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“Yesterday,” Sierra admitted. “And don’t start ragging on me, Alex. I wasn’t anywhere that I could get it looked at.”
“Surely, you could have stopped at a hospital before taking the flight home?”
“I just wanted to come home,” Sierra muttered, tensing as he began to pull the tape off her flesh. Her fist curved tight, and she forced herself to breathe through the red-hot pain.
“Okay,” Alex murmured, removing the tape. “It is over. You can relax now, Sierra.”
“How bad is it?”
Alex studied the six-inch knife wound, looking closely at the swollen, bloody area. “It is clean. No infection. Yet. Did you take antibiotics as soon as you could?”
“Yes. The max load prescribed. I know what infection in Africa can do.”
“Good,” he praised quietly, gently moving his long, large fingers along parallel to the deep cut. “Do you know if the man had a rusty knife? Did you see?”
She snorted. “Oh, come on, Alex! Like I was looking to see if the blade was clean steel or rusted? In the middle of a knife fight for our lives? Hell, I don’t know.”
“But you did give yourself a tetanus shot as soon after was you could?” and he lifted his chin, looking up at her. Sierra was laying with her eyes tightly shut, her wide, expressive mouth thinned. Her hand was still in a fist, telling him she was feeling quite a bit of pain from the wound. He daubed the area with lidocaine to reduce the pain. Instantly, her mouth relaxed.
“Of course, I gave myself that tetanus shot. You make sure our blowout kit has one of everything in it,” she said, barley opening one eye and giving him a half grin.
“You are a model patient, Sierra.”
“I was going to try and stitch it up, Alex, but I almost missed my flight. There was nowhere in business class that I could do it.” She laughed. “If I had, the people around me would probably have fainted from all the blood.”
He laughed along with her, nodding. “Okay, I am going to put some lidocaine into a syringe. You know the drill. I’ll put it outside and around the wound, and then I will wait until the numbness takes hold. After it’s numb I’ll put some in the wound and you won’t feel a thing.”
“Then,” Sierra said wryly, “you’re going to scrub the shit out of it and disinfect it and then tape me up so there won’t be a scar or, worse, an infection. Right?” and she raised one arched, black eyebrow, giving him a demanding stare.
Alex’s mouth moved into a sour smile. “Yes. You should have become a combat medic, Sierra. You are good at this.” He continued to numb the wound site. Sierra didn’t move, didn’t jerk her leg out of his hands. She lay still and tolerated the pain as it lessened.
“No thanks. I like being a sniper. Not as messy.”
“Okay, this stage is done.” He dropped the syringe into the sharps container on the wall and said, “let me examine the rest of you while that lidocaine takes hold, and I can brush the area?” That was protocol. He didn’t trust Sierra not to have other cuts. And when in Africa, or any other jungle environment, infection could blow up on a person in a matter of hours and kill them if they didn’t get medical help right away.
Sierra groaned. “I’m fine, Alex. I’m just exhausted. Can’t I just lay here under these nice warm blankets?”
“No,” he murmured. “You know the drill. You are supposed to be getting an exam after every mission is complete.” He peeled off the blanket from her shoulders and patted it around her waist. “This will not hurt,” he promised, moving her damp hair aside, critically examining her skull, face, ears, hairline and neck.
Making an unhappy sound, Sierra muttered, “You’re too damned good, Alex.” She relaxed as the Ukrainian lifted her shoulder to make sure it worked, pushed up the material, examining her arm on all sides, and then laid it back down gently against her body. “Really. I’m okay, Alex.”
“Mmm,” was all he said, using his hands to check her ribcage by gently pressing inward to test each bone. Sierra flinched.
“Just bruises, Alex. That’s all.”
He stood there, watching her forest-green eyes narrow a little as he pressed her lower ribs a bit more firmly. She winced again. “Want to tell me about this, Sierra?” he asked in a casual manner. Alex had found all operators tended to let bruises, and even fractures, go if they could get away with it. They all said the same thing: they were okay. Nothing was wrong.Right.
“During our exfil, we got into a fight with five Somalis who were supposed to protect the warlord of theirs. The one I’d killed. They all had machetes and knives on them.”
“How many SEALs in your team?”
“Four, plus me, the non-SEAL.” She grinned a little. “It was a fair fight. Five against five.”
He placed his large hand gently against her cranky ribs. “And how did you get this?”
“I was pushed into a palm tree,” she admitted. “Hit here,” and she took her right hand and pointed to her tender ribs. “Just bruises Alex. Honest to God, just bruises.”
“Any broken skin?”
