Ghost’s hand closes around my arm, steady but unyielding.
“Talia,” he says, quiet enough that it sinks under my skin. “You need to step back.”
My knees give out.
The concrete tilts.
Before I drop, Ghost catches me, hands braced around my elbows, his body a wall of calm in a room full of razor-edge urgency.
“Easy,” he murmurs. “You’re not leaving him. You’re just giving them space to work.”
Ghost pulls me back. Far enough to clear the surgical perimeter. Close enough that I can still hear everything.
Through the vinyl flap, the surgical team closes around Jackson in a rush of motion—voices sharp, instruments clattering, monitors chiming. Skye’s voice cuts through it all, sure and crisp, directing the room like she owns the air they breathe.
“Clamp.”
“Pressure’s dropping.”
“Hang blood.”
“Ready—move.”
“I activated Guardian HRS’s combat medical team,” Ghost says, eyes fixed on the blur of movement inside the vinyl tent. His voice stays low, even, like he’s narrating weather patterns—not life and death. “They were standing by.”
I blink at him. “Combat … What?”
“Think trauma surgeons who go where the bullets are,” he says. “They deploy with us when we expect a fight to get loud.” He nods toward the tent where Skye and her team move like a single organism. “Field surgery. Battlefield stabilization. They train to keep people alive in places worse than this.”
I stare at him.
“You had them waiting?”
“As a precaution.” His tone doesn’t shift—it’s not bragging, not dramatic. Just fact.
“Guardian HRS owed us support. I cashed in the marker. Got their best team.”
Inside the tent, a monitor alarms. Skye’s voice snaps a command. Someone adjusts a valve. The whole structure vibrates with urgency.
Ghost’s jaw tightens. “They’re the reason he has a shot,” he says. “You’re watching the top combat medics in the country do what they do better than anyone.”
He finally looks at me.
Direct. Unflinching.
“They don’t lose people easily.”
I don’t know what that means.
I don’t ask.
All I know is that strangers in scrubs materialized out of nowhere and are now fighting to keep Jackson alive.
Time bends.
Someone hands me water.
Someone else wipes dried blood off my face.
