by Gemma Hart
“Hawk, I think that’s all of them,” Bear said, interrupting my thoughts.
I turned and saw Bear squinting from the sweat and dirt that was dribbling down his face and into his eyes.
I looked around the town square that had been turned into a makeshift open-air hospital. “There’d be no way to do a count, I’m guessing,” I said, putting my hands on my hips to stop them from throbbing. My fingers twitched against the muscles being used beyond exhaustion. “I doubt they’d have files for a census. What about the city official? Did you happen to—”
I saw Bear’s face darken. “When?” I asked, feeling suddenly saddened for the good old man who had only wanted the best for his dying town.
“He was one of the first we found when we started digging for you,” Bear explained. “I think the man was helping people out of the nearby buildings when he got caught up in a fall.”
I nodded. “Right,” I said with a deep breath. “Then that only leaves some of the more distant homes on the outskirts that need checking and rescuing. But we can’t leave the med team for that now. We’ll go tomorrow. Maybe by then, we’ll hear from some relief workers—Mr. Carew or the UN.”
I clapped a hand on Bear’s shoulder. “Take a rest then. Help the med team where they need help but take a rest first. Tell all the men to take a rest.”
Bear nodded and headed off to relieve Easy Team. But before taking a step, he hesitated and turned around.
“What?” I asked.
“I don’t know if this is the best time,” Bear started, his brows furrowed together, “but I thought you should know that Tennessee picked up on some chatter about an American dealing with some Qunari gangs near here.”
“What?” I said in surprise. “When?”
“Right before the earthquake hit, he hit me up on the radio. He had gone back to base camp from the refugee camp to pick up some needed equipment from the medical tent. He heard the chatter then and radioed me. But before I could tell you,” he made a sweeping gesture at the destroyed town, “this happened.”
I put a hand on the back of my neck, the muscles feeling as tight as violin strings. “Anything else besides the chatter of him hanging out with gangs?”
Bear looked around us to make sure no one was listening in. He leaned in and said lowly, “Apparently, there’s some talk that the American is working in arms dealing.”
My back stiffened. “What the fuck,” I blew out in one breath.
“You’re telling me,” Bear said, shaking his head.
Arms dealing in this area was a dangerous business. Qunar was an impoverished but not a dangerous country. But it was surrounded by other dangerous countries that had their own healthy share of terrorist cells and revolutionaries. Arms dealing meant you were directly in contact with these kinds of people.
“If there’s any working sat phone you can find, report it to Commander Wolffe,” I said. “If not, we’ll just have to wait till we get back to base camp.”
Bear nodded. Then he looked at me, the question hanging in his eyes before he even spoke. “Do you think it’s really Randall?”
“Not too many white guys hanging around Qunari gangs around here for it to not be him,” I said.
Bear snorted. “I guess you’re right. But if it is him, then this might mean we need to engage. And we’re not in the best position to—”
I put up a hand to stop him early. “Let’s wait and see what the commander says,” I said. “He might have more intel.”
Bear nodded then pressed his lips together, forming a tight straight line. His eyes darkened as he said, “But whatever the case, I’d definitely want another chance at that fucking traitor.”
I stared at him. We both knew what we the other was thinking.
El Salvador. The dead women. The absolute and utter betrayal.
“Me too,” I finally said, nodding. “Goddammit, me too.”
Bear slapped my arm in agreement then finally walked away.
I took a moment to push back those thoughts for another time and then turned back around to find the one person I needed to be near.
Margie had managed to get to the opposite end of the square where Emilia was bent over a man who was covered in dried blood and dust. I watched as Emilia tied a makeshift splint to the man’s mangled arm.
By the looks of it, the arm would probably need amputating but there was nothing that could be done about it now out here.
Emilia and Margie then helped the man lie down onto his back, careful to keep his damaged arm steady. As Emilia stood back up, she swayed alarmingly. Margie grabbed her wrist, steadying her.
I quickly made my way over.
“I’ll take her,” I said firmly, catching Emilia in my arms.
Margie, her eyes ringed with fatigue, looked up in surprise. “Oh Captain Hawking,” she said in a tone of mild surprise, as if she had bumped into me on the street. I could tell she just didn’t have the energy to even be genuinely surprised. “You’re not still working, are you? You and your men? You all have been at it for hours!”
“No, we think we’ve recovered everyone from town,” I said, holding Emilia tightly. I could feel tremors of exhaustion running through her slim shoulders. “We’ll do another sweep in a few hours.”
Margie nodded. “Then why doesn’t Dr. Lyon rest until the next sweep?”
Emilia’s eyes widened. “Don’t be silly, Margie,” she said sharply, trying to find her feet and failing. “You need me here. There are way too many patients to care providers here.”
Margie shook her head. “You’ll be no good if you’re this tired. You might try and amputate a leg when they have a broken arm,” she said with a tired smile.
Emilia finally managed to stand straight, although I kept my arm around her waist, ready to catch her should she fall.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ve been at this longer than I have. If anyone should rest, it should be you,” she said with a surprising amount of strength in her voice.
