Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
What the hell had she been thinking?
Didn't she know there were six expert marksmen standing around her, any one of whom could have taken out the man holding her hostage before he could get off a shot?
Voodoo bolted toward Indigo as both she and the hostage taker fell to the ground in a tangle of limbs.
Damn woman had to go and try to save him, always thinking that she was worth less than him, less than anyone, less than everyone.
Skidding to a stop on his knees beside the two bodies, he didn't even spare a glance for the man who had tried to steal Indigo from him. Regardless of how this would have played out, the man would have wound up dead.
Sure, Voodoo would have enjoyed torturing him a little, drawing it out, but in the end, he only cared that a threat to Indigo had been eliminated.
“She shouldn’t have done it,” he mumbled to no one in particular as Steel and Lion grabbed hold of the man and pulled him out of the way, leaving Indigo lying before him.
“She cares about you,” Blade said softly as the other man helped him lie Indigo out so he could get a proper look at her.
“Still shouldn’t have done it. We would have handled it.”
“Maybe she didn't know that,” Dragon reminded him. “Maybe she thought she should do her part. After all, she’s one of us, isn’t she?”
“Always,” he replied as Thunder switched on a bright light that allowed him to remove the NVGs and see her condition more clearly.
There was no denying the fact that Indigo would always be part of them.
Even if nothing romantic ever developed between the two of them, his team had already adopted her as one of their own, a little sister of sorts.
Voodoo knew that Rose, Cassandra, and Whitney would all immediately take to Indigo as well.
She just had a sweetness to her that drew you in, and it wasn't because you felt sorry for her because of her tragic life, it was because despite that tragic life, she was still standing.
Now that he could see her properly, his heart dropped.
There was a wound on her leg that looked deep.
It hadn't been there when they’d been with her in the forest before she fell into the river, so it had to have happened once she was recaptured.
The burns he’d noticed on her when she was brought out of the first building and bundled into the car she crashed looked much worse now that he was up close to them.
But it was the gaping hole in her stomach that had panic seizing his lungs.
“Indy, why?” he whispered as he ripped off his shirt, needing something to press to the wound to try to stem the flow of blood.
“You know why, brother,” Steel reminded him, voice soft and gentle, so un-Steel like. “Because the thought of anything happening to you meant she was willing to go to any lengths, put anything on the line, so long as you walked away alive.”
“I'd rather she walked away alive,” he muttered. If only one of them was leaving this forest still breathing, then it should be her. Sacrificing his life for hers would be easy, Indigo deserved a chance to live a happy life, to have people in her corner, to be anything she wanted to be.
Now that chance was slipping through his fingers.
Literally.
Already, his fingers, holding his balled-up shirt to her abdomen, were stained red with her blood. It was soaking through the shirt. Coming too quickly.
Fear that he wouldn't be able to save her thrummed through his system.
“What about him? Is he still alive?” Voodoo asked, not bothering to look away from Indigo’s still form as he asked about the fate of the man who had held a gun to her head, threatening to hurt her as well as kill her.
“Your girl is a warrior at heart,” Lion replied. “He’s dead.”
“Good,” he muttered. While he wouldn't have wasted any of his energy trying to save the man’s life, the only life he was interested in saving was Indy’s, he liked knowing that his girl had fought for herself as well as for him, even as he would ream her out for it as soon as she opened her eyes.
“What do you need us to do?” Blade asked, and part of him hated that everyone else was managing to keep their cool while he felt like his world was spinning faster out of control with each beat of his heart.
“I … don’t know,” he said, pressing the shirt harder against Indigo’s wound, wishing for the first time since he’d met her that she could feel pain.
Pain was often a great stimulus in rousing an unconscious patient, but Indigo wouldn't feel the agony caused by touching anything to a gaping hole in her stomach, let alone pressing it firmly in a desperate attempt to keep some of her blood inside her system.
“Yeah you do, man,” Thunder assured him.
“You know what to do. You’ve always known what to do.
