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Hawk took my arm, guiding me past the ER desk where the nurses gave us kind nods, past full exam rooms and curtained-off areas where the less serious patients were being taken care of. I heard someone groan, as if they were in absolute agony, and I whimpered.
“Tanner?” I whispered, and Hawk nodded grimly.
“It’s not pretty,” he warned. “You are about to see and smell something that will haunt you, sweetheart. But try to keep it together for his sake, okay?”
“Okay,” I said with a gulp.
“Good girl,” he murmured and knocked on a door at the end of the corridor.
Seconds later, it opened, Bash standing there with tears in his magnetic eyes so like his cousins’. He was so tense and angry-looking, I instinctively took a step back. Noticing my reaction, he attempted to ease his expression into something less intimidating, but he didn’t really accomplish it.
“Thank fuck,” he breathed and grasped my free arm, forcefully pulling me into the room.
The instant I stepped through the door, it was like being hit by a wave of the worst-smelling scent on the planet. I gagged, trying to breathe through my mouth, then my nose again. Neither helped, and I had to cover my nose and mouth with my hand.
“What is that?”
“It’s rotting flesh,” a voice I didn’t recognize answered. I glanced over and saw a man in scrubs with a mask on and a light blue gown tied around him. He looked like he was performing surgery, and I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t.
“Tanner has second-degree burns on his back,” Bash explained. “It’s mostly healed, but the rotting flesh has been infected with maggots. The doctor said that was probably the best thing to have happened to him since they’ve fought off gangrene setting in.
But he’s cutting away the rest of the rotten skin.”
He had scissors in one hand, tweezers in the other, as a nurse helped him clean Tanner’s back. Tanner lay facedown on the bed, two different IVs in his arms pushing fluids and medication into him. Oxygen was in his nose, the heart monitor connected to him letting us all know that his heart rate was very, very low.
The doctor cut away something on Tanner’s back and placed it in the container another nurse stood holding patiently.
“Are you Jos?” the doctor asked casually as he continued to work.
“Y-Yes.”
“Then please, come sit beside the bed,” he requested. “Our friend here is on the strongest meds we can possibly give him, but they can only do so much. He keeps talking about you. Maybe he’s talking to you. Not quite sure right now. But I think he needs you more than he needs me at the moment.”
Matt moved from where he’d been standing in the corner of the room, startling me so much, I jumped. When I didn’t move quickly enough for him, he picked me up several inches off the ground and carried me over to the chair the doctor indicated. Sitting me down, Matt stood over me, waiting to make sure I didn’t run away.
I really, really wanted to run away.
Tanner groaned again, his body flinching with pain, and I instinctively reached out. My hand touched the side of his face, my fingers stroking over the weeks’ worth of beard on his jaw, my thumb touching his deeply cracked lips.
“Shh, shh,” I murmured softly, as if I were talking to Reid having a bad dream. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
His eyes opened to mere slits. They were glazed with narcotics and pain, and he blinked a few times, as if trying to focus on me. Then he smiled a sad, heartbreaking smile, and my world stood still. “I really must be dead this time.” His words were slurred but not unintelligible. “Never believed in heaven before, but I’m glad I got here.”
Tears poured from my eyes, but I rushed to reassure him. “No, Tanner,” I choked out. “You’re not dead. I’m here.”
He lifted his hand slowly, as if he wanted to touch me. I had to swallow my gasp when I saw he was missing a finger, and the tears only fell harder. I caught his hand, brought it to my face, letting him feel that I was real.
“Even when you cry, you’re beautiful,” he mumbled before his eyes closed again, and he let out a harsh groan.
“Why the fuck aren’t you doing this in an operating room with him knocked out?” Hawk demanded from where he was still standing by the door.
“Because he wouldn’t survive going under,” the doctor told him calmly, but now I could see the sweat soaking through his scrubs and the surgical gown. It was beaded thickly on his brow. His voice and hands were steady, but this was getting to him just as much as the rest of us. “Your friend here has a mean burn on his back that’s scarred up pretty thickly, and it makes it hard to numb him. Any idea where that came from?”
“My guess?” Matt’s voice was little more than a feral growl behind me. “The bomb we thought killed him must have scorched his back.”
The doctor made a noncommittal sound, continuing his task. Every time Tanner groaned, my heart rate jumped and I tightened my fingers around his, fighting back the whimpers of distress for him.
“Try talking to him some more,” the doctor urged. “It might distract him from what I’m doing.”
