Justine
“He should.”
But that didn’t mean that we weren’t in a world of trouble right now.
Right now, in looking at Zack, he had a bullet wound to the arm that, all things considered, wasn’t serious, and a bullet to the lower back that had, by all good fortune, missed his spine. The wounds were causing blood loss, which contributed to him passing out. I didn’t want to say all it took was some bandages and tourniquets and we’d be set, but we had certainly dodged the worst of it.
But that was with no MRIs, no X-Rays, nothing. I was making best guesses, and so long as I did not have access to the medical equipment I normally relied on, we were just making assumptions. And in medicine, assumptions could kill.
I had to gather myself, though. They’d gotten me out of danger. Now I had to do the same.
“Get us to the hospital in Albuquerque as fast as you can,” I said. “He’s not in immediate danger, but the bullets in his body can cause a reaction. And we’ll have more security there than we will anywhere else.”
“You got it, Doc!” Garrett yelled from the front.
In the interim, I went to work using what I could to stop the bleeding. All the while, the Black Reapers—yes, Brock included—gave me space to work. And after fifteen minutes, I’d stemmed the bleeding and rested Zack against me.
The worst was over.
And then I thought about it some more. The worst wasn’t just Zack’s condition. I had just experienced the worst-case scenario possible. I’d gotten kidnapped. Eduardo hadn’t done anything more to me since I’d called Zack, but it was almost certain he would at some point. I’d had to rely on a gamble and not a hope that the Black Reapers would rescue me.
And…
I’d done well for myself.
Granted, “done well for myself” mostly meant just not losing my cool and being patient while I wanted for the Reapers to show up. But didn’t that say something good for me? I hadn’t panicked. I hadn’t lost my mind. I hadn’t submitted so easily to the Bandits.
The hospital would need more security; that was a certainty. The Bandits would seek retaliation on the Black Reapers. That war between them had sucked me in, and I didn’t see how I was getting out any time soon.
But for as badly as I had wanted to stay out of this and how awfully I’d gotten dragged in…I was stronger than I thought.
But how did that translate to Zack and me?
* * *
We got Zack to the hospital with ease, and the surgeon on staff started working on him immediately. Fortunately, everything aligned with how I had thought; the bullets, though painful and obviously not ideal, had not caused any long-lasting damage. Zack woke up from being knocked out halfway to the hospital and had needed morphine so the doctors could do surgery to remove the bullets, but just a couple hours later, we were all set.
Zack rested in his bed, the entirety of the Bandits now standing outside the room. I sat in a chair next to him, smiling as he slowly came out of the morphine high. He looked groggy but ultimately relieved.
“You’re here,” he said.
“Of course I am,” I said. “After you rescued me? It would be really awful of me if I didn’t stay with you.”
Zack chuckled. He sounded better than most patients who came out of morphine like this.
“I was just doing my job.”
“And I’m just doing mine.”
Zack smiled.
“You being here isn’t a job,” he said, “at least, I hope it’s not. I hope you’re here because you care.”
I cared.
But the question also put something of a pit in my stomach. We never really had addressed where this was going or what we would slow down to since Cole had woken up. And while I didn’t want to have such a conversation right now, with Zack still recovering, he saw the look on my face.
“You don’t care?”
