Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Clive and Marion called to say they were on their way. A few minutes later, I met them outside. “He’s fine…”
“Not again!” Marion exclaimed after giving me a hug. “We heard from Sal that she’d just admitted him and that he was unconscious! The stained glass above the entry doors is gone. My Lord Almighty! What happened? And not a day since Ormr was trying to kill us all!”
Clive cleared his throat and looked at my brother, who’d come up behind me, with a long, hard glare, then back to Marion as if in a pointed notation of his presence.
“Who’s Armor?” TJ asked, taking in Marion and Clive.
“O-R-M-R, Ormr, Minorrison, jackass.”
Clive looked to me in surprise, then to TJ.
TJ held out his hand to Clive. “Hi, I’m Jackass, but you can call me TJ.”
Clive stood a little taller. “Yes, the resemblance is uncanny now.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Your sister shares your taste of humor, and some facial structure, if not hair and skin color.”
“Last time I checked, she’s also a girl with a rack and I am a dude with a dick. Not at all alike.”
I chimed in. “Like I said, he’s Jackass, and if you’re feeling formal, elevate to Captain Jackass.”
“Who’s Ormr?”
“None of your business—”
Clive proceeded, “A legendary man who walked among us wearing your sister’s skin like that of a selkie.
She dealt us a mighty blow just yesterday; thus, we are all on edge.
When your lethal aerial arrived and blew out the upper windows, naturally, we thought he’d come back and killed the two of them. ”
TJ took a long blink as if his eyes had absorbed too much light, then focused hard on Clive, expecting him to laugh and tell him it was all a joke. He waited. We all waited.
“You’re not kidding.”
“Young man, I’ve become accustomed to your sister, and I have to say your brand of humor is most juvenile.
Of course I am not ‘kidding,’ as you say!
And were you here just twenty-four hours prior, you might have seen what real men, dicks or not, can do.
Your sister is one of the mightiest men I’ve ever encountered. ”
I held up my finger, pausing the conversation.
“Now, TJ, satisfied? You’ve been told everything I wouldn’t tell you until you were ready. Ready to call the cops and report us as a cult?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Clive cried, “we were fine until you arrived and shattered the—”
“For the record, it was a good thing my ride to Castle Loch—”
“Laoch.”
“—was available to hang a uey and grab us so I could get your boy’s ass over here—”
“Thank you,” I said to him and tried not to sound like I didn’t mean it.
“Well.” Clive held himself higher. “Had you called ahead—”
“And ruin the surprise? No, I was under strict orders to arrive without an announcement to see what was happening.”
“Orders?”
We answered in unison, “Mother.”
“Oh,” Clive said, taken aback, “Mrs. Baker.”
TJ looked like he’d swallowed a grape, and I knew I wasn’t alone in hearing a sigh, of longing and desperation, when Clive said Mother’s name.
“Well, in that case,” Clive continued, “welcome. Will your mother be joining you?”
TJ gave him another long look before adding, “No, Mother and Daddy will be at home until further notice.” Then he glanced at me and scrunched his eyebrows up and together in question.
I just shrugged. It was Clive—what was there to explain other than he needed more time outside his basement hovel? Aloud, I said to my brother, “Welcome to Glentree, fuckface.”
I was holding Rowan’s hand when he woke.
The gentle beep of the machines was the soundtrack.
Rowan’s hospital room was the hospital’s only VIP room.
It boasted a pasture view, an in-room bathroom, and paisley curtains that looked like station dividers repurposed from the emergency department.
The hospital room was clean, but time had aged the corners where the vinyl baseboards came together into a sepia color; the ceiling tiles sported minor stains from a leak.
The cabinets were faux wood. If I were a betting woman, I’d say that Rowan’s uncle, the previous chief, infused it with cash when things were flush, before the big whisky bust in ’89.
Thankfully, the equipment was much newer.
The surgeon, however, was not. He was an old military doc and took advantage of having my ear all to himself when he checked earlier on a still-sleeping Rowan.
He told me point-blank that whatever horse manure Rowan was constantly finding himself in, he needed to knock it off.
