Actual Stop (32 page)

Lucia gripped my wrists, jostling my shoulder, and I yelped. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I swiped them away with the back of my hand. Her chest was rising and falling rapidly, and the crimson stain trickling from between her lips told me she was aspirating on her own blood.

“Luce, sweetie, just hang on. I’ve gotta turn you over, okay?”

I tried to rotate her onto her side, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. Moving my right arm at all made me see white flashes in my periphery, and I simply didn’t have the necessary strength. I settled for curling up as tight as I could over Lucia’s body and pressed my forehead into hers. Squeezing my eyes shut I murmured to her over and over again to hang on, that help was coming, that she’d be okay.

She was gasping now, or trying to, and it was agony to hear the sound of the blood rattling in her airway. Each strangled wheeze was a red-hot ember being dropped down my throat to burn in my chest. I pressed harder against her neck as tears streamed down my face. My sobs sounded like thunder to my ears and mingled discordantly with hers, seeming to drown out everything else.

How unprepared I was for this situation. We’d trained relentlessly in the academy, going through assault scenarios repeatedly until it became second nature to put your protectee’s life ahead of your own. And yet, as many times as they’d made me practice, I couldn’t help thinking they’d failed me in this. They’d taught me how to take a bullet, how to trade my life for someone else’s, how to die so someone who didn’t even acknowledge my existence could live. They’d taught me to have pride in that mission and to accept it as easily as a corporate employee would acknowledge the reality of Monday-morning meetings. They’d failed to teach me, however, how to cope with watching someone I cared about shoulder that burden.

And then I stopped thinking altogether.

An unbelievably annoying beeping sound disturbed me who knows how long later. At first, I fuzzily thought it might be someone’s watch or cell phone, but it just kept going, making me want to scream. Each beep felt like someone was stabbing me behind the eyes.

When I tried to snipe at someone to turn it the fuck off, I noticed a tube down my throat and felt like I was suffocating. I heard a low sort of strangled hissing sound, and my lungs burned as they were forcibly filled with oxygen. My heart rate soared, which only increased the tempo of the beeping, and I struggled to open my eyes and sit up. My right shoulder was in agony, and I let slip a muffled grunt. Only one eye would open all the way, and that didn’t help me stay calm.

The deluge of air stopped, and I gratefully exhaled before trying to suck in a breath on my own. I tried to grasp the tube with my right hand, but my arm was fastened to my body somehow, and the struggle to free it caused me unnecessary pain. The hiss came again and with it the unsettling feeling of being inflated like a balloon against my will. Panic rose in the back of my throat, and I gave up on my right arm and reached for the tube with my left.

I’d just started to yank, determined to get the damn thing out of me so I could breathe on my own, when cool fingers closed over mine.

“Ryan, calm down,” a voice said authoritatively. It sounded eerily familiar, and I opened my good eye, casting around wildly as fear threatened to choke me. A soothing hand stroked my forehead, and I finally managed to focus on my sister’s face as she looked down at me.

“Don’t fight the machine,
Ay-vo
,” Rory advised me. “I know it’s uncomfortable. Just give me a second, and we’ll get it out of you, okay?”

I nodded and tried to concentrate on lying still and remaining calm, but my body was still fighting to breathe without aid, and I was shivering. The sensation of drowning even though my lungs were being pumped full of air was maddening.

I heard the faint, low sound of switches being flipped, and the hissing stopped. My relief was immediate, and I started to pull.

Rory chuckled. “Hang on a second. You don’t want to pull that out just yet.” She turned away from me again, and I felt a pressure in the area just below my throat loosen. Rory’s face drifted back into view, and she nodded. “Knock yourself out.”

With a stifled sort of gasping sob, I tugged. The pull of the tape as I ripped it away from my cheeks stung, but I ignored it and soldiered on. My throat was on fire as something scraped against the length of it for what felt like an eternity. And suddenly, it was out and I could breathe.

I sucked in greedily, gulping the air, ignoring the burning sensation all up and down my windpipe. I was thrilled I could breathe on my own and blinked furiously as a lone tear trickled down my right cheek.

