Another One Bites the Dust (8 page)

“If you can stand it, you can ride out with Lita.  Otherwise, the next ride out won’t be for another two days.”  Layne said with an evil glint in his eyes.

Fucker.  He knew I would want to leave as soon as I could.  Looks like I was trading one shit place for another.  At least for another fourteen hours, that is.

A packed duffle, a cleaned gun, a goodbye said, and two hours later found me sitting in the huey from Speicher to Baghdad, and from there I would jump a military flight to the states.  I still had three more stops once I reached the states.  If it all played out well, I would make it back in time to see Payton tomorrow morning before she got off work.

I’d been in the seat on the huey for over ten minutes before O’Hare finally showed.  She was practically snarling with rage, and I couldn’t help but think I was one lucky SOB.  She threw her stuff in with little regards to who was on the receiving end of her anger.  Her rifle was tossed in with a recklessness that wasn’t smart when dealing with firearms.  My foot went up as her rifle sailed across the metal floor, and I stepped down to stop its progress before it sailed out the open door on the other side.  She snarled at me as she got in the door, and grabbed the rifle.  Without saying thank you, might I add.

O’Hare refused to strap in, and I didn’t care enough to convince her.  Little did I know that she had a reason for doing the things she did.

We were about twenty feet in the air when the helicopter exploded. 

I was disoriented.  My mind wasn’t working.  Lights were bright.  The heat of something was so intense that my skin sizzled.  Everything hurt.  I couldn’t see.  I heard screaming, but I couldn’t tell if it was me, or someone else.  It went on like that for minutes, or maybe hours, hell I don’t know.  Finally,
finally
, darkness overcame me, and I found peace.

ɸ

I woke on a military flight to the states.

From what was explained to me, I wasn’t in critical condition.  I had burns on parts of my body, but it wasn’t significant.  I had a broken arm, lacerations on my chest and neck, and a severe concussion.  The concussion must have been why my head felt like a party I wasn’t invited to was happening in my skull.  It throbbed in time to my heartbeat, and I might have thrown up on the cute little nurse that was changing out my fluids at the time. 

I was checked over by medical personnel at Speicher before they decided to take me back to the states on a direct military flight, instead of to Germany. 

  I was lucky.  The same couldn’t be said for O’Hare, whose body was unable to be recovered from the wreckage due to the flames that overtook the huey not long after they pulled the pilot out.  The pilot had third degree burns on nearly seventy percent of his body, as well as many broken bones.  He’d be lucky to even make it through the night.

I smiled widely at the nurse who was in the process of lowering my blanket and checking out my left hip, where apparently I had another large gash.  “We haven’t even had dinner yet.”

She laughed, but continued with her work.  She was cute.  Short, with about shoulder length brown hair.  She reminded me of someone, but right now, my brain was high on the good shit, and I was close to not caring about anything.

“Careful there, Cowboy.  What would Payton think if she found out you were checking out another nurse?”  Layne said from beside me.

“Who’s Payton?”  I asked, confused as hell.

Chapter 5

Lesson one:  Only trust people with big butts.  They cannot lie.

-E-card

Payton

My palms were sweating.  I was nauseous, and I wasn’t sure I should even be here.  When Ember called, she told me Max was hurt, and my heart had broken.  Literally shattered in a million pieces.  I dry heaved for nearly an hour, and I’ve been sick to my stomach ever since.  When he got onto that plane, I watched it take off, and I knew that something bad was going to happen.  I knew that our relationship was never going to be the same.  What I hadn’t counted on was him having no memory of me, or the last year of his life. 

According to Ember, when Max got to the states, they decided that he would be healthy enough to come to Texas for his care.  Other than bumps, bruises, a concussion, a few cuts, and a broken arm, he was relatively healthy.  All things said and done, he was lucky that he was the first off the helicopter, because otherwise he might have been a lot worse off, like the pilot, or the poor woman who was presumed dead, and whose body was never found.

“What the fuck are you doing touching my sister?”  I heard Max yell.

I was outside his room, and I snickered covering my face with my hands.  This wasn’t even remotely funny.  Not in the slightest.  Except for the part where he didn’t remember that his sister was married and had a kid, that is.  My part in it wasn’t funny in the least.  Painting on a brave face, I walked into the room and stopped dead at the sight of him.

