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But it’s not meant to be.
An hour later, I’m crouching on the floor beside the bed, drenched in sweat from another night terror. I scan the room, temporarily disoriented by my unfamiliar surroundings. Then it all comes crashing back, and for once, the memory of my present situation is worse than my past.
I drag myself through the shower again, hoping the steamy water will wash away my fatigue. It doesn’t. I unpack my bags and settle into the hotel room, wishing I’d brought a backpack or messenger bag. I check my phone and find a twenty-four-hour superstore nearby. An hour later, I’m back at my hotel, armed with snacks, bottled water, and a faux-leather tote large enough for my laptop, tablet, and the contents of my purse.
I return to the hospital before daylight. In the dark, the enormous brick and glass complex shines with lights from at least half the windows despite the early hour. Hospitals aren’t for sleeping, they’re for healing, and anyone expecting a night of uninterrupted sleep is in for a rude awakening.
My Uber driver drops me off, and I hurry inside, bracing myself against the brisk January winds. I find my way through the maze of hallways to the ICU more easily today. When I slip into Mark’s darkened room, I pause, scrutinizing him. He looks the same as yesterday, swollen and battered and bruised, not at all like my Mark. My chest constricts.
The room has a beige vinyl couch that folds out into a cot-sized bed, a recliner beside the window, and a straight-backed chair for me to choose from. I drop my bag on the couch and move toward the monitors attached to Mark, gauging his condition based on objective data. His heart rate and blood pressure are mildly improved, and his ventilator settings are unchanged. These are good signs – he’s stable, and slightly better than yesterday.
I glance briefly up at the stethoscope dangling above the ventilator and hesitate a split second before reaching for it. I listen to his heart and lungs with a practiced ear. His lungs still have fluid at the bases, but his heartbeat is reassuringly strong. I return the stethoscope to its hook and glance thoughtfully at him before deciding I might as well assess the rest of him. I’ll feel better if I do. Besides, if he were conscious, he’d let me. I’ve patched him up plenty of times before.
I take a deep breath and gently pull down his covers. The absence of his right lower leg makes my stomach clench. Limb loss isn’t easy for alpha male soldiers to cope with, and Mark is one of the most alpha males I know. His limb now ends five or six inches below his knee. It’s hard to tell exactly because thick gauze wraps all the way to his hip, presumably also covering his burns and the incision from his femur surgery. Flat metal bars run down either side of his thigh to his knee. They’re held by velcro straps to brace his repaired femur. His bandages are clean, except for some yellowish-brown drainage near the amputation site. His left leg is swollen and splotched with dark purple bruises, and assorted dressings cover several shrapnel wounds and his thigh burn.
I pull the blankets back up to Mark’s waist, then loosen his gown and slide it up to examine his torso. It, too, is covered in angry bruises and assorted gauze dressings – one at each of his three chest tube sites, one spanning the width of his upper abdomen from the surgery to repair his liver and remove his spleen, and a vertical one along his right chest wall where they repaired his free-floating broken ribs. There are also several smaller dressings over shrapnel punctures.
I tug his gown back down and straighten his covers, smoothing them lightly over his chest. Then I reach for his right hand and squeeze it as I lean down to kiss his swollen cheek, avoiding his tubes and lines. “Morning, Big Guy. How about waking up and talking to me?”
He doesn’t, not that I’d expected him to.
I just hope he wakes up soon, and that when he does, he’s still Mark.
Because if he’s not, I don’t know what I’ll do.
I watch him, pretending he’s just sleeping as I drag the recliner over to his bed and sit down, sandwiching his right hand between both of mine. Mark and I have been best friends almost since we met. He and his parents moved next door when I was nine and he was eleven. Not even two weeks later, he rescued me. We’d met twice already, once when my mom and I took over a tray of cookies to welcome his family to the neighborhood, and again when my dad lent his dad a drill because his hadn’t yet been unearthed from a moving box.