Margie raised a dry brow. “But I wasn’t trapped under rubble for ten hours,” she said. Emilia opened her mouth to argue but Margie wasn’t having it. “You were lucky, yes. You didn't get crushed or killed by the falling debris but being trapped for so many hours is no simple matter. And look at your hand. I’m quite sure you’ve fractured a bone or two.” I looked down and my jaw tightened to see Emilia’s right hand swollen and red with dried blood running down the side of it. She must’ve injured it during the earthquake.
“You’ll only make that injury worse by working in such an exhausted state,” Margie said. “You need rest. Captain Hawking, would you mind taking Dr. Lyon somewhere where she might take a breather?”
“But—”
“Of course,” I said, cutting Emilia off and firmly pulling her along with me. She tried to twist out of my arms but I kept a steady grip on her as I pulled her away.
“You can come back after a rest,” Margie called out. “It’s not like we’re going anywhere.”
Only after we were several dozen feet away did Emilia finally stop struggling. I pulled her towards a small pile of rubble. We rounded the pile and found a large broken piece of wall to sit on. With the rubble behind us, it formed a decent barrier to give us some privacy.
I guided Emilia to the large piece of wall and sat her down then sat down next to her. I could see her fighting to keep her back straight, her shoulders squared, determined not to show her exhaustion.
She gave a small snort. “Margie can be very funny,” she said softly. “But she’s too soft for her own good. She should be the one resting, not me.”
I put a hand to her lower back, feeling her muscles taut and hard from trying to keep herself upright.
“She’s right,” I said. “We were unbelievably lucky when the earthquake hit. We didn’t get crushed or fatally injured but it was still being trapped in a small space for nearly half a day. And I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d gotten a mild concussion and some bruising from the initial quake. The
n to get up and be thrust into working and treating people for another straight day—” I sighed, squeezing her shoulder “—resting isn’t such a bad idea.”
She turned towards me, looking up at me. Dark smudges ringed her eyes and I could her face drawn and exhausted. It made me want to pull her into my arms and hold her tightly, giving her whatever strength I might have. But I resisted the urge. It would be an insult when she was trying so hard to sit up straight on her own.
“But…” she said softly, “But we were lucky in more than one way during the earthquake. Weren’t we?” I could see her eyes glisten as she remembered our time together, trapped and yet safe beneath the rubble.
I grabbed both her hands in mine and squeezed. “You better believe it, sweetheart,” I said.
I had had fears about letting her get too close to me. I was afraid of hurting her, darkening her, damaging her. But with every passing day, she showed me what a remarkable woman she was. She wasn’t someone ready to play the damsel in distress.
She wanted to work, to help, to fight. And with her, I felt as if I could do all those things and more. It was a futile fight to deny what I felt for her and I was all too grateful to know she also felt the same way for a dirty mercenary like me.
All I knew was, come what may, I would protect her with everything I had. When nothing else remained, I would fight for her and her alone.
Emilia gave me a trembling smile, her eyes moistening as tears suddenly gathered on her lashes. “Yes,” she rasped. “I feel so, so lucky.”
Then as suddenly as the wind, she burst into tears, sobbing and choking as her whole body shook and trembled. She nearly collapsed forward but I caught her and this time, I did pull her onto my lap.
I wrapped my arms about her and pushed her head down onto my chest, murmuring soothing nonsense as I stroked her back.
“Oh god,” she sniffled, between sobs. “I don’t…I don’t know why I’m crying like this. I’m really not sad. I just—I just—”
She tried to wiggle her way off my lap but I kept her firmly in place and put an arm over her own to keep her from pushing herself off.
“You’re tired,” I said firmly. “It’s nothing odd. When the body gets exhausted and overworked, you can’t help but just breakdown. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”
She breathed in a ragged breath as she wiped at the tears that streamed down her face. “I-I really am not that tired,” she protested. “This is so stupid! I f-feel so s-stupid! There’s no reason to cry!”
I stroked her back, ignoring her attempts to get off my lap so she could hide her tears.
“You just survived a major earthquake. After being rescued, you’ve been dealing with injured or dying patients. After facing your own mortality, you’ve had to deal with countless others’. There’s nothing worse than fearing your own death then seeing someone else’s. You start to feeling guilty for surviving.”
Emilia coughed and sniffled but finally stopped fighting me. My arms relaxed and held her more comfortably against me.
“Y-You sound as if you speak from experience,” she said thickly, sniffling through the tears.
“Aren’t I?” I asked.
She paused then nodded. “Right,” she said. “That was dumb of me. Of course you are.”
I squeezed her close to me. “There’s nothing dumb or stupid or silly about any of this right now so knock it off with all that, will you? No soldier makes it through the first death of a comrade without tears and heartache. And it’s always worse when you thought it was you that would be the one to go.”
Emilia nodded, trying to regain her breathing. “I know I was safe with you down in the rubble,” she said through hiccups and sobs. “I know. But we were buried so deep. And we waited so long. And when they got us out…and I saw how deep we actually had been buried…and how lucky we were to not have been crushed…or-or inju-ured….”
She couldn’t finish her sentence as she broke into a new wave of tears. My throat tightened feeling her small body shake and quiver in my arms.
