by Kaylea Cross
Another agonizing minute passed. The cold was making it hard to breathe, sucking the precious air from her lungs. Her muscles were growing weaker with every second, her breaths coming in shallow little bursts as her body tried to warm her vital organs by shunting blood to her core.
She couldn’t hear any shooting from the fort now, and the sound of the helicopter was fading, leaving nothing but the sound of the water splashing around her and the pounding of her heart in her ears.
She let out a sharp scream as strong hands grabbed her arms. Hanes.
“I’ve got you, Sam.”
She froze, blinking at the sound of that wonderful, familiar voice. “Rhys,” she gasped out, going limp with relief.
“I’ve got you. I need you to relax and let me tow you in.”
“B-Ben,” she said through chattering teeth, trying to turn toward him.
His arm banded around her ribs like steel. “No, float on your back for me and let your muscles relax. I’ll have you to shore in no time.”
He hadn’t answered her about Ben. It was impossible to relax, she was shuddering all over from the cold and shock, but she tried to do as he said.
Ben. If Rhys was here, then Ben was too. She would see him in only a few more minutes. She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together as tears of relief gathered.
Her eyes sprang open, her muscles tightening as she remembered. “Hanes,” she rasped out. “He’s—”
“Dead. I saw his body surface. He’s gone.”
What? She looked up into Rhys’s hard face as he swam her to shore, and another thought struck her. Bryn.
She opened her mouth to ask about her friend, but he shifted his grip and angled her upward a bit. “Okay, almost there. You’re doing great.”
Less than a minute later he touched bottom. He pulled her with him, then lifted her into his arms as he began climbing up the rocks and out of the water.
She gasped when the cold air hit her wet body, moaned as the shudders got worse. “B-Ben,” she managed.
“Ben!” he yelled as he pulled her free and began carrying her up the sloping shore. “Ben, I’ve got her!”
Sam was shaking so hard she could barely see. She blinked as Dec materialized out of the darkness with Bryn. Sam gave a glad cry to see that her friend was okay, her hands free and the gag gone.
“Where’s Ben?” Rhys demanded.
Dec’s face was somber in the moonlight as he stared at them. “He’s hit.”
All the air rushed from Sam’s lungs. Her heart stopped beating.
Rhys went rigid against her. “What?”
Dec turned, his gaze moving up the shore. And then Sam saw them.
Luke was crouched over someone lying on his back on the rocks.
“Ben,” she screamed, arcing upwards in Rhys’s arms. She had to get to him. Had to help him.
Rhys clamped her to him and raced for his brother.
Pain unlike anything Sam had ever known engulfed her as Rhys finally reached him and set her down. “Ben,” she quavered, dropping to her knees beside his head.
He’d been shot through the chest and side. His shirt was soaked in blood. His eyes fluttered open at the sound of her voice, slowly focused on her.
Luke was behind her, quickly cutting her wrists free. As soon as they were, she grabbed Ben’s face in her hands. “Look at me,” she told him. “Look right at me. I’m okay, and you’re going to be okay too.” Slowly those pale green eyes focused on her. “Hi,” she whispered, her voice shredding.
His lips parted as if he was trying to talk. Then he choked, a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of his mouth.
Horrified, Sam swallowed a cry as Luke and Rhys immediately turned him onto his side. The sound of Ben’s breathing was awful. A rattling, gurgling wheeze. The scent of his blood mixed with the salty air, making her stomach twist.
Rhys and Luke were talking, their words clipped, commanding, but she didn’t hear a thing they said, and didn’t even know who they were talking to, her or Ben. All she could focus on was her husband as she cradled his pale face in her icy hands.
“I’m here,” she whispered helplessly as tears tracked down her face. “I’m right here, sweetheart, can you hear me?”
Ben struggled to suck in another horrible breath, and closed his eyes.
“No. Ben, no, look at me,” she pleaded.
The sound of a boat motor cut through the terrible silence. She glanced up, her vision blurred by tears as Dec steered a boat up on shore yards away from them. Bryn was in it with him.