The day Mark became my hero, I was on the soccer field after school, practicing dribbling and cutting maneuvers. He was there practicing, too, but we weren’t practicing together. I’d lost control of my ball, and it rolled off the edge of the field and down a slight incline behind the back corner of the gymnasium. I trotted after it, startled to find Corbin Holmes lurking back there. Corbin was a big, mean, nasty-tempered bully a couple of years older than me. He grabbed my soccer ball and refused to give it back. When I attempted to pull it out of his meaty hands, he let go of it, and I fell onto my backside. Before I could blink, he’d flipped me onto my stomach and was kneeling on my back, shoving my face into the gravel. I was furious, trying to buck him off, swearing I’d knock his teeth out when I got up – a rather ambitious threat, considering he was a full head taller and at least forty pounds heavier.
I’d heard quick footsteps crunching on the gravel right before Mark had appeared, tall and skinny, with long arms and legs and pale blue eyes that immediately assessed the situation. He didn’t waste a second before snatching Corbin up by his collar and dragging him upright, then jerking his arms behind his back. He’d called Corbin a pussy for picking on a girl half his size. Corbin snarled, but there wasn’t much else he could do. Then Mark had tipped his chin at me. “You wanna keep your promise?”
I’d gotten to my feet, brushing the dirt off my scraped knees and frowning at the tear in my favorite tee shirt. Stupid Corbin Holmes. “What promise?”
“To knock his teeth out.”
I’d looked at Mark in surprise, and he’d grinned. Then I marched right up to Corbin, drew back my fist, and planted it solidly in his mouth. I’m not sure who was more surprised by the sudden flow of bright blood – me or Corbin. “You’re dead,” he threatened, spitting on the ground.
Mark had hitched Corbin’s arms higher behind his back, enough to make him squeak in pain. “I don’t think so,” he’d said calmly, “because if you hurt her, it’ll be the last thing you do, pussy. Mess with her, and you’re messing with me. And you don’t wanna do that.” Then he’d hurled Corbin facefirst on the ground, taken me by the hand, and led me forward, both of us tromping right across Corbin’s back.
I developed my first crush that day.
“Thanks,” I’d told him when we got to the field.
He’d looked at me and frowned. “You’re bleeding,” he’d said. He’d glanced down at his dirty shirt, then pulled it up and used the inside of it to wipe the blood from my lip where Corbin had shoved my face in the gravel. “Nice punch,” he said. “I don’t think you knocked any teeth out, but you cut his lip up pretty good.”
“You think he’ll tell on me?” I asked, suddenly worried about getting called to the principal’s office. I was pretty sure my parents wouldn’t like that.
But Mark had laughed. “He’s not going to tell anyone that a girl beat him up.”
I’d eyed him. “You shouldn’t say ‘pussy’,” I said. “It’s crude.”
He grinned. “Tell you what. I won’t tell anyone you punched him in the mouth if you don’t tell anyone I used crude language.”
I’d agreed, and from that moment on, we’d been inseparable, always at each other’s houses, hanging out together, and watching each other’s backs. My childhood crush faded away, replaced by deep friendship. I helped Mark practice football passes from the time I was ten until he graduated from high school, and I can still throw a decent spiral. He tutored me in algebra and chemistry so I could pull off a C in both, something both I and my parents were immensely grateful for. When my jackass of a boyfriend Kirk dumped me for KiKi Carter two days before my prom, Mark asked if I’d go with him instead. I said yes, and Mark made sure we danced right next to the two of them. KiKi flirted her ass off with Mark the entire night, batting her big doe eyes and angling her body to give him an eyeful of her impressive boobs. He ignored her, and she and Kirk both ended up pissed off – KiKi because Mark gave her the brush-off, and Kirk because KiKi had lost all interest in him when compared to Mark, Lakeview High’s former star football player. Mark and I stayed out all night, going out for huge, messy burgers (because what else would a hot guy in a black tux and a girl in a backless white prom dress eat?). Then we laid in the bed of his truck, listening to music and watching the stars until the sun came up. Mark had rescued me again, and my crush on him returned in full force. I kept it to myself until I left for college a few months later, unwilling to make a fool of myself by acting on it.
It wasn’t all good times for us, though.
When Mark was thirteen, his mom was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. By the time they’d found it, the cancer had already spread to her brain, lungs, and bones. She’d endured chemo for her family’s sake, hoping for a miracle that wasn’t meant to be. When she died, he and I leaned against each other in my basement for hours, him trying not to cry and failing, me rubbing his shoulders, unsure what to say or do. At eleven, I’d not dealt with the death of an adult before.
