Chapter 4
Jack
Three days in, I have learned exactly two things about this compound: the coffee is industrial strength, and control is currency I do not have.
So, I take what I can get.
By seven in the morning, I'm back at the supply cabinet with my clipboard. When two soldiers lean in the doorway to watch me work like they’ve never seen anyone organize anything, I put them to use.
"You." I point at the tall one. He has a shaved head and tattoos up his neck. "Hold this." I hand him a box of gauze. "And you." I turn to the younger one, maybe twenty-two, who wears a more complicated expression. "Count the syringes in that drawer. Tell me how many are still sealed."
Neither questions it, which tells me everything I need to know about the power vacuum in this compound's medical care.
"Seventeen sealed," the young one says. "Three open."
"Three open syringes in a drawer with no biohazard protocol. Noted." I write it down. "Put the box on the table and get out. Both of you."
They go. In the hallway one mutters something about the new nurse being a hard-ass, and I let myself smile for exactly three seconds. Better a hard ass than a doormat here. Then, I get back to work.
The garden is my next project, though I dress it up as reconnaissance. If a man has a cardiac event on the third floor, I need the fastest route to get him outside for an ambulance. It’s just professional due diligence. The lie tastes thin even to me.
I find the glass door at the end of the east corridor.
It opens onto an overgrown garden. Hedges press against a wrought-iron fence I could climb if I were twenty years younger and hadn't spent a decade destroying my knees on hospital floors.
The door has a keypad. The world on the other side of it is green, close, and locked.
"Miss Rivera."
I don't jump, nurses don't jump, but my pulse kicks. When I turn, the soldier named Callen is three feet behind me with his hands clasped in front of him like a funeral director. He’s thirty, maybe, with a forgettable face and pale blue eyes that miss nothing.
"The garden's off-limits without escort," he says in a polite, almost apologetic tone. "Mr. Maddox's orders."
"I was assessing emergency exits."
"Of course." He doesn't move. "I can arrange an escorted tour. For medical purposes."
The way he says medical purposes makes it clear he knows exactly what I was doing. I appreciate that he doesn’t make me hear it or say it.
"The keypad code would be useful for genuine emergencies," I say.
"I'm sure it would." He offers a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "I'll mention it to Mr. Maddox."
He walks me back to the medical room without touching me, keeping a precise three feet of distance that reads as surveillance dressed up as courtesy. I hate that he's good at his job. I hate his politeness because at least with hostility I'd know where I stand.
Jamie calls at noon. I duck into the bathroom, lock the door, and sit on the cold tile with my back against the tub.
"Jack." His voice is thick with relief. "I wasn't sure you'd pick up."
"I always pick up. How's the lip?" I ask with the right amount of sisterly love in my voice.
"Better. Are you okay? Is it terrible?"
There's a water stain on the ceiling shaped vaguely like a rabbit. "It's fine. I have a room. The work's straightforward. The men are respectful enough."
"Respectful enough. That's not exactly an endorsement."
"It's a year, Jamie. I've survived worse than a year."
The silence is heavy with everything he wants to say. "I'm sorry…I know it doesn't fix anything."
"I know. Stay inside. Go to class. Let me handle this."
"I can't just do nothing."
"You can and you will. I didn't sign away a year so you could get yourself killed doing something stupid."
A long pause. "I love you."
"I love you too. Now let me work." I sit on the floor for another five minutes after we hang up, until my hands stop wanting to shake.
Tiernan comes to the medical room at dusk. I feel the air change before I hear him, but make myself calm. He doesn’t get to rattle me in my space.
"The previous inventory was six months out of date," I say without turning around. "And someone's been self-medicating with ibuprofen at twice the recommended dose. Long-term use at that level causes kidney damage, GI bleeding, increased cardiac risk." I hold up the log. "I documented it."
He reads my entry. Compound medical officer declined to comment.
"That's not my title," he says.
"It's not anyone's title because you don't have a medical officer.
You have a supply closet with expired bandages and enough whiskey to kill someone's liver by Christmas.
I'm fixing that." I set the log down. "The ibuprofen was almost empty, the date eight months gone.
Someone bought it, hid it, and worked through it slowly.
That's chronic pain management, not acute injury. "
"Remy," he says after a long tense moment where I feel him reading me. "The shoulder, from last week. He's been having trouble sleeping."
I didn't expect him to actually answer. "Then Remy should tell me directly so I can adjust his treatment. Hiding pain from medical staff is how small problems become big ones."
"I'll mention it to him."
"See that you do."
He leaves without another word, and I stand in the fading light a moment longer than I need to.
The next morning I'm in the kitchen at six because my body is still on hospital time. The coffee pot is already full. Tiernan is at the counter with a mug, his back to the door, shoulders set like he heard me coming.