He was shirtless, blanket up to his armpits and folded under his arms.  His hair was shaved to a fine stubble, revealing a nasty cut that ran the length of his skull, down the middle of his forehead, and came to a stop at the eyebrow above his left eye.  His face was battered and bruised, arm covered in dressings most likely due to the burns they said he had.  His arm was covered in a bright fluorescent green cast, and a jealous ball slid up my throat when I saw the name Jenny in cutesy artsy fartsy handwriting with a number underneath.

I gritted my teeth at the surge of anger, and told myself the first chance I got I was kicking that bitch’s ass.  Finally, I allowed myself to meet his eyes, and was taken back at the amount of emotion there.  I wasn’t sure he would remember me, but it seemed instinctively he knew I belonged to him, and it didn’t matter that he didn’t remember.

A leaning mountain of dog nearly took me out at the hip, but I caught my balance by grabbing hold of the end of the bed.  Well, I thought it was the end of the bed, when in reality it was Max’s foot.  He didn’t seem to mind though.  His blanket slipped down some on his chest, revealing his nipples, and dog tags that hung down the middle of his chest.  I looked down and collected myself.  I bought myself some time by scratching Alpha between the ears.  Over the past two weeks, we’d grown attached to each other.  He seemed to know me better than I knew myself at times.

I came in early to work so I could stop by and see Max.  Just in case, I wanted a contingency plan to fall back on if Max didn’t want me here. 

“You’re not my nurse.”  Max finally said.

“How do you know that?”  I countered.

“Your ID badge has pink on it.  The other nurses don’t.”  He stated.

I was pretty damned impressed that he figured that out in the two minutes I’d been in the room.  “You’re right, I’m not.”

He nodded.  “Come here.”

I hesitated, and Alpha sensed it, so he put himself in between me and Max.  Ember and Gabe sat in a chair across the room, and watched silently while we had a battle of wills.

“Platz.”  Max demanded in a funny accent.

Alpha seemed to understand the word, but he wasn’t trained to follow anyone’s command but mine.  “What the hell, Apollo.  Why aren’t you listening to me?”

“Uh, Max?  This isn’t Apollo.  This is Alpha.  You bought Alpha for Payton when you left for Iraq.”  Gabe said from his seat.

“Oh, man.  I’m so fucking confused.”  Max said bring his hands up to rub his forehead.  His groan of pain had me at his side in a flash.  I took his hand down from his face, and inspected the cut on his head.  Tiny stitches bisected the cut, holding it together.  It would leave one hell of a scar unless he did something about it.  The wound wasn’t bleeding, and I felt a knot of sickness well in my throat again.  Leaning down, I gave his cut the lightest of kisses before leaning back and looking into his eyes.  Which were heated.

“I know you.”  He said roughly.

Fuck me.  His gravelly voice sent shivers down my spine.  My nipples beaded, and I licked my lips wishing that I could take him right here and now.  “You do.”

“Should we give you two some space?  Y’all aren’t going to have sex in front of us, right?  You know, for my virgin sensitivities and all.”  Ember said sarcastically from behind me.

I ignored her, and ran my hand down over his arm letting it settle on the thick cast. 

“This is her, isn’t it Emmie?”  Max asked.

My eyes shot up from the cast to his face, and I heard Ember laugh her sadistic laugh and say, “I knew you would remember her!”

“I don’t actually.  I just know it’s her.  She makes my dick hard.”  Max declared.

“Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Max.”  I said before reaching up and tweaking his nipple.

He laughed, and flinched away from my hand, acting for the entire world as if he didn’t just fall out of the sky on a helicopter.

“That’s just sick.”  Ember squealed and covered her ears repeating, “lalalala” over and over again.

Gabe just rolled his eyes, and ran his hand up and down the length of her thigh.  Max’s eyes narrowed, and Gabe’s hand stopped the movement.  He seemed to understand that it was upsetting him, so he stopped to keep Max from getting out of bed and starting something he couldn’t finish.

The nurse came in soon after Ember’s outburst, and gave her an annoyed look before walking up to the bed on the opposite side of me.  Her eyes flickered when she noticed my hand resting lightly on Max’s cast, and I made note of her nametag that read Jenny Fields, R.N.  So, this was the bitch who signed his cast.

