Page 2 of His Christmas Love Song

He looks down at himself, feels a wave of dizziness as the pain finally registers. He is, in fact, bleeding. There’s a chunk of sheet metal embedded in the back of his right bicep. He vaguely remembers feeling something glance off him during the second explosion, but he’d been so focused on Ryan he hadn’t paid attention.

“Well, shit, you’re right,” he says.

Ryan struggles to sit, but Jesse puts his left arm out to keep him down. “Hang on. You need to stay put.”

“Your arm—”

“I’m fine.” Jesse blinks away dark spots that suddenly appear in his vision, or tries to. The world goes insistently gray, then black.

* * *

Ryan talks his way into the medical building with a practiced grin; he knows what effect his smile has on people. The building isn’t very big, but it has strict security protocols. He gets a badge and has to scrub his hands and wear a mask.

He knows the drill from when he was here yesterday to visit Diego. He’d escaped with a bunch of cuts on his head from broken window glass, been patched up and pumped full of antibiotics and kept overnight. Ryan hadn’t even been admitted. Once they got back to camp the doctor diagnosed him with a mild concussion and told him to rest. But Jesse’s still here. They wouldn’t let Ryan see him yesterday; he’s not taking no for an answer today.

This is the nearest thing to a hospital for miles, and he passes rooms that are full of people in various stages of need, cursing himself for a fool. He’s such an idiot. He thought the Peace Corps would be an escape, a way for him to stop being himself for a little while. Turns out, he’s still him when he’s thousands of miles away from home.

He knows, intellectually, that he’s contributed during his time here. He knows he’s done some good. He also knows the vehicle he was riding in hitting a land mine isn’t his fault. But it still seems like something that would happen to him. Ryan Winslow, second-rate country singer runs away from home looking for meaning, gets blown up.

He can’t even do that part properly. He’s fine, and Jesse, the kid who pulled him out of the car, the kid who saved his life, is stuck in here, recovering from emergency surgery.

He finds his way to the recovery room all right. Jesse’s inside, talking to the same doctor who examined Ryan yesterday. He knocks on the door frame and they both look up. Dr. Moore’s wearing a mask over his salt and pepper beard, but his eyes narrow at the sight of Ryan. Jesse, maskless, tries on a smile, but he looks pale, his normally light skin leached of all color, making his almost-black hair starker by comparison.

“Okay if I visit the hero for a minute?” Ryan asks.

“For a short minute,” Dr. Moore says.

“How’s the patient?”

“I just checked his sutures. No sign of infection. If we can keep it that way, Mr. Arlyn will be back on his feet in a few days.”

“I’m fine,” Jesse insists wanly. “It’s just a cut on the arm.”

“That piece of metal was embedded three inches deep. We had to do careful surgery to address the injury to the muscles. If you don’t rest and let it heal properly, you could have lasting muscle damage,” Dr. Moore says sternly.

“Jesus.” Ryan hadn’t known exactly why Jesse had been kept so long, but now he gets it. He’d lost a lot of blood, too. The ride back to base from the bomb site had been terrifying. Jesse had woken up a couple of times but hadn’t been lucid. Ryan had held his arm steady, so the metal didn’t knock into anything else, blood soaking his clothes, while Kim drove and Diego stanched his bleeding in the front seat. They’d faced a mountain of paperwork, too, once they were deemed stable.

“You’re okay?” Jesse asks, turning to look at Ryan. “How’s your head?”

“I’m good,” Ryan says. “You saved my life.”

Jesse smiles faintly. “It was a life worth saving.” His voice sounds dreamy.

Ryan frowns and looks at Dr. Moore. “How many drugs is he on?”

Dr. Moore’s warm brown eyes crinkle at the edges. “Enough to make him comfortable. You’ll have to make it quick. I’ll give you another minute.”

“Okay.”

Dr. Moore leaves and Ryan lets out a breath. “Listen, Jesse, I wanted to thank you. You really did save my life. The others told me that if you hadn’t pulled me out of the car, I’d have been caught in the second explosion.”

“Of course,” Jesse says, sounding clearer, his gray eyes bright. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was to me,” Ryan says. “And I want you to know if there’s anything I can ever do for you, here or back in the States, whatever, just say the word. Okay?”

Jesse’s silent. He should let him rest. He starts to back out of the room, but Jesse says, “Well, there is one thing. I was going to ask you about this before, but, well. I write songs. Sing ‘em, too, sometimes. Play guitar.” He grits his teeth. “If this arm gets well enough to play again.”

Ryan’s sympathy at the idea of not being able to play guitar again wars with resentment at what Jesse’s implying. Of course he’d come to Africa to escape from the music industry and end up meeting an aspiring singer-songwriter. He tamps down his irritation and reminds himself he offered. Jesse’s just taking him at his word.