Neither of us moves for a moment.
"The pot's fresh," he says, not turning. "Help yourself."
I pour a cup and stand beside him. I’m close enough to smell cedar and something darker underneath.
"You're up early."
"I'm always up early. The compound doesn't run itself."
"Neither does a hospital. I used to do doubles on four hours of sleep. You learn to function."
"Function." He turns his head, just enough to look at me sideways. "Is that what you're doing here?"
"I'm surviving. Same as always."
He goes back to the window. We finish our coffee without speaking, and when he sets his empty mug in the sink, his shoulder brushes mine. He leaves without looking back.
I tell myself the warmth is the coffee.
I'm restocking suture kits the next afternoon when boots hit the corridor wrong. They’re too fast, and my pulse kicks before I've made the decision to move. Callen comes through the door first, half-carrying a man whose shirt is soaked dark from the shoulder down.
Remy is on his feet. "That's Evan."
"On the table. Now," I order.
They lower him onto the exam table and I'm already pulling on gloves, cutting the shirt away. A wound high on the left shoulder, near the clavicle, entry small, no clean exit. He's conscious. His breathing is fast and shallow.
"Bullet," Callen says. "Dockside. Moretti's people hit the loading bay. We got him out before they finished."
"How long ago?" I ask.
"Twenty minutes."
I check the pulse in his arm, the color of his fingertips, and the way the blood is welling rather than pumping. No arterial spray. The round missed the big vessels and lodged against bone. He’s relatively lucky, even if I won’t say it.
"Evan." I put a hand on his good shoulder when he tries to talk. "Don't. Breathe through your nose, slow. I'm going to control the bleeding and find the bullet. You're going to hold still."
I work like I learned in the ER, when there were three patients bleeding and two hands to go around. Pressure and probe. The round comes free and clicks into the steel tray. I irrigate, pack, close, dress, and immobilize the arm against his chest.
By the time I'm done my scrubs are streaked with blood and my hands are cramping, but his breathing has steadied and his color is back.
"He needs fluids and rest," I tell Callen. "IV antibiotics for at least forty-eight hours. Keep that arm in a sling, no heroics. The shoulder's going to need real rehab once it heals, or he loses range in it."
Callen and Remy carry Evan out to recovery. I strip off my gloves and wash my hands in water hot enough to sting. I see Tiernan in the doorway as I’m doing my second round of soap.
He’s wearing a dark shirt and a holster I make myself not look at. There’s a cut on his side that's still seeping through his shirt and a bruise coming up along his jaw.
"You're bleeding," I say.
"It's superficial."
"It needs stitches. Sit."
For a second I think he'll refuse. Then he crosses the room and sits on the edge of the table, rolling up the hem of his shirt. The cut is deeper than I thought. I clean it in silence, aware of his eyes on my face, his breath stirring the loose hair at my temple when I lean close.
"Evan will keep," I say, because the quiet is getting hard. "The bullet missed everything that matters."
"I saw. You work fast."
"I’m efficient. It's not the same thing." I thread the needle and start suturing.
"You didn't flinch," he says. "When they brought him in. Most people flinch."
"I'm a nurse. Blood is part of the job."
"This isn't a hospital. Violence here isn't sterile. It doesn't stay in triage bays."
"I'm aware."
"Are you?" His voice drops, and I feel it low in my body, where it doesn’t belong. "Because you're standing in a room full of someone else's blood, looking at me like I'm the one who needs fixing."
"Everyone needs something fixed." The words come out sharper than I mean them to. "Even you." I tie off the last stitch and apply the bandage. "Done. Try not to tear them open in your next confrontation."
He looks at me with something between assessment and something else. The distance I put between us doesn't feel like enough.
He picks up my log, reads my entry on Evan, and below it, the line about him. Compound medical officer present during procedure.
"You keep calling me that," he murmurs.
"It's accurate."
"It's a title. You could use my name."
"Names imply familiarity. I prefer professional distance."
The corner of his mouth twists into a dangerous smirk. "Is that what we're calling the coffee."
My pulse betrays me. "The coffee is caffeine. Nothing more."
"Right." He straightens, and the tension fizzles. "Get some sleep. Tomorrow will be worse."
He leaves. I clean the instruments under water too hot for them to settle my fingers.
I hate how easy it would be to cross the two feet of tile he keeps leaving between us and find out whether that flat control breaks the way everyone's does. Would he stay quiet or say my name? Would he finally stop calculating?
No. He owns a year of my life. He does not get the rest of it.
I shut off the water. I set the forceps in the tray, square to the edge.
I take the tray to the autoclave and start the cycle and watch the steam. I ignore how much effort it takes not to think of him.