and it picks up enough to tell me that she has some bruised ribs, one cracked. I’m guessing it was from hitting the joint in the pipe on the way down that also pulled off her necklace. And she has a broken fibula that will need surgery. There aren’t any signs of internal bleeding.
The waiting is agonizing. I’ve been around injuries before. I’ve been injured. I know from what the doctor said that Zoe’s injury isn’t life-threatening, but I won’t be convinced that there isn’t anything that they missed until I can hear her voice and see for myself that she is okay.
I don’t even realize that I’m shivering from being in soaking-wet clothes until someone brings me a blanket. When I warm up a bit, I think to pull out my phone and bring up the contact information that Evan O’Brien , the aide to the Irish Ambassador to the United States , gave me so I could contact him for a game of hurling. I shoot him a text, explain that I need to ask the Ambassador for help, and see if he’ll relay the message.
By the time a nurse comes back, my shirt is dry and my pants are only damp by the pockets and waist band. My shoes and socks have a long way to go. But , gloriously, the nurse, a dark-haired woman in her thirties named Nehir , is one of the only people in this hospital who speaks a bit of English , and she tells me that I can see Zoe .
She leads me to a room where Zoe is unconscious on a rolling bed. An IV bag hangs from a pole beside her, and a lot of bandaging wraps around her right leg. Seeing her like this causes a stabbing pain in my chest. Another nurse is at Zoe’s side, marking something in her chart. “ She’s asleep, from…” the nurse pauses, can’t seem to remember how to say the words to the next part, so she mimes giving Zoe a shot.
I nod to let her know I understand. “ How long will she be asleep?”
The nurse shrugs. “ It’s different for everyone.”
I pull the chair up close to Zoe’s bed and take a seat. Everything looks fine with her hand, so I hold it in mine and wait as both nurses do their thing, going in and out of the room. It takes longer than I guessed it would for Zoe to come out of anesthesia— the room is already lightening from the rising sun— but both nurses are present when her eyes finally flutter open. I let out a huge breath of relief, and say, “ I’ve never been happier to see someone open their eyes.”
But then Zoe grabs the first nurse’s wrist and says, “ Something is wrong.” My relief flees as quickly as it came.
Nehir hurries to Zoe’s other side and runs her hand down Zoe’s hair, over and over, and says, “ Shh . It’s okay.”
But then Zoe grabs her wrist, too, and repeats, “ Something is wrong.”
“ This is normal,” Nehir says. “ Your , um… body. It knows something happen. Your brain was…” She can’t seem to come up with the English word to use, so she puts her fist at her head, miming being knocked out, then puts a hand out flat and lays her head on it, closing her eyes. “ It wasn’t there, so it doesn’t know something happen. It tells you something is wrong. But you’re good.” She gives Zoe two thumbs up, which is kind of awkward with her right thumb since her wrist is still being held by Zoe .
Zoe doesn’t look very comforted, though, so I move to where she can better see me and wave. Her eyes fly to the movement, land on my face, and she smiles. It’s beautiful. She’s injured and she just went through surgery, but that smile is everything. And I love that it was my presence that made it appear.
She looks relieved and a bit more relaxed, too… except for the death grip she’s got on both nurses’ wrists. The scene looks like a three-person arm wrestling match where everyone is stuck in a stalemate. Maybe the wrist grabbing is a common enough reaction, because neither nurse seems fazed by it, and they both continue to do their work of checking Zoe out with their one free hand.
About the time the nurses finish up, Zoe decides she can relinquish their wrists. The first nurse leaves immediately. “ You need me,” Nehir says as she’s showing me a control panel on the bed, but then she can’t seem to remember how to say the words she means to say, so she says, “ Bzzzzzz , ding, ding! And there’s water.” I look to where she gestured and see two cups of water with lids and straws on a small rolling table.
“ Where am I ?” Zoe asks, her voice groggy and scratchy.
I grab a water cup and bend the straw, holding it so she can take a drink as I say, “ A five-star hotel, where everyone will wait on you and bring you anything you need.”
“ Looks like a hospital.”
“ Well , some people call it that. How do you feel?”
“ Heavy . Am I restrained?”
“ No . Are you in pain?” I know she’s on pain medication and was very recently under general anesthesia, but I still need to know that she’s okay. “ Can you feel anything? You’ve got bruised ribs, and one’s broken, and you just had surgery on your lower right leg. Does anywhere else hurt?”
She shakes her head, then looks at the water again, so I give her another drink. Then she looks at me very intently, her eyes roving around my face, before she says, “ You’re so pretty.”
