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With an effort, she whispered, “Horrible dizziness. It’s getting worse. I can’t stand… walk… my ears are ringing. I can barely hear you. I have a headache,” and she pointed to the side of her head.
“Okay, sounds like a level two concussion,” Mace grunted. He pulled the tube of her Camelbak out over her shoulder, placing it in her fingers. “Drink. A lot. I’m going to take care of you. We’re staying here for a while.”
It was the last thing Sierra remembered for a long while.
Mace heard Sierra groan. He had just returned from reconnoitering the area surrounding the falls, M-4 in hand. Before heading out, he had cleaned her up, finding a huge, laceration and swollen bump on the side of her head, caked blood, and embedded stony fragments around it. His best educated guess was that a rock that had been hurled out of the jungle by the RPG’s explosion had impacted on her head, concussing her. He’d placed her on a waterproof tarp, laid his dry wool blanket over her, and placed her head on her wet ruck.
He moved quietly. The midday light illuminated the cave well enough for him to see that the IV he’d put in her left arm was still in place, its bag hanging off an outcropping above her head. His gaze went to her face, which was pale and strained-looking as she flexed her hand slowly. She was probably feeling stiff and sore all over and, more than likely, going through one hell of a headache from where the rock had struck her.
Mace knelt, placing his hand on her shoulder. He’d stripped her out of her jacket and the two soaked alpaca sweaters under it, down to her t-shirt and cammo pants. He’d pulled off her wet boots and had taken off her socks so her feet could breathe and not become waterlogged. Because of the cave’s constant seventy-five degrees temperature, he hadn’t felt the need to cover her with anything.
“Sierra?” he called, her eyes still shut. “You’re safe. It’s Mace.” He watched her lips part and she frowned. Earlier, he’d taken her hair out of their muddy braids, and now it all lay like a black halo around her head. And he’d done his best to wash the mud out of the strands and dry them somewhat with the small towel he carried in his ruck. And, just as he’d thought, those strands were thick and strong, like her.
Her eyes barely opened.
He peered down at her so she could lock onto his gaze. Did she recognize him? See him at all? Her eyes were cloudy-looking, unfocused. “How are you doing, Sweetheart?” Given a level-two concussion, Mace knew the drill: She’d lost consciousness and then had fallen into an exhausted sleep.
Sierra would have moments of clarity, maybe even not remember anything about how she’d been injured, and then come back to clarity. Mace hoped the whole cycle lasted for under twenty-four hours. Otherwise, she would slide into a level-three concussion, which could include aphasia, speech-slurring, forgetfulness, and potential blood-clotting in her brain. If she went there, he’d have to get her out of here. Get her to medical help as soon as possible. That would be life-threatening. Even right now, she would be unable to function in the most vital ways.
Weakly, Sierra lifted her right hand, rubbing her eyes. “W-what…?”
Her speech sounded slow, but clear. Mace squeezed her shoulder, wanting her to focus on his gaze. “We’re safe. We got attacked by Belov’s men near dawn this morning after you took him out. Belov is dead. Do you remember that?”
She blinked and stared up at Mace. “Attack?”
“Yeah,” Mace said. “Do you recall any of it?” He couldn’t help himself and lightly smoothed thick strands of hair away from her face. It gave him a feeling of almost shameful, stolen pleasure to thread his fingers through them. It was an unwanted pleasure, but one that he was unable to deny. He saw the wrinkles across her brow ease as he did so. There was such a powerful, unspoken bond between them. And it was a good one. And alive. And he’d never been so scared as when she’d lost consciousness shortly after he’d gotten her into the cave. That had scared the hell out of him. It was then in that moment that Mace had realized how deeply he ‘liked’ her. He didn’t want to use the word ‘love’. That scared him even more.
“N-no, I don’t remember… what happened?” she whispered, her voice wobbly and unsure. Looking up and to her left, she stared at the IV bag hanging above her head.
“You were dehydrated,” Mace told her. He sat down, facing her, picking up her right hand and holding it gently between his. When he touched her, some of the tension left her face. Even if her brain was still scrambled from the concussive pressure waves that had slammed into her, some part of it remembered him. And wanted his contact. He ached to hold her. Never let her go. Protect her. Glancing up at the bag, he saw that it was nearly empty. “In about ten minutes I’ll get that IV out of your arm. Are you thirsty, Sierra?”
She closed her eyes. “I’m dizzy. Thirsty. Where are we?”
He watched her struggling to remember. “In a cave behind a waterfall.”
“Ohh… yeah… I remember the falls.” She opened her eyes to slits, looking at him. “Things are starting to come back. Bits and pieces…”
“I think when the RPG exploded, one of the rocks hurled up in the air by it, impacted on your head, giving you this concussion. Do you recall that?” Slowly, Mace was seeing life come back into Sierra’s cypress-green eyes. Never had he wanted anyone to recover from their wounding more than he did right now. He’d been hiding how he really felt toward her. It had all happened so damned fast. Mace knew he was still reeling from it, his riled-up emotions, his desire for her, the fact that he’d damned near lost her early this morning. And they still weren’t safe by a long shot. He’d been making regular rounds, keeping watches for the Russians. So far, no one had shown up, and he hoped they’d lost their trail at the point he and Sierra had taken the stream to make the final dash for their safe place.
“Ohhhhhh,” she muttered, “I remember now.” She pulled her hand from his, touching the side of her head. “There’s a goose egg here…”
“Yeah, you got hit with a pretty big rock when that RPG exploded right near you.”
“I don’t remember…”
“Don’t worry about it.” He slid his fingers across her hair, smoothing down some of its frizzy strands, watching how her eyes opened wider, changed, became softer, filled with some unknown emotion. “Do you remember me? My name?”
Her lips curved slightly. “Sure, I do, Mace. How could I not?”
He grinned a little. Sierra was slowly returning to him. Brain trauma was serious business, and he knew they weren’t out of the woods yet. “Thirsty?”
“Terribly,” she admitted.
Mace wanted to keep lightly stroking her hair but eased to his knee. He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and removed her IV, and then reached across her. He Swabbed around the red puncture welt with an alcohol wipe, then placed a protective bandage across it and then took down the IV bag from the rock he’d hooked it over.
“Hang on,” he told her, getting up. “I’ll bring you over some water.” He tucked the used IV kit back into a special compartment in his ruck. Mace always carried bottled water that had been purified with tablets to take out the parasites and bacteria. When he returned, he saw Sierra had closed her eyes once more.
“I’m going to ease you into a sitting position and hold you in my arms while you drink this,” he warned her. He sat down by her shoulder and eased his arm beneath hers. Sierra made a soft sound as he gathered her against his body, her head resting against his upper arm. When she opened her eyes, his heart took off at a hard beat. Her eyes were clearer and even in the half-light in the cave, he saw the depth of the layered green colors within them. Pressing the bottle to her lips, she drank thirstily, gulping it down, showing him just how dehydrated she’d become.
