She pressed down hard on his shoulder, and he couldn’t help but moan.
Then Doc Sullivan was there. “Hey, boss, Ms. Hamilton.”
In a heartbeat, Jenna seemed to swallow her fear and went total nurse on them.
“He’s got an entry wound in his left shoulder but no exit wound. I put hemostatic and pressure bandages on it, but Qassim aggravated the wound to cause him pain. I tore up my burqa and made a dressing with that. I think he has broken ribs from a bullet that struck his vest. He’s had trouble breathing, but there’s no pneumothorax. I gave him twenty mgs of morphine that wore off hours ago.”
“Thanks for taking such good care of him. Let’s get him comfortable.”
A stick in Derek’s thigh. A stretcher. A warm blanket.
And then Derek was floating, Jenna stroking his hair.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a Chinook, an IV bag hanging above him, Jenna holding his hand, her worried gaze focused entirely on him.
She’d told him she loved him. Had she meant it, or had it been stress?
She smiled. “How do you feel?”
He didn’t really register her question, his gaze on her face. “Beautiful.”
Yeah, he was high as a kite.
He knew when they reached the U.S. military hospital in Kabul, when they took X-rays, when Jenna kissed him as they wheeled him into surgery.
“I’ll be right here.”
Then there was nothing.
* * *
Jenna satnext to Derek’s bed, watching his vitals, getting the nurse when his IV fluids ran low, changing the ice bag on his chest, doing her best to keep him comfortable. The staff had let her borrow a pair of scrubs, as her clothes were filthy with dirt and blood. They’d fed her, too, and brought in one of those chairs that opened into a bed so she could stay overnight.
It was almost midnight now. It had taken the surgeon a little more than three hours to remove the ball from his shoulder and repair the damage to bone and connective tissue. There was nothing they could do for his broken ribs or cracked sternum or the bruises and lacerations on his cheeks and lip. They would heal with time.
She had come so close to losing him, so close to watching him die.
She squeezed her eyes shut, tried not to remember. Malik hitting the windshield in a spray of blood. The sight of Derek falling back onto the asphalt. The sound of his cries when Qassim tortured him. Perooz falling to the dirt, impaled through the abdomen. The blast of the stun grenade.
Please don’t! They killed my son! I did what you told me to do! I only did—
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Jenna had witnessed more violence, more brutality in the past two weeks than in the rest of her life combined. Through it all, Derek had been beside her, sheltering her, doing his best to keep her safe—and driving her crazy in bed.
She’d told him she loved him, and it was true. She had gotten involved with another man who was dedicated to his career.
Well done.
But she’d seen the shock on his face.
He’d told her upfront that he didn’t do relationships. He’d warned her not to get tangled up in him. She’d gone and fallen for him anyway. Of course, there was a chance he wouldn’t remember what she’d said. Then she wouldn’t have to listen to him tell her that it wouldn’t work, that whatever they’d had was over now.
Maybe if she pretended that nothing had happened, her feelings would fade. She’d studied some psychology and knew that people in survival situations sometimes forged special bonds—the product of hormones. Maybe what she thought was love was nothing more than stress-related brain chemistry.
Yeah, not a chance.
Nice try, though.