Chapter 3 #2
“What is going on in here?” a nurse asked sharply, appearing in the doorway. She was a middle-aged woman with iron-gray hair pulled back in a tight bun and a no-nonsense expression that suggested she had seen it all and was not impressed by any of it.
“I need to go,” Ryan told her, still fumbling with the IV. His fingers were not cooperating, and the room was starting to spin faster. “There’s an emergency. I need to leave right now.”
“You’re not going anywhere for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, young man,” the nurse said, striding into the room with the kind of authority that made it clear she was used to being obeyed.
She grabbed Ryan’s shoulders and started firmly pushing him back toward the bed.
“You just had major surgery. You lost massive amounts of blood. If you try to leave this hospital, you’ll collapse before you make it to the elevator. ”
“No,” Ryan said stubbornly, trying to resist her push. But his legs were already giving out, his body betraying him. The nausea was rising, threatening to overwhelm him, and the pain in his side was so intense he could barely see straight. “I have to go.”
“Do as the nurse says,” Mitch told him, his voice firm. “Can you knock him out again? Give him something to make him sleep?”
“We can restrain him if necessary,” the nurse said, giving Ryan a look that suggested she would be more than happy to do exactly that.
“But I think he is going to cooperate, aren’t you?
Because you are going to get back in that bed right now before you tear your stitches open and undo all the hard work the surgical team did to save your life. ”
Ryan tried to take another step, tried to push past her toward the door, but his legs simply would not hold him anymore. He stumbled, and the nurse caught him easily, guiding him back down onto the bed with surprising gentleness despite her stern demeanor.
“There we go,” she said, arranging the covers over him. “You just lie down and rest. Whatever emergency you think you need to deal with, someone else can handle it. Your only job right now is to heal.”
Ryan wanted to argue, but the room was spinning too fast, and the nausea was too strong. He leaned over the side of the bed and dry-heaved, his empty stomach clenching painfully.
“Lie back down,” the nurse instructed, easing him back against the pillows. “Slow, deep breaths. The nausea will pass.”
Mitch was already dialing another number. “Glory? Can you come sit with Ryan? Make sure he stays here. I have to go. Something has come up, and I’ll explain later, but I need you here now.”
Ryan heard the response through the phone, though he could not make out the words.
“Thank you,” Mitch said. “I owe you.”
He hung up and looked at Ryan, and there was genuine fear in his eyes. “I have to go. Glory is coming to stay with you.”
“Now you are getting babysitters for me?” Ryan grumbled, fighting against the exhaustion that was pulling at him. The medication in his system was too strong, his body too weak. “I don’t need a babysitter. I need to help you and Lori… Tessa..”
“You need to lie down and rest,” the nurse said firmly. She checked the machines beside his bed, adjusted something on his IV line, then looked at Mitch. “I’ll sit with him until your friend gets here. You go do what you need to do.”
“Thank you,” Mitch said, already moving toward the door.
“Dad,” Ryan called weakly, hating how pathetic his voice sounded. “Please keep me updated. Please tell me what’s happening.”
Mitch stopped in the doorway and turned back, his expression softening slightly. “Of course. I’ll let you know as soon as I have any news. I promise.”
Then he was gone, and Ryan was left lying in the hospital bed with a stern-looking nurse hovering over him and the knowledge that Tessa was in danger and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
The minutes crawled by agonizingly slowly.
The nurse checked his vitals, made notes on her tablet, and adjusted his blankets.
Ryan stared at the ceiling and tried not to think about what might be happening to Tessa right now.
Tried not to imagine her scared and hurt and wondering why no one was coming to help her.
He must have drifted off for a moment because the next thing he knew, Glory was walking through the door.
“Hey,” she said, pulling up a chair beside his bed. “Heard you tried to make a break for it.”
“You got here quickly,” Ryan said suspiciously, his words slightly slurred from the medication.
“Yup,” Glory nodded. “I was just in the cafeteria downstairs. Figured I would grab some breakfast and stick around in case your dad needed anything. Good thing I did.”
