by fox, angie
I took the straight-backed wooden chair opposite his desk.
"What do you want, Robichaud?" He watched me like he knew. He grunted, leaning back in his chair. "It had better not be more surgery cases. You don't have the rank or the seniority."
I squirmed on the hard wood seat. "Not today, Colonel." Although I still hadn't given up on that one, despite all the trouble my last big surgical patient had given me. "I'm afraid it's more serious."
He gave me his full attention. "Yes?"
I crossed my legs then uncrossed them, fighting the urge to sugarcoat it. Kosta liked things short and to the point. "I'm dealing with a bureaucratic mistake. My patient isn't my patient anymore. He was transferred to a dead doctor. I want him back."
"It could take months."
"So I've heard. He's special forces," I explained, knowing Kosta preferred facts over emotion. "He needs to get back to his unit in time for a major offensive." One he refused to tell me about. "I have a feeling we may be looking at an unbalanced army."
Which meant earthquakes, tsunamis, disaster on Earth.
Kosta frowned, the scar over his lip crinkling. "One man can't unbalance an army."
"I know," I told him, "but the kicker is, I think this guy can." Regardless. "He needs to go back to his unit. Only the doctor who needs to sign off is dead."
He sat, unmoved. "Call on another doctor in the unit."
"His backup is dead. They've been dead for eighty years."
Kosta studied me. "I'm sure he's in good hands wherever he is."
It took everything I had to keep my voice even and my butt in the chair. "That may be so, but I want him back. He's my patient." I felt guilty for trying to get rid of him in the first place.
Kosta tilted his head. "What's really going on here, Robichaud?"
Galen of Delphi saw too much.
Knew too much.
Made me feel too much.
Worst of all, Galen of Delphi might be right.
I stood quickly. I needed a walk, or maybe a swift kick upside the head. "I suspect this patient fully recovered," I said, pacing between an Athenian shield and an uncomfortable-looking cot. "He's a trapped war hero who probably doesn't appreciate being stuck here."
Kosta pulled out a cigar from the bottom drawer of his desk. "He's a soldier. He'll manage."
"Why should he have to? Can't you call someone?"
"I don't bend the rules." He bit the tip off the cigar and tossed it in the trash.
"I should have just signed it myself," I mused.
"And you'd have faced court-martial."
I stared at the ceiling. "So the only thing left would be to raise this doc from the dead."
Kosta scoffed. "You know it doesn't work that way, Robichaud," he said, lighting up.
I knew. I'd never seen Kosta use his power, but I knew it cost him every time he did it.
"Powers are a tricky thing," he said.
Tell me about it.
He rolled his cigar between his fingers. "Every action has consequences."
It was the last thing I wanted to hear. "So what do you expect me to do?" I needed him to throw me a bone here.
"Deal with it."
"Lovely."
He took a few puffs. "You may want to start with Shirley. Tell her I said to talk to Pandora at HQ."
"Okay." I could do that. "Thanks."
I turned to leave.
"One more thing." He rolled the cigar in the corner of his mouth. "You say this man's a war hero?"
"Yes," I said, hope blossoming.
He pulled the cigar from his mouth and pointed it at me. "Then I'm going to have to agree with you. He doesn't belong in the hospital tent."
I wanted to twirl with relief.
"Put him in VOQ," Kosta said.
"Visiting officers' quarters?" He had to be kidding. That was for diplomats and generals and important people.
"I'll have them start prepping the tent this afternoon. It'll be ready first thing tomorrow. You give this soldier one final exam and then move him in."
"Oy."
"One more thing, Robichaud. Be sure to tell this hero just how honored we are to have him with us."
I nearly choked. "Believe me, sir. He's made himself quite welcome."
Chapter Eleven
That night Rodger and I patched up a couple of mechanics from the motor pool who had tried—and failed—to unleash a plague of locusts in Kosta's tent.
We were in the small intake room off the main OR. Two tables, no waiting.
Rodger had been avoiding me all day. Now he wouldn't even look at me as he worked.
