21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (30 page)

Again
.

Grit stung the corners of Zach’s eyes. His body burned with the need for real sleep, but he shut that need away in a box. Trained to go forty-eight hours straight on a hard march through hostile territory, he could definitely handle a cushy assignment, sitting on his ass in the hospital room. Doctors and nurses came in regularly. They checked her vitals and the readouts on the machine. They wheeled her out for a CT scan—a hellaciously one-hour long scan—and nodded to themselves.

No one really seemed worried that she wasn’t waking up. Not even Logan. Sure, he was tense and he didn’t sleep any more than Zach did. But he didn’t act anxious or concerned.

In the back of his mind, a little voice argued that wasn’t fair. Logan cared about Jazz as much as Zach did. Hell, she was the only woman they ever talked about. He just couldn’t do anything about her sleeping, so he didn’t get bent. But it was the not being able to act that drove Zach crazy.

Her fingers flexed against his hand. He leaned forward. Her eyes fluttered, opening with such agonizing slowness. Her pink tongue flicked out as though trying to moisten her lips, and she coughed, the simplest, tiniest, dry-throated cough.

“Water?” He scooted the chair forward and scooped up the plastic cup with its bendy straw and held it to her lips. Barely focused, she sucked down a mouthful and then a second. He pulled it back when she would have taken a third and watched her throat convulse as she swallowed. Satisfied, he returned the straw for her to drink.

She lifted the IV-taped hand to push it away, and he set the cup to the side.

“Good afternoon.”

“Hey,” she said. He loved that little hey. It was a soft exhale of breath, simple and clean. Her coffee-with-cream stare warmed him. She smiled, her expression tentative. He waited for the questions. The
why she was here, what happened
, but she didn’t say anything. Her pupils seemed normal, large, but they didn’t seem to expand as they had during the seizures he’d witnessed.

The empty blankness that crept over her sexy face was the creepiest, most horrific thing he’d ever seen outside of battle.

“Jazz?” He rubbed her fingers against his cheek, trying to remind her that he was still there.

“I’m in a hospital.”

The statement pushed a wave of relief through him. It was the first time she didn’t ask a question. “Yes. You’re in the States. You flew home a couple of days ago.” He held his breath as her startled gaze alighted on him.

“Was I in a car accident?”

Shit
.

“No, babe. There was an explosion in Afghanistan. You were injured. You’ve been in and out for the last couple of weeks, but they finally flew you home.” He stroked her cheek gently. The fresh pink and rapidly fading scar on her too pale skin seemed to mock the rest of her injuries.

“My head hurts.” An understatement, he was sure, but he kept that thought to himself. “Where’s Logan?”

“He went to get food. He’ll be back soon, so you need to stay awake for him.”
He needs to get his ass back here
. Zach had to let go of her hand to tug his phone out, but he continued to caress her cheek. “I’m going to text him right now.”

“Okay.” Her lashes fluttered down and his texting finger froze.
C’mon, babe. Stay awake
. Sleep might be the best thing for her, but the utter stillness in her and lack of color in her cheeks haunted him. He needed the spitfire with her sassy red toenails and rapid-fire wit to make an appearance.

She focused on him again, and he finished typing the single word.
Awake
.

He hit send and set the phone down. “Outside of the headache, how are you doing?”

Her silence seemed to be the answer. She shook her head, almost warily. “I don’t know. I think I felt better after twenty miles with a hundred-pound rucksack.”

“Amen.” A grin curled the corner of his mouth, one nearly as tentative as her head shake. “You look beautiful.”

She snorted.

Relief swamped him. The tension knotting inside snapped.

“Zach?” She reached up to catch his hand, holding it to her cheek.

“Yeah, babe?”

“What happened?”

His heart stuttered.

“I mean, you said I’m back in the States. It had to be bad. What’s the 4-1-1?”

He sucked in a lungful of oxygen. Her condition might not be the best subject.

Logan, however, took that decision right the hell out of his hands. “Skull fracture. Brain injury.”

He turned a glare on his best friend. “Logan—”

“Don’t.” Jazz interrupted him before he went further, and squeezed his hand. “It’s good. I need to know. My head is kind of full at the moment. Like there’re too many thoughts in it, and it’s kind of jumbled.”