Rowan’s injuries were getting to the limits of their small country hospital.
He gave me a list of things they couldn’t do if we found ourselves in a chopper and thinking of landing there again.
I winced at hearing a big fat no to cerebral trauma and pocketed the list for later, as in, never later. I was an optimist.
What they had taken care of this time, I was informed, was that Rowan had had organ bruising, and like TJ thought, a hematoma had formed and then burst when TJ hit him.
His body went into shock and shut him down.
He had wide gauze wrapped around his midsection, providing support and coverage of the incision.
And a reminder to take it easy for a while.
They had dialed back Rowan’s pain medication an hour before, and he was now coming to the surface.
He opened his eyes; the blue was washed out, making him look downright ill against the pale pillow and beige surfaces of the single-bed room.
The sparse five o’clock shadow on his face showed how much time had passed since he’d arrived.
“Hi,” he croaked.
“Hi,” I said and got him some water.
He took a tentative sip, and when he got that down, I gave him another until he was strong enough to take the cup from me.
His bed had him at a gentle slope, so I fluffed his pillows, adjusted his blankets, and fussed over his IV tube’s placement where it flopped over his forearm until his other hand wrapped around my wrist.
“Cole, mo ghràdh.”
I stopped, took a deep breath, and sat on the edge of his bed. “Are you OK?” I whispered.
He nodded and winced. “I am now. I’ll have to thank your brother when I see him next.”
I was sure my eyebrows arched so high they touched my hairline. “Demanding an apology was more what I was thinking.”
“If I’m not mistaken, I was flown here?”
“You remember that?”
“I do,” he said, and paused. “At least, I think I do; it’s getting mixed with the last time I was on my back in one.”
“Oh” was all I could manage. That would have been when he was evacuated to Germany after Vick, his navigator, was killed.
“If he didn’t punch me, the doc said tha’ it could have ruptured at any time. If I had to be driven here, I would have either bled out or had organ failure before I got to the ER doors.”
I gripped his hand with both of mine and put his knuckles to my brow bone like I were laying my head on a prayer stone.
He continued, “You were right.”
I looked up. “About what?”
“We should have gone to the hospital last night.”
I shook my head. “You mean, two days ago.”
He looked at the weak midday sun. “That was two days ago?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling, “they had you sedated for half of it.”
We made small talk as that settled in on him, having lost that much time.
“TJ wants to come by to check on you. I’ve told him to go pound sand until you’re up and vibrant again. If he does show up, I’ve promised him another shiner.”
Rowan tried to sit up and grimaced.
“Easy there, cowboy.” I got the giant corded remote for his bed and hit the tattered button that had a faint up arrow on it.
The room filled with the racket of the bed attempting to come to an upright position.
It whined and growled, working under duress.
I tapped the remote against my palm as if that would cure it; when it didn’t, I tried another button. It made the bed vibrate.
“Whoa,” Rowan said and grabbed the side rails as he shook.
“That can’t be it,” I mumbled and hit another button displaying an arrow.
I was getting desperate. I needed to fix it.
This whole situation of Rowan being in the hospital, I couldn’t help but feel, was somehow on my shoulders.
Ormr, who had initially punched him, had been in me; then it was my brother who punched him again. I had to do better.
I smashed the next button in a stress sweat.
The bed went flat in an instant—Rowan with it.
“Whoa!” he shouted. His feet flew in the air as he fell back with a thud.
“Shit!” I said and hit the up button again. The motor ground and shook the bed.
“Oh!” hollered Rowan as the nurse crashed through the doors.
“What in the bloody hell,” she said, breathless.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, Rowan.” Then, to her: “I was just trying to get him sitting upright, and it shook and vibrated. Then I thought maybe back would help get the motor in gear, and then it fell!”
“Aye, I see tha’. This bed is not meant to have weight on it when it’s moving,” she said, and with an arm around Rowan’s shoulders, she had me do it again, and like a sloth through quicksand, the bed made its way to a slightly higher incline than it had been at minutes before.
My stomach churned while she took his vitals. When she left, I turned and delicately put the remote on the side table.
