Anything, Anywhere, Anytime (25 page)

So why wasn't she turning cartwheels in excitement? Or sleeping away the hours with blissful dreams?

Shuffling restlessly on her cot, she kicked the sleeping bag free, the quilted fabric too hot. Of course, no cover proved too chilly. One more reason she couldn't drift off. The erratic schedules of these military people had her sleeping patterns all flipped, leaving her cranky, restless, with too many lonely hours to remember one kiss that should not have changed so much.

The true reason for her insomnia.

Barren walls stared back at her, their monotony broken only by the hooks holding her drying underwear, daisy scarf and spare dress. Soon she would have a closet of clothes again. She would be leaving shortly, they assured her. Only a couple more days for the impending sandstorm to pass and apparently red tape would be snipped cleanly with the State Department. She would be away from Ammar's constant threat.

Except she would also be away from Drew.

Drew.
Rolling to her tummy, she punched her pillow, smoothed it, hugged it to her. She'd never met anyone like him. Someone so strong who did not use strength to overpower those around him into submission. He took the time to be gentle.

She'd been out with boys at the university and sometimes on trips with her mother away from Rubistan.

She'd even flirted a bit on her graduation cruise, coming close a time or two to going further than a few kisses, curious as to what would make her mother leave her country and first family. What would cause other women to risk being publicly ostracized? Or worse.

But she had always stopped short because her practical nature held her back from risking all for something that was simply...nice.

Kissing Drew Cullen was way beyond
nice.

He'd stirred more feeling with that one simple encounter than all of those
boys
combined. Could it simply be his experience, his age?

Maybe.

Regardless, she suddenly understood why women risked everything. Because right now, she would risk all to have more than just one kiss to remember Drew Cullen by.

A door slam jarred her back to the present. Feet thumped, picked up pace, pounding down the hall.

Urgently, faster than the regular nocturnal activity of this never-sleeping group.

Curious, she crossed to the door, peered outside left, smiled briefly at the poor guard stuck watching her.

Then looked right. Monica double-timed toward her.

Yasmine slid out into the corridor. "Is something wrong?''

Her sister slowed only briefly, tucking a wayward strand from her braid behind her ear. "Nothing for you to worry about."

Yasmine gripped her arm. "Then why are you running?''

"Work." Monica pulled free and sprinted past.

A niggle of concern tickled. Why would her sister, a doctor, be running? Yasmine trailed Monica and let the guard worry about keeping up. Breathless, she caught her at the stairs. "Since you don't have time, I will run alongside while you talk."

Monica's exasperated sigh hissed through her teeth. "Something went wrong on a training exercise."

"Training accident? A flight?" The tickle turned to a painful pinch, but she kept pace.

"No. The Army. A gunshot wound, one or two. There are too many damned stories coming through for me to get anything straight but that they need me at the medical transport before the ambulance brings in the wounded."

"Will you have to leave?"

Monica stopped, sighed. Ill-disguised anger snapped from her eyes. "If it happens that someone is so mortally wounded that we have to fly out, I'll be sure to put in a good word for you to get a spare seat."

Her sister's words smacked over her. "That's not what I meant."

"I'm sorry, then," she acquiesced, backing away. "But I don't have time to talk."

Monica pivoted and jogged toward a door opening onto the parking ramp.

How long would she have to wait for answers?

Not as long if she followed her sister. Yasmine crossed, paused in the doorway, searching for a benign place to wait where security would not drag her back to her room. Wind lifted her hair.

Her hair?

Her hand drifted up to her bare head. She'd been so concerned about Drew she'd abandoned twenty-three years of training by leaving her scarf behind.

All because of a man she'd known less than a week.

The wind whispered her mother's voice over her.
Ah, sugar, five seconds after I set eyes on your daddy
stepping out of that Mercedes, I k new. He was the one.

As much as she loved her mother, she wasn't sure she wanted the kind of emotion that made a woman do reckless things. But what if she never had the chance? What if the ambulance speeding in the distance held Drew?

Yasmine's feet carried her a step farther outside, as far as she dared. She did not want her escort hauling her back inside where no one would care to give her answers to the questions already tumbling over themselves in her head.

She watched her sister sprint toward the open end of one of the planes. Light poured from the gaping back ramp, people massing into a clump of desert-tan uniforms. She would have thought she could recognize Drew anywhere, but there were too many, too far away.

A military ambulance streaked across the cement. Stopped. Unloaded, the mass of uniforms blocking her from viewing the patient.

Who?

Night wind whipped all around her as it had her first night cooking the goat stew. The chilly gusts were nothing compared to the icy fear stinging through her veins. Only a handful of days before she had stared into intensely beautiful blue eyes and everything changed.

She inched deeper into the biting wind's path. Time was precious. She should have remembered after her mother's and father's deaths too early in life from a fluke flu epidemic.

Just as the unrelenting gusts tore away facades with brutal force, she felt her own self-delusions strip away. She wanted more than just a memory to take with her when she left. She craved the freedom to be with Drew.

Jack threw away his half-full paper cup of coffee and charged down the side stairs of the mobile command post now that the Army ambulance had arrived. Not that he would be able to do a damned thing for the injured private.

His boots pounded pavement toward the open ramp of the medivac plane-—fully equipped for surgery.

Shouldering through the crowd at the base of the plane, he worked his way into sight of the mayhem inside.

He didn't know who the page had found, Monica or one of the other deployed doctors. Either way, he hoped to find the physician doing nothing more than setting some bones or stitching up an arm.

Instead he found Monica covered in blood.

He didn't do blood well, odd thing for a military guy, but there it was. Since Tina's death, all he remembered about that night was blood from the emergency C-section as they worked to save the baby while trying to save her. All the while dragging him out of the room.

To this day he couldn't even get a vaccine without breaking into a cold sweat.

For the most part his job didn't involve a lot of blood, and that was fine by him. Monica's job was all about blood. But even as his head went a little light, he couldn't look away from her involved in something so much more intense than a routine flight physical.

IV bags dangled from poles, some with clear fluid, another two dripping blood into the tube. Even with the olive-green surgical drapes, Jack could still see enough—the young man's boots, his head with an oxygen mask over his nose. A medic stood to the side, suctioning out the soldier's mouth. And in the middle of the orders and bustles and suctioning noise he heard wheezing.

Gurgling.

Death sounds of a lung deflating.

The magnitude of what was happening hit him. A kid was in there dying. Someone he had brought here.

Jack braced a hand on the side of the C-17. Constricted breaths pinched inside his chest.

Monica flipped up the field medical card and scanned the contents, face unemotional. