Knight: A Club Alias Novel

by KD Robichaux

  I swallow my bite. “I was only doing my job, what I’m trained to do. I don’t deserve any special treatment.” When she lifts her brow at me, I can’t help but smile. She’s not the type to take any shit from me, apparently. “But thank you. I appreciate you going through all this trouble for me.”

  “Trouble? Are you kidding?” She shakes her head. “If you could see the images I captured….” She trails off.

  “So show me,” I prompt, but she just shakes her head again.

  “Doctor said that wasn’t a good idea. They want your TBI to heal without causing you any more stress. Something about letting the memories come back organically instead of forcing it.”

  I adjust my position in the cot, and my leg suddenly throbs. She must see the pain and confusion on my face, because she explains, “Shrapnel in your calf. They were able to get it all out, but it’ll take a while to heal. But they said you’ll make a full recovery… and have a sweet scar as a trophy.”

  Suddenly, a memory flashes through my mind—my calf burning as I’m pressed against the side of a building, a window above my head, as the sound of chaos goes on behind me.

  A window. I was looking through that window when the IED went off. What was I looking at?

  “You okay, big guy?” Clarice asks from the chair beside me.

  Try as I might, I cannot remember what I saw through that window. But something tells me it was important. I just can’t recall why.

  “Yeah, I—”

  Just then, a nurse walks in holding a syringe. “Good morning, Specialist Glover. How’s that leg treating you?”

  “It’s throbbing pretty bad,” I reply, watching her uncap the needle.

  “This’ll help,” she says, and she pushes the liquid into the IV attached to my arm. “How’s that breakfast? Your girl is a bossy little thing. She wouldn’t take no for an answer when she asked for your meal a certain way. When they wouldn’t listen, she snuck into the kitchen and made it herself. They finally let her have her way the past couple of days since she wasn’t hurting anything.”

  I glance over at Clarice with a small smile, and my neck heats when she corrects the nurse. “I’m not his girl, but he’s definitely my hero.”

  The nurse grins, nods, then heads out of the makeshift room. The hospital here is a bunch of tents that have been formed together to create what would be more like an Urgent Care in the States.

  “Shouldn’t General Diaz be your hero? He’s the one who kept you safe when the IED went off.” I take another bite of eggs and toast.

  “You remember?” Her eyes go wide and she sits up straight.

  I tilt my head to the side. “Yeah, I guess I do. I can remember running back to the school building to find you, and—”

  “To find me?” she murmurs, and I continue in an attempt to distract her from the fact that the first thing I wanted to do after the explosion was to make sure she was all right.

  “And the rest of the team, I mean. I had gone in the opposite direction as everyone else, to secure the alley we knew wound up in a dead end. And when I ran back to the school, he was using his body as a shield over you.”

  “Yes, and I am super grateful he did what the contract he signed ordered him to do—to be my escort and make sure I didn’t die. But you should’ve seen yourself, Bri. You were like a damn superhero out there, a fucking machine. After you and the medic fixed up all the injured soldiers, you carried every single one of those men to safety, and then made sure all of them got onto the helicopter. You looked like the Hulk out there, lifting them like they weighed nothing. It’s no wonder you passed out as soon as you finally sat down in the chopper,” she conveys excitedly, admiration in her eyes. It’s a look I’ve never had directed at me before, and it makes me feel even taller than my 6’8”.

  After finishing my breakfast, she takes the tray away and plops back into the chair while holding her camera. “You’re a lot more lucid today. Ever since we got here, you’d ask what happened, and when I told you, you’d say a few words and then pass out a few bites into your meal.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. So I felt kind of bad taking photos of you, knowing you weren’t remembering anything. So if you want me to, I’ll delete them. It’s nothing majorly graphic or embarrassing or anything. Just a timeline I thought I could show you once the doctor said it was all right. I know if it were me and I couldn’t remember going through something, I’d like to see it later. Like those funny videos of people coming out of anesthesia when they get their wisdom teeth out. You were pretty boring though. You only told me how pretty you think I am about twenty-eight thousand times,” she tells me.

