My feet feel like they are wading through concrete, legs seizing up and not moving nearly fast enough to get to her.
She drops her camera. I don’t know why I focus on that, the sight of it falling and then stopping and recoiling back up like a bungee jumper when the strap around her neck loses slack.
Her body contorts, arms pumping, legs pushing, eyes locked on mine pleading with me in an apology I never want to accept.
C’mon, rookie, I call to her silently, urge her, beg her to put as much distance between herself and the dog caught in the improvised explosive device.
C’mon, baby.
The explosion rocks me to the core. The earth beneath my feet is nonexistent as I’m thrown into a spin cycle of smoke and sound and the complete unknown before my shoulders end up finding the ground again.
I’m stunned, shell-shocked, paralyzed. Unable to speak, can’t think, can’t hear anything except for a high-pitched ringing in my ears, and I am terrified to see.
Beaux?
Beaux.
Beaux!
My mind screams with fear; the horrific images of war in my memory mix with the thought of Beaux producing visuals I don’t want: her small body impossibly contorted, soft skin marred, long hair matted with blood. I hear the sound of Stella screaming in pain, but I’d swear it’s Beaux’s voice this time around.
Then the pain that radiates throughout my body and the sensation of my skull feeling like it’s beneath the wheel of a car rolling at an excruciatingly slow pace drown out everything else.
So you’re the one, huh?
Panic ricochets, and my head swims in a viscous haze that grows thicker by the second. My body is so heavy, and all I want to do is roll onto my stomach and crawl to find her. But I can’t move, can’t think beyond the dust and particles raining down around me, the staggering scent I winced at earlier now becoming a part of me.
“Tanner! Tanner!”
Voices shout from every direction, hands touch me and minister to my injuries and wave in front of my eyes. Sarge and Rosco and a soldier. A medic, I think. But I don’t know anything for certain because my focus wanes, fades to black momentarily before coming back, a little fuzzier, a lot more confused.
I don’t know much, can’t make anything I see stay still, but I do know one thing: There are people around me, trying to help me – everyone but the one I want to see there the most.
Bubbles. I close my eyes, my head feeling adrift like the bubbles we were blowing last night. Was it last night? I can’t pinpoint anything because I’m fading. Slowly. I welcome it because when it pulls me under, the pain stops momentarily.
“He’s in shock!” someone I can’t focus on shouts over the deafening ring in my ears.
Well, no shit. The observation is so odd that I want to laugh, want to tell them to stop looking at me and get to Beaux. She was closer. She was closer.
I couldn’t get to her.
I couldn’t save her.
Beaux.
My world spins, blackness seeping into the fringes of my consciousness and bleeding from the edges in, closer and closer, darker and darker.
Until there is nothing left.
Beaux.
You promised you’d always come back to me.
Chapter 21
I
struggle to swim above the water. I claw my way to just beneath the surface with lungs burning, the sky in sight, only to be yanked back down. And I struggle against it less and less because when I’m swallowed by the darkness again, I can go back to the rooftop with Beaux, blowing bubbles, making love. It’s so much easier to be here in the warmth of the hot sun and the sweet taste of her kiss than to endure the ache in my head when I try to open my eyes.
I can’t keep track of how many times I resurface, but the penlight in my eyes and the cool burn of something like ice being injected into the top of my hand are annoying enough that I promise next time I’ll wake up.
Next time.
But then the minute I’m firmly ensconced back in the depths of my subconscious, the look on Beaux’s face as she realized what was happening flashes before me.
I never told her I loved her. It’s on constant refrain in my mind when I come to and the only thing I know for sure before the darkness steals my thoughts from me once again.
The void of sound and pain is so soothing that when I reach the surface the next time, the beeping that’s muffled in my ears confuses me for a moment. The bright light that hits my eyes as I break free from the weight of the water holding me down causes me to squint and then blink rapidly as I try to focus on the room around me.
“Tanner? Can you hear me, Tanner?”
I feel like I’m on the wrong end of a megaphone, sound siphoned through a pinhole, but at least the roaring pain in my head has dulled to a nagging ache behind my eyes and at the base of my skull. My eyelids are heavy, wanting to droop back down, but between my name being called again and my sudden awareness of everything, I force my eyes open as confusion gives way to worry.
And dread.
“Beaux. Where’s…?” My voice breaks as I try to make the question sound as urgent as it is in my head, but I know at best I sound groggy.
Patient brown eyes assess me as I look around and place myself in the military combat hospital on the forward operating base. “Tanner, do you know where you are?” I start to nod and stop immediately as the pain radiates through my head. “Don’t move. The pain will ebb slowly. You took a pretty big hit to the head. Have a slight concussion. So much better than we’d expect with the blow we were told you took,” he says as he writes something down on the chart in his hand. “You’re a lucky man. We gave you some sedatives to allow your brain to rest for a bit, so it may feel like you’re having a hard time waking up.”