Forever Mine: Callaghan Brothers, Book 9 (4 page)

“Hey Mick.” She was the only one that called him that besides his brothers.

“Hey Tish. Thought you were supposed to be on vacation.”

She shrugged those tiny shoulders. If the woman topped a hundred pounds, he’d eat his scrubs. But she was the best. There was no one else he’d rather have controlling things at the head of the table, keeping watch over his father. His cautious optimism rose substantially.

“I was there when Jimmy got the call, thought you could use an extra set of hands.”

Michael raised his eyebrows. Sure enough, the swath of skin exposed between the surgeon’s cap and mask was turning pink. Those two had been circling around each other for years, but it looked like they finally decided to stop fighting Fate.

“Appreciate it.”

Michael took his father’s hand in his. “You hear that, Dad? You’ve got the best of the best. The Dream Team of open heart surgery. Everything is going to be just fine.”

––––––––

J
une 1970

Near Kompong Speu, Cambodia

“Everything is going to be just fine.”

Jack heard the words, floating to him on a wave of white hot pain, but he couldn’t see who had spoken them. It was dark, too dark to simply be nighttime.

“What happened? Where am I?”

A telling pause. “Your team was ambushed two days ago. You are in a mobile medical unit. You sustained injuries to your head and chest.”

Hazy memories began to surface. New intel had come through, a small cell of unfriendlies mucking up the works for a bunch of Army boys. It wasn’t supposed to be anything major, just a blip on the big picture radar, but they’d stumbled upon a veritable rat’s nest of bumblefuck. Trees and mud had come alive, eyes filled with hatred and hands sporting automatic weapons as the South Vietnamese and Cambodian Armies engaged in a battle to recapture the capital.

Vastly outnumbered, they’d run for cover... Fitz had been only a few steps ahead, Brian at his six. Fitz had looked over his shoulder, reached his arm out and yelled something, and then they were airborne...

Pain exploded at the back of his head. Jack squeezed his eyes shut, or at least tried to. The bandages around his head were wrapped too tightly to allow much. His eyes weren’t working, but his ears were functioning just fine. And it was too fucking quiet. No moans, no curses, no medics working urgently.

“Where’s the rest of my team?” Jack asked. Silence was the only answer, but his heart ached with knowledge.
Fitz. Bri. Tommy. G-man...

“I’m the only one?”

A heavy, rough hand landed on his shoulder. “O’Connell’s in surgery. You two are some lucky sons of bitches. We’ll take the bandages off tomorrow. For now, you need to eat.”

The news hit him like a second blast. His team. His friends. His brothers. Fucking
gone
. 

And this guy had the balls to say he was
lucky
? Jack felt the bowl pushed into his hands. He gripped it with clumsy, almost-useless fingers covered in more bandages and flung it into the black space. A second later, he heard the dull splat and thwack as it hit the heavy canvas wall of the medic tent, then another as it hit the ground.

A host of emotions swarmed around him, suffocating him. Anger. Rage. Guilt. Remorse. Grief. Questions whirled through his splitting head, but they all started with the same word. Why? Why did they have to die? Why hadn’t they been more alert? Why hadn’t they sensed the trap? Why hadn’t he been the one in front instead of Fitz?

When those had run their dizzying course, another set followed closely behind. How bad were his injuries? Did he still have all of his limbs? Would he be able to see again, and if so, how was he going to look into Fitz’s mother’s, father’s, and sisters’ eyes and tell them? How was he going to live with himself?

And then Kathleen’s voice whispered in his ear. “You promised me, Jack.”

Jack reached beneath the sheet, fumbling for his pocket, but he wasn’t wearing pants.

“Looking for this?”

Jack felt something pressed into his hand. He recognized the smooth feel of the photo paper, though it was significantly smaller than it had been, and the edges were no longer clean and straight. He held it between his fingers, rubbing his thumb over an image he couldn’t see. That was okay; he didn’t need his eyes to see the soft, smooth skin, the perfect rose-colored lips curved into a mischievous grin, or the glittering desire in the pair of clear, emerald eyes. He had stared at those pictures so often, each frame was indelibly burned into his mind; if he had an ounce of artistic talent he would have been able to recreate each one down to the small detail.

Just thinking about her helped. It didn’t dull the pain, it didn’t take away the ache, but it helped him pull back just enough to get him through the next minute. And the minute after that. It wouldn’t be the first time. This place was hell on earth, and Kathleen was the glimpse of heaven he needed to keep going. Her letters reminded him that there was a world outside this hellhole, waiting for him.

“Your girl?”

“Yeah.”

“Good reason to make it home.”

Yeah. Yeah she was
. He couldn’t explain it, but a tendril of peace snaked its way into his aching chest and he was able to draw breath. She was the reason he was still here, still alive. Jack hadn’t broken a vow yet, and he wasn’t about to start now. He would make it back to her.

But first he had to get the hell out of here.

“What’s your name?”

“Travis.”

“Well, Travis, do you think you can scrounge up another bowl of sludge for my ungrateful ass?”

“I think that can be arranged.”

S
eptember 2015

Pine Ridge

“Dad. Dad, can you hear me?”

That voice; he knew it well. Not Travis, though. And while the antiseptic smell was somewhat familiar, this didn’t feel like a field hospital.

Jack pried open his eyes, wincing against the bright light.

Definitely not Vietnam. Definitely not Travis. And he wasn’t twenty years old anymore, though the heavy pressure in his chest did remind him of that hidden mine blast so long ago.

He looked up into familiar blue eyes, into the handsome, compassionate face of his third-born son, Michael. The doctor. That was good. That meant he wasn’t dead yet.

“You had a heart attack, and we had to perform emergency bypass surgery. Do you understand?”

Jack tried to answer, but his mouth didn’t seem to be working properly. He blinked in acknowledgment.

Michael smiled down at him. “You did well, Dad. Came through with flying colors. Keep it up and we’ll be moving you out of Recovery and into the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit soon. I’m going to leave you in the capable hands of these lovely nurses for a few minutes while I talk to the others and give them the good news. No flirting, though,” he winked.

Unable to move, Jack followed his son’s retreating form with his eyes.
Such a good lad
, he thought. Michael had always been the one fixing up the others when they got into it, as boys often did. Kathleen had said early on the boy would be a doctor someday. She had known each of her sons so well, predicting their personalities with eerie accuracy within minutes of their birth.

She would be so proud of them. Of the fine men they had become. Of what they had accomplished.

His eyes were already closing again, but not before he caught a glimpse of clear, emerald eyes flashing above the mask. “Just relax, Mr. Callaghan,” said a kind, feminine voice. “We’ll take good care of you. Just leave it to us.”

––––––––

J
uly 1972

Pine Ridge

“Just leave it to us,” the National Guardsman assured him. Jack’s heart lodged somewhere in his throat when he looked down from the chopper at the devastation of his beloved hometown. Hurricane Agnes had ripped through a week earlier, dumping anywhere from six to sixteen inches of rain across the area, leaving thousands homeless.

Local rivers and creeks overflowed, turning the lower level regions into a vast, temporary lake. Centuries-old homes were destroyed, ripped from their foundations and carried away. Cemeteries gave up their ghastly treasures; bodies in various states of decomposition were found floating in attics and yards and upon rooftops. The flood waters were receding, leaving a sticky, pungent muck in their wake. The stench hung in the heavy, humid air.

The National Guard had been flying in aid around the clock. Big Army helicopters brought food, medicine, and clothing to those who had lost everything. Today, one of them brought Jack Callaghan home.

But the flood wasn’t why he had been given a temporary, week-long ticket to Pine Ridge. Not directly.

No, he was here to bury his father.

Liam had suffered a massive coronary while trying to rescue a family from the rising waters. One minute he was reaching for a woman leaning out of her second story bedroom window; the next, she was safely in his bass boat with her kids and dog and he was grasping his chest and plunging over the side.

Until the call came, he hadn’t known about the hurricane or the flood or any of it. He had been out of contact for months, unable to write or phone. He’d been so looking forward to a break from active duty, to getting back to a secure base camp to do just that, but it hadn’t worked out quite the way he’d thought it would. When he’d gone to pick up the hefty stack of accumulated letters written by his mother and Kathleen, he had been directed to the commanding officer’s tent instead.