Rory wiped it away tenderly, then brushed the hair back off my forehead as she shone a tiny light in my eye. I scowled and batted my eye against the painful intrusion, trying to pull away from her. My feeble struggle didn’t appear to faze her.

After a bit, she flicked her pen light off and tucked it back into the pocket of her white coat. In the same motion, she reached up to retrieve a stethoscope, which’d been slung carelessly around the back of her neck. I must’ve been really doped up because I didn’t notice her attire until then.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, as though the surgical scrubs and white lab coat with her name embroidered on the left breast didn’t provide enough of a clue. My voice sounded rough and raw, barely more than a whisper. My throat was a raging inferno. Each syllable that passed through my lips was like swallowing broken glass, and a sharp, stabbing sensation encompassed the entire right side of my back in time with every breath I took.

Rory ignored my inquiry. Instead, she inserted the stethoscope into her ears and placed the pad against my chest, inside the neck of my hospital gown.

“Breathe in for me,” my sister directed. Her sea-foam green eyes were unfocused as she concentrated.

I complied, though even that simple act was an effort. The right side of my body from my shoulder down to my knee felt like someone had worked it over with a two-by-four.

Rory relocated the stethoscope slightly farther down my chest. “Again.” And when I’d followed that order, she repeated the process. The entire experience couldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds, but time felt slippery, the whole thing dreamlike.

Once she’d finished, she replaced the instrument so it dangled off her again like a fashion accessory and took my wrist. She consulted her watch as she held me and then nodded, appearing satisfied.

A heavy-set woman with a cheerful face and a chaotic halo of curly ashen hair entered the room. She, too, wore scrubs and was carrying a folder, but I was too busy trying to keep my eyes open to make much sense of anything. The woman’s sparkling eyes landed on me, and she beamed.

The newcomer shifted her attention to my sister and consulted the folder briefly. “Evan O’Connor?” Her tone was questioning, as though she was trying to verify the information. “E-A-V-A-N. Is that how you say that? ‘Evan’?”

Rory held out her hand, silently asking for the papers. “It’s pronounced ‘even,’ actually. But we just call her Ryan.”

Confusion drifted across the woman’s merry countenance much the way clouds float in front of the sun. She glanced back at the papers in her hand before handing them to my sister. “Where did you get ‘Ryan’ from?”

“Her middle name. Aeryn.”

“Oh. Well, that’s different.” The woman somehow managed to sound happily excited by just about everything, which amused me for some reason. She nodded and smiled at me again. “Nice to finally meet you, Ryan. I’m glad you’re awake.” She turned back to Rory. “I’ll page her doctor now. Unless you need me to take care of something else first.”

Rory was flipping through the pages of what I could only presume was my file. “No,” she murmured distractedly. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

The woman left, and my sister and I were alone. I was exhausted and struggled to keep my eyes open, drifting for a while as Rory read. I wanted to go back to sleep but was afraid of what I’d miss if I did. I had no idea how much time passed before Rory spoke again.

“How are you feeling?”

I shot her a dirty look. Well, as dirty as a look could possibly be with the full use of only one eye, which, if her facial expression was any indication, wasn’t very. “Fantastic.”

She ignored my sarcasm. “Any headache or nausea?”

A smart-ass response welled up within me, but I didn’t let it loose. I considered the question. “Headache. No nausea.”

She set my chart down on the nightstand and gently probed the swollen tissue surrounding my left eye. I hissed at the unexpected pain and tensed, which didn’t help the aching sensations in the rest of me.

“Your stitches look good. The swelling is definitely going down.”

“Hooray,” I murmured. I was trying to recall how I’d ended up here, but my thoughts were sluggish.

As if reading my mind, Rory asked, “Can you tell me what happened?”

I frowned, ignoring the dull throb the motion brought to the area of my injured eye. Dim flashes of memory swam around in my head, broken and disjointed. “Maybe.”

Something flickered in Rory’s eyes as she watched me, and while my brain fog wouldn’t let me identify the exact emotion I saw playing there, I did know I didn’t like it. My heart-rate monitor picked up speed in time with my racing pulse.

“Well, these definitely aren’t injuries I want to read about in my baby sister’s chart,” Rory informed me, changing the subject abruptly.

