“I need to check your back for an exit wound,” their team medic told her.
Mac nodded weakly but didn’t speak.
Turning her slightly, she hissed a breath as Trevor slid his hand along her back. “Feels like a through and through. Won’t know the extent of the damage until we get her to the hospital.”
“Ambulance is on its way.” Derek rushed over to them. “I got ahold of Eric. He put the call straight through to the area’s nearest EMS team. Told them to act like she was one of theirs.” The former SEAL looked sick with worry as he took in Mac’s condition. “He and Riley are on their way, too.”
“Thanks, D,” Coop mumbled, doing his damnedest not to break down and bawl like a baby.
To Grant, Trevor said, “Get my blue bag. It’s on the floorboard behind the passenger seat.”
Without hesitation, Grant took off for the first aid kit Trevor always kept in his truck for emergencies.
Coop couldn’t think of a situation more emergent than this.
Opposite him, Jake squatted down by Mac, his face tense with worry as he rested his hand on the top of her head. “How you doing, honey?”
“H-hurts.”
Her skin was pale and damp, and her body was trembling. She was losing a lot of blood fast, and if the ambulance didn’t get here soon…
I could lose her.
Coop closed his eyes and hung his head low so she wouldn’t see the staggering fear eating away at his soul. He honestly didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Ever since this whole thing started, he’d had this gnawing feeling in his gut that he was going to lose her. He’d tried to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t there, but it never really went away. Coop was sick to fucking death of it.
I was supposed to protect her.
That was his job. As her partner, and as the man head over ass in love with her. Yet, he’d failed her, and now…now he may never get the chance to make it right.
Grant returned with the bag. Trevor pulled out a brand-new package of the same combat gauze they used in the field.
It was infused with a hemostatic agent designed to speed the body’s natural clotting ability. In doing so, it slowed the bleeding, increasing the patient’s chances of survival.
Coop had seen field medics administer it numerous times before, but this was the first time it had ever been used on the woman he loved.
Please, God. Please let this work.
Sirens blared in the distance, and there was a collective sigh of relief knowing help wasn’t far away. Mac’s eyes began to droop closed, but he refused to let her sleep.
“Open your eyes, McKenna.” Careful not to touch the cut on her cheek, he put a gentle hand to the side of her face. “I need you to stay with me, okay? You gotta stay with me.”
Her lids fluttered, those blue eyes finding his once more. The light he’d always sworn he could get lost in was dull and fading, and Coop’s soul shattered. His entire life was bleeding out in front of him, and there wasn’t a fucking thing he could do about it.
But then Mac licked her lips and whispered, “Not going…anywhere…without…you.”
Her image blurred behind a rush of fresh tears. Coop’s nose burned, and he barely managed to choke out a whispered, “Promise?”
The amazing woman held her trembling pinky up to him. “P-promise.”
Coop busted out a half-laugh, half-cry. “This is a promise you’d better damn well keep, woman.”
“Kept…y-yours.” She closed her eyes but quickly forced them open again.
“Which promise was that, sweetheart?”
“Story…b-beginning.”