“I’m so sorry,” I said and found his hand.
He looked over at me, and there was humor twinkling in his eyes. “Aye, let’s not do that again.”
“Deal. I’m pretty sure that after everything, you don’t want your obituary in the newspaper to read, Killed by Wife with Bed.”
He gripped an extra pillow to his abdomen and tried not to laugh. “I was just thinking of tha’. I’m going to bloody fucking die in some foolish way after everything we’ve been through.”
I gave in to the stress giggles. The relief that he was going to be all right was followed by the realization that I needed to accept things as they were. Or I was going to make things worse.
Wiping tears from my eyes, I leaned forward and softly brushed my lips over his, “I love you.”
His quiet laugh was sealed in our kiss. “Tha gaol agamsa ort fhèin.” I love you too.
We were quiet for a while, our fingers intertwined, and absently, I stroked the side of his hand with my thumb.
“Your brother seems nice,” Rowan said.
I looked up sharply; he was studying the ceiling, a grin on his face.
“Yeah, well, if you think he’s nice now, just wait until you see him again; you’ll get the impression he’s trying to mimic Mother Teresa.”
“No, he’s a good older brother. I’d have done the same if our roles were reversed.”
“And why should there be punching? How about a nice civilized discussion?”
But Rowan’s mind was elsewhere. “What I can’t shake, though, is the feeling I’ve met him before. Must just be the helicopter ride tha’ was familiar.”
I nodded. “You haven’t talked much about Germany.”
“No, I haven’t. I try no’ to. But now…there’s something about how he moved reminded me of the medics on the helicopter after I crashed.”
“He is a medic, as you know,” I prompted, then waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. He looked at the ceiling as if the thoughts he felt were written there.
After he crashed. After he was shot and Vick was killed. I didn’t even consider until then that the airship that saved him would have been a helicopter. He talked of his time there in general terms, so now that he was in the memory and talking about it, it felt like a significant deal.
“Are you feeling like that helicopter ride was yesterday, or does it feel far in your past?”
He took a deep breath in and winced. “Aye, a little of both. I know it was a long time in the past, but hearing the blades beat the air is reminding me of things that make it feel as if it’s just happened. The heat, the pain,” he said, feeling at his side where he’d been shot, “and Vick…”
I nodded, listening.
“The smells… I couldn’t eat a ham sandwich for years.”
“You still don’t prefer them.”
“The smell is too alike. Flesh…”
He looked down then. “We weren’t supposed to be in that air space.
But we’d gotten good intel, good enough to send Vick and me in, but without NATO command sanctioning it, there would be no support.
We knew what we’d signed up for, and after we crashed and I was shot, I was expecting another in the head before I wrestled a gun from them.
Only I didn’t have to. I remember the whir behind me and the sand spiking up as bullets came down.
To this day, I don’t know why they were there.
I never learned their names; sometime during the flight, I lost consciousness. ”
I put my hand over his. “Remind me, they were your brothers in arms, weren’t they? So, they wouldn’t have left you there. You were RAF; they would have known you went down and come to get you. NATO sanctioned or not.”
“You would think tha’, only they were US military.”
I scrunched my nose, did I remember that bit? “US military? How would they have known you’d gone down? The flight beacon?”
Rowan shook his head as if it wasn’t that exactly. “I have plenty of theories, but the exact details of how, why, where, who…are all things I have to shake hands with and put back in my black box. Because of the nature of our mission, I’ll never know.”
“OK,” I whispered, kissing the back of his hand, “let me know how I can help?”
He gave me a soft smile and returned my kiss, pressing his lips to the back of my hand. “Stay here with me, if you can? I hate hospitals.”
“Done. Just try and get rid of me.” I took a long moment to drink him in, the returning sea–slate blue of his eyes, the dark shadow beneath his sharp jawline, and the dark slashes that were his brows.
He was the breadth and depth of my love, a human embodiment of it walking this earth.
He was close, alive, and our future spread out long like an endless road before us.
“Marion is coming up today to give me a change of clothes. Doc says tomorrow you go home.”
He sighed. “Tha’ will be nice.”