“You all right?”
Dan shook his head again. “I need to find something to break or I’m gonna lose my shit. I was supposed to drive him home today. How the fuck did it come to this?”
Glenn spoke again, his tone low and soothing. “Nothing about something like this makes sense, dude. You look beat. You should get some rest.”
Max agreed. Dan had been at the hospital for… he didn’t even know how long. Too long. “Dan, go back to Carla’s and get some sleep. I’ll call you if anything happens.”
Dan scrubbed a hand over his face. “Yeah, I think I will. The others are headed back there anyway. Dad’s gone to pick up Flo. You’ll call us if anything happens?”
“Someone will,” Max promised.
Dan stared hard at Jed for a moment longer before he turned on his heel and walked away.
Max let out a shaky breath as the door closed behind him. He loved Dan like a brother, and his anguish was almost as hard to take as his own. His tired brain was beginning to scatter. Sooner or later, he was going to have to give in and get some sleep himself.
Glenn leaned against the bed rail. “I know how he feels. We had two weeks left on our tour before it all went to Hell. Paul, Raffi, Jed… they were all getting out. It didn’t have to be this way.”
“Jed was getting out?”
“Yeah. He hadn’t admitted it out loud, but we both knew he couldn’t go on. I don’t know if he would’ve left the Army completely, but he was done with frontline combat.” Glenn let out a heavy sigh. “It didn’t have to be this way,” he said again. “It was over, we were coming home…hewas coming home.”
Max felt stunned. He shouldn’t have, but a sickening sense of ironic injustice rushed over him. The world was so damn unfair. He trailed a cautious fingertip over the hard planes of Jed’s abdomen, the abdomen that sheltered the cause of this whole mess. “I can’t believe he managed to hide this out in the field.”
Glenn sighed. “He didn’t hide it as well as he wanted to. The others knew something was wrong. We’re trained to be observant, to see things people don’t want us to see. Trouble was, we’re also trained to conceal—to blend into the shadows and disappear. In the end, I think they all figured he’d finally had enough.”
“Finally?”
“It was a long tour, for Jed more than most. He gave a lot of his leave to Paul.”
“Does the rest of your team know he’s sick now?”
“Not yet. If he doesn’t wake his ass up soon, I’ll need to make some calls.”
Soon.The word struck a chord with Max. “You think he’s going to make it, don’t you?” Glenn’s eyes flickered, and Max knew he was right. “What makes you so sure?”
“Same reasons as you I’d imagine, though I guess we came to believe them in different ways.”
Max gestured for him to elaborate. He wasn’t sharp enough to talk in riddles.
Glenn shrugged. “I guess I figure he’s had his chance to check out, and he chose to live. Jed’s a stubborn fucker. I don’t think he’ll change his mind now.”
“You really believe that?”
“I do. Don’t you?”
MAXSLUMPEDforward and put his head on his arms. It was late, well after midnight, and after a day of being surrounded by the grief and worry of so many others, he was finally alone with his own.
Of course, he wasn’t really alone. Jed was there, but despite being bolstered by Glenn’s philosophical confidence, now, with the ghostlike nurses and beeping machines for company, Max’s faith was beginning to fade.
He eyed the slim stack of crumpled envelopes Glenn had left before he’d driven Luke and Saja back to the cabin in Jed’s truck to get some sleep. Letters. Jed’s letters to Nick, Dan, and Hector and Anna. There was even one for Belle, though not Tess. Jed must’ve written them before she was born.
Glenn said he’d left them for Jed to burn, so sure was he that he didn’t need them anymore, but Max wasn’t quite there yet, because even without the cardiac arrest, Jed’s condition hadn’t improved… his chance of survival hadn’t changed at all.
Max wanted to tear the letters to shreds, to obliterate them like they’d never existed, but he didn’t. The unthinkable had edged too close to reality to take that chance. He closed his eyes and pictured Jed scribbling the letters in some tented base camp on the other side of the world. Surrounded by death and violence, Max wondered if he’d ever imagined he’d fight his ultimate battle for life in a hospital in Oregon.
It felt good to rest his eyes. He let the invasive noise of the machines wash over him and reached out with his mind, straining every sense. Sometimes, when they were together at home in bed, he found himself dreaming of Jed, even though he was right there next to him. Most times he couldn’t remember the dreams, but sometimes he could, and what he found was a fantasy that was pretty much his reality. He dreamed of rainy days in front of the fire, of long summer evenings by the water. He dreamed of their present and the future he craved so badly.
He dreamed of a life that was so fucking possible, if only Jed could fight his way back.