Luke and Rhys immediately lifted Ben and rushed for the boat. Sam staggered to her feet and stumbled after them. Her teeth chattered, her heart fractured into a thousand jagged pieces that sliced her up with every shallow breath.
Ben had come here to save her. And now he was dying.
She knew he was. She could feel it. And the agony of it was too much to bear.
Luke and Rhys got Ben into the boat. Sam made it to the bow on her own, her mind whirling in anguish and shock, a scream of pain trapped in her chest.
Bryn was there, gripping her hand and helping her aboard. Sam jerked forward as Dec started the engine and immediately headed for shore.
She stumbled her way over to Ben, who was lying on the floor near the stern. She dropped to her knees beside him and clutched his hand, the weight of her grief crushing her. She couldn’t take this. Not Ben. Never Ben.
She barely registered the sensation of warmth as Bryn wrapped her arms around her and held on tight. Rhys was pressing two wadded-up shirts to the wounds in Ben’s chest and side, his face grim, eyes haunted as he laid a thin piece of plastic across the wound over Ben’s lung to try and seal it.
Sam was vaguely aware of Luke on his phone, calling for help, asking for emergency medical transport to be standing by when they reached the marina.
Shaking all over, Sam clutched Ben’s hand in hers and stared into his motionless face, willing him to hold on. To fight. For her. For them.
His eyes were closed. She couldn’t even tell if he could hear her anymore.
Dissolving into tears, she bent low over him, putting her cheek to his. “Please, Ben. Please don’t leave me,” she choked out.
It was Christmastime. And Sam needed a miracle.
****
The pain was so intense he couldn’t breathe.
Ben clung to the tenuous thread of consciousness, instinctively sensing that if he let go, he was done for. He faded in and out of consciousness, between blessed blackness and stark terror when the fear kicked in again, propelling him back to the surface, through the heavy, gray layers weighing him down.
Then the pain hit again.
His mind suddenly snapped back into gear. No air.
He tried to suck in a breath. Couldn’t. His body arced, struggled in vain as panic punched through him.
Strong hands held him down. Voices floated around him.
His body settled, the pain and panic fading a bit as he slid back under. But somehow, he stopped it from taking him this time.
Beneath the pain and fear he could feel the cold wind whipping over him. He thought he might be shaking. And he could hear more voices around him now. Indistinct at first, then clearer as the pain sharpened and he eased back toward consciousness again.
“Ben. Please, Ben, you have to hold on for me. You have to.”
Sam. Sam was talking to him. She was upset. Crying.
He vaguely registered the pressure around his hand. On his cheek.
Sam. He tried to squeeze her fingers in reply, but his hand wouldn’t move. Nothing would move, not even his lungs.
He forced his eyelids open a fraction, fighting for every ounce of air, but it felt like they had lead weights attached to them.
Sam sobbed and leaned over him, her blurry face coming into view for a second. Her wet hair blew around her, spraying cold droplets on his face. She was pale. Terrified, her eyes filled with tears.
He hated that she was afraid and hu
rting. Don’t cry, he tried to tell her, but his lips wouldn’t move.
Then he became aware of the movement. They were on a boat. It was skipping over the water. And Sam was scared because he’d been shot.
“That’s right, you hold on,” she told him with a forced smile, staring into his eyes. “I love you so much. I know it hurts, but you have to fight. You’re a fighter, Ben.”
With herculean effort he shoved back the agony and fear bombarding him. He was a fighter. Had been since the day he was born. He would fight for her. Would do anything for her, and wished he could comfort her now.
“Ben. You listen to me,” a hard voice said.
His gaze flicked over to see his brother hovering over him. Rhys was naked from the waist up, the muscles in his massive arms standing out as he applied pressure to the wounds in Ben’s chest. Making them burn like hellfire.
His mind cleared a little more, the pain and adrenaline wiping away the shock.
