What I Fight For: A Bad Boy Military Romance (Easy Team Book 1) (15 page)

              “You’ll only make that injury worse by working in such an exhausted state,” Margie said. “You need rest. Captain Hawking, would you mind taking Dr. Lyon somewhere where she might take a breather?”

              “But—”

              “Of course,” I said, cutting Emilia off and firmly pulling her along with me. She tried to twist out of my arms but I kept a steady grip on her as I pulled her away.

              “You can come back after a rest,” Margie called out. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”

              Only after we were several dozen feet away did Emilia finally stop struggling. I pulled her towards a small pile of rubble. We rounded the pile and found a large broken piece of wall to sit on. With the rubble behind us, it formed a decent barrier to give us some privacy.

              I guided Emilia to the large piece of wall and sat her down then sat down next to her. I could see her fighting to keep her back straight, her shoulders squared, determined not to show her exhaustion.

              She gave a small snort. “Margie can be very funny,” she said softly. “But she’s too soft for her own good. She should be the one resting, not me.”

              I put a hand to her lower back, feeling her muscles taut and hard from trying to keep herself upright.

              “She’s right,” I said. “We were unbelievably lucky when the earthquake hit. We didn’t get crushed or fatally injured but it was still being trapped in a small space for nearly half a day. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d gotten a mild concussion and some bruising from the initial quake. Then to get up and be thrust into working and treating people for another straight day—” I sighed, squeezing her shoulder “—resting isn’t such a bad idea.”

              She turned towards me, looking up at me. Dark smudges ringed her eyes and I could her face drawn and exhausted. It made me want to pull her into my arms and hold her tightly, giving her whatever strength I might have. But I resisted the urge. It would be an insult when she was trying so hard to sit up straight on her own.

              “But…” she said softly, “But we were lucky in more than one way during the earthquake. Weren’t we?” I could see her eyes glisten as she remembered our time together, trapped and yet safe beneath the rubble.

              I grabbed both her hands in mine and squeezed. “You better believe it, sweetheart,” I said.

              I had had fears about letting her get too close to me. I was afraid of hurting her, darkening her, damaging her. But with every passing day, she showed me what a remarkable woman she was. She wasn’t someone ready to play the damsel in distress.

              She wanted to work, to help, to fight. And with her, I felt as if I could do all those things and more. It was a futile fight to deny what I felt for her and I was all too grateful to know she also felt the same way for a dirty mercenary like me.

              All I knew was, come what may, I would protect her with everything I had. When nothing else remained, I would fight for her and her alone.

              Emilia gave me a trembling smile, her eyes moistening as tears suddenly gathered on her lashes. “Yes,” she rasped. “I feel so, so lucky.”

              Then as suddenly as the wind, she burst into tears, sobbing and choking as her whole body shook and trembled. She nearly collapsed forward but I caught her and this time, I did pull her onto my lap.

              I wrapped my arms about her and pushed her head down onto my chest, murmuring soothing nonsense as I stroked her back.

              “Oh god,” she sniffled, between sobs. “I don’t…I don’t know why I’m crying like this. I’m really not sad. I just—I just—”

              She tried to wiggle her way off my lap but I kept her firmly in place and put an arm over her own to keep her from pushing herself off.

              “You’re tired,” I said firmly. “It’s nothing odd. When the body gets exhausted and overworked, you can’t help but just breakdown. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

              She breathed in a ragged breath as she wiped at the tears that streamed down her face. “I-I really am not that tired,” she protested. “This is so stupid! I f-feel so s-stupid! There’s no reason to cry!”

              I stroked her back, ignoring her attempts to get off my lap so she could hide her tears.

              “You just survived a major earthquake. After being rescued, you’ve been dealing with injured or dying patients. After facing your own mortality, you’ve had to deal with countless others’. There’s nothing worse than fearing your own death then seeing someone else’s. You start to feeling guilty for surviving.”

              Emilia coughed and sniffled but finally stopped fighting me. My arms relaxed and held her more comfortably against me.

              “Y-You sound as if you speak from experience,” she said thickly, sniffling through the tears.

              “Aren’t I?” I asked.

              She paused then nodded. “Right,” she said. “That was dumb of me. Of course you are.”

              I squeezed her close to me. “There’s nothing dumb or stupid or silly about any of this right now so knock it off with all that, will you? No soldier makes it through the first death of a comrade without tears and heartache. And it’s always worse when you thought it was
you
that would be the one to go.”

              Emilia nodded, trying to regain her breathing. “I know I was safe with you down in the rubble,” she said through hiccups and sobs. “I
know
. But we were buried so deep. And we waited so long. And when they got us out…and I saw how deep we actually
had
been buried…and how lucky we were to not have been crushed…or-or inju-ured….”

