Page 55 of Rescued

They were a mess. The ones on their feet were bloody and bandaged, and they were lifting stretchers out and handing them off to the men ducking underneath the rotors. It looked like the opening credits of that old TV show MASH, with helicopters packed with wounded soldiers and everyone running to help them.

Breanna stood frozen in place, watching. One, two, three stretchers—and then the rest of the team, holding each other up, some barely able to walk.

Oh my god. She’d thought shifters were practically indestructible. She couldn’t imagine how badly some of them must be hurt, if the pilots were afraid the ten-minute drive from the airfield might make a difference.

Or maybe there weren’t enough trucks up there to carry all the wounded.

The helicopter lifted off, heading for the airfield, and the second one set down in its place. More carnage, more bodies on stretchers, more men covered in blood who could barely walk.

Breanna began to run.

She grabbed the first person she got to, outside of the medical center. She didn’t even know his name. “What happened?” she asked.

“Ambushed,” he said wearily. “Bad intel, and they knew we were coming. Half the guys got caught in an explosion.”

Oh, no. She swallowed down the sick feeling inside her. “Did we—did you lose anyone?”

“One,” he said, his voice bleak. “Beringer.”

She didn’t know what to feel. Relief that it wasn’t Switch, wasn’t anyone she really knew—and yet, she could tell that his man was torn up inside. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

He shook his head, and she let him go. Turning around, she saw Switch climbing wearily out of the helicopter.

She ran over to him, but he was just standing there with his hand against the helicopter, like he was too tired to move. He didn’t look at her; it was like there was a wall around him.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re bleeding.”

The wounds were small, but they must be deep because some were still oozing blood despite his shifter healing.

He still didn’t look at her. “I’m fine,” he said. “Go back to the cabin. You don’t need to see this.” His voice was rough, and she could tell that the last thing he wanted was someone hanging on him.

Part of her really, really wanted to go hide in the cabin. She didn’t need to see this. But there were so many wounded—it would be the worst kind of selfishness just to walk away.

Some of those men could be dying, and she wasn’t sure there were enough still on their feet to take care of them. She didn’t know much about first aid, but she could run and fetch and bandage, get people water. Something.

But first, she had to help Switch. “You can’t just stay out here,” she said. “Come on inside.”

For a second she didn’t think he’d come, but finally he straightened up. He looked kind of okay, except he still didn’t meet her eyes, and his hands were clenched tightly into fists.

They walked together into the medical center—and were swept into a horrible maelstrom of bloody chaos.

There weren’t even enough beds for all the wounded. The worst-off got them, and the leftover, slightly-less-hurt guys were on the floor and in the chairs. Two of the stretchers had just been laid straight onto the beds, like they were afraid to move the guys off them.

One of them had a leg so mangled the bone was sticking out, with bandaging on either side of it. Cisco.

Others had arms hanging at weird angles, and still others had blood-soaked bandages around what had to be horrific abdominal wounds.

A couple of guys banged through the back doors, bringing more mattresses and sheets.

Dobe seemed to be more or less in charge of directing the first aid. “What can I do?” she asked him.

He gave her a long look, and then said, “I hope you don’t faint at the sight of blood.”

That began a nightmare of pain and mangled flesh. Breanna moved from person to person, wherever she was told: putting pressure on wounds, her hands slick with blood; helping hold a man’s arm while the bones were set; fetching water and supplies.

She’d gotten separated from Switch in the rush of activity. She saw he was one of three or four people who had surgical suture kits and were stitching up their friends and comrades. He seemed to be having a problem with his hands, though—he kept stopping and flexing his fingers, clenching and unclenching them.

But he always went back to what he was doing, a look of grim determination on his face. And whenever she tried to catch his eye, he was always looking somewhere else.