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Lila gasps. “What do you mean, Mark’s hurt? What happened?” There’s brief static as she switches to speakerphone for Tucker’s benefit.
“I don’t know all the details. An IED exploded and Mark was thrown against an armored vehicle. They stabilized him and flew him to San Antonio.”
“From Afghanistan?”
“The field hospital, then Landstuhl, then to Brooke.” I stuff toiletries in around the edges of my suitcase.
“So he was burned.” Her voice quavers. As former medics, we both know BAMC specializes in burn victims.
I grab my carry-on and start filling it as well. “Second and third degree, but he didn’t say where or how much. He’s unconscious with a bad head injury, on a vent. He had surgery to stop internal hemorrhaging. And –” I sink onto the bed. “And he said the blast shredded his right leg.”
“Jesus Christ.” Tucker’s voice is barely a whisper. “But he’s alive?”
“For now.” I swallow hard. “But it’s bad, Tucker. Really bad.”
In the background, I hear the rapid clicking of computer keys. “I’m booking your flight,” Lila says. “Pack fast.”
“We’re leaving now,” Tucker says. “Unlock the chain on your door and leave your gun.”
Tucker hurtles at top speed to get me to the airport, shadows flying past me in the dark before I can identify them. I make my flight with no time to spare.
The red-eye flight is agonizing. The interior of the plane is dimly lit as other passengers doze, but I couldn’t sleep if my life depended on it. I can’t stop trembling, my stomach in knots as one terrible question swirls through my mind. What if?
What if Mark doesn’t make it? What if he lives, but has severe brain damage? What if he loses everything that makes him Mark – his memories, his brilliant mind, his sense of humor, his charisma?
What if I’m forced to keep a promise I never should have made?
An unwanted memory shoves to the forefront, playing like a movie in my mind. It was back in Afghanistan, late one night, with the four of us huddled around a fire. A few days before, we’d shipped out four of our guys with critical injuries sustained in an IED blast, and we’d received word that Taylor hadn’t survived. The others were alive, but they’d never be the same. Jameson and Hardaway were missing limbs, and Brock’s head injury was bad enough that they suspected he’d spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state.
Ryan Brock was twenty-two, just a kid, with a cheery smile, dancing eyes, and a mouth that would have shocked a sailor.
It wasn’t fair.
We spent every day surrounded by the brutalities of war, driven by duty and denial. Horrible things happened all around us, but each of us believed we were immune, that it wouldn’t happen to us. We had to. Hearing about Brock had ripped away our sheer veil of invincibility.
Tucker’s light brown hair looked golden in the firelight, and though I couldn’t see them in the semi-darkness, I knew his dark blue eyes were somber. His hands flexed repeatedly as he looked toward me and Lila, tipping his head toward us. “Would you want to live if you’d been badly injured? If you weren’t the same?”
Lila made a face. “If I’m beating and breathing, yeah. I’ll fight my way back.”
I stared at orange sparks flying skyward as the tower of burning wood in the firepit shifted, taking my time before answering. “It would depend on what I’d lost.”
Lila’s head whipped around. “What does that mean?”
I shrugged. “There are things I wouldn’t want to live through. I think I could deal with physical injuries. But TBI’s? Traumatic brain injury,” I clarified for Tucker. “Ending up like Brock, with my body intact and my mind gone?” I paused. “I don’t want to be trapped in a healthy body with no idea who I am or who anyone else is. We’ve seen it too many times. The brain is fragile. I don’t want to be completely oblivious for years until I finally die from pneumonia or an infected bedsore. I want to go out fighting.”
Mark had silently walked me to my barracks later that night. I’d turned to go in when he caught my hand. “I won’t let you go out like that, Baby Girl.”
I turned back to look at him, his face half hidden by the darkness of the starless night. “How? Fighting? It’s a little late to avoid that.”
“No. Dying oblivious, trapped in a healthy body. I won’t let that happen to you.”
“I’m not sure you can prevent it.”
He studied me, deliberately choosing each word. “If you truly wouldn’t want to live that way, and I knew you really weren’t in there anymore –” He’d hesitated. “I wouldn’t make you live like that. It would be wrong to make you suffer.”
The shadows playing across his face emphasized the weight of his words, and I shook my head. “I would never ask you to do that, Mark. That’s too much. It’s not right.”
“You aren’t asking, Charlie. I’m offering. I’ll make sure you don't have to worry about living that way if we both know you wouldn’t want to.” He hesitated again. “For what it’s worth, if it’s me? If I’m not in there anymore, if my body hangs on, but I’m gone?” He’d tapped his chest. “I don’t want that either. There’s a difference between existing and living. If I’m merely existing, I’d rather die.”