              She couldn’t finish her sentence as she broke into a new wave of tears. My throat tightened feeling her small body shake and quiver in my arms.

              “There’s a soldier’s cure for this,” I said with decision after awhile.

              “Wh-What?” she sputtered as she wiped her nose on her sleeve.

              Holding her close, I reached back towards my back pocket and pulled out a small flask. Flicking open the top with my thumb, I pressed the flask towards Emilia’s lips.

              Crying, she didn’t fight as I tipped the flask down her throat. But after one sip, she pushed my hand away, coughing as the liquid burned down her throat.

              “What is that?” she gasped, a hand to her chest.

              “Whiskey,” I replied, pressing the flask to her lips again.

              This time, she turned her face away. “I hate whiskey,” she said in a husky rasp. “Oh god, that burns!”

              I put an arm around her back, keeping her still and preventing her from pushing away, then pressed the flask firmly against her lips and tipped a healthy slug of the whiskey into her.

              “I don’t care whether you are mortal enemies with whiskey,
this
is the cure for what you’ve got,” I said, holding up the flask.

              Emilia eyed me dangerously through her swollen eyes after wincing through another swallow. “Getting drunk?” she argued. “Getting drunk is the cure?”

              “No,” I said. “Numbing the senses is the cure. Right now, you’ve just overloaded the body. Too much has happened in too little a time. Nevermind that you’ve been through an earthquake and have been injured,” I picked up her swollen hand before she snatched it away, “but you’ve had to come through that only to treat and aid others who have been injured from the same earthquake as well.”

              “Injured
worse
than me. They’ve been injured wor—”

              Before she could finish, I slipped the flask in again and managed to throw down another healthy slug down her throat.

              She gasped and choked and slapped my chest. “Stop doing that!” she cried. But her tears were beginning to slow down. Her breathing was less shallow. And I could see a slight dilation in her eyes. The alcohol was doing its job.

              “This isn’t the time to be comparing injuries,” I said. “You feel what you feel and others hurting more or less doesn’t invalidate how you feel.”

              I shook the flask and felt only a swallow left inside. Seeing Emilia grow a little drunk and therefore a little calmer, I tossed back the remaining contents down my own throat, enjoying the smoky taste of the liquor.

              “Where did you even get that flask?” Emilia asked softly, her head leaning more heavily on my chest, her words slightly slurring.

              “Bear,” I answered. “He gave it to me once he dug us out.”

              “Won’t he be mad that you drank all his whiskey?”

              I looked down at her, an amused smile on my lips. Emilia was now breathing more calmly and she snuggled in closer to my chest. It felt so damn good to have her in my arms like this, especially after the last 24 hours.

              She hadn’t been the only one to feel shaken after being rescued. We had been buried deep and seeing all the injured people we had pulled out, it only emphasized how lucky we had been.

              Thinking about Emilia getting hurt in that way made my throat tighten into a knot. I couldn’t even bear the idea of it. And as I worked to pull survivors out from the wreckage, all I wanted to do was run and find her and pull her into my arms just like this.

              But because she had worked so hard, many would survive this sudden quake. She had saved lives.

              My little fighter.

              “Are you telling me that you don’t think I could hold own against someone like Bear?” I asked with mock offense.

              Emilia smiled to herself, her eyes closed as she finally let her body relax, the alcohol taking control. My chest swelled with pride to know that she felt comfortable enough to let herself loosen up when alone with me.

              “Well,” she said sleepily, “a bear
is
bigger than a hawk.”

Chapter
Seventeen
Emilia

              Doc Jones groaned next to me as he slowly fell back onto a large rock that served as a chair.

              He winced as he carefully straightened out his legs, most likely swollen from standing and running around for so long.

              Margie had just relieved me and Doc Jones had just finished his last rounds of checking on those he could while making sure no one had died in the last few hours.

              He and I sat near what had been the meeting hall. The large hill of rubble made a good barrier against the waning sun as we sat down, trying to catch our breath. It was now day three since the quake although it all felt like a long, crazy blur in my mind.

              But it had been three days of half of Easy Team and half the medical team trying to run around and save and treat as many people as possible. We didn’t know what the end goal was here. By day two, one of the Easy Team men had managed to get the truck working again. It had been damaged during the quake.

              With the truck, they had gone back for a resupply run to base camp. But the team at the refugee camp had already been and our supplies were dangerously depleted.

              We couldn’t keep going on like this in the open air amid all this destruction but we also couldn’t just leave the survivors to their own devices.

              For the time being, we were stuck.

