Healing Home

by Madden, J. M.

  The world exploded with heat as he hit the ground.

  * * *

  BB felt off for some reason. Physically she felt fine, but something was just … wrong in her world. But she couldn’t see or feel what. It was a beautiful day outside, windy, but the sun was shining gloriously. Frankie ran around in the back yard like she’d been cooped up for days, but it had only actually been an hour since she’d been out. Frustrated with work, BB kept leaving her desk looking for distractions. Frankie was always ready to be the center of attention.

  So, she played tug of war with a rope bone and tried to pinpoint what it was that was bugging her.

  There was a deadline looming but she was well on her way to being done with the project— just a few more small tweaks. She was making good money and all of the family seemed to be doing okay. When Carolina had asked her to take another contract, though, BB had declined. It was too soon after Lincoln. As soon as she’d hung up with her sister, she’d wondered if she was crazy. Her life had pretty much crawled to a stop as she waited to hear that Lincoln had made it home safely.

  She was imagining what he would think of her place when her phone rang in her pocket. Her heart began to race as she saw Mary’s name on the display.

  “Hey, Mary!”

  “I don’t want you to freak out,” were her opening words and BB’s blood ran cold. “He’s okay, but a bit beat up.”

  “What happened?” She asked, already planning her drive south to Coronado.

  “They got most of the prisoners out, where Link was, but when they engaged with the Taliban the shit hit the fan. There was a massive fight. Several of the platoon were injured. Lincoln was escorting two civilians to safety when a grenade landed behind him. He protected the civilians, but his back took serious damage, and his thighs. He had to have surgery to pull several dozen pieces of shrapnel from his skin, but it’s not as bad as it could have been. They’re flying the team back now and he’s expected to make a full recovery, but he’s going to be out of commission for a few weeks. They’ll be landing in about six hours. Black just found out. He’ll have to be in the hospital for a few days. Apparently he was fighting a fever and infection when he went into battle, so they’re dealing with that too.”

  “Where do I go?” Her mind was spinning, so she grabbed a pen and paper as she went into the house.

  “If I were you I would go straight to the hospital. He’s drugged, Justin says, so he won’t know you didn’t come to the airfield to meet him.”

  “Okay.”

  She wrote down what Mary told her to, dropping to her couch.

  “I wasn’t sure how you would feel about this.”

  “Oh, I’m glad you called. Believe me. I’ll be down as soon as I can make arrangements and find someone to watch Frankie.”

  “Bring her here,” Mary said quickly. “Then she won’t have to be away from you for long.”

  Tears filled BB’s eyes as she thought about Lincoln being hurt. “You swear to me he’s going to be okay.”

  “I do,” Mary told her firmly. “Swamp Man says he’s not a hundred percent, but he’s okay.”

  “Thank you for calling me, Mary. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  BB didn’t wait for Mary to respond, just hung up. There was so much to do. She had to pack a bag for her and one for Frankie. The drive was going to be interminable.

  It was good, though, that she finally realized what was bothering her.

  * * *

  Lincoln roused as they were carrying him off the plane. He wanted to move, but they had him strapped down on his belly. Yes, he could sleep on his belly, and did a lot, but being in the same position for the past two days was really beginning to infuriate him.

  Even more infuriating, though, was coming off the plane being carried like a damn invalid. His world spun as they turned toward the hangar and he had to close his eyes as dizziness swamped him. He had to choke back nausea. Okay, maybe it was better they drove this time.

  When the dizziness passed, he cracked his eyes open to look around. There was a group of women moving toward the group, but none of the kids. Several of his platoon had been injured and were coming off the plane the same way he was, so the big brass had suggested this was a spouses only meet.

  In spite of himself he looked across the group of women, looking for light brown curls and a smiling face. And a dress. Then he cursed himself when she wasn’t there. The contract was over with. BB had no business, no desire, to be here.

  One of the wives stopped beside his cot, resting a hand on his wrist. “Welcome home, Lincoln.”

