A bright light shone down on the patch of brown-washed skin of the soldier who lay anesthetized before Frankie.
After her last stitch, she dropped her bloody instruments on her tray and peeled off her gloves. “I’ll get Sammy to take you to Post-Op, Private Morrison,” she said aloud, even though the patient couldn’t hear her.
She heard the distant sound of a helicopter coming in. Dr. Rob looked up, his worried gaze meeting Frankie’s. They were at their ragged end.
Just one chopper. “Thank God,” Frankie said.
Rob went back to work.
The OR doors banged open and a gowned and masked Barb came in with a pair of medics carrying a bloody patient on a litter. “We need a surgeon. And you, Frankie. Stat.”
Frankie could tell it was bad by the look in Barb’s eyes.
Frankie washed her hands and picked up a new pair of gloves, snapping them on.
The soldier on the litter wore a blood-soaked T-shirt and fatigues that had been cut off at the thigh. He’d lost his left leg at the knee, a medic had field-wrapped the bloody stump, but that injury was nothing compared to his chest wound.
A thick layer of black-red blood covered his face. She picked up his dog tags. “Hey, Captain C—”
Callahan.
Jamie.
She looked up at Barb, saw the grief in her friend’s eyes. I’m sorry, Barb mouthed.
“His bird was shot down, ma’am,” one of the medics said.
Frankie wiped the blood from Jamie’s face and saw the grievous injury to his skull.
“Rob!” she shouted. “Get over here. Now!”
The doctor came over, looked down at Jamie, and then at Frankie. “He won’t make it, Frankie, you know that, and we have—”
“Save him, Doc. At least try.” She reached for Jamie’s cold, limp hand, held it. “Please. Please.”
Eleven
Jamie lay in a Stryker bed in Neuro, naked beneath a sheet, his face bandaged so completely that only one closed eye could be seen. A tube snaked into his nostril. A ventilator kept him breathing. Whoosh-thunk. Another machine monitored his heartbeat. Rob, the surgeon, had done what he could, and then stepped back, shaking his head, saying, “I’m sorry, Frankie. I’ll write to his wife tomorrow. You should say goodbye.”
Now Frankie sat by Jamie’s bed, held his hand. The heat of his skin indicated that an infection was already taking hold. “We’ll get you to the Third, Jamie. You hang on. You hear me?”
Frankie’s mind played and replayed the last thing Jamie had said to her. I love you, McGrath.
And she’d said nothing.
God, she wished she’d told him the truth, wished they’d kissed, just once, so she could have that memory.
“I should have…” What? What should she have done? What could she have done? Love mattered in this ruined world, but so did honor. What was one without the other? He was married and Frankie knew he loved his wife. “You’re strong,” she said, her voice strained. The nurse in her knew no one was strong enough for some injuries; the woman in her longed to believe in an impossible recovery.
“Lieutenant? Lieutenant?”
The voice seemed to come from far away. Scratching, irritating, a thing to brush off.
She realized a pair of medics were standing beside her. She noticed belatedly that one had laid his hand on her shoulder.
She looked up at him. How long had she been here? Her back ached and a headache throbbed behind her eyes. It felt like hours, but it hadn’t been long at all.
“The bird’s here. He’s being medevaced to the Third. A neuro team is standing by.”
Frankie nodded, pushed her chair back, and stood. For a second, she was shaky on her feet.
The medic steadied her.
She saw the duffel bag at his feet. “Those are Jamie—Captain Callahan’s things?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Frankie reached into her pocket and pulled out a felt-tipped marker and the small gray stone she’d been given by the young Vietnamese boy. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d pressed it into her palm. It had become a talisman for her. She wrote You fight on one side of the stone and McGrath on the other. She slipped it into his duffel bag.
She leaned over and kissed his bandaged cheek, felt the heat of his fever, and whispered, “I love you, Jamie.”
Slowly, she drew back, straightened. It took every scrap of strength she possessed to step back while they prepped him to leave and then rushed him out of the OR and toward the helipad.
Halfway to the helipad, Frankie heard the medic yell, “Code,” and saw him begin chest compressions.