“There’s a soldier’s cure for this,” I said with decision after awhile.
“Wh-What?” she sputtered as she wiped her nose on her sleeve.
Holding her close, I reached back towards my back pocket and pulled out a small flask. Flicking open the top with my thumb, I pressed the flask towards Emilia’s lips.
Crying, she didn’t fight as I tipped the flask down her throat. But after one sip, she pushed my hand away, coughing as the liquid burned down her throat.
“What is that?” she gasped, a hand to her chest.
“Whiskey,” I replied, pressing the flask to her lips again.
This time, she turned her face away. “I hate whiskey,” she said in a husky rasp. “Oh god, that burns!”
I put an arm around her back, keeping her still and preventing her from pushing away, then pressed the flask firmly against her lips and tipped a healthy slug of the whiskey into her.
“I don’t care whether you are mortal enemies with whiskey, this is the cure for what you’ve got,” I said, holding up the flask.
Emilia eyed me dangerously through her swollen eyes after wincing through another swallow. “Getting drunk?” she argued. “Getting drunk is the cure?”
“No,” I said. “Numbing the senses is the cure. Right now, you’ve just overloaded the body. Too much has happened in too little a time. Nevermind that you’ve been through an earthquake and have been injured,” I picked up her swollen hand before she snatched it away, “but you’ve had to come through that only to treat and aid others who have been injured from the same earthquake as well.”
“Injured worse than me. They’ve been injured wor—”
Before she could finish, I slipped the flask in again and managed to throw down another healthy slug down her throat.
She gasped and choked and slapped my chest. “Stop doing that!” she cried. But her tears were beginning to slow down. Her breathing was less shallow. And I could see a slight dilation in her eyes. The alcohol was doing its job.
“This isn’t the time to be comparing injuries,” I said. “You feel what you feel and others hurting more or less doesn’t invalidate how you feel.”
I shook the flask and felt only a swallow left inside. Seeing Emilia grow a little drunk and therefore a little calmer, I tossed back the remaining contents down my own throat, enjoying the smoky taste of the liquor.
“Where did you even get that flask?” Emilia asked softly, her head leaning more heavily on my chest, her words slightly slurring.
“Bear,” I answered. “He gave it to me once he dug us out.”
“Won’t he be mad that you drank all his whiskey?”
I looked down at her, an amused smile on my lips. Emilia was now breathing more calmly and she snuggled in closer to my chest. It felt so damn good to have her in my arms like this, especially after the last 24 hours.
She hadn’t been the only one to feel shaken after being rescued. We had been buried deep and seeing all the injured people we had pulled out, it only emphasized how lucky we had been.
Thinking about Emilia getting hurt in that way made my throat tighten into a knot. I couldn’t even bear the idea of it. And as I worked to pull survivors out from the wreckage, all I wanted to do was run and find her and pull her into my arms just like this.
But because she had worked so hard, many would survive this sudden quake. She had saved lives.
My little fighter.
“Are you telling me that you don’t think I could hold own against someone like Bear?” I asked with mock offense.
Emilia smiled to herself, her eyes closed as she finally let her body relax, the alcohol taking control. My chest swelled with pride to know that she felt comfortable enough to let herself loosen up when alone with me.
“Well,” she said sleepily, “a bear is bigger than a hawk.”
Chapter Seventeen
Emilia
Doc Jones groaned next to me as he slowly fell b
ack onto a large rock that served as a chair.
He winced as he carefully straightened out his legs, most likely swollen from standing and running around for so long.
Margie had just relieved me and Doc Jones had just finished his last rounds of checking on those he could while making sure no one had died in the last few hours.
He and I sat near what had been the meeting hall. The large hill of rubble made a good barrier against the waning sun as we sat down, trying to catch our breath. It was now day three since the quake although it all felt like a long, crazy blur in my mind.
But it had been three days of half of Easy Team and half the medical team trying to run around and save and treat as many people as possible. We didn’t know what the end goal was here. By day two, one of the Easy Team men had managed to get the truck working again. It had been damaged during the quake.
With the truck, they had gone back for a resupply run to base camp. But the team at the refugee camp had already been and our supplies were dangerously depleted.
We couldn’t keep going on like this in the open air amid all this destruction but we also couldn’t just leave the survivors to their own devices.
For the time being, we were stuck.
Doc Jones was leaning back with his head resting on the rubble, making small groaning noises to himself. I looked up and caught him opening one eye at me.
“What?” I asked. I sat on my own rock. My own legs felt like fragile cardboard that could snap from exhaustion at any moment.
“Shouldn’t you put a new dressing on that?” Doc Jones asked, jerking his chin towards my hand.
My right hand had been hit by falling rubble in the quake. Margie had cleaned it and dressed it but with all the work I was doing with survivors covered in dirt and dust, the bandages had grown grimy fast.
I shrugged. “Maybe later,” I said, pretending I was too tired to bother changing it when really, I didn’t want to use up any of our precious remaining supplies. My hand could wait.
The torn arms and cut shoulders and gashed legs couldn’t.
