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He adjusts his body to line up better with his gun.
Ford doesn’t answer as he tries to calm everyone down on the road. Both our team and theirs point guns at each other.
Fingers on the triggers.
One of their guys grabs the women.
And then, the world explodes.
* * *
There’s a certain rhythm to a hospital room. It’s in the hum of the lights. The buzzing of the machines. The movement of the staff. Like everything moves in perfect synch.
In my few short years in the Navy, I’ve woken up this way a time or two... maybe three. The difference this time is that I don’t remember why.
When I force my dry eyes to open, the dark room takes a minute to come into focus, and even then, it’s not crisp. What the fuck is wrong with my vision?
I attempt to sit up and immediately regret it as pain spikes up my abdomen, and a massive pressure in my head threatens to detonate.
“Relax, Sinclair.” Ford’s voice comes from my left—I think—and I turn my head slowly his way as a wave of nausea rolls through me. “I’ll get the doc.” A chair scrapes against the floor, and I groan in response to the offending noise.
“What happened?” I rasp quietly as I try to focus on Ford, who grabs something that looks like a crutch next to his chair and leans his weight on it to maneuver himself to the door of my room.
Why is everything out of focus?
Ford opens the door and speaks to someone on the other side, then makes his way back to me. “Whatdidn’thappen would be a better question,” he groans as he slowly lowers himself down into the chair as the curtain between my bed and the one next to me opens.
Rook drops down into a chair next to Trick with a grunt.
Trick is lying in the other bed, with his leg casted from hip to toe and hanging from a metal thing above the bed. “The mission went FUBAR in a way none of us could have possibly expected.”
I close my eyes and try to focus on something scratching at the back of my mind, but it doesn’t come. I will myself to remember what happened, but I’m coming up blank. The room goes in and out of focus as my eyes attempt to adjust. “What the fuck?” I rub my eyes, trying to clear them. “What happened out there? Did we save the girls?”
The girls... We were there to save two women.
I think.
“What’s the last thing you remember?” Ford adjusts his position at the foot of my bed.
“The last thing I remember was the team sitting in the command room, going over how to execute the mission.” The pain behind my eyes settles to a dull ache as I try to focus on Ford but can’t.
Rook leans his elbows on his knees. Dark circles surround his eyes, and a white bandage wrapped around his forearm pulls tight against his skin. “How’re you feeling, Sinclair?”
“Like someone put my brain in a blender. Will one of you tell me what the fuck happened? Where are the other guys?” I don’t dare try to move again, for fear of the pain in my head coming back.
Ford clears his throat. He and Rook are both in sweats, unlike Trick and me, who lie in our beds in hospital gowns.
“Where’s Linc and Axe?”
Just then, a nurse in blue scrubs walks through my door and starts fussing with my chart. “How’s your pain on a scale of one to ten, Petty Officer?”
“A two,” I tell her without thinking it through, just wanting her out of the room so I can fill in the blanks.
“Now is not the time to be a hero, sailor. Your body will heal faster if it’s not in as much pain.” She checks the machine next to me, then she adjusts the starched white blanket around my waist and lifts my gown to check the bandage on my abdomen.
“Holy fuck. Was I shot?” I ignore the groan coming from Trick while I look down at my bandaged abdomen in shock.
“Yes. They had to go in and retrieve the bullet.” She writes something in her chart, then rolls a tray my way and fills a cup with water. “A doctor will be with you shortly. Let me know if you need anything.” She hands me the remote for the bed, then turns to Rook and Ford. “You’re both supposed to be in your own rooms.”