  I groan. “I thought you said I didn’t do anything embarrassing.”

  She giggles. “Oh, come on, Bri. What’s embarrassing about making a girl covered in desert grime, who hasn’t showered in four days, feel like a supermodel?”

  “Oh, is that what that smell is?” I grin, and she snatches up an ink pen from somewhere and tosses it at me.

  “You shithead,” she says with a laugh. “I haven’t left your side except to make you gourmet meals, and that’s the thanks I get?”

  I chuckle and then my face goes soft. “Where have you been sleeping?” I ask, looking around for clues.

  “The flap right there opens up to an empty cot. They told me I could use it until they needed it.” She shrugs.

  “Wow. I don’t even know what to say. But… thank you,” I tell her sincerely.

  “I’ve already decided we’re going to be BFFs, so no need to thank me. A guy who rescues people like a goddamn Avenger is definitely one I want in my court. You’re stuck with me now,” she says matter-of-factly, and I try to laugh, but it comes out more like a snuffle, and I feel overwhelming fatigue pressing down on me. I register Clarice’s hand on my cheek as she whispers, “It’s okay, big guy. The meds are just kicking in. Get some rest. Try to remember when you wake up again, sweet man.” And then blackness consumes me.

  When I wake up, I open my eyes to find Clarice watching me intently. I blink a few times, clearing the fog. “Twenty-eight thousand times? Jesus. Was I just saying ‘You’re so pretty’ over and over again on repeat, or what?”

  She jumps up from her seat, and practically launches herself toward me until I’m nearly cross-eyed looking at her she’s so close. “You remember what I said earlier?” she breathes.

  “Uh… yeah.” I take in the little flecks of gold in her brown eyes, and the way they tilt up in the outer corners, my heart starting to beat a little faster at her nearness.

  She jumps up with a yip. “BRB, BFF!” she calls as she hurries out of the room. When she returns, she’s got a man in scrubs with a clipboard in tow. “He remembers what I told him this morning. That’s the first time he’s ever gained consciousness and remembered where he was,” she’s telling him, but all I can do is watch her outward show of excitement. Excitement over me.

  “See? I told you there was nothing to worry about. It’ll all start coming back now. Mostly in flashbacks until he can piece the whole story together,” he explains to her before coming to my side. “How we feeling today, Specialist Glover?” He takes out a penlight and hovers over me to flash it in my eyes then writes something down on his clipboard.

  “Not too bad. My leg is starting to throb a little bit again,” I reply.

  “I’ll have your nurse bring you more pain meds.”

  I sit up a little. “Is there anything else she can give me that won’t knock me out?”

  “Yeah. I can switch you from morphine to 800-milligram ibuprofen.”

  I chuckle, shaking my head. Eight-hundred-milligram ibuprofen is the military’s cure-all for every ailment. “That should be good. Thanks, Doc.”

  “Can I show him pictures now?” Clarice steps in front of the doctor before he’s able to exit, her hands clasped together as she bats her eyelashes. “Pretty pleeeease?”

  He glances at me over his shoulder with a look of sympathy before giving her the
okay. I have no idea what that look is for though. Why would anyone need sympathy for the most beautiful woman in the world wanting to spend any kind of time with you?

  “All right, big guy. Prepare to feel like a badass motherfucker,” she chirps, grabbing her camera before scooting the chair as close as she can to me. I tilt toward her as much as possible in my cot, trying not to move my leg too much.

  As Clarice begins clicking different buttons on her camera, the nurse comes in, carrying a giant plastic cup with a handle and straw full of water, and a tiny clear medicine cup containing a giant white horse pill. I swallow it down and thank her before she leaves us alone.

  “Okay, so I’m going to show you on the little screen on my camera instead of on my laptop. Later, if you want to see them all big and detailed, I’ll hook it up. But I figure we can start out small.” After I nod, she continues, “All right, here we are at the beginning of the day. We got there, went into the schoolhouse…”

  She narrates her photographs, clicking through them at a slow but steady pace, allowing me to take it all in. I can remember everything clearly from when we were together in the building, and then she gives me time to think, seeing if I can recall anything from when I left her and the general to go secure the area.