              Doc Jones was leaning back with his head resting on the rubble, making small groaning noises to himself. I looked up and caught him opening one eye at me.

              “What?” I asked. I sat on my own rock. My own legs felt like fragile cardboard that could snap from exhaustion at any moment.

              “Shouldn’t you put a new dressing on that?” Doc Jones asked, jerking his chin towards my hand.

              My right hand had been hit by falling rubble in the quake. Margie had cleaned it and dressed it but with all the work I was doing with survivors covered in dirt and dust, the bandages had grown grimy fast.

              I shrugged. “Maybe later,” I said, pretending I was too tired to bother changing it when really, I didn’t want to use up any of our precious remaining supplies. My hand could wait.

              The torn arms and cut shoulders and gashed legs couldn’t.

              They needed the bandages more than I did.

              Doc Jones made a noise in his throat as if he could read my thoughts, didn’t approve, but decided to make no argument against it.

              We sat in silence, letting our aching bodies take a moment of rest before Doc Jones spoke up again.

              “Where’s that Cap of yours?” he asked.

              “He’s not
my
Cap and he’s out on the edges of town, searching for survivors,” I said, my cheeks immediately blushing whenever Cooper was mentioned.

              Doc Jones snorted. “Come on,” he said. “Don’t insult my intelligence. I happen to be a well-educated, dignified healthcare provider in one of the country’s leading hospitals.” He looked down at his grubby shirt that was caked in dirt and sweat and his torn pants that revealed a scraped knee and scratched calves. “Not to look it, of course,” he muttered in resignation.

              I chuckled.

              “I don’t insult anything,” I said. “I’m just telling the truth.”

              Doc looked down at me, turning towards me with an open gaze of serious sincerity. “Are you?” he asked softly. “I could tell that kid was sweet on you from the moment we landed in this dusty pit.”

              “You did not,” I protested, although my heart skipped a beat at hearing his words.

              Doc Jones snorted again. “If I couldn’t see the symptoms of love that obvious, then I don’t know how in the hell I could’ve ever become a doctor,” he said.

              I rolled my eyes and playfully slapped his thigh.

              “But you do like him?” he said after awhile. He looked at me with a face that asked for honesty.

              And I gave it to him.

              “Yes,” I said quietly, smiling. “I do like him. I like him a lot.”

              Doc Jones sighed as he leaned back again against the rubble. “I’m glad,” he said, his eyes closed. “At least with this one, I won’t have to pretend to like him.”

              “You did not pretend with Edward!” I said, whirling around on him. Doc Jones was still resting as comfortably as someone could on a pile of rubble. “Did you?”

              “Pretend might not be the best word,” he said. “Approval by omission is maybe a more apt description. I could tell you clearly were in love with the man so I just held my tongue and didn’t say anything good or bad about him.”

              “You didn’t approve of him,” I said slowly, a little surprised to hear the news.

              “No,” Doc said firmly. “But I could tell that saying otherwise to you would be useless. It was just something you would have to experience.”

              “But,” I said, confused, “what if he had proposed to me? What if I had planned to marry him?”

              Doc Jones opened his eyes and fixed me with a slightly pitying look. “I knew you guys would never make it that far,” he said in brutal honesty. “But if by chance you did, I would’ve kidnapped you on your wedding day and locked you in the hospital supply closet till you came to your senses.”

              I couldn’t help but laugh. But sadness still weighed heavily on me. “So you knew. Everyone knew we were a bad match but me,” I said. “I must’ve looked so stupid.”

              “No,” Doc countered firmly. “I knew and everyone knew that you were too good for Edward. You were a better doctor and a better human being than him and marrying that man would’ve been a waste of your potential.” Doc paused and then broke out into a smile, winking at me. “But I can tell that won’t be the case with this new young man.”

              I whirled around in my seat to hide my blushing face.

              “Cooper is a good man,” I said simply.

              “That he is,” Doc replied in agreement. “He clearly has a dangerous and difficult job but you can tell that kid’s got honor written all over him.”

              I almost beamed with pride in hearing someone talk so well of Cooper.

              “But will you be able to handle what comes with being with a man like Captain Hawking?” Doc Jones asked quietly.

              I turned my head slightly, looking over my shoulder.

              “What do you mean?” I said, feigning dumbness.              

              “Oh come now,” Doc Jones chided. “You are much too practical and methodical a woman to not have thought about the responsibilities that would come from being with a man like that. He holds lives in the balance. A mercenary. You and I can only imagine the kind of dangerous and compromising positions that kind of job can put a man. Lying, fighting—those are just the tip of the iceberg. Killing, I imagine, would be the base.”

              It was as if someone was pulling out all my mental arguments out of my brain and laying them out on the open.