Saving people is what you do. Has nothing to do with what Dr. Gardner did to us.
Whitney even told you that what you can do, who you can save, shouldn’t even be possible.
But you do it. Because you're a healer.”
“Not with her, I can't seem to make it work with her,” he whispered. Yes, he’d been able to pull her back from the brink after infection almost stole her from him. He’d also been able to pull her back from the brink after hypothermia almost dragged her too far away for him to reach.
But in the end, he was pretty sure he hadn't been the deciding factor in either of those instances.
She had been.
Almost losing her had been because Indigo was giving in to the voices inside her head whispering that she was better off dead. That voice was loud because she’d already spent a lifetime thinking she was unworthy, unloved, that no one would miss her if she was gone.
Saving her had also been because she realized, instinctually, since they hadn't had a chance to properly discuss his growing feelings for her, that he would miss her, that he saw her worth, that he valued her as a human being. So she’d decided to fight.
It terrified him to think that the only thing that might save her now was herself.
What if she didn't realize that he needed her?
What if she thought now that she’d met people who wanted her, she could let go?
What if she didn't have enough cognizance left to know she had to fight?
“All she needs is you,” Lion said with such confidence that he refocused his gaze on Indigo’s face.
It was so pale in the harsh light of the torch, her skin almost translucent.
Her eyes were closed, lashes fanned out on her bony cheeks.
She needed some more meat on her bones, and he knew from personal experience that the food Dr. Gardner provided while they were kept in his lab was nutritionally balanced, but it wasn't enough to sustain them long term. Plus, Indigo had been living on the streets before that, so he doubted she’d been eating enough.
Now she looked too thin. All he wanted was to take her home, shower her with love and affection, and try to make up for all she’d never had.
Dirt and blood covered her face, her arms and chest, her legs. Voodoo didn't even need to look at her bare feet to know they’d be shredded from running through the forest as she escaped the wrecked car.
It was hard to look at her and look past the injuries, to see her dispassionately as he would look at any patient laid out before him.
Indigo wasn't just anyone.
She was his.
And he wasn't sure he could save her.
That was all he could focus on. But he had to try to push through it.
Keeping one hand pressed against her stomach, his other reached out to sweep across her pale cheek.
Her skin was still warm to the touch, shock not settling in enough yet to drop it dangerously low.
She was alive, breathing, her heart still beating.
Settling his fingertips on her neck, he allowed each bump of her pulse to seep inside him, to reassure him that he hadn't lost her yet.
As long as she was still alive, he had a chance to bring her back.
This wasn't an injury he would normally think someone could survive, even immediate surgery in a hospital likely wouldn't be enough.
But this wasn't anyone. Indigo had the same enhanced healing ability as he and his team.
Losing her wasn't a given.
Forcing himself to pull it together, he’d never forgive himself if it was his own panic that caused him to lose Indigo.
Leaning down he touched his lips to her forehead. “I'm not giving up on you, honey, so don’t you dare give up on me.”
January 25th
3:19 A.M.
I'm not giving up on you, honey, so don’t you dare give up on me.
The words floated into her mind like pretty, colorful ribbons wafting on a breeze.
While of course Indigo felt no pain, she felt … wrong somehow.
It was hard to put into words. It was just a deep knowledge, settled into her very bones, that she knew what was happening to her, and she knew there wasn't going to be anything she could do to stop it.
“Can you hear me, Indy?”
If it were anyone else other than Voodoo asking her that question, she probably would have allowed those words to flutter right on past her hazy mind and sink into the enticing quiet that was lapping at the edges of her consciousness.
Drifting off into it was almost too appealing to fight against.
But just like she knew what was going to happen to her, she also knew what it was going to do to Voodoo.
He was a healer, saving people was what he did, what he thought he had to do, the only thing he thought gave him any value.
Indigo wanted him to know that he was more than that, that his value was simply because he was a human being with a good heart, who cared about others, who wanted to do what he could to help them.
The last thing she wanted for him was for her death to send him spiraling.