  Yeah, whatever.

  He closed his eyes and hoped the ambulance crashed on the way to the hospital.

  * * *

  BB was about to scream. No matter how much she cajoled or wheedled, the woman would not let her through the doors. She had called Mary twice but Black’s wife wasn’t answering, and she didn’t have the numbers to any of the other women. BB was left to pace the waiting room of the medical center and hope that someone called her back.

  If she was a wife or a fiancé it would be no big deal, but a ‘friend’ just didn’t cut it. Pacing down the hallway, she stepped outside to get a breath of fresh air and looked inside the window just in time to see a woman walk up to the receptionist, looking frazzled. The receptionist smiled tightly, like she was aggravated, and began packing up her personal items.

  Ah. Maybe she’d been grumpy because her relief was late. BB watched the woman who had told her no leave, and the second woman settle into the chair. She didn’t think they’d talked enough for the second woman to be aware of BB trying to get in, so, taking a deep breath, she marched in through the front doors of the emergency wing.

  “BB Jones to see Lincoln Bezel. I was told he was brought in about two hours ago.”

  The young woman smiled and looked at her computer, tapping quickly on the keyboard. “Yes, ma’am. He’s in bay three. I’ll let you through.”

  BB opened her mouth to say yes, she was related, then realized that the woman hadn’t even asked. Well, hell. She proceeded through the doors and into the super-bright emergency department. Trying to stay out of everyone’s way, she headed down the central hallway, past a bustling nurse’s station. It was obvious that they’d suddenly gotten a lot of wounded and were scrambling to care for them all.

  The curtains didn’t have numbers on them so she had to peer inside each one to see if she could see Lincoln’s dark hair. Finally, she found him way down at the end of the corridor, face down on a gurney. His back was draped with a light sheet and his eyes were closed, but he seemed to sense her looking at him because his bright, electric eyes flicked open. Something vulnerable flickered across his face. She thought it was disbelief, and he closed his eyes again, frowning. When he opened them again she’d moved closer.

  “BB. What are you doing here?” He whispered, voice rough like he’d been screaming.

  She smiled for him. “I had to come.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Is it okay that I’m here?”

  He stared at her for a long moment, then took a long blink. “I don’t know. Did Mary hire you again?”

  She shook her head, kneeling on the hard tile floor. “No, Mary did not hire me. She did let me know you were here, though.”

  BB waited. Lincoln seemed to be under the influence of some type of sedative, because he kept drifting off, then rousing again. At one point he moved his right arm and winced, but didn’t stop until his hand was within reach of hers. BB met his touch, enfolding his fingers in hers. Pulling a chair up close she sat down and just held his hand. If this was all she could do for him she would do it.

  She rubbed his fingers with her thumb, then traced a finger dawn his lean cheek, which was still dirty from wherever he’d been. He didn’t rouse.

  BB sat with Lincoln for almost an hour before a nurse rushed in and began doing things. She seemed startled to see BB with him, but she smiled and nodded as she went about loggin
g vitals. Then she circled the bed to BB. “He’s doing good,” she said. “I’ll have the doctor come in and talk to you about when you can expect him to wake.”

  “He was already awake.”

  The nurse frowned and looked at Lincoln, shaking her head. “He shouldn’t have been. He’s on enough sedative to keep an elephant in Lala land.”

  “He was awake and talking to me,” BB reiterated.

  The nurse left soon after that, then returned about ten minutes later with a syringe in hand. She injected it into the IV. “We’re going to make sure he stays down for a while. When he rouses these wounds are going to be extremely painful and we want to get a bit of a head start on the healing.”

  Smiling brightly, she left through the curtain.

  Half an hour later a uniformed doctor came through the curtain. His name tag said Coffey. He smiled at BB when he saw her, but it seemed tired. “Ma’am. I hear Mr. Bezel has been talking.”