  “There’s a blank spot from the time I left the schoolhouse until the explosion went off. But then I can remember running back to y’all. I saw you were okay. I went in search of the rest of the team. And… found them,” I say, my voice lowering. “I remember telling you to stay back. And then it’s all a blur, like autopilot kicked in.”

  “Do you want to see the images I captured when you told me to stay back? I’ll warn you they’re graphic as fuck, but amazing all the same.” She reaches out and places her hand on my bicep, and it’s right then I realize that with her by my side, I could face pretty much anything.

  “I want to see,” I tell her, and she nods, tilting the camera in my direction once more.

  As soon as my eyes land on the violent image, an entire alley strung with bodies covered in blood and gore, my heart drops to my stomach at the pain I see on all my brothers’ faces. I swallow thickly, but when Clarice tries to hide the screen from my view, I reach out and grasp her arm. “No. I’m good. Show me.”

  She doesn’t question me, seeing the serious look in my eyes. She just nods and continues her scrolling. In every single one, she’s captured not only the carnage of the scene, but even I can spot the way she focused on the heroism of the lone soldier working tirelessly to save as many of his fellow infantrymen as possible. In one, she zoomed in on a leg as I tied a makeshift tourniquet above the knee. In another, the focus is on my hands putting pressure on a stomach wound. In all of them, the red blood stands out sharply against the all-beige backdrop.

  She flips through more of the photos, and the scene changes as more people come into view. I work alongside three medics who arrived, doing whatever they told me to do. And then I watch in awe as she begins to flip through them more rapidly, making it play out like a movie in stuttered motion. The images she captured while following behind me as I loaded each wounded soldier into the helicopters were the kind that could make even the most hardass man weep.

  “So that’s everything from the village. The rest are the ones I took while they fixed you up,” she explains, before she scrolls through photos of the doctor removing the shrapnel from my leg. There’s another of me being helped into my cot. And one of me sleeping. And the final one she lands on is of me looking directly into her lens, a drunk, crooked smile on my face as I give her a thumbs-up.

  “Can I see?” I ask, holding my hand out to take her camera. She looks at me curiously before handing it over. I push a couple buttons until I figure out how to take it off viewing mode, flip the big, black piece of equipment around, and hold it far out away from me as I lean in closer to Clarice. “Say cheese,” I tell her, and then give my best Blue Steel as I hold down the shutter. Her giggle does something funny to my chest.

  “Let’s check it out,” she says, giving a chin lift. When I flip the camera back around, she touches the little triangle button, and we both laugh when our faces fill the screen. “Perfect.” She takes her camera from me, smiling down at the photo for a moment before turning it off and setting it inside her backpack that hangs on the back of the chair. “I’m sending those out later today after I get a few more edited. The couple I sent to my boss made her cry, so she wants all of them back ASAP to do a whole spread.”

  “Wow. That’s like… kind of a big deal, isn’t it?” I ask. “I mean, I really don’t know much about you, other than you’re the beautiful photographer who works for a magazine.”

  “Ah, I’ve been upgraded from pretty to beautiful now?” She giggles.

  “Psh. Gorgeous is more like it. I’m just trying not to give you a big head. It’s probably heavy enough with that amount of dirt in your hair,” I tease.

  “You’re not going to leave me alone until I finally shower, are you?” She narrows her eyes. “Ya know, you’re not so clean yourself. I’ve given you little sponge baths in the past few days, but you could do with an actual submersion of soapy water.”

  “And a shave,” I say, before her words dawn on me. “You’ve given me sponge baths? Dear God. Just go ahead and burn my man-card already.”

  “Honey, your man-card is made of diamond. Ain’t nothing going to even dent that bitch after what you did out there. And negative on the shave. I like the scruff.” She reaches up and strokes my cheek, and I instantly harden beneath my thin blanket. I lift the knee of my uninjured leg to hide my predicament.