              I watched as Margie and one of the nurses knelt over each patient, giving them a drink of water or changing their bandages.

              “I want to be with him,” I said softly. “And for me, that is enough. That is reason and strength enough for everything else.”

              Doc Jones sighed and then closed his eyes again. “Love,” he said wistfully. “A many splendored thing, it is.”

              I was about to reply when in the distance I saw a trail of dust heading straight towards us. I jumped to my feet, putting a hand over my eyes to shield myself from the sun.

              “Who’s that?” I asked, squinting.

              Doc Jones got up as well. “That doesn’t look like one of our truck,” he said, also shielding his eyes to get a better look at the incoming vehicle.

              No, it definitely did not look like one of our trucks. It was a large, white vehicle that was racing straight into town. There were markings on the side of the truck but I couldn’t make them out.

              A horrid thought hit me.

              Car bomb.

              With the earthquake, any terrorist would know that the surrounding areas would be devastated. It would be the perfect time to commit some kind of horrible bombing. No one could defend themselves.

              Including us.

              “Come on, we should try and get a hold of the Cap,” Doc said grimly, clearly thinking along the same lines as me.

              “He’s not here. I told you, he’s out in—”

              I was about to follow him towards the city center when the truck turned sharply as it came into town, cutting me off short.

              “The UN!” I cried in surprise and relief.

              “What?” Doc Jones said, looking at me in confusion.

              I laughed and pointed at the truck, unable to hide my relief and joy.

              “It’s a UN relief truck!” I said, almost crying from relief. “It’s an actual UN relief truck!”

              “Holy shit,” Doc Jones said, slumping a little in utter relief. “Finally!”

              We had spent over 72 hours trying to keep an entire city alive on barely anything. It felt so good to see the UN truck pulling into view. This meant we had help. This meant we had supplies. This meant, we were not alone.

              With a whoop of joy, I ran towards the truck, all exhaustion and fatigue forgotten. Doc Jones was not far behind me, calling out towards Margie and the rest to join us.

              By the time I reached the truck, we were a small dusty, dirty, grinning army, grinning like relieved fools. I knocked on the driver door.

              A man opened the door and jumped out, looking over us with some surprise at our sudden gathering but not at our condition. He looked just as tired as we were but was at least clean.

              He looked past us at the survivors we had laid out in the city center.

              “Looks like you guys have been pretty busy,” he said, a faint smile on his lips.

              “You have no idea,” Doc Jones grumbled.

              “You can’t know how glad we are to see the likes of you,” Margie said in a sigh of relief.

              The man smiled and put out a hand which I automatically shook. “Brian Crawley, UN medical relief team leader,” he said.

              “Emilia Lyon, head of this medical team,” I said, unable to stop grinning. “You guys are lifesavers.”

              Brian nodded. “You can imagine the damage the quake has done around here. It took awhile to get down this far. But I think you guys have earned a bit of a rest. After briefing our team, why don’t you guys head back to your base camp and grab a shower.”

              He headed towards the rear of the truck and opened the doors. There were three other relief workers there plus one more in the front passenger seat. The truck was filled with medical supplies and equipment and it made my heart swell to know that the survivors here would be in good hands.

              The team stepped out of the truck and immediately began talking with Doc Jones and the rest, coming up to speed on what needed to be taken care of. I watched as my team and Brian’s team paired off and walked towards the city center.

              Brian remained, quickly unpacking the truck, and I jumped up to help him. With quick efficiency, we unloaded the large crates of supplies and the smaller boxes of gauze and bandages.

              “Where did you guys come from?” I asked while unloading another box.

              “Well, from the capital originally,” Brian said with a heave as he lifted a crate. “We were supposed to go to Ragahar but another truck had already been dispensed there. We were then assigned to come here but there were a lot of rock slides that had covered the roads on our way here.”

              “The capital?” I asked in surprise. My heart thumped a little as I remembered a pair of sad and somber gray eyes. “Um, would you happen to know what might’ve happened to the recent trafficking rescue mission?”

              Brian paused in front of another crate, turning to me with a confused expression. “Rescue mission?” he asked, perplexed.

              I nodded. “Yes, the rescue mission of the trafficked girls in the tent camp. I wanted to know how they were coping in the orphanage,” I said. But as I watched his confusion grow my confidence began to sink with each word.

              “Trafficked girls?” Brian asked, his voice going up on the last word. He stood up now, his hands on his hips. “Where in the heck did you find trafficked girls?”

              “East of here,” I said, my voice growing less steady. “About thirty miles.”

              Brian furrowed his brows, shaking his head slowly. “I’m sure if there was any mission on rescuing trafficked girls, I would’ve definitely heard about it.”