Chapter Fifteen #2
The knot in her chest didn’t loosen, but she could breathe a little better as the ladies rushed her inside.
As soon as the guys settled Hawk on a gurney in the center of the room, she tried to break free so she could hurry to his side. But Willow’s strong arms held her back.
“Let them work,” she said in her ear.
“Sit here.” Rhae’s soft touch urged her onto a second gurney.
Ayla moved to draw the curtain across the room, intending to shut her out of what was going on.
“Don’t shut the curtain! I need to see him!”
Hawk’s head turned at the sound of voice. Though his eyes were electric with pain, his stare found hers and held.
“Close it,” he ordered.
Before he was closed off from her, she saw hands at work, cutting his shirt off and exposing the thick gauze pressure bandage Gray applied the minute he reached them at the mouth of the mine.
Panic swept through her. She needed to see him—to see what they were doing to him. If she could see him, she would know he was okay.
Someone pressed a cup into her hand. “Drink, Sinead.”
She did, listening like a child, her attention fixed on the white curtain separating her from the man she’d fallen in love with somewhere between a snake bite and a gold mine.
Low murmurs came from the other side as the team working on Hawk gave updates.
“Are you injured?” Ayla asked, her tone gentle.
She shook her head, hardly processing the question.
The curtain suddenly twitched aside and Gray stepped into sight. He looked straight at her. She searched his face for some sign of what was going on over there. Then she glanced down at his hands, to the cloth he held. Covered in blood.
She jumped off the gurney. “Heath!”
Ayla grabbed her and held her, surprisingly strong for her petite size.
“You have to let them work.”
“Sinead.” Hawk’s voice came from the other side of the curtain, stronger than it had been a minute before.
“Heath, I’m here!” She tried to take a step around Ayla, but she blocked her path, her fiery hair matching the spark in her eyes that warned Sinead not to try it.
“Tell her…I’m all right.”
She broke into tears, and suddenly a new woman was entering the door at the far side of the room. A tall brunette, her hair pulled into a low ponytail, wearing a blazer and slim trousers, quickly stepped up to the gurney. “Sinead, I’m Bella. I’m the resident psychiatrist.”
Bella. Gray had looked at Sinead and called for her. They must think she needed trauma support. But she’d seen bad things before, like when her guide was attacked by the lion.
While that was horrific and she didn’t want to see the man die, she didn’t have ties to him the way she did Hawk.
She nodded at Bella, but all her attention was fixed on the man lying wounded on the other side of the room.
“Stabilizing.”
She caught the word and grasped the edge of the gurney.
Just then the door opened again and a small girl slipped in—hair in two crooked pigtails, a backpack slung over one shoulder.
Rhae made a low noise and rushed forward.
Denver burst past the curtain, moving fast to intercept her. “Navy, baby, maybe you should—”
“I want to see.” Navy was already crossing the room to Hawk like she owned the place.
Denver crouched in front of his daughter, studying her face carefully, the way a father studied a child for signs of fear he didn’t want her carrying. “We need to let Dr. Hitchcock help Hawk.”
She threw her arms around his neck. “I’m not scared, Daddy.”
Rhae crouched next to her family, watching the exchange. From this angle, Sinead couldn’t see Hawk, but Rhae looked that direction and gave a small nod. “If she’s okay, she can stay on this side of the curtain with me.”
Sinead took in the dynamics. The trust and the way this family let a little girl decide for herself whether she could handle hard things.
And she felt her aching chest crack open wider with affection for all of them.
Denver gave Navy a small pat on her back and released her.
She immediately grabbed the curtain and tugged it aside.
“Navy—” Rhae took a swift step forward to stop her.
“She needs to see him, Mom. They’re friends.”
More than friends.
Sinead’s throat thickened as she shifted her gaze from the child who was wise beyond her years to the man lying on the gurney.
Hawk was on his side, facing her. A sheet was erected over his body, leaving only his head and shoulders free.
A man in full surgeon’s gear was working on the wound along his side. And Hawk’s eyes opened when Navy marched right up to the gurney like she’d done this a hundred times before. She unzipped her little backpack with the focus of someone conducting very serious business.
