14. NINEAH
NINEAH
WHEN I CAME TO, the doctor was gone, but one of the nurses from earlier—the lighter haired one—was switching out my IV bag.
Due to our language barrier, she didn’t acknowledge me with anything more than a wary look, but I noticed there was a pitcher on the side table this time, as well as a cup.
Thank God.
I tried to reach over for the pitcher but the nurse grunted, shaking her head at me. Rounding my bed, she then picked up the pitcher and poured me a cup before placing a straw in it. She tapped something on her cellphone, put it away, then brought the straw to my lips.
“Drink… Slow,” she commanded in her stilted English.
She didn’t have to tell me twice.
Straining my neck to reach, I drank from the straw and nearly cried when the cool liquid wet my tongue and dry throat. Swallowing the first gulp, I went to take another but she pulled the cup away.
“No… too much.”
I threw the nurse my best puppy dog stare, but the woman snorted. “Palauk… Wait.”
After a few moments, she let me have another sip, and another, administering them one at a time like she was feeding a bird. When my thirst was somewhat satiated, she placed the cup back on the table.
“Thank you,” I told her.
“Wait… for doctor.” With that, she left the room, and I was alone once more. Instantly, my previous conversation with Dr. Kazlauskas returned to the forefront.
I did the mental math.
Having been tasked with vetting and hiring Abraham, I’d have onboarded him roughly fifteen months ago. Something I wouldn’t soon forget because it wasn’t as if he made any effort to conceal how he felt about me, but that couldn’t have been right. There had to be some explanation for this.
A cover identity for work, maybe?
Life insurance fraud?
Oh my God.
I’d married him.
HIM.
Images, memories, information downloaded faster than I could process it.
MARSOC. HUMINT. Interrogator. Source developer.
CAT III linguist. Fluent in seven languages.
Dual bachelors in Psychology and Linguistics.
Masters in Foreign Relations. Qualifications—CQB.
CQC. Special Operations Forces. Nineteen years active duty.
Twelve deployments. Six duty stations. Redacted Ops.
Redacted file. Medical discharge recorded as retirement.
Ruptured spleen. Collapsed lung. TBI, GCS 11, LOC more than twelve hours, PTA less than twenty four hours.
Third degree burns covering over thirty percent of the body.
Six feet, eleven inches. Three hundred fifty seven pounds.
Interview date: None. Onboard date: February, seven years prior.
Completely and entirely unimpressed with me on every level.
No, not just unimpressed.
Abraham Lawton hated me.
And I’d married him.
Just then, my door swung open and Dr. Kaz entered. “Miss Nineah, how are you feeling?”
“Like… shit?” I didn’t know why I’d said that like a question. “I mean, you know, things could be better.”
FuckmeIwasfuckingmarried!
“I was just reviewing your CT. Nothing concerning, but I do not like the fact that you keep losing consciousness.” She removed a penlight from her coat pocket and gestured for me to follow the light.
“You also seem to be experiencing some memory loss, which can happen with trauma to the brain, even with more mild injuries, which yours are not, I am afraid. Do you remember where you are?”
“Yeah. Too fucking far across the Atlantic,” I squeaked.
“Can you tell me your age?”
“Twenty seven.”
Dr. Kaz pocketed her pen before meeting my gaze. “According to today’s date and the birthdates on both your passport and birth certificate, you are thirty two years old. Do you understand?”
A round from a .50-cal wouldn’t have created the blowback those two sentences did the second they left her mouth. My world rotating on its axis, I couldn’t even bring myself to respond.
Five years?
Oh, fuck no.
I needed to get the fuck out of here.
Now.
Dr. Kaz must’ve registered my panic, because she immediately rested a hand on my shoulder. “Looking at the intermittent loss of consciousness and the subsequent retrograde amnesia, these are serious signs of a severe concussion. I would like to monitor this over the coming d—”
“You said he’s here,” I interrupted. “Abraham.”
