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After checking it, she stood. “Duty calls.”
Being the gentleman that he was, he pushed his chair back and rose to his feet as well. “Alright, but don’t forget what I said. You need to rest and take care of you. If you need anything, anything at all, you let me know, ya hear?”
“I will. I promise.” Stephanie was still fighting back tears as she gave him a quick hug before rushing to the elevator bank closest to the break room.
As she waited for the doors to open she wiped the moisture beneath her eyes and realized that she couldn’t keep going on like this, bursting into tears at the drop of a hat. She’d done her best to convince herself that her father passing and whatever had happened between her and Ace hadn’t affected her. It clearly had and she wasn’t doing herself any favors by not dealing with it.
The doors opened and she stepped inside the elevator as she started formulating a game plan to get herself back on track. First things first, when she got home tonight she was going to have to take a fearless emotional inventory. No denying. No hiding. No avoiding. Whatever she was feeling she was going to face it.
When she arrived on the first floor, all of her personal issues were forgotten. Instantly her mind switched into work mode. In her job, being preoccupied could cost someone his or her life. She entered the room focused, calm and clear minded.
Her Zen state of mind shattered when she saw the patient lying in the bed. If it were physically possible, Stephanie’s jaw would’ve hit the floor. She sucked in a startled puff of air as her heart started galloping so hard she was sure it was audible.
Alerted to her presence, probably thanks to her gasp or pounding heart, Ace’s eyes fluttered open.
“Hi,” he smiled, wincing slightly as he did.
The barely noticeable action snapped her out of her shock. He was in pain.
“What happened…are you okay?” she asked even as she was picking up his chart.
As she scanned the document, several words stuck out to her. Gunshot wound. Infection. And MTBI, which stood for mild traumatic brain injury.
She looked up at him for answers. Instead of getting them, he rasped, “I missed you.”
The fact that he had a head injury and may not even know what he was saying didn’t stop her from admitting, “I missed you, too.”
Her mind was having a hard time processing what she was seeing and it wasn’t just because Ace was now sporting a beard that looked sexier on him than the shirt and sweats had the last time she’d him. He was here. Right in front of her. She could reach out and touch him.
“Oh good. You’re here.”
She turned to see Seth Sloan walking through the doorway.
He made his way into the room, filling the space with authority. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”
Confusion swirled through her as she looked back and forth between the two men. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Garrett says he needs to stay overnight for observation.” Seth stood beside the bed with his feet shoulder width apart and crossed his arms. She wasn’t sure if it was meant to be an intimidating stance, but if it was, he was nailing it. “Ace is refusing. I had you paged so that you could get through to him.”
Ace sat up straighter in the bed. “I’m fine.”
Stephanie still wasn’t sure exactly why Seth thought that anything she said would matter, but she tried anyway. “If Dr. Gresham thinks that you need to be observed, then you need to be observed.”
“I’m fine.”
He stole her line.
She knew from personal experience that those words covered all kinds of sins and that he was obviously not fine. He’d been shot, from what it said on his chart the bullet hadn’t entered the abdominal cavity so it basically equated to a flesh wound but he was fighting an infection and he had a concussion. That’s what she should be focused on. Instead, she felt like a teenage girl whose crush had just showed up at her job. Since the moment she’d lifted her eyes and seen Ace, the dark cloud cleared and the sun was shining through again.
***
Even in his foggy-minded state, one fact remained sharp and in focus: there was no way he was going to stay in the hospital. He’d only agreed to come and get checked out because Seth had pulled rank and insisted on it. Although they were both out of the Corps, the chain of command was still intact.
After his flight landed this morning Ace had gone directly to Elite offices for a debriefing on the shit show the mission had turned out to be. Once they’d landed on foreign soil, things had gone sideways. Two days into their retrieval there was an uprising against the government. Suddenly there was no longer government backup available and all intel they had arrived with had changed. What had started as a clandestine code yellow, no-combat mission, had escalated to a dangerous code red, under fire extraction.
Six days in, they found themselves under siege from enemy combatants. Thankfully, they’d all escaped the attack unharmed, but a good portion of their equipment including radios and protective gear had been destroyed and because of the remote area, there were no cell signals. They’d been totally blind, in hostile territory, with no way to communicate with anyone.
It had taken them two weeks to locate the asset and another twenty-four hours to get him out. During the extraction, Ace had placed his own bulletproof vest on the asset and had ended up getting shot himself. He’d treated the wound with the minimal first aid that they’d had available in the field. In D.C. he’d seen a doctor who’d patched him up so he could catch the first flight home.