Ben was a medic. He knew what the wound placement and symptoms meant. Both his lungs had collapsed, that’s why he couldn’t breathe. And he’d been shot in the side as well, possibly in the gut or liver. He must have lost a lot of blood.
“Don’t you let go,” Rhys growled, his eyes more intense than Ben had ever seen them.
Not going anywhere, Ben wanted to say.
Rhys’s face was taut, all his focus on him. “Don’t you fucking let go, you hear me, punk?”
And then Ben knew.
Holy fuck, I’m dying.
The pain suddenly increased tenfold. He tried to drag in a shallow breath, but there was no air.
None. Only pain, more than he could bear. It felt like someone had set his whole chest on fire, and had parked an elephant on it for shits and giggles.
Terror and grief ripped through him like a blast wave. He was fading fast. Could feel the blood pumping out of him, his strength ebbing, the cold increasing.
He stared up at his brother, tears rushing to his eyes. No. Don’t wanna die. Don’t let me die.
“Ben.”
He shifted his gaze to his wife. She stroked his cheek, tears rolling down her face. “I love you,” she whispered, as if she knew.
I love you. I love you, he wanted to scream. He wanted to hold on, he was fighting so hard to, but his strength was fading. The darkness was too powerful, pulling him down. Sucking him into the abyss.
With all his remaining strength, he tried to squeeze her hand. He thought his fingers moved a little.
He couldn’t speak so he sent up a silent prayer to his brother, hoping his twin would hear it. You take care of her for me.
****
Nev snatched her cell phone from the table in the safehouse kitchen when it rang. Rayne and Emily were staring at her as she checked the screen. “It’s Luke. Hello?” she answered.
“Where are y’all?” he demanded, his voice urgent.
Her spine jerked ramrod straight in the chair. “In a house across town. What’s happened? Is Sam—”
“Sam and Bryn are both okay. But Ben’s not.”
Oh, Jesus. “What’s wrong?”
“Shot twice in the torso.”
No. She closed her eyes, her heart going out to him, Sam and Rhys. “How bad?”
“Bad. We’re almost to shore and there’s an ambulance standing by, but his vitals are dropping fast. Can you meet us at the hospital Emergency entrance? He’s gonna need to go straight into surgery.”
“Of course.” She was already up and heading for the door, her mind spinning with a million questions.
“Rayne will take you, and Em knows the staff there. She can help get you into the O.R.”
“Okay. I’m on my way. Tell Rhys I’m coming.”
“I will.”
She stopped and turned to tell the others, but Rayne and Em were already standing behind her. “We need to get to the hospital, now.” She filled them in as she grabbed her purse and shoes. A minute later they were all piling into the SUV and Rayne raced them to the hospital.
They beat the ambulance there. Nev rushed inside with Em while Rayne stayed close to guard them, just in case. “Come on, I’ll take you straight to the ER doc,” Em said.
She took Neveah straight to the emergency physician and explained the situation. His answer wasn’t good.
“The trauma and vascular surgeons are already busy performing surgeries right now. All we’ve got left is an on-call general surgeon. They’ve already called her in, but it’ll be at least another fifteen minutes before she can get here.”
That was too long, but what choice did they have? “I’ll scrub in now and assist her.” The surgeon would need a hand, and even though Neveah’s weren’t what they once were, they were better than nothing and Ben needed all the help he could get.
The ER doc shook his head and both she and Emily began arguing with him at the same time.
Nev’s patience snapped five seconds in.
“I’m a certified trauma surgeon, and I need to scrub in now if we’re going to have any chance of saving the patient’s life,” she snapped, cutting off the rest of what Emily was going to say. “So go call whoever you need to, but I’m going to be ready and waiting in that O.R. when the patient arrives.”
The man’s mouth tightened. He stared at her for a long moment, then nodded, no doubt only because of the circumstances and Em vouching for her. “Okay. Fine. Scrub in and I’ll call the other surgeon.”