“I can imagine.” Logan slid up next to the bed and perched near her feet. He dropped a couple of white bags onto the table over her hospital bed. “Burgers and fries, and you can have them if you want them.”

Her mouth twitched and the first real smile he’d seen on her since Italy made an appearance. “Not really. Thank you.”

Every moment she didn’t slip back into the fugue seemed to lighten the weight on Zach’s shoulders. “You hungry at all, babe?”

“No. It smells good. You two should eat. You look like crap.”

Logan laughed. The tension bubbling in the room burst. Zach chuckled and snagged one of the bags as his stomach growled in agreement.

She tried to shift on the bed, and Zach shoved the food bag away to adjust the blankets. She froze in mid-motion.

“I wanted to sit up.” The words were careful and wariness surged in her face.

“Carefully,” Logan advised. Irritation scraped across Zach’s nerves. She’d barely been awake five minutes, and Logan didn’t care if she sat up. They didn’t even know if she was allowed to sit up yet.

“Wasn’t planning to hit the course today. Just sit up.” Annoyance marched quietly beneath the words.

“Ease up, Zach. We’re right here.” Logan’s advice added insult to aggravation, but he pushed it away. This wasn’t the time or the place.

Logan pressed the bed control into her hand, guiding her finger to the button that would lift the head of the bed. She pressed down and held it. The bed inched up slowly until she still reclined but at more of a 120-degree angle than a 180.

“Better?” His best friend grabbed the white bag of food and pulled out a French fry. He munched it with all the nonchalance of sitting in a fast food restaurant rather than their girlfriend’s hospital room.

“Yes. Actually. Though—” The words broke off and her gaze went flat. The pupil in her right eye swelled and seemed to engulf the brown.

“Dammit.” Zach rounded on Logan. “We shouldn’t have let her sit up.”

“Maybe.” The easy expression fled from Logan’s face. He stared at her with a frown. “But we can’t coddle her.”

“She has a
brain injury
. We can coddle her.”

“No, we can’t. If she wants to push her limits, we have to let her.”

Zach clenched his fist. His eyelid twitched.

“I missed you guys.” Her voice punctured the anger weighing anchor in his belly. Zach jerked back around to find her looking back and forth between them.

“We missed you, too.” Logan didn’t miss a beat, even the strain seemed gone from his voice.

Zach couldn’t quite mask his own reaction as easily and it pissed him off. He released his fist, somewhat surprised he’d considered slugging his best friend.

Not like it would be the first time.

“Yeah.” Zach finally found his voice. And maybe his sense of humor. “We did, but you picked a helluva way to get a free ticket home.”

“Squeeze my hand.” Reade, the nurse assigned to her care was in his late thirties, easygoing with a fast wit, and seemed more suited to combat than babysitting. He also worked with her on her initial physical therapy until she was ready to be signed over to the PT wing. His magic tricks alternated between the amusing and the irritating, either way, he got a reaction out of her. She was also sick to death of the tests.

“I am squeezing it.” Two weeks in the hospital and three surgeries later, she achieved sitting up in bed on a regular basis. They still refused to let her walk, insisting on a wheelchair or rolling her to her appointments on a gurney. Flexing the fingers of her right hand around a ball made up her current assignment. She couldn’t quite get her pinky and ring fingers to cooperate. Unlike the day before when it was her index finger and thumb.

Sweat beaded her forehead as she forced her trembling fingers into the correct position. They refused to stay there, releasing before she was ready. Tingles radiated up and down her arm, like a fallen electrical wire lashing back and forth in some bad action movie.

“Breathe. Inhale for four and focus, just grip the ball and squeeze. One solid squeeze. Use all your fingers at once.”

Did he think she wasn’t doing it? Frustration swelled in her chest and pushed the oxygen from her lungs. She stared at her hand, willing it to cooperate. The ring finger locked down on the ball, but her pinky hovered, hesitating. The trembling shivering her skin spread up her wrist. Her hand spasmed.

The ball fell to the floor and rolled away.

“Fuck.” She spit the word out. “Give it back to me.”

Reade retrieved the ball, but rather than hand it back, he held onto it. “That’s enough for one day. We’re making great progress.”

