Ryland’s Reach (Bullard's Battle Book 1)

by Dale Mayer

  The doctor relaxed a little bit and said, “I’d feel better if Garret were in a place more suited to his injuries. We’ve got state-of-the-art equipment, but that head injury concerns me.”

  At the mention of Garret, he was wheeled in on a hospital bed to join Ryland in his room.

  Ryland looked at his friend, ever silent, and nodded. “That’ll be the first thing we run tests on.”

  Chapter 5

  As soon as Tabi got back with her bag, she found Ryland already on his feet and dressed, with the gurney moving Garret to the upper deck. Ryland stood at the doorway waiting for her. He motioned at the gurney and said, “Come on. We’re behind him.”

  She slowed her pace to get behind him, until he glared at her. She shrugged and moved forward. “Don’t be so touchy,” she said. “I’m not the one with stitches in my ass and everywhere else that could be slowing things down.”

  “Ha,” he said. “My butt is just fine.”

  “It’s more than fine,” she said, laughing, but she deliberately didn’t hold open the doors he went through either. Didn’t want to set off his touchy ego again.

  He just glared at her. “You could at least help,” he said, in that mocking aggrieved voice.

  “And get dirty looks? Nope, you’re one of those big tough guys.” She smiled. “You’ll make do on your own.”

  By the time they got to where they were going, which was up on deck, a huge military helicopter waited for them.

  She just stared at it in surprise and looked at him. “Is this your ride, Ryland?”

  “Yep, and yours too,” he said, as he grabbed her hand. “Come on.” And, together, the two of them walked closer.

  “I’ve never flown in anything like this,” she said nervously.

  He looked at her, squeezed her fingers, and said, “Stick by me, and I’ll get you there safe.”

  “You’re the one who was just blown out of the sky,” she said.

  He burst out laughing. “True enough,” he said, “but that wasn’t our fault.”

  “Says you,” she replied.

  But still, she followed his lead, and, by the time she was up in the helicopter and sitting down, he was working hard to buckle her in. Then she caught that slight grimace on his face as he pulled on muscles that had been stitched together.

  “Sit down,” she scolded. “I can do up my own buckles.”

  He sat down beside her and said, “Touchy, touchy.”

  “Not so touchy,” she said.

  “It’s all good,” he said, and he settled back with a smile.

  She looked over, and her gaze caught on his strapped-down friend. “No change in Garret’s condition, huh?”

  Ryland’s face was grim, as he shook his head. “No, none.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It is what it is for now,” he said. “This is a wait-and-see deal.”

  “Still, I’d rather get him back to a hospital,” she said. “And wait and see there.”

  “That’s what the doctor just said too, not that they don’t have the best equipment, but, as you know, any serious cases like this? They lift off the ship anyway.”

  “Well, let’s hope, when they run the tests at the hospital, they find something different.”

  “It may be that he just needs time.”

  “At least all the time he’s been laying here, the injuries have been set and closed off,” she said. “The rest of him will heal.”

  “There is that,” he said. “I have any number of fractures that need to heal myself.”

  “You’re lucky no plates were needed.”

  “I wouldn’t be ambulatory if that were the case,” he said. “It felt more like I had been shaken hard, like a pill in a bottle, before being tossed in the ocean.”

  “But that landing was damn hard too. I know the chute didn’t help much, but at least it was something.”

  “It was,” he said. “Just not enough.”

  At that, he fell silent, and they stayed quiet, as the helicopter finally lifted. She stared out the window, amazed at the view below her. “And clear weather,” she said. “It’s absolutely stunning. But, in a storm like we just had, it’s pretty ugly.”

  “It is, indeed,” he said. “Mother Nature always reminds us who is boss out here.”

  “You were flying in good weather?”

  “We were,” he said. “So, no lightning strikes messed up the instrumentation.”

  At that, she looked at him. “Was there an instrumentation issue?”

  He shook his head. “No, not at all. It just went from one minute to the next and then boom.”

  “Damn,” she said. She looked around at the empty helicopter. “I thought your friends would be on here.”

  “They’ll meet us on the next flight,” he replied.

  “This flight must cost a fortune,” she said, tentatively worried that she might get dinged for some of it herself.

  He looked over, smiled, and said, “Had to pull a favor or two.”

  “Friends in high places again.”

  “We need them sometimes in my line of work,” he said, settling with his head back, resting. “Rest. You didn’t get a ton of sleep last night.”

  “I slept well,” she protested, but, as she looked at him, she saw the color leaching from his skin. “But you need to rest, yes,” she said, as she sank back and stared out at the beautiful scenery around them.

  “Don’t let me sleep longer than thirty minutes,” he murmured.

  She checked her cell phone and said, “Done.”

  The next thirty minutes passed, with a sense of surrealism. The helicopter itself was high-tech, huge, and just had that power and authority of military. She loved it, but it felt very much like a foreign experience, like she was a little bug in a very big system, and she didn’t really count for much, but somebody had decided that she should get this ride. It was pretty amazing, and, as long as she didn’t think about her beloved boat, life would continue to be amazing. But that boat had been a long part of her life, her history.