  “They’ll eventually make me shave. Once I break out of this joint, it’ll be back to baby face until the next time I go on leave or get out of the army. Then I can grow a sweet freedom beard,” I tell her. When she pouts, I ask her, “What did they happen to say about showering, anyway?”

  “You’re not allowed to get your bandages wet, so they gave us these plastic bags to wrap around it once you’re able to get up. They took your catheter out this morning after you passed back out, so if you feel like trying to go to the bathroom or want me to help you to the showers, I can.”

  “I feel like our relationship is escalating really quickly.” I eye her, unsure if I want this perfect woman seeing me at my weakest.

  “Don’t look at me like that, big guy. Told you. You’re never getting rid of me.” She stands, pulling back the covers quickly. Thank God my boner had a chance to calm down or she would’ve gotten quite an eyeful. She pulls the pillow gently from beneath my injured calf and then helps me swing both legs over the side of the cot. “Don’t hold back. I may be little, but I’m damn strong. Hidden beneath these oversized dirty clothes are buns of steel.”

  By her tone, I can tell she’s trying to joke around and distract me from any pain I might be feeling, yet I still groan, but for a different reason. “Can we not talk about your buns, pretty girl? I’m trying my best not to pop another woody in this scrap of fabric they’ve got me in.”

  Her chuckle is sultry as she helps pull me up to standing. “Another? Yeah, they didn’t exactly have anything that would fit a real-life giant. Here. I’ll wrap this around you while we walk so no one can see your ass.” She grabs the sheet from the cot before circling it around my waist. “Awww!” she coos, and I look down at her with my brow furrowed. “You seriously have the cutest butt ever.” Her eyes twinkle evilly.

  I groan once again. “I’m really in hell, aren’t I? I died during the explosion, and now I’m in hell.”

  She makes sure I have my balance before taking a step sideways to grab the crutches leaning against the tent wall. “Nah, you just got stuck with a guardian angel with a wicked sense of humor. If I were super sweet, you’d totally get bored, and you know it.”

  “Fair enough,” I murmur, taking the crutches and grimacing at how short they are.

  “Um… I guess you’re just going to have to crouch down for them to fit into your armpits.”

 
I toss one of them onto the cot and just use the one to help me balance as I slowly follow while Clarice backs out of my room. She reaches out and snatches up the plastic bags she told me about, but continues walking backward, her arms out like a mom ready to catch her toddler who’s just learning to take steps.

  “You know I would pretty much crush you if I fell, right?” I lift a brow.

  “But at least I would break your fall,” she says, her eyes concentrating on my feet as I shuffle forward.

  I don’t know if it’s the lingering meds in my system, or maybe the TBI acting up, but her words have a strange effect on me. They choke me up, and I do my best to disguise the emotion behind a mask of focusing on walking. True, she might have a wicked sense of humor, but goddamn, no one has ever treated me so selflessly before. This woman—this gorgeous, funny, talented, wonderful woman—could easily become someone tremendously important to me. And if what she said is true, that I’m never getting rid of her, then I seriously can’t see one single problem with that. What person in their right mind would want to get rid of a soul like Clarice?

  When we finally make it to the latrine, she takes my crutch and leans it against a sink while I hang onto a wall separating the shower stalls. Before I know what’s happening, Clarice is kneeling before me, taking my foot and placing it on her thigh. All I can do is watch, speechless, as she snaps one of the plastic bags in the air to open it up, and then proceeds to wrap up all of my bandages from my knee down with precision. When she’s done, I have no doubt that sucker is watertight, if the look of satisfaction on her face is anything to go by.

  She hops up, and I murmur a thank-you. She grasps hold of the sheet she wrapped around my waist, but before she can yank it free from the knot she tied, I snatch up her hands in one of mine. Her head tips way back so she can look up at me, her eyes a mix of startled and something else I can’t quite place. “I can take it from here,” I tell her quietly, but she immediately shakes her head.