She produced a lollipop and placed it by Hawk’s shoulder. “For being brave,” she informed him.
“That’s one heck of a combat nurse,” Dr. Hitchcock’s statement came muffled from behind his mask.
Hawk, pale and clearly in pain, still managed a small smile. “Much appreciated.”
She dug deeper into her bag and produced a box of bandages, studying her options with real deliberation before selecting one. “Not the pony one. You get the superhero.” She pressed it carefully on his arm, patting it once. “I’m not gonna kiss it, though. Germs.”
“Wise policy,” Hawk rasped.
Satisfied, Navy turned and marched over to Sinead’s gurney next. She dug out a sticker—a bright gold star—and pressed it onto the back of Sinead’s hand with great ceremony.
Her gray eyes fixed on Sinead’s face. “For being brave too.”
Her throat went tight. “I don’t feel very brave right now, sweetheart.”
She considered that for a moment. “Then the sticker will make you brave. That’s how it works.”
Sinead issued a wet, broken laugh and agreed.
Rhae picked up her young daughter and carried her away. Ayla and Willow said a few soft words to Sinead and left too, leaving her with Bella. The woman didn’t pry her for information on what happened out there. She just stayed close, her presence offering comfort.
They didn’t close the curtain between them, allowing them to see each other. When the surgeon wrapped up with Hawk, he stepped around the curtain to speak to her.
“Your bodyguard should play the lottery, because he’s one lucky son of a bitch.”
His harsh statement was just the sort of thing she imagined from a surgeon in combat hospitals. And it was just the thing she needed to reassure her that Hawk was going to be all right.
“The bullet went straight through. Ultrasound and x-rays show it missed anything important. Didn’t even nick a rib.
” He smiled and peeled off his sterile cap to reveal thick blond hair.
“He lost some blood, and we’ve given him a transfusion.
I’ve given him something for pain, and it will help him sleep. ”
She nodded, fingers twisting together. “Thank you,” she said thickly.
He nodded. “You should get some rest too.” He looked at Bella.
Something passed between them, though Sinead couldn’t put her finger on it. A current of energy. Maybe more.
“I’ll see that she is settled in a room,” Bella said.
The surgeon nodded and was gone, and for a long moment Sinead just sat there, letting his words settle into the empty spaces the fear had carved out.
Missed anything important. Didn’t even nick a rib.
She repeated it in her head like a prayer, needing to believe it fully before she let herself move.
She stood on legs that felt borrowed and crossed to the gap in the curtain.
Hawk lay on his side, bandages stark white against his skin, IV line taped into the back of his hand.
The same hand that had gone so cold in the helicopter.
His eyes were closed, chest rising and falling slow and even, color already creeping back into his face now that the transfusion had done its work.
He looked wrecked and exhausted and utterly, gorgeously alive.
She pressed a hand flat over her own mouth, holding back a sound that wanted to be a sob and came out instead as something closer to relief.
He was okay. She could see it now—really see it, not just hear it secondhand from a surgeon with a blunt bedside manner—and something in her chest finally, finally unclenched.
She stepped closer, careful of the wires and lines, and rested her palm gently against his shoulder, needing the contact more than she needed anything else in that moment.
His eyes drifted open at her touch, unfocused at first, then finding her face.
“Hey,” he rasped, voice rough from whatever they’d given him.
“Hey yourself,” she whispered back, and let herself finally believe it.
He was okay. He was really, truly okay.
Which was good because he may have fulfilled the terms of his contract with her, but he hadn’t even begun to meet the terms of hers—the ones she hadn’t written down anywhere.
The ones that said stay.
That said don’t ever scare me like that again.
That said I love you and I meant it and I need you to survive long enough to say it back.
“Don’t do that again,” she whispered, pressing her forehead lightly to his.
His hand found hers, weak but certain. “No promises.”
She let out a watery laugh. “Hawk.”
“I’ll do my best,’ he amended, voice softening. “For you. Always for you.”
He may not have said the three words she hoped to hear from him, but those three—always for you—gave her hope that it might be the same thing.