  She’d sailed it with her younger brother for years, until he had passed away from leukemia. She’d named it after him—Lucas’s Light. And now, like him, it had been crushed under the pressure of Mother Nature’s heavy hand. She wanted to be bitter; she wanted to rail at the elements, but there was absolutely no point. Just like her brother’s death, the death of her sailboat seemed almost faded already.

  She didn’t even know if she wanted to replace it at this point. Lately it had seemed so much harder to get there for her holidays, and looking after it had become a pain—like trying to find a place for Lucas’s Light after her friend Maureen’s place had gone out of business for a bigger development to move in on the waterfront property. It just seemed like life was so much like that. Now Tabi had decisions to make, but at least she had her personal stuff with her, and her girlfriend would pack up and leave her little bit of clothing there. But it felt weird, like part of her was gone, a part of her history. And that hurt even more.

  “What are you thinking?” he said, interrupting her thoughts.

  “That you should be asleep,” she said, with some asperity.

  “You were thinking too loud,” he murmured.

  “I’ll tone it down then,” she said drily.

  He snickered, kept his eyes closed, and shifted ever-so-slightly. She’d seen his body and knew just how much damage there had been. Hitting the surf and whatever debris had sliced into his body left tiny little knife cuts. It had to sting and hurt like crazy, but he’d suffered in silence. Stoic. But given the kind of work that he must do, she understood.

  She’d seen big men like that come through surgeries all the time, but she’d also seen them on the other side, when they woke up with limbs missing or reattached or major breaks fixed, their bodies absolutely shaken and brutalized by what had to happen in order to make them better. She’d seen the tears in their eyes and the depression sink in, when they realized something worked—or didn
’t. It wasn’t an easy thing to be bigger than life and stronger than what you thought the world should be.

  But it was all about being true to who you were, and she appreciated it when the big men would also cry because of their pain or be depressed in their anguish. It wasn’t good to keep it all inside. And she wasn’t sure what the guy beside her was like, but, so far, Ryland had a sense of humor and an inner strength that she appreciated. She’d seen it all in her work.

  And, just like that, the flight was over. She was shocked and sad, when they came down for a landing on top of the hospital, because the view, the scenery had been just so spectacular. With a start, she realized that she’d let Ryland sleep past the thirty minutes. When she reached out and placed a hand on his arm, gently avoiding his stitches, he opened his eyes immediately. His bright deep-green gaze came instantly about to stare at her. Not with the sleepy awareness of somebody just coming out of a nap but fully alert.

  “Are we there?” he asked, his voice ever-so-slightly thick.

  Relieved to see even some symptom of a normal person coming awake, she nodded. “We’re just coming down on top of the hospital.”

  “Good,” he said. “We need to make sure Garret gets the treatment he needs.”

  “I see people down there,” she said, looking out the window.

  “Cain will be there,” he said, absolute certainty in his voice.

  She said, “Cain? The guy I called for you?”

  He smiled. “My friend and teammate.”

  “If you say so. Doctors and nurses are waiting for Garret too.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s all part of it. Hopefully Cain will have news on Bullard.”

  “I hope so, for your sake, but I think you’re asking a lot of your friends.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m not asking anything from them that they wouldn’t ask of any of us.”

  “All hard-asses, are you?”

  “Yes,” he said, with a smile. “Definitely.”

  As it was, the chopper slowly descended onto the rooftop. When it came to a solid landing, she looked at him and said, “Well, for better or worse, we’re here.”

  The doors were flung open. Ryland, knowing how to unbuckle, stood up. She struggled with the closures on hers. He reached over, brushed aside her fingers, quickly unbuckled her, picked up her bag, and said, “Let’s go.”

  A tall man stood on the tarmac, right below the chopper, waiting for them, who looked like serious business. His face was hard, scars visible on his forehead, and he had the same build as Ryland. She looked at him, looked at Ryland, and asked, “Cain, by any chance?”

  Cain broke into a big grin that flashed across his face, and he said, “Now that’s my boy. You go out. Your plane goes down, and you come back with a beautiful woman.”

  Blushing, she stared at him in surprise, but Cain already had his hands around her ribs and had dropped her gently onto the concrete beside him. With that, Ryland, albeit a little slower, made his way out of the helicopter too.

  Garret was transferred onto a gurney on the rooftop, and nurses and doctors carefully maneuvered him inside. With Ryland grabbing her hand and pulling her after him, she walked at his side and asked, “Now what?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll need to debrief with Cain.”

  “Is this where we part ways?” She needed to bring it up because, well, he hadn’t. But it felt odd, like she’d spent just enough time with him that he half belonged here, at her side. But she didn’t really know who this man Ryland was. Looking at Cain, she asked, “Any word on Bullard?”

  His face locked down, and he shook his head. “Not yet. We’re still looking.”

  She slowly nodded. “I remember what it was like out there,” she said. “Bits of debris as far as I saw. It’s only because these two were higher on the surface that I actually caught sight of them. Then, as I got closer, I think Ryland moved.”

  “Yep, that would be him, flagging down the prettiest woman in the area.”

  “In this case, the only woman,” she said drily. As soon as they stepped inside the hospital, she felt that welcoming sense of familiarity to the atmosphere. “If they see me, they’ll put me to work,” she complained lightly.