“He has been asking to see you, yes,” she confirmed. “Quite adamantly.”
Jesus fuck me Christ. I was so not prepared for this. Not on any plane of existence. But in this state and without a laptop, I was useless on my own and considering I needed to figure out what was going on, beggars couldn’t be choosers.
“Ask him how tall the grass grows on the hill,” I told her.
Dr. Kaz frowned.
“He’ll know what it means.”
“Alright.”
Pulling my hand out from underneath my blanket, my eyes went to my ring finger and I gasped at the deep indent and tan line there. I immediately shoved my hand back under the blanket and breathed through my nose.
Would it be poor form to just… die here?
Dr. Kaz returned with a wary look. “He says grass does not grow on the hill, but around it.”
I sucked in a deep breath and wondered how long I might’ve been able to hold it until my disabled respiratory system betrayed me. The answer was apparently three seconds.
“Fine. I will speak with him,” I relented. “But only if he agrees to bring me a baggie of those pineapple sour rings. Do you guys even have those in Lithuania?”
The doctor eyed me cautiously. “You do not fear him.”
I blinked. “Define fear.”
Was I currently ignoring a full blown internal meltdown? Sure. Was I terrified at the prospect of confronting whatever lay ahead of me the next few hours? Unfortunately. However, afraid didn’t exactly describe how I felt about Abraham, at least not in the violent sense.
“He won’t hurt me,” I said, reassuring myself as much as I was trying to reassure Dr. Kaz. Because the truth was, I didn’t actually know. Still. Whatever Abraham’s legacy had become, thankfully hurting women had never been part of it. That, I was confident of.
Dr. Kaz left the room and I leaned back in bed, clasping my hands together.
Deliberately ignoring my empty ring finger, as well as the voices in my brain urging me to call my boss and beg him to wire me enough money for a fifties-style lobotomy, I twiddled my thumbs until the door opened. Then my heart leapt into my spleen.
A man I mostly spoke to via email and spent the other ninety percent of my professional time avoiding, ducked underneath the doorframe and faced me.
Taller than any I’d ever met and heftier than I remembered, he regarded me with his familiar stolid demeanor that was even more imposing up close.
I catalogued his massive arms and hands, the chest that was as wide as my car, the mottled skin that textured half of his face and entire forehead, the scar that ran from the top of his left eye to the bottom of his cheek…
All of it should have made him seem fallible. Instead, it made him twice as menacing.
Swallowing, afraid to be the first to speak, I lasted ten seconds in his brand of silence. “Hi.”
Abraham just stared. Not at me, like most men. Not over me, like everyone else. His gaze cut through my awkwardness in a manner that made me want to climb under the Earth and hide inside its core. Then rough, deeper than pitch-black the color, he spoke. “You’re allergic to pineapple.”
My heart slammed back into my ribcage.
He even addressed me like he knew me. Fuck.
“I rarely get the chance to say this to a man, but you’re even bigger up close,” I whispered.
He didn’t step in my direction or approach me but he may as well have. Ridiculously, almost cartoonishly large, Abraham Lawton made the room smaller. In his left hand was a white plastic shopping bag he set on the table next to my water.
“What’s in the bag?” I asked.
He ignored me. “Dr. Kazlauskas has just informed me that you’re presenting post traumatic retrograde amnesia and other injuries consistent with a mild TBI.”
Guess that POA checked out.
“Seems that way, huh?”
He stared at me as though he was talking to my subconscious with his eyes. It was the most unnerving thing I’d ever experienced and I’d suffered basic training undiagnosed.
“You don’t…” he swallowed. “You have no idea who I am.”
No, I knew exactly who he was and that was the entire problem. But I knew that wasn’t what he meant, so I kept my mouth shut.
For a lengthy beat, we stared at one another in awkward silence until Abraham finally nodded. Then to my shocking horror, he turned around and walked out of the room.