“I’ll step out and give you a few minutes,” Dr. Stover said quietly, and backed out of the room, leaving Stark alone with Kira.
“God forgive me. I did this to you,” Stark whispered and took her hand. It was limp, but warm. He clasped it between his hands and bent forward, bringing her delicate fingers to his face. His breath shuddered and he choked back tears. He remembered her running those fingers through his hair. He clasped her fingers tight, closed his eyes and pictured her in Aspen. Sitting with her in the snow at the top of the world, they had everything before them. Her cheeks were rosy pink from the sun and the wind on her face. Stark couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful. She had looked up at him with pure joy in the moment. Her eyes were as bright as the sky when she smiled at him. Looking back, he loved her even then. He had never met anyone like her. For the first time in his life he had felt complete. That day felt like a million years ago, and yesterday at the same time.
Even through the veil of bruises and fluorescent lighting she was breathtaking. “Kira. You made it baby. We’re back home. Don't give up now. You have to fight to get well. I'm so sorry for this, for everything,” Stark spoke softly holding her hand against his face. “I love you Kira, I can’t imagine this world without you. You have your whole future ahead of you. Please come back from this. You have so much to fight for.”
Stark’s voice broke and the tears began to fall. He lay there, his head rested on the bed beside her hand as he listened to the machines that helped her breathe and watched the rise and fall of her chest in the dim light. He could barely breathe when he thought of just how close he came to losing her. “I never wanted to hurt you. I swear on my life. If I had only known. I never would have …” He choked up and took several deep breaths. His heart was ripping in two. He had done this. All of the damage to her frail little body came from his gun.
“Remember when we sat by the fire in Aspen? You were so incredibly beautiful. God, that first night, Kira. You are everything I have ever dreamed of. You are strong and brilliant and everything that a man like me doesn’t deserve. Before I knew you, I was cold and broken. Then you walked into my life and I swear the heavens opened up. I don’t know if there is a God out there, but if there is, he made every fucking piece of you perfect. Please come back Kira. You can’t begin to know what you mean to me. I am so fucking sorry I put you here. God, damn it, you deserve so much more than this.” Stark lay helplessly beside her. He would give absolutely anything he had to bring her back. He longed to hold her, to protect her. She lay cold and quiet. The ventilator sounded on in a dark melody with the slow steady beep of her vital monitor. The only interruption was the occasional warning as her pressure flashed 64/42. He couldn’t begin to picture this world without her in it.
This is not how their lives were supposed to go. Stark looked up at the ceiling. Why God damn it? We are supposed to be getting married. Colin should have been our best man. Fuck! All that was gone now.
“Remember racing me through the forest when we first started to run together? You never give up on anything. This cannot be how your story ends. You have to come back.” He remembered how she had fought at the confidence course, despite her size, she never let anything stand in her way. Damn, her determination about killed her that day, but she fought all the way to the finish. “Kira fight like you did at the confidence course. Fight like you have your whole damn life. You are not a quitter. You are a beautiful, damn stubborn soldier. You were born that way, and you know it. It’s time to step up and show it,” he growled at her, willing her with everything in him to fight.
Stark closed his eyes again. He pictured her standing in the rain when she flew to California to be with him for his father’s funeral. “I never got to tell you how much it meant to me when you came to California. When I saw you standing in the rain, I swear to God no one has ever looked so beautiful.” He remembered scooping her up and kissing her as they both got soaked. Oh, and sweet baby Jesus the way she looked coming down the steps of his parent’s home at the reception. The way her dress moved made it look like she was floating. In that moment, nothing, and no one else mattered. “It’s like that every time you walk in the room, baby. Everyone else just disappears.”
But, fuck. I messed that up too. She flew all that way and I didn’t fight for her when Simone presented all that bullshit about college. I just let her walk out of the door, out of my life. “I don’t deserve you Kira Riley, but there is nothing I wouldn’t give to spend the rest of my life trying.”
Time ticked on, but Stark couldn’t go. He couldn’t bear to leave her side. He had to stay until he knew she was going to be ok. He rubbed her tiny fingers. Just to be this close to her was everything. Every fiber of his being was alive. He paused over her ring finger and imagined what the emerald cut sapphire would look like against her skin. If I had only gotten to ask her, what would she have said? Would we still be here now, or would things have been different? If he had chosen her over the military when he had a chance, would she be safe now? Would Colin have lived? Fuck. I did this. I wrote this story and it cost me everything.
“Kira … not a day goes by that I don’t think about that night at The Garden of the Gods and what might have been.” He couldn’t even say the rest out loud. Now he would never know. He would never stick her with a broken man. She deserved so much more. A month ago, all he could think about was wanting to be with her, wanting her back. Now he just wanted her to live.
He realized he would never deserve her. He would never deserve that kind of happiness. He had stolen it from Colin and from Kira. She shouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life taking care of him. Stark looked down at the empty foot peg and shook his head. His leg was a small price to pay to bring her home safe, but it was a payment for his own mistake. She didn’t do anything to be stuck with this for the rest of her life. I swear to you, God, if you will just let her live. I promise you I will do the honorable thing and walk away. I swear it. Just please let her live. Take my life, not hers, please. Unashamed, Stark let the tears fall. The world was a better place with her in it. He could never make up for the loss of Colin, and he could never give back what he had taken from her.