  Cain looked at her and asked, “You work here?”

  “I’m a surgical nurse,” she said. “I’m on holiday and still have another five days to go, but they’re always short-staffed, so—”

  “If you want, we can give you cover, right to the front door, and you can duck back out again.”

  “I want to see what’s happening with Garret.”

  “Well, that’s where we’re heading right now,” he said.

  They made their way behind the gurney, and, as she walked in, Dr. Stevenson looked up and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, it’s a long story,” she said. “I’m the one who picked these two guys up from a plane crash in the ocean. I was sailing nearby, and we ended up on a naval ship, and now I’m here.”

  He gave a snort. “I’m pretty sure you headed out for a holiday, so you didn’t have to deal with all the trauma that keeps coming through here.”

  “Well, I was looking for peace and quiet, but I didn’t quite find it. I ended up losing my boat in the storm, so now I’m here,” she said. “No, I’m not looking for work. I need a few days.”

  “No doubt,” he said. “What do you mean, you lost your boat? Are you saying that Lucas’s Light is gone?”

  “Yes, while trying to reach the naval ship, a storm engulfed us, broke the mast, and she filled with water.” It felt very prophetic to have to say that.

  He looked at her, reached out, and gave her shoulder a light squeeze. “Sorry, kiddo. I know it meant a lot to you.”

  “Yeah, it did,” she said, “but apparently it’s time to move on. How is Garret?”

  “I got his records earlier, so I’ve had a chance to study up. We’ll run some CT scans and an MRI to make sure we don’t have anything else going on.” He looked at the two men with Tabi and asked, “Who are you?”

  Ryland identified himself; Cain stayed silent. When the doctor looked at him, he raised an eyebrow and said, “I’m in charge of these men.”

  “Right,” Dr. Stevenson said. “It’ll be at least two hours before I get any information.”

  Cain looked at his watch and said, “You sure that won’t be one hour?”

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “No promises.” He looked at Tabi. “Why don’t you take them to the cafeteria, until I get some results.”

  “Good idea,” she said. She looked at Ryland and said, “Come on. Let’s get you some caffeine and some more food. It’s been at least an hour since you ate.”

  He looked at her, laughed, and said, “That means there’s at least a corner I can fill.”

  She just rolled her eyes, looked at Cain, and asked, “Do you eat like he does?”

  The corners of Cain’s lips kicked up. “Sometimes,” he said, “especially when we’re injured or when we’re building muscle, then maybe.”

  She led the way to the cafeteria, which actually had fairly decent food and also had a nice open space, with lots of places to sit. She walked up to the front and grabbed a tray. Looking at the food, she shrugged and said, “I really don’t need more food, but I sure could use some coffee.”

  She watched as Cain grabbed a couple sandwiches and two muffins.

  “There’s hot food too,” she murmured.

  “This will do for the moment,” he said. “I’ll get a steak in a couple hours.”

  She just gave a headshake, looked at Ryland, but he was mulling over the sandwiches himself.

  “Ryland, there is more hot food, if you need it,” she offered, not that she had any idea where he could possibly put it.

  “But sandwiches can come with me,” he said. He grabbed several, added some muffins and a couple power bars. Cain paid for it all, and she led the way to a table over on the far side. As soon as she sat down, Cain approac
hed, looking around, then shook his head and pointed to another table that had nobody around it.

  She shrugged, picked up her tray, and moved. “Why is this one better than that one?” she asked in a low voice.

  “Nobody can hear us,” Ryland said.

  She thought about that for a moment and said, “Right, apparently that’s necessary right now.”

  “It is,” Ryland said, as he looked at Cain and asked, “Do you have any news?”

  “The question is,” he said, “what news do you have for me?” With that, he gave a hard look at Ryland.

  *

  Ryland gave a clipped nod and proceeded to explain the last few minutes on the flight. “We had no warning,” he said. “We were just about to switch places. Bullard had insisted on flying most of it but didn’t want to land, as tired as he was. I would bring it down. I was just about to stand up and move into the pilot’s seat when the back end blew up. At that point in time, there was no taking over anything. Bullard had still been standing and got sucked out, so I’m not even sure exactly where he went down. Garret was there, still sitting in his seat, and he had parachutes for us. I managed to grab one and got sucked out, but I pulled the chute, and Garret did too. With him up there beside me, we were both free and clear, but we were too low. So the chutes weren’t pulled fast enough, and we hit hard.”

  Taking a drink of water, Ryland continued, “I came to the surface and managed to get out from under the rubble and found a piece of debris to climb on, while I searched for Garret. I found him by his chute, and he was already under. I don’t think he was under for long though because he was still struggling to survive. However, by the time I got him free of the parachute and up on the plywood, he didn’t make sound anymore sounds. But he was breathing, so I laid him out as best I could with his injuries and looked for more debris to pack up into a bigger floatation area,” he said. “No sign of Bullard.”

  “So, he had no parachute?”

  “I’m not sure about that,” he said. “I didn’t see, and I haven’t asked Garret. Bullard was in the process of going to them anyway. So it’s possible.”