I sighed, but my thoughts had strayed back to recent events. I mentally catalogued the battery of aches and pains plaguing me, trying to assign a cause. Something was nagging me, and I was determined to figure out what.

Rory regarded me for a long moment, her countenance serious. Her hair was a little messy—which was unheard of for her—and she looked nearly as exhausted as I felt.

After a bit, she moved to a small rolling table nestled up against the wall and retrieved a gleaming metal bedpan, which she brought over. I eyed it warily, but she didn’t relinquish it.

“I don’t have to go right now,” I informed her.

“I know you don’t. You have a catheter in.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ew.”

Rory’s expression now was vaguely sympathetic. “I can take it out if you want. Or we can wait for your doctor to do it.” She shrugged. “Your call.”

I looked away from her but didn’t reply.

“Or I can tell you about your injuries.”

When I refocused on her, I saw she was expectant. This appeared to be a sticking point for her for some reason. I attempted to sit up, the movement pure agony.

Through my haze, I watched Rory roll her eyes and wordlessly push a button on the automatic bed. With a low hum, it slowly folded me into a sitting position, which was still painful, but slightly less so. It was worth it not to be lying down anymore, though. I frowned again as I let my gaze drift around the room.

“Am I on drugs?” It took a while for me to make that connection.

“Oh, yeah. Dilaudid. Why? Are you in pain?”

“Some,” I murmured lazily. “But mostly I just feel out of it.”

“So, now would not be the best time for me to tell you about your injuries.”

“
Asha
, you could tell me when I’m completely sober, and I still wouldn’t understand half of what you’re saying.” My mouth felt sluggish and beyond my immediate control. I wasn’t even sure my words were coherent.

She chuckled softly. “When you emerge from your drug-induced haze, I’ll explain. I promise to use small words and prop dolls the way I would with the little kids.”

“Fine.”

A long pause. I’d just closed my eyes and decided it was okay to give in to the sweet siren song of sleep when Rory’s whisper broke the relative quiet.

“You scared the shit out of me, Ryan.”

I struggled to open my eye again so I could look at her. She was worrying at her lower lip with her teeth, and her brow was creased. The sight nearly broke my heart. “I’m sorry.”

Rory appeared faintly annoyed. “Don’t apologize. It wasn’t your fault that some crazy person decided to—” She bit her lip again.

“Decided to what?” The dim snatches of memory swirling around in my subconscious came into sharper focus, but I still couldn’t identify exactly what’d gone down.

Rory swallowed and lowered herself so she sat perched on the edge of my hospital bed, the bedpan lying in her lap. A wobbly smile touched the corners of her lips, and her attempts at bravery tugged at me almost painfully. She took my good hand in one of hers.

“I know this is what you signed up for, but I never in a million years thought it would ever really…” She shifted her focus so it rested on our intertwined fingers.

“I was shot.” It wasn’t a statement, but it wasn’t exactly a question either. Hell, even as drugged as I was, I was able to tell my injuries weren’t consistent with something as mundane as a fall or a car accident. My mind worked overtime to put the pieces together, and I winced at the sharp stab of pain the effort produced.

“Five times,” Rory confirmed quietly.

“Bummer.” I may or may not have actually said that out loud. Bits of the incident were coming back to me slowly. I closed my eyes again, and this time I could almost hear the chaos that’d erupted when everything had broken bad. But the recollection was rather muffled and distant.

“Your right shoulder got the worst of it,” Rory was saying from far away. She seemed unable to help herself. Clearly, she needed to get this running diatribe of my injuries off her chest. “The bullet tore through your trapezius, which was actually lucky. The shoulder’s a complicated joint. If it’d struck lower, it would’ve shattered bone, and you might never have recovered full use of the limb. Of course, if it had—”

“Mmm.”

I was missing something. Speaking of bones, I could feel it deep in the marrow of mine. In the theater of my mind, I was trying to replay the events as best I could, but they were broken, out of focus, not in the correct order. When I was a kid, I used to dive to the very bottom of the pool and look up at the world above. My memories were wavy like that, and I felt insulated from them as though submerged under ten feet of water.