Page 5 of Love What's Left
A shaking hand cups my face. “Open your eyes for me, sunshine.”
The voice sounds strange. Some words are shards of glass, others a whisper.
“You’re okay,” the man says. “You’re okay. You’re okay. I’m here. Get her a blanket. Now!” he yells as the ringing in my ears slowly subsides.
I stay silent as the grave. Someone covers me with crinkling fabric.
“Back off, Henry. Worry about her, not me,” the man says.
“If you’re hit, we take care of both of you.”
“I’m fine. The vest did its job.”
Gentle fingers pry my eyelids open. Tall man on his knees beside me. Helmet gone. Jade-green eyes under frowning brows. Shines another light. When he lets go, my lids drift closed once more. He continues to lean over me and blocks the worst of the glare seeping through from the overhead fixture.
“Get her on the board,” someone says.
My eyes fly open. “No straps.Please. I’ll be good.” No matter how hard I try to scream, my voice emerges as a painfully halting whisper.
The others back away, but the green-eyed man stays and shows me his palms. “I’ll carry you, okay? I’ve got you.”
Another man, dressed the same way, steps closer. “Let me. If your ribs are cracked from the bullet, you could puncture a lung.”
“They’re bruised, not broken. I’ve got her.”
He grunts as he lifts, then holds me against a hard body. My face presses against the sturdy fabric covering his shoulder.
“You don’t need to do that,” someone says.
“Yes, I do. Get the fuck away from her.” Hard words grated through clenched teeth.
He carries me through the door, across rattling grates of metal and the long expanse of a building, until we emerge into fresh cold air. The world expands around me, huge and confusing. I drift, lost in space. No. An ocean, floating on top but directionless, unanchored, and unmoored.
Frigid wind cuts through the blanket. Nips at my toes.Wait. Wait.“Don’t kill me. I d-don’t know anything.”
“You’re safe now,” the man says.
“Liar,” I whisper.
Despite the chill in the air, fat warm droplets of water fall from the sky and onto my face. I touch my parched tongue to wet lips . . . and taste the sea.
4
Gabriel
Sydney lies limp across my knees and tucked against my chest, the tubing from her nasal cannula stretching under the sharp cut of her cheekbone to the oxygen tank pressed against my calf.
My fingertips on the thready pulse at her wrist and the shallow lift and fall of her chest tell me she’s alive. My ribs feel like I took a kick from a horse, but I push back my panic and pain, so I can track that pulse. So I can feel her chest move against my own.
The chopper lands on the hospital helipad in a controlled descent, and I rip off my headset, glancing at Henry as I rise, my body bent and my teeth gritted, to exit with Sydney in my arms.
Sonofabitchthat hurts.
Henry holds the oxygen tank in one hand. “Right beside you. Don’t slow down for me.”
The team hits the tarmac, single file, then spreads out on either side of me.
Three hospital staff, led by a familiar man in green scrubs, his golden-brown skin lit by the buzzing exterior lights, run toward us, heads bent as they scan the scene that greets them.