Nev spun away and hurried with Emily to get ready. Her heart pounded as she put on a pair of scrubs and began her scrub-in procedure, the ritual so familiar and yet terrifying now.
She was about to operate on Ben to try and save his life with reduced sensation and motor function from the median nerve damage in her dominant hand. She scrubbed at her skin, feeling nothing along her right thenar eminence, or all the way up her thumb and index finger.
Anxiety clawed at her. She forced it aside and focused on what she had to do.
Someone tapped on the glass of the scrub room. She glanced up, and her heart constricted to see Rhys standing on the other side.
His face was strained, his shirt smeared with blood. And his eyes… The haunted, desolate look in them made her want to cry.
She lifted a hand, wishing she could go to him. Comfort him somehow. Reassure him that she would do everything in her power to save Ben.
He swallowed. Nodded.
Pain sliced through her when she caught the sheen of tears in his eyes as he turned away. The strongest man she knew, the one who hated showing any kind of weakness, crying for his twin.
Shaken, Nev turned back to the sink and began washing her arms, keeping her hands higher at all times so as not to contaminate them with any bacteria-laden soap and water.
The scrub room door opened and a bronze-skinned woman around the same age as her rushed in. “You Doctor Sinclair?” she asked, quickly removing her watch and wedding band.
“Yes.”
“Sarah Chambers. Nice to meet you,” she said, coming to the sink to start her own scrub-in procedure. “The patient’s your brother-in-law?”
“Yes. Is the ambulance here yet?”
“Just got here as I was pulling in.”
The operating room doors burst open on the other side of the large window in front of them. Neveah sucked in a breath as the team wheeled Ben in. His face was ashen beneath the oxygen mask. Blood soaked his torso and the gurney, dripping onto the linoleum floor.
She swallowed and pushed aside her fear, calling on her professional demeanor and training. “I’ll see you in there.”
Holding her hands up so they were higher than her elbows, she walked through the connecting door into the operating theater, praying that together they could save Ben’s life.
Chapter Fifteen
Ben still hadn’t regained consciousness.
Rhys sat up and leaned back in the chair he’d pulled beside his brother’s hospital bed, stretching his stiff neck. He wasn’t even sure what day it was anymore. How lo
ng had he been here? Three days now?
The room was eerily silent, the soft beeps and whirs of various equipment providing a rhythmic backdrop he hated with every fiber of his being, reminding him of his hellish recovery from the brain injury that should have killed him.
Now the tables had turned, and it was Ben fighting for his life.
His brother had required multiple transfusions to stop him from bleeding out. The surgery itself had taken forever. One bullet had perforated both lungs. Another had hit his liver.
Nev and the rest of the surgical team had stopped the internal bleeding and patched up the holes, but Ben was still in danger from internal hemorrhage and infection. They’d put him in a medically-assisted coma to keep him under and give his body a chance to start healing.
Now he had a fever due to an infection. They were giving him strong antibiotics for it, but there was no guarantee he would pull through.
Rhys turned when the door opened behind him. Nev walked in and gave him a soft smile, looking tired. Here in the ICU the visitation rules were strict, only one close relative at a time. But since Nev was a surgeon and had operated on Ben, they’d allowed her in too.
“Hey. How you holding up?” she asked him quietly.
“Fine.”
“Yeah?” She came over to the bed, paused to check the equipment and Ben’s vitals, then slid into Rhys’s lap and wound her arms around his neck. “You don’t look fine to me,” she murmured, their faces close together.
He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was almost Christmas. They should all be celebrating the holidays together at Luke’s place right now. Not sitting here praying his twin wouldn’t die. “Have they said anything else? About when he’ll wake up?”
“They’ve already reduced his meds, so he could wake up any time. Now it’s just wait and see.”
Rhys nodded once, his gaze straying back to his twin. The doctors had been tight-lipped about Ben’s prognosis. Even Nev, not wanting to give him false hope.
This was total role reversal. Not so long ago it had been Ben sitting at his bedside, waiting, wondering if he would ever wake up.