  BB gave him the gist of the conversation and he basically told her exactly what the nurse had. They were going to be keeping an eye on Lincoln and keeping him sedated, because the wounds he’d received were extremely painful. One piece of shrapnel had been incredibly close to puncturing a lung and another had been just to the side of his spine. And just as Mary had said, the doctor told her about a secondary infection they were dealing with.

  “Not sure yet what that’s from, but we’re going to be loading his system with antibiotics to combat it, and whatever might have been on the metal in the grenade.”

  BB thanked the doctor, feeling a little faint. She moved to the chair and sank down. It hit her that there was a very real possibility she could have lost Lincoln. They’d had so little time together but somehow she knew if he had been killed, it would have wrecked her.

  Her gaze drifted down his forehead to his closed eyes. His ridiculously long lashes rested on his cheeks, still. She assumed that when they got him to a room they would bathe him and get some of the grime from him. If there was a bathroom here she would wipe off his face herself, but she didn’t really see anything to help do that. She dug around in her purse. Yup, baby wipes. Very gently she cleaned his face of dust and blood. If she thought she wouldn’t get yelled at she would go further. Maybe when they got him into a room they’d be able to clean him up.

  Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Did you make it through?

  Yes. Finally. In with him now.

  Ok, good. Tell me when he’s assigned a room.

  Will do.

  A woman started sobbing down the corridor and BB wondered what was going on, or if it was part of Lincoln’s team. It sounded like someone had gotten terrible news. As she listened to the woman break down, her own eyes filled with sympathetic tears, then overflowed. For just a moment, she allowed the situation to overwhelm her.

  “Why are you crying?” A deep voice rasped.

  Her gaze jerked to Lincoln. His eyes were slitted open and she shook her head in exasperation. “You need to go to sleep,” she said, her voice tight with tears.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked again, hand tightening around hers. “You don’t have to be here. If this is too much just go.”

  He tried to pull his hand away, but she didn’t let him. “Quit it, Lincoln. I just got a little overwhelmed for a minute. This is a lot to take in, you know? But I’m okay. As long as you’re okay I’ll be okay.”

  He closed his eyes for a minute and she thought he’d gone back to sleep. “I’ll be okay,” he whispered. “Thank you for being here. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

  BB blinked, wondering if she’d head him correctly. Then, as she thought about the pain he had to have gone through, her eyes filled with tears again and she tightened her hand on his. “Same, Link. I’m glad you made it back. Now go to sleep.”

  His lips tilted up in a smile and his breathing deepened.

  They moved him into a room an hour later. BB tried to stay out of the way, but she was afraid to lose sight of him just in case she had to reassert who she was to him. Maybe if she stayed with him they would just assume she was supposed to be there. She did have to step to the side when they changed the bandages on his back, but she caught a glimpse of his injuries, and it twisted her stomach to even think about it. His poor back had been shredded, cuts and scrapes going every which way. There were several that were obviously deeper, held together with sutures. She stepped closer and looked at the nurse settling him. “How many stitches did he get?”

  The woman looked down at his back and shook her head. “A hundred, maybe? I’ll check the chart in a minute and see if it says exactly.”

  BB watched what she did for Lincoln. All of the cuts were cleaned and the deeper ones were rebandaged, but the smaller ones were left just with a sheet draped over them. His thighs and the bottom edge of his buttocks looked the same, though his back had taken the brunt of the damage. The nurse cleaned the wounds then draped him in another sheet. Then she cleaned up her mess and gathered up his chart. “Looks like he got a hundred and thirty-seven stitches.”

  The woman left the room and BB headed to her chair, feeling faint again. Damn. She cracked open a bottle of water and drank. It settled her tummy and let her think more clearly.

  Mary came to the room as soon as she texted her the number. Her face looked haggard, alarming BB. “Are you okay?” She asked.

  Mary shook her head and drew close enough to rest a hand on Lincoln’s arm. Her eyes filled with tears and she wiped them away. “One of the guys isn’t doing well. He’s in surgery now and they’re not sure he’s going to make it.”