Yeah, well, denial would only get him so far.
The mean part of me hoped he had a hangover. Maybe he'd learn from it.
"That's a nasty scrape," Rodger said to his patient.
I shot my friend a dirty look. "It's always good to think before you act."
That went for me, too, I realized as I climbed up on a step stool. I wasn't crazy about heights, and yes, this counted. Still, it was the only way to get a better look at the Russian sitting on my exam table. I touched my gloved fingers to my patient's bald head and craned my arm to adjust the large silver snake light above him.
"There's not much I can do for the bites," I said, examining a particularly nasty one between his eyes. A little Neosporin should do the trick. "Your buddy got the worst of it."
His companion lay prone on Rodger's table, suffering more from humiliation than his twisted ankle. He tilted his head up. "Next time, we use frogs."
Rodger tossed his exam gloves into the waste bucket between our tables. "It's not your taste in plagues. It's the colonel's wards."
True enough. Rodger and I learned that firsthand when we tried to park a jeep in his office. "He's got his tent warded, his car—"
"His private latrine," Rodger added. He cast a glance my way, testing the waters. "Kosta's a slippery one."
Our patients had made a beginners' mistake. Sure, Kosta's plain tent looked like an easy target. So did his car—a vintage 1959 Cooper T51 racer that he liked to polish with a cloth baby diaper. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the Formula One racer was Kosta's only luxury.
Back when the vacation pot was only up to a week and change, Rodger and I tried to fill Kosta's race car with gumdrops. We got our candy-laden trash bags to within a foot of the royal blue paint job and the gumdrops started exploding. It was like we were each holding a thousand live firecrackers. Rodger screamed like a girl. I'd like to say I handled it a little better. But I don't like to lie.
No doubt the colonel had been in his tent, smoking a cigar and laughing his butt off.
"That's why the vacation pot is up so high," I said, placing a Band-Aid between the Russian's eyes.
Well, that and the fact that we'd gotten a lot of veteran transfers. You had to put in your whole vacation savings bank in order to have a shot at the jackpot. Some of the immortals had chipped in as much as a day. It was insane.
"It can make people do crazy things," Rodger said, tucking an ice pack into his patient's bandages.
"Like drive a person to drink," I said, tearing open another Band-Aid, not even bothering to hide my meaning.
Rodger took a sudden interest in making sure the Ace bandage clips were tight.
My patient frowned. "Kosta's not the magical type."
Not unless you counted raising the dead as magic. Still, the Russian had a point. "We think there's someone helping him," I said.
"We keep hoping Kosta's magical ace is in camp," Rodger said.
"And corruptible," I added. If we could figure out who it was, and if the person was open to part of the jackpot, we'd be in business.
"Did you two see anybody outside after your prank failed?" Rodger asked. "Anybody checking out the hutch or maybe aiming a few spells at the place?"
"We were too busy running," the man on Rodger's table groaned.
I didn't blame them.
Rodger helped him down and we sent our patients back to their tents
with parting gifts of crutches, antibacterial ointment, and Band-Aids, courtesy of the new god army.
The room was deafeningly quiet, save for the low buzz from the overhead lights.
I pulled off my latex gloves. "I'm glad we were on call tonight," I said to Rodger, "or else I would have thought you ran away."
"I haven't been avoiding you," he growled, shoving the Ace bandage roll back into the med cabinet.
"Oh good," I said. Fan-fricking-tastic. "Then you must want to talk about what happened last night."
Rodger tossed a disposable ice pack into the med waste bin. "No. Because I already have a mother and she's in Topanga."
"So, I'm a nag if I tell you that you might be turning into an alcoholic."
He glared at me. "I'm in control."
"Is that a fact?" My heart thumped hard against my chest. "Then why the hell did you tell Galen about the knife?"
"Wait." He threw up a hand. "What?"
He'd better not deny it. "You heard me."
He stood, stunned. "I don't remember that."
I squeezed my eyes shut. "And you don't think that's a problem?"