His father was gone, and now he was gazing at what was left of the valley he called home.

With the help of Guardsmen, he made it to his parents’ house. Luckily, it was far enough above the flood plain that they hadn’t been directly affected by the rising waters. It was only a small consolation.

His mother Mary ran to him, embracing him with red-rimmed, puffy eyes. She looked as if she’d aged twenty years instead of four, but that was probably the grief. After thirty years of marriage, his parents had still been very much in love. Now the light in her eyes was dimmed, her heart broken right along with her husband’s but still somehow beating. That was the power of
croies
.

The priest was there, too, offering words of condolence and faith. Jack nodded and thanked him, but the words provided little comfort. He wasn’t the same man he’d once been. He’d seen too much, done too much. He was numb, so numb to the horrors of life.

What Jack did thank God for was the fact that his family didn’t know, hopefully would never know, those horrors. That was why he and the tens of thousands of other young men did what they did.

Neighborhood women bustled about with food and candles and flowers, but there was only one face Jack searched for.

He found her in the kitchen, neatly organizing the well-intentioned offerings of food. For long moments, Jack just stood in the doorway and watched her. Waves of black silk were twisted and coiled at the base of her neck, so dark against her much-lighter skin. The summer sun had touched it though, lending a radiant, healthy glow.

She wore a dark, flowing, ankle length skirt and a short-sleeved, plain blouse. So damn feminine. His heart thundered in his chest and for a moment, he was afraid to move for fear that this vision –—that she—– wasn’t real.

Kathleen reached up to tuck an errant lock back into place, turning slightly in the process. Her eyes widened when she saw him.

“Jack?” she whispered. And then she glided across the room and wrapped her arms around him, uncaring of those who had stopped what they were doing to watch the scene. He pulled her close, burying his face in the crook of her fragrant neck. He closed his eyes, letting her warmth, her love, soak into him.

“I’ve missed you,” he managed. The words were woefully inadequate, but in that moment there were no words ever written that could have conveyed what he felt. This woman, the one he had known for barely a week before he’d shipped out, really was the other half of his ragged soul. From the moment he’d looked down in her beautiful eyes, he had known.

“I’ve missed you too,” she said. Her hands traced over his arms, his shoulders, his face, as if assuring herself he was really there. “I’m so sorry about your father.”

He squeezed her to him again. As awful as the situation was that had brought him here, he was overjoyed to hold her. A throat cleared, and then another, reminding him that they were not alone.

“Come,” he said, lacing his fingers through hers and tugging her out the back door and into the yard, away from prying eyes. When he got behind the row of stately pines, he backed her against the old oak and kissed her the way he’d been dreaming of doing since the moment he’d left.

She returned the kiss with equal fervor, thank God.

“Are you all right?” he said finally, exhaling heavily as he rested his forehead against hers. “Did you and your family make it through the flood okay?”

“Not entirely,” she admitted, “but not as bad as some. The water level came up to about a foot on the ground floor, but the second floor is still livable. The diner wasn’t affected; Dad’s been working around the clock, providing meals to those displaced. She reached up and traced the pale scars that extended beyond his hairline. She knew that he’d been injured, knew about Fitz, because he’d written her. He had spared her the details, though. “God, Jack, I missed you. Are you okay?”

He captured her hand and kissed her fingers. “I am now.”

––––––––

T
he funeral service was nothing more or less than he had expected. Somber men walked past his father’s casket, offering condolences and handshakes. The women sniffled and gave teary-eyed hugs. Through it all, Jack stood tall beside his mother. It hadn’t quite hit him yet, but it would, later.

Death didn’t have the impact it once did; he’d seen too much of it, seen too many good men die for the sake of helping others. His father hadn’t given his life on a battlefield or in a war zone, but he had died a hero nonetheless.

Jack met the family his father had been helping when it happened. They attended the funeral Mass and prayed with the scores of others whose lives Liam had touched in one positive way or another. Jack remained silent and stoic through all of it. He’d always known his father was a damn good man. It was nice that others had recognized that, too, but it changed nothing. Liam was still dead, and Jack had only a few days before he would have to leave his devastated mother and his
croie
again to return to fulfill the commitment he’d made.