I try to hold back a smile. “ Am I ?”
“ Uh -huh. I like your face. It’s so… face-shaped. The perfect face.” She holds out the word “perfect,” but not like she meant to— more like it was just a difficult word to say. All her words are groggy and not formed well, and I know she’s just feeling the effects of the anesthesia, but I’m still really digging the compliment.
“ I like the rest of you, too.”
“ All of the rest of me?”
She nods. “ Like your shoulders. And your arms. You’ve got good arms.” She reaches out and puts a hand on my forearm, which sends warmth all the way up it, even though her skin is cooler than mine. “ You got good everything. But your hair is…” She makes a face.
I put a hand on my hair. Between the rainstorm and how many times I’ve run my hands through it in worry over the past few hours, it feels a bit, well, big . “ I guess I can’t have everything.”
A moment later, she says, “ I like competing with you.”
“ Oh , yeah? Why’s that?”
“ I don’t know.” She says it like it’s all one big, slurred word. “ Because it makes me feel like you see me.”
“ I definitely see you,” I say, knowing that I’m “seeing” her more now than I ever have. Since we first met, there hasn’t been a time when I haven’t. But now, I feel like I understand her in a way I haven’t before. I’m seeing all the sides of her that are beautiful and perfect.
“ You have the most…” her sentence drifts off, and it’s like she’s coming out of the anesthesia just a hair more. Not fully, or even close to it, but more than she was. Enough to make her expression turn from blissful ignorance to something that looks a lot like frustration. In an accusatory voice, she says, “ You gave me sowdeuhm thio… thiowe pentol?”
All her words have been coming out mumbled and slurred, but I’ve been able to make them out just fine until this one. It takes a moment before I realize she’s maybe asking about sodium thiopental, and I chuckle. “ You think I gave you truth serum ?”
“ I know they combine it with… sleep deprivation? Or being nearly asleep? And oxy, oxy, oxytose… I can’t think of it. Bad guys followed me to Vladivostok once and captured me. They gave it to me, so I know how it feels. They try to make you believe that you’re talking to someone you love and trust so you’ll give up information.”
She tries to sit up, but winces and decides to just pin me with an intense glare instead. “ So who are you? Who’s your boss? Who captured me?” Each question comes out like a single, slurred word. “ I withstood it once before and I’m going to withstood… withstood? With stand it now.”
“ No one gave you ‘truth serum.’ You had surgery on your fibula, and now you’re coming out of anesthesia. That’s all it is. The effects should wear off soon.”
She shakes her head. “ No , you’re lying. ‘ Cuz , I never would’ve said ‘ I like your face’ to Ledger’s face. You’re not him. You gave me sodium thiopen…something. And now you’re pretending to be someone I love so that you can get me to give up classified info.”
I can’t help the smile that crosses my face. “ You love me?” Sodium thiopental is used by almost no one in the world for a lot of reasons, one being the fact that it doesn’t actually work. Maybe the real ‘truth serum’ is general anesthesia.
I want to hear what else Zoe has to say. But not only does Nehir come in, but my phone rings. By the country code, I know it’s the Irish Ambassador to the United States , and I know it’s very early, especially in Ireland . I step out into the hall to take the call.
“ Ambassador Connolly ,” I say after I answer the call. “ Thank you for returning my call.”
“ Oh , of course. I was surprised to wake up to see that calling you was on my list of tasks for the day. Evan must’ve added it sometime during the night.”
Had I even realized that it was the middle of the night when I texted Evan ? “ How was your daughter’s wedding?”
“ Absolutely perfect. She was such a beautiful bride.”
I can hear Nehir talking to Zoe in the room. Using the English words she is familiar with, she says, “ That hamburger man. He a good one.”
“ Hamburger man?” Zoe asks, rightly confused, even without the recent anesthesia.
“ No , no, um…” There’s a pause, and I’m fairly certain that the nurse is trying to explain with gestures.
“ Oh ! Beefy !”
I’m really trying not to get distracted by their conversation, but then Nehir says, “ Yes ! That beefy man is good. He kept a constant virgin at your side.”
“ He kept what at my side?”
I run a hand over my face, mute the phone, and call out, “ Vigil ! I kept a constant vigil at your side.” Then I unmute the phone and ask the ambassador, “ Did you get lots of women ogling your legs while wearing your kilt?”
“ You know, I was too busy fawning over my family and enjoying that we were all together in one place to notice, but afterward, my wife told me that there was plenty of ogling.”