He ran a hand through his coarse mop of hair. "Hey, I'm sorry. I had no idea—"
Yeah, well, that ticked me off even more. "Sorry doesn't cut it." Apologies meant nothing if he didn't promise to knock it off. "Look, this place gets to me, too." It got to all of us. "But it doesn't mean you have to destroy yourself."
Rodger cocked a brow. "Aren't you being a little melodramatic?"
"No." I sighed. It was like reasoning with a doorknob. "I'm worried about you."
He dragged on his army field jacket. "I got it, okay?"
I didn't think he did. But I'd made my point as best I could.
Rodger started flipping off lights.
I bent over the small desk by the door and signed us out on the log sheet. "You got drunk and didn't bother to think. Now, because of you, Galen is convinced I'm some answer to everyone's prayers."
"Who's Galen?" Rodger bent to add his signature.
"The special ops soldier," I snapped.
Rodger gave me a knowing grin. "Ahh, so now he's Galen?"
"Oh, grow up." I wasn't in the mood. Besides, "Don't you think there's something wrong if you don't remember what you said last night?" I planted a hand on my hip. "What would Mary Ann say?" Maybe I should write to his wife about his drinking.
Although chances were, she could do nothing and it would just worry the snot out of her.
Rodger snarled. His shoulders bunched as if he were ready to pounce.
"What?" I asked. "Too close to home?"
Yellow ringed his pupils as he stared me down. He seemed larger, more menacing as he sucked the air out of the small room.
I rolled my eyes. "Too bad for you the angry-werewolf thing stopped working about three years ago." And frankly, it pissed me off that he'd even try. "I know you weren't on duty and I know you weren't on call, but what if we'd actually needed you last night? What if a dozen ambulances came screaming in and we needed an extra set of hands?"
He growled low in his throat. "Are you done?"
"No." Because that wasn't even why I was mad. I scrubbed a hand over my eyes and sat back against the desk. "Remember last month?"
Rodger had gotten drunk, shifted, and gnawed the tires off half a dozen ambulances.
He crossed his hands over his large, round chest. "You nailed Marius into his footlocker," he said accusingly.
Way to bring that up. "That was different. I wasn't drunk."
He shrugged one meaty shoulder. "Look. I'm fine. Okay?"
No, it wasn't okay. Something was taking hold of Rodger. I looked up at my friend and knew from the stony expression on his face that he'd shut down.
I didn't know what else I could say to get through to him and that bugged me most of all.
"Rodger—" I blew out a breath. What was I going to do? Tie him to his bed? Nail him in a footlocker? He had to decide he had a problem and he had to want to change. I didn't know how to deliver him to that point. Maybe he hadn't screwed up enough yet. "Let's get out of here," I said.
"Sure," he said, letting it drop. Rodger always let it drop.
It was dark and I was cranky as we trudged toward the tar swamp, crunching over locusts, batting them away from our eyes.
Cursed amateurs.
It had been a grueling day, made more annoying by the fact that I'd been running full-throttle and somehow making things worse instead of better.
Father McArio was no longer the only one who knew I could see the dead. The entire camp thought I was going to use forty-eight thousand condoms. And Galen was a VIP.
I glanced as my roommate as we made it back to the hutch. Cases and cases of condoms were stacked on both sides of the door.
"You couldn't even put them out back?"
"They're heavy."
And he was wrung out from his one-man party last night—not that he'd admit it now. He didn't have to. Rodger didn't even bother to take off his shoes before he fell face-first into bed.
I figured it would take me a while to settle down, but it was the last thought I had until morning.
Sunlight stung my eyes as I woke to a chorus of swamp creatures squeaking. It sounded like way more than a dozen.
Hades. I didn't want to know. I buried my head in my pillow, hoping they'd go away already, when I realized that the morning was awfully bright.
I grabbed for my watch.
"Ten o'clock?" I shot up in bed, squinting against the suns. "Where are my shoes? I was due at rounds by eight."
Rodger's cot protested as he rolled over. "That's why Horace was banging in the door." He threw an arm over his eyes. "I gave him a little dinosaur and he went away."