“No
we
aren’t. I’m making shitty profits—” She grimaced and tried the word again. “Projects. Shit. Fuck. Damn a pussy cat.”

Damn a pussy cat
.

To the nurse’s credit, Reade didn’t smile. “Gunny, it takes time. You’ve had a total of seven surgeries, two of which were just to alleviate pressure on the brain. The doctors have ordered another CT scan tomorrow. But you are making progress.”

Coddling didn’t make her feel better. She flexed her fingers, but the pinky still refused to tuck into formation. Her left hand opened and closed. Her fingers wiggled responsively. Her right hand didn’t. She needed her hand.

“Projects—prof—fuck—it’s not enough.” Some words were harder than others. At least she didn’t speak in tongues. That led to another surgery and words like brain bleed being tossed around. Sweat slid down her neck. Her sheets would have to be changed again. It would help if they turned the air conditioning down, but her internal thermometer seemed to be broken. Squeezing a ball wasn’t exertion, not like running uphill with fifty-pound pack on her back.

Reade covered her right hand with this, tucking the recalcitrant pinky where it belonged. “Gunny, you’re making progress. You’ve had good recall the last two days. You can move your arms and legs. Gross motor control is responsive, fine motor control will return. You have to be patient.”

Fuck patience
. She scowled at him. “Give me the ball.”

He sighed and pressed the ball into her hand. Sucking in a noisy breath, she latched her fingers around it. The quivers zinging up and down her arm intensified. Her forearm flexed. A brutal cramped seized her makeshift fist and her fingers locked in agony. She didn’t whimper. She barely breathed, riding the wave of pain, until Reade plucked the ball away and began massaging her arm.

She wanted to prostate—prosaic—fuck—protest it. What the hell was wrong with
pr
-words? She didn’t argue. She endured the strong thumb pressing into the cramp where the muscles bunched. The bruising pressure—at least
that
word was correct—radiated down into her hand until one by one, her fingers loosened. Her shoulders sagged with relief, and she drew in a shaky breath.

“Enough for today. You’ve got a visitor waiting, and I think you could use the break.” He rubbed her arm, spreading the heat until only vague tremors remained of the episode.

A visitor
. The spasm in her arm moved to her heart. It had to be Logan or Zach. They’d barely left her side, rotating in and out of her hospital room like the sexiest sentries on health patrol. Zach fussed, teasing her out of her black moods, while Logan gave her space and talked the business end of recovery. They were the perfect pair, coaxing and challenging her with absolute patience.

They repeated information to her tirelessly, but where Zach always seemed on the knife edge of worry, Logan maintained an easy stance. She loved them.

Both of them
.

The pressure in her chest intensified. She always knew the day would come when she had to choose between them, but as impossible as it seemed, she needed both now. It wasn’t fair or right.
Who fell in love with two men
? It would never work.

“Same time tomorrow, Gunny?” Reade gave her a pat and stood.

“Not going anywhere.” The doctors refused to speculate on her recovery. A recovery measured in achievement, not minutes, hours, or even days. A swath of bandages still wrapped her head. She probably looked like Frankenstein’s bride beneath the linen. At least she’d win the next bet on who had the worst scars.

The nurse opened the door and Logan filled the entranceway.

“Hey, Logan.”

Masculine energy swarmed the room. Her body hummed appreciatively. Sweaty hospital gown and hairless condition aside, Logan never failed to make her feel like a woman. A woman who wanted very much to crawl out of the bed or—better yet—have him crawl into it.

“Reade. How’s my gunny doing?” Logan may have been asking the nurse, but he never looked away from her.

“She’s a Marine.” Reade was Navy and his tone spoke volumes.

Logan grinned. “Yes, she is. See you later, man.” He waved the nurse out the door and closed it behind him. Snagging the chair, he dragged it back over to her bedside. “So, how are you doing?”

“This sucks. I can’t even make a fist.” She held up her right hand, partially curled. The ache of the recent cramp twitched her fingertips as she tried to close it.

“What about your left hand?” His nonplussed response eased the aggravation in her soul. She curled that hand without any effort and brought the fist up parallel with her right. He nodded an acknowledgement. “Do you have feeling in the fingers on both?”