I laugh genuinely.
“ And what about you? Did you try black and white pudding while you were in my country?”
“ I did.”
“ And ?”
“ It … wasn’t what I was expecting at all, for sure. Honestly , I was a little afraid to try it, but it was pretty good!”
He chuckles. “ We like to keep visitors on their toes. Next time we’ll have you try the pickled herring. But , I’m guessing you didn’t ask for a call so we could chat about the wedding and food.”
“ I didn’t. I want to talk to you about your flight. When are you heading back to the States ?”
“ This evening. Why ?”
“ What is the possibility of you taking a detour to Ankara on your way?”
The ambassador and I chat for a couple of minutes before we end the call. When I get back into the room, I can tell just by looking at Zoe that she has come out of the anesthesia fully. Nehir is telling her, “ You’re in good square, so you’ll heal fast,” and Zoe is looking super confused. The nurse looks up, her eyes moving back and forth quickly as she thinks as if the answer is written on the top of the wall. “ Square , circle, square….shap… Shape ! You’re strong. In good shape. You’ll heal fast.”
“ You do really well with your English ,” I say to her. “ Where did you learn?”
The woman beams at the compliment. “ Thank you! I’m much better at Arabic and German . I learn those from Duolingo . You know it?” I nod, impressed that she knows at least four languages, and she says, grinning, “ But I learn English from watching Grey’s Anatomy .”
“ Impressive !” I say, and hold up a hand to give her a high-five. It amazes me when someone can learn a language by watching a TV show. And especially to be able to communicate as well as she is.
“ Thanks . I owe my English to McDreamy .” She sighs. “ He keeps me coming back. That , and Cristina’s and Meredith’s …” She makes hand gestures as she searches for the word she needs, but I can’t tell what they mean.
“ Friendship ?” Zoe says.
“ Yes ! That .”
Nehir checks Zoe’s blood pressure one more time, then says she’ll be back to check on us later. Zoe’s eyes stay on the nurse as she walks out the door.
The moment it closes behind her, Zoe’s eyes fly to mine. “ Did you finish the mission?”
I pull back my head in surprise at the question. I thought our surroundings and her injuries kind of told the story itself. “ No . You got hurt.”
“ Ledger , you weren’t supposed to sacrifice the mission for me!”
“ So , what? You expected me to just leave you on the ground in the dark, during a downpour, passed out from the pain, and just go finish the mission?”
“ Yes ! That’s exactly what I expected!”
I shake my head. “ That was never going to happen. I would choose to save you every time.”
“ Before we got there, you agreed to finish the mission no matter what.”
“ Zoe , I didn’t even know how bad your injuries were. Or if you had internal bleeding. Luckily you didn’t, but you could have. And even if I knew you didn’t have internal bleeding, there isn’t a chance I would’ve left you there in so much pain that you weren’t even conscious.”
I can’t fathom why this would make her so upset. Does she worry that her director won’t be okay with us not being successful? “ Listen ,” I say, “ I talked to both of our directors while you were in surgery, and all they care about is your safety. They care about that so much more than the mission.”
“ Those men trying to be heirs to Aragundi’s network and resources are bad guys. Stopping them is more important than my safety.”
I flinch. Because as much as I want to stop them, I’m having a hard time right now thinking anything could be more important than her.
In a quieter voice, almost a whisper, she asks, “ Was the Trust piece stolen?”
I pause a beat, wishing I could give her a different answer. “ Yeah , it was.”
She crosses her arms over her chest, and I catch the wince she tries to hide. The motion has to hurt with that broken rib and the bruised ones around it, but she seems too mad to care. She grits her teeth and looks away. She’s breathing heavily, too, which makes one of the machines hooked up to her start to make a loud noise.
“ Zoe ,” I say, “the operation isn’t lost. It didn’t all hinge on this one piece. We still have the trackers on the Trust pieces in Dublin and in Belgrade . Eventually , the Barno Brothers will steal them, and when they do, we’ll catch them. ”
She gives a curt nod, still gazing at the wall, as Nehir comes back in to see why Zoe’s heart rate spiked.
I’ve known Zoe long enough to know that she’ll finish a mission at any cost. Part of the reason, of course, will always be because we don’t get missions unless a lot is riding on their successful completion.
I’ve always known that there’s more to it than that for Zoe , though, and I had assumed that it’s because she’s so competitive and wants the win. But if she is this upset that I didn’t finish it even without her, then maybe I don’t understand her motivations as much as I thought I did.