The nurse finished whatever she was doing and headed for the door. “I’ll check back in a little while,” she said. “If he tries to get out of bed again, hit the call button, and I’ll come right back.”
“Will do,” Glory said with a small smile.
The door closed, leaving Ryan and Glory alone in the room.
Ryan knew he had been beaten. His body had made it very clear that he was not going anywhere, no matter how much his mind insisted otherwise. He felt exhausted, wrung out, like he had nothing left to give.
“So what is going on?” Glory asked, settling into the chair. “Mitch said there was an emergency, but did not give me any details.”
“Tessa has been taken again,” Ryan said, and even saying the words out loud made his chest tighten with fear. “Someone kidnapped her right out of Seabird Cottage.”
Glory’s eyes widened. “What? That’s quite a bold move.”
“I know,” Ryan said angrily. “But I guess whoever is behind this was not done with her yet. And now she’s gone, and I’m stuck in this hospital bed, completely useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Glory said firmly. “You are recovering from major surgery. There is a difference.”
“It doesn’t feel like a difference right now,” Ryan muttered.
Glory was quiet for a moment, studying him. “You really care about her, don’t you? About Tessa.”
“I love her,” Ryan said simply. There seemed to be no point in hiding it anymore.
“I told her that before we were kidnapped. I told her I loved her and wanted to be with her and her daughter. And she basically told me she didn’t trust me.
That she thought I would hurt them the way her ex-husband did. ”
“Ouch,” Glory said sympathetically.
“Yeah,” Ryan agreed. “So when I woke up in that basement and saw her there, I just shut down. Went into soldier mode. Kept my distance. Focused on the mission of getting us out of there alive. And now I’m afraid I messed everything up, and I’ll never get the chance to tell her that I understand why she reacted the way she did.
That I don’t blame her for being scared. ”
“You’ll get that chance,” Glory assured him. “Your dad is going to find her. He’ll bring her back safe.”
“I hope so,” Ryan said. His eyes were getting heavy again, the medication pulling him down toward sleep. “I need to tell you something. About the giant. The man who held us captive.”
“Okay,” Glory said, leaning forward attentively.
“He had a military tattoo,” Ryan said, fighting to keep his eyes open.
This was important. This could help them figure out who the giant was and where he came from.
“On his forearm. I saw it when he was bringing us food. It was a unit insignia. I recognized it because I almost got assigned to that unit before I went into Special Forces.”
“What unit?” Glory asked, pulling out her phone to take notes.
“It was the Second Battalion,” Ryan said, his words starting to slur as consciousness slipped away from him.
“Second Battalion, Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment. The insignia had the scroll, the star, and the lightning bolt. He was a Ranger. Army Ranger. Which means he has training. Serious training. Hand-to-hand combat, weapons, tactics, everything.”
His eyes were closing despite his best efforts to keep them open.
“Ryan?” Glory said. “Is there anything else? Any other details you remember?”
“The tattoo,” Ryan mumbled, barely conscious now. “It was faded. Old. Like he got it years ago. And there was scarring around it. Like he had been injured. Burned maybe. Or shrapnel. I could not tell for sure. He also had a weird voice like his vocal chords had been damaged.”
“Okay,” Glory said. “That is good information. That will help narrow down who he is.”
“Need to find Tessa,” Ryan whispered, the darkness pulling him under. “Need to keep her safe. Tell Dad. Tell him about the tattoo. Tell him to find her.”
“I will,” Glory promised. “I’ll call him right now and tell him everything you said. You just rest.”
But Ryan was already gone, consciousness slipping away into the darkness of medicated sleep.
The last thing he thought before the black claimed him completely was a prayer that his father would find Tessa in time.
That whoever had taken her would not hurt her.
That he would get another chance to tell her he loved her, and that he was sorry, and that he would spend the rest of his life proving to her that he was nothing like Mark Green.
Please, he thought. Please let her be okay.
Then there was nothing.