Page 89 of Keeping Amanda
“Is she going to be okay?” he whispered.
“Yes,” Casper said without hesitation. “Your woman is tough. She wouldn’t have gone down to Guyana in the first place if she wasn’t. She wouldn’t have survived that rebel camp if she wasn’t. She wouldn’t have made it through the jungle if she wasn’t. She’s going to pull through. I know it.”
Buck was well aware Casper wasn’t a doctor. That he had no idea if Mandy would survive or not. But his words were still abalm to Buck’s shattered psyche. Exactly what he needed to hear right now.
“Have faith, Buck. In the doctors, in your woman. And when you’re able to go in and see her, talk to her, just let her know that you’re here. That you aren’t going anywhere. How much you care about her. Give her a reason to fight. To come back to you.”
Buck nodded, taking his team leader’s words to heart. He’d do whatever it took to get Mandy back on her feet. He’d stay by her side no matter what condition she was in when she woke up.
With the vision of her smiling, laughing face in his head, Buck clenched his fists in determination. Mandy would be okay. She simply had to be.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Buck had no idea what time it was. Hell, he had no idea whatdayit was. All he knew was that Mandy still hadn’t woken up. She’d made it through the surgery to lessen the pressure on her brain, but she’d been in a medically induced coma ever since. The doctors wanted to give her brain time to heal. For the swelling to go down.
But every day that went by was one more Buck spent in hell. He wasn’t eating very much, definitely wasn’t sleeping enough. He wasn’t thinking about his job, the upcoming mission, and even poor Rain had been neglected. Thank goodness Laryn had stepped up and brought Rain to her and Casper’s place for the time being.
Buck couldn’t bring himself to leave the hospital. The nurses and doctors were well used to him by now, and had allowed him to spend much more than his allotted time in the ICU room with Mandy.
The beeping of the machines she was hooked up to were background noise. Buck barely heard them anymore. All his attention was on Mandy. She looked even smaller than usual in the big hospital bed with all the tubes attached to her body.
He sat next to her for hours, holding her hand and talking.
He talked nonstop. Retelling stories she’d already heard from him. Talking about the weather, about Rain, about his family. Anything he could think of.
And he told her how much he loved her. Over and over, he said the words out loud. Words he’d give anything to have said before she was attacked. She had to know how much she meant to him. That she was his world. That he loved her more than he’d ever loved anyone in his entire life.
But the longer Buck sat with her, the more despondent he became. She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t even flinched. The doctors said that was normal. That since she was in the medically induced coma, she wouldn’t be able to do anything other than heal, which was the point.
They also said the swelling had gone down, which was a relief, but the fact that she hadn’t moved even one little muscle was freaking Buck out, no matterwhatthe doctors told him.
He was sitting with Mandy, as usual, when Obi-Wan came into the room. Buck was surprised to see him, since ICU didn’t normally allow more than one visitor at a time.
“The doctor said I had ten minutes,” Obi-Wan said, without beating around the bush. “I have news I think you, and Mandy, will want to hear. And since I knew you wouldn’t leave her side, I convinced the doctor to let me in.”
Buck nodded. His friends had been his rock. He didn’t know what he’d have done without them. Casper had talked to Colonel Burgess and gotten Buck’s emergency leave approved, Laryn had taken Rain in without question, Obi-Wan and the rest of the guys had taken turns bringing him food and clean clothes, and bullying him into showering when they could get away with it.
“What day is it?” Buck asked Obi-Wan.
“It’s been five days since you guys were attacked.”
Buck blinked in surprise. “Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wow. It feels like it’s been a lot longer.”
“Not surprising. Anyway, Buck…Blair is dead,” Obi-Wan said flatly.
Buck felt not one iota of regret at the news. In fact, he was relieved.Glad.
“What happened?”
“She was arrested under suspicion of murder and arrangements were being made to move her to a mental health facility in North Carolina. It was obvious to everyone that she wasn’t competent to stand trial, and that she was experiencing a complete mental breakdown.”
Buck growled.
“That doesn’t absolve her of guilt,” Obi-Wan said quickly. “Nor does it make what she did okay, by any stretch. She wasn’t going to be freed anytime soon, even if she was deemed incompetent to stand trial. But while she was in a local mental facility, she attacked one of the guards. She’d taken one of the springs from her mattress and tried to use it as a weapon. She had to be Tasered, and she apparently had a heart attack as a result. Even though she was in her seventies, I guess she had the strength of the mentally ill behind her…a Taser was the only way to subdue her.”