I sat my ass down on the side of Max’s bed, and his arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me more firmly into his side. 

Her face went mottled, and she said, “Hospital Regulations say you can’t be in the bed with the patient.”

“Actually, hospital regulations don’t say shit about being in bed with a patient.”  I countered.

Max’s body started shaking, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at him.  “Do you have a marker?”

“On the table beside you.  Ember brought it.”  He said.

How he could make those simple words sound so sexy, I don’t know, but I could feel myself getting wet.  I wanted to jump him, ride him like a cowgirl until I couldn’t see straight.

He must have sensed where my thoughts had gone, because he reached down and adjusted himself under his blankets.  My eyes were attracted to the junction of his legs, and I couldn’t stop the satisfied smirk that lifted the corner of my mouth.  Good, if I had to be horny, so did he.  At least he didn’t have to walk around with an oil slick between his legs the rest of the night.

Pulling away from his hold, I took the marker off the bedside table and went to work on his cast.  I was distracted for a few minutes, but my attention came back in a snap when the nurse started pulling his blankets down.

“What are you doing?”  I demanded.

“Checking his catheter, it doesn’t seem to be producing correctly; I think there is a kink.”  Jenny the giglio said.

“What do you mean it doesn’t seem to be producing correctly?  Is there any urine in the bag?”  I asked.

“Yes.”  She huffed.

“Well then it’s fucking fine.”  I snarled.

“Well there isn’t as much now as there was earlier.  I was just going to check it.”  She argued.

“Jesus, lady.  Get out.  I’ll check it, but I know for certain it’s fine.”  I said as I came around the bed and checked the fluid levels on the catheter bag.  “There is over half a bag of output here, your head needs examined.”

She left in a huff, and the silence in the room penetrated my enraged mind.  They were all staring at me with amused expressions.  “What?”

“Down, Bubbles.  If you wanted to see my penis, all you had to do was say so.”  Max said in his deep placating voice.

I lifted my lip at him in a silent snarl.  He didn’t find this scary, in fact, he laughed even harder.  He lifted his casted arm up to his face like he was going to run his hand over his scruffy jaw, but stopped when he caught sight of the cast.  He started to lower it back down when the drawing on it caught his attention.

He studied it for three seconds, and then promptly started laughing so hard he nearly fell out of bed.  “Ahhhhh, it hurts.”

But obviously not bad enough for him to stop laughing. 

Ember got up, and studied the drawing herself, and then promptly pulled her phone out and posted it on Facebook, all the while laughing.

I’d drawn a bulldozer with a stick figure hanging out the window that looked like it was about to shovel Jenny’s name and number right off the cast.  My stick figure had a bubble over his head reading, “Move bitch, get out tha’ way.” 

I smiled, totally proud of myself.

My alarm on my phone reminded me it was time to go to work, so I silenced it and went up to Max’s bedside.  “I have to go to work; I’ll stop by on my way home in the morning.  Get some sleep; don’t try to do too much when they finally release you from your bed prison.”

Leaning down, I grazed my lips over his, and stepped back, only to find myself hauled back forward with my lips smashed against his.

“Ewww, yuck, make it stop.”  Ember whined from behind me.

I flipped her the bird, and disentangled my lips and tongue from his, backing away from him slowly.  I smiled, gave him a smile, and exited the room.  Alpha was at my heels, and I couldn’t help but smile.

The man was freaking awesome.  I couldn’t wait for him to get better.  Two weeks is too long to be deprived of his body.  This went a lot better than I had expected it to.  He may not remember me with his mind, but his body sure does.

ɸ

“Who is that sexy hunk of man?”  Laura asked.

Laura Huffman has been a nurse for forty years.  Thirty-eight of them have been in this hospital, on this floor.  She’s seen it all, and it’s a rarity when something sets her off.  In this instance, I knew exactly whom she was talking about, and I acted like I didn’t know he was there.  One of the nurses on the floor that Max was
supposed
to be on had called to warn me. 

“Six foot, shaved head, scar on his forehead, and an IV pole trailing behind him?”  I asked blandly.