Another one? I grabbed my boots and plopped down on Marius's footlocker to drag them on. "You've got to stop giving out swamp creatures. They're breeding."
"I've got it under control," Rodger said, rubbing his arms as he sat.
Where had I heard that before?
I stood up. "Rog, seriously. Do you have it under control?"
He yawned. "Don't worry about me."
Merde. One more fiasco I couldn't control. I planted a boot on the footlocker and tied the laces. "Tell them to keep their little monster parts to themselves."
Rodger grinned, his red hair sticking out at impossible angles. "Thanks for the condoms, by the way."
"I figured they'd make good water balloons."
"Or finger puppets."
"Off to work," I said, grabbing my stethoscope.
"Have fun, dear," Rodger called after me. "Good luck."
"Yeah, yeah," I said, tossing a pillow at his head on the way out. I was going to need all the luck I could get.
***
"Well, look who decided to show up," Holly drawled as I banged into the recovery tent, two hours late.
"I was on call last night," I said, grabbing a few Starburst from her candy bowl.
"Ah, the old plague-of-locusts excuse. Your two friends from the motor pool were talking about it at breakfast this morning." she said, clacking through patient release charts. "I found half a dozen of the little buggers in my left boot this morning."
"Crunchy?"
"Extra-crispy." She handed me a clipboard packed with rare pink forms. "Here's your hold on Commander Galen of Delphi."
I stiffened. "What makes you think I'm coming in here just for him?"
She raised her brows. "He's your only patient in recovery."
Right. I took the chart. "It's been a crazy week," I said, by way of explanation.
"Technically, he's not even yours," she said. "Captain Thaïs did his final exam. He's clear for release...or wherever he's going."
"Kosta wants him in the visiting officers' quarters."
"You don't say." Holly leaned her chin on her knuckles, interest sparking her eyes. "Nice digs. And he's certainly easy on the eyes."
"Don't even think about it."
"Why?" she
drawled.
"I'm not being possessive, if that's what you think."
Holly winked at me and straightened in her chair.
Why was she looking so flirty? "Is there something you want to tell me?"
"Hello, Doctor," Galen said behind me. I turned around, figuring I'd be prepared for the sight. I wasn't.
Holly whistled. "Hello yourself."
Galen stood in his combat fatigues, feet set wide, shoulders squared. He wore the black of the special forces, with a Ken rune etched in red on his left shoulder. It was the symbol of flame, sex, action, and heroism. It was the mark of a warrior. A gold commander's star glinted on his collar.
Oh my God. I couldn't believe I'd actually been with this man.
Galen looked like he could charge about a dozen giant scorpions, uphill, and not even break a sweat.
He glanced at Holly. "At least somebody doesn't mind having me around."
My body warmed and I felt a flush creep up to my cheeks. "She doesn't know what you're capable of."
He leaned in close enough to touch. "Neither do you."
Was he trying to give me a heart attack?
Technically, I was supposed to plant him in a wheelchair until he left the hospital, but I wasn't going through that again.
"Follow me," I said, not bothering to see if he did. I had to calm down. I wasn't some simpering female. I was a trained medical professional.
A brisk walk would be just the thing.
All I had to do was show Galen to his tent and then hope he never came out again.
The sky was blue as we stalked across the courtyard. The high-level tents were next to the hospital and administrative offices. You had Kosta, the head nurse, and now Galen—our newest VIP.
Black dragons swooped over a rocky outpost in the distance. Scouts, no doubt, gathering intelligence before battle. We'd be seeing wounded soon.
"I know why you're so worked up," Galen said, falling into pace next to me.
Hades, I hoped not, because I couldn't handle that right now.
"You're mad because I'm right," he said.
Of all the... The man was dead sexy and too cocky for his own good.
I stared him right in the baby blues. The uncertainty fled, replaced by hot indignation. Angry I could do. I had a PhD in pissed off. "You think Kosta giving you a cushy tent makes you right?"