How the fuck did I not know it was her? His mind began racing with questions.
“Kira what were you doing at that house? What were you looking for? Baby, I would have helped you. I’m so fucking sorry that you didn’t feel like you could come to me.” Javier had mentioned his brother being very interested in the case she was working on. What interest did a drug lord have in bugs? How the hell were terrorists involved? He needed to talk to Javier. What happened to him, and where he was now?
“You felt strongly enough about this to risk your life for it, then it will be my mission. I doubted you once, but I’m not making that mistake again.”
Her fingers moved slowly in his hand. He froze.
“Kira, can you hear me? Please squeeze my hand if you can hear me. You’ve got this. Kira, you are strong you’ve got this,” he pleaded eagerly.
Her little fingers moved slowly, weakly, and curled around his.
“That’s it!” He squeezed her hand back and kissed it. “Kira I could never ask you to love me now, but know that I will spend the rest of my life finding out exactly what happened and make it right. I can never take back what I did, but I can finish what you started. I will do whatever it takes to find what you were looking for and crush the fucker.”
Kira squeezed his hand harder and seemed to be trying to over breathe the vent. Her heart rate jumped up and the monitor began to alarm. Frantically, he pushed the nurse button. If she was trying to wake up, the ventilator would scare the hell out of her.
The nurses and Dr. Stover came rushing into the room.
“Is everything ok?” Dr. Stover asked concerned.
“She moved! She squeezed my hand!” Stark informed them eagerly. “I think she may be waking up!”
“I’ll call her doctor, she is heavily sedated while on the vent but that hea
rt rate is jumping up there. I’m afraid you are going to have to go now,” the redheaded nurse commanded. Her tone was as excited as a toll collector on the turnpike. He realized she probably dealt with over emotional family members desperately clinging to hope on a daily basis.
Stark turned back to Kira. He was still holding her hand as they started to wheel him from the room.“Wait! Kira!” He held on to her with one hand and the bed with the other.
More nurses arrived. They were calling her name. Someone was calling his. Someone had their hands on his arm, trying to pull her from his grasp.
“Kira!” he called again, the world spun and everyone seemed far away. A shot sounded and the huge icy raindrops fell all around them. “Kira, hang on baby! We’re gonna make it out of here!” he yelled at her. He could see the team on the other boat performing CPR. This was all my fault. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” He had to get to her. He lunged for her and fell, hard.
“Sergeant Stark!” a loud voice boomed in his ear.
Stark froze. His heart racing, he realized he was lying ass exposed in a hospital gown on the cold tile floor of Kira’s room. What the hell just happened? He looked back and forth from Dr. Stover to the wide-eyed nurses who surrounded him.
“Sergeant Stark. It’s ok. I don’t know where you went for a minute, but you are safe. Captain Riley is safe. You are in Walter Reed Hospital. Can we help you back up?”
Stark was still shaking. He didn’t need help up from them, or anyone else. He tried to push up and his damn right leg wouldn’t … fuck. Reality came back to him. God, damn it. He looked down at the bandage that was starting to bleed. Shit. Now I’ve done it. My first trip out of ortho lock down and I completely lost my shit. Stark shook his head and bit his lower lip. He looked Dr. Stover in the eye and reached out his hand.
Dr. Stover took his hand and helped Stark back into the wheelchair. “Let’s get you back to your room and take a look at that leg. I think you and Captain Riley have had enough excitement for this morning.” Dr. Stover’s lighthearted tone sounded forced. To the nurses, he followed with, “Ladies, it’s been a pleasure.”
“Wait. We can’t just leave,” Stark returned. He didn’t know how to leave her alone. He knew when he finally did it would kill him.
“Your leg needs attention, and whatever you said to Captain Riley has her fighting like hell to wake up. If you want to help her, then we need to get out of the way and let her medical team work.” Dr. Stover’s words were calm and measured.
“Ok,” Stark relented, “can we come back?”
“I doubt we could keep you away if we tried,” Dr. Stover replied as he wheeled Stark toward the hallway. Just as they crested the threshold they met Captain Holt.
Holt stepped back into the hall almost dropping the flowers in his hand. His face was pallid as if he had seen a ghost. “Sergeant S-S-Stark …” he stammered, looking over Stark's disheveled appearance.
Stark had hastily pulled the blanket back over his lower half as they left the room leaving his right leg exposed. He followed Holt’s gaze down to the now crimson dressings on his amputation. Holt didn’t speak, he just stared as if he was taking it all in. Stark reached down and covered his leg with the blanket, breaking Holt’s trance.
“H-have you been debriefed yet?” was all Holt managed to say.
“No. Not yet.” Stark was starting to think he was not going to like this one bit.
“I just want to say thank you, and … well … I’m sorry about … your friend.” Holt looked at the ground. “About the debriefing … I,” Holt struggled for words.
“Thanks. Sergeant Colin was one of the best men I have ever known. Don’t sweat the debriefing. This is not my first rodeo.” Stark reached out and took Holt by the arm. “They said you have been to see her every day.”
Holt's cheeks flushed. “Yes, of course. I took leave after we returned to stay here with her.”
“I see.” Stark looked at the tile for a moment. Holt could be so much more of what she needed. It ripped him to the core to admit that. “Just remember I am watching. I will always watch out for her. Be good to her,” he finished, staring directly into Holt’s eyes.
Holt looked confused. He stood mouth opened, not saying a word as Stark let go of his arm and motioned to Dr. Stover.
Owen Stark did not look back as they wheeled down the hall. He didn’t think he could bear to watch the little shit going into her room. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to be the one to hold her hand when she woke up. This was not his story. This was not how his life was fucking supposed to go. Stark balled up his fist as they rolled toward the bank of elevators. He should consider himself lucky, he guessed. Colin didn’t get to come back at all. He felt rage building like an inferno. What have I done? Fuck my whole life condemned to this fucking chair, while the love of my life lay fighting for the next breath. My best friend, now but a memory with no closure, a gaping void in my life that cannot be filled. And the little shit in his fucking khaki pants swooping right in, to be the one to hold her.
They rolled into the elevator like entering a tomb. A stream of light from the windows across the hall spilled into the dim space like last rays of hope. Dr. Stover pushed the buttons for the fifth floor and the heavy metal door began to close, Stark clenched his fist so tight the knuckles turned white. Every dream he had for their lives, every wish, every hope extinguished like the tiny beam of light. His heart raced with vengeance and loss. The door sealed in place extinguishing any remaining light and hopes along with it. Stark could take no more. He let his fist fly into the wall of the elevator.
“FUCK!” he yelled to everyone, and no one. He had no one to blame but himself.
AS THEY ROUNDED the corner, a group of JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) officers were visible outside his room. Their crisp uniforms were unmistakable. Stark groaned. He had expected the debriefing, but at the present moment he just wanted to be alone. Spending the next six hours detailing the entire mission by the minute was going to be fucking torture. The wheelchair crept forward in the hands of Dr. Stover. Stark contemplated asking him to turn around.
“Looks like word’s out that you woke up,” Dr. Stover commented quietly. “We were instructed to notify them the moment you came around.”
“It's protocol, I understand. Listen, I'm sorry about downstairs. I … I’m not sure what happened in there,” Stark replied. He worried that he may have gotten Dr. Stover in trouble. He worried even more that he wouldn’t get to go back. Kira was better off without him, but he knew he couldn’t stay away, at least until he knew she would be ok.
One of the officers noted them coming and nodded toward him. The others turned and saluted. They far outranked him, but he appreciated the show of respect.
“Forgive me if I don’t get up,” Stark said with a forced smile as he returned the salute. They didn’t laugh. Tough crowd. This is going to be a blast.
One of the officers held the door to his room open as Dr. Stover wheeled him in and helped him back into bed. Stark hated being this vulnerable. Usually, these meetings were held at their Iso-Fac with his commander and crew. This was different. Two of the officers had the crisp appearance of army lawyers. The tabs and bars on three of the others marked them as pentagon brass. The last one had to be a psychiatrist. She stood quietly in back of the group studying him and making notes. Stark began to feel like a caged animal on display at the zoo.
“If you guys wouldn’t mind waiting outside just for a moment,” Dr. Stover began, “I just need to change his dressing. It began to bleed a little with his first activity this morning.”
The group exchanged glances, but complied and filed out into the hallway. As soon as they stepped out, Dr. Stover closed the door behind them.
“I thought you might need a minute to reset after being downstairs. You looked like you were about to chew your leg off to escape,” Dr. Stover said, with a half-smile.
“Thanks,” Stark returned, as he settled back into the bed and watch
ed Dr. Stover don a pair of gloves. This would be the first time Stark had actually seen the wound. He swallowed hard and tried to settle in on what would be his new reality.
Slowly, Dr. Stover unwound the dressing. Yards of kerlix gauze piled up on the bed beside him. Finally, they reached the blood-soaked pad covering the wound.
“That doesn’t look good,” Stark commented. The sight of blood had never bothered him. The sight of blood coming from the stump where his leg used to be was another story. Stark blew out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
“It may not be as bad as it looks,” Dr. Stover replied in a measured tone and removed the pad. He discarded it in the red bin and opened a sterile pack of 4x4s.
Stark watched intensely as he cleaned the wound. It seemed more like a horror movie cliché than real life. The human fear of losing a limb was primal. It went against every self-preserving instinct. The disfigurement, the repulsion in others’ eyes, dwarfed the physical pain. Stark stared at the rounded slab of meat, the stump marbled white and red, with a large surgical wound that wrapped him like a twisted smile held together with staples. Dark red blood oozed from around one of the metal closures and ran down his flesh.
“See, that’s not so bad,” Dr. Stover said, smiling as if he were looking at a prized work of art instead of the mangled heap before them.
“You’re fucking kidding, right?” Stark answered, unable to look away from the mess that was now his leg. His leg … this tortured remnant of what was once a stellar military career, was no work of fucking art.
Stark Resolution (Stark Trilogy Book 3) Page 7