  BB sagged in her chair, then stood to give Mary a hug. “Give him a chance. These guys are all incredibly strong. Lincoln keeps waking up even though they’ve given him enough sedatives to keep an elephant down, the nurse said.”

  The other woman nodded, smiling. “He’s not going to like being on his front for very long. Justin had an injury like that once and it about drove him nuts.”

  “Is he doing okay?” BB motioned to a spare chair and Mary sat down.

  “Yes, he’s doing okay. I’m going to have to go home soon to report otherwise he’ll be in here. He’s already hobbling around the house and he’s not supposed to be.”

  BB shook her head. “Does anything keep them down?”

  For the first time, Mary grinned. “No, not much.” She leaned over and gave BB a hard hug. “Let me know if anything changes with him. Or if they have an expected release day.”

  “I will, definitely.”

  Mary stood and moved to the door, then turned back. “Oh, I know a couple of the nurses here and I had them add you to Link’s call list as his fiancée.” She grinned wickedly as BB gasped. With a wave she was gone.

  BB shook her head, but she appreciated what Mary had done. It would make it easier for her to get in and out of his room now.

  Chapter 10

  Lincoln roused at some point, feeling like he’d been run over by a tank. His head was muddled and his mouth dry. It was dark in the room, which he appreciated. There was a bank of lights somewhere, but they weren’t bright. It gave him just enough light to see BB sleeping in the armchair beside his bed, her head propped on her hand.

  Her light brown hair curled down over her arm and he wanted to reach out and touch it, but as soon as he moved his arm he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach her. She was too far away.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  Moving tentatively he pushed up against the bed a little. Scorching pain roared across his back and he gasped. Immediately BB was there, her hand on his. “Don’t Lincoln. They said they were going to ease you off the sedation but you can’t move yet.”

  Lowering himself back to the mattress he looked at her. She’d popped out of sleep like she’d been waiting for him to wake up. “What day is it?” He rasped.

  “It’s, um,” she scrubbed her face, looking at the clock on the wall. “Tuesday, now. You came home on Friday.”

  Yeah, his body had that n
umb feeling like he’d been drugged for a long time. “Is everyone okay?”

  She nodded. “Yes. There was one guy, Carmichael, who was kind of touch and go for a long time. They ended up having to take his leg, but he’s doing okay now.”

  Link blinked. Luca Carmichael was the K9 handler attached to his team. It sucked that he was injured. He wondered what had happened to Wicked, his war dog. “Anyone else?”

  “Swamp Man had a couple of wounds, but he’s doing good too. I think they’re releasing him tomorrow. “

  Lincoln drew in a deep breath, tentatively stretching his back. He thought if he moved carefully he could swing his legs around. “What are my injuries?” He asked her, watching her eyes carefully.

  BB glanced down his body. “You have a lot of cuts across your back and thighs, but overall I think you’re doing pretty good. They’re fairly superficial and you’ve done a lot of healing in the past few days. But I think if you try to move you’re going to hurt your thighs when you sit up. You should wait for the nurses to help guide you.”

  Link blinked in frustration. His body had that tired feeling like he’d been in one position way too long and he wanted to move, even if it did hurt. With the side rails up on the bed he felt claustrophobic and a little desperate. His breathing must have changed because BB was suddenly leaning down toward him. She did something on the bed and the siderail moved out of the way.

  “Hey,” she said firmly, leaning down close to his face so that she could get good eye contact. Her hand began to stroke back through his hair along his temple, and he thought he remembered her doing that a lot. “Look at me. You’re going to be fine. They expect you to walk out of here in just a few days. I know this has to be uncomfortable but you have to stay here and wait until they help you. Okay, Link?”

  He blinked at her, seeing the tears in her eyes she was trying to blink away. The sight of her distress took his mind off his own. “Why are you here, BB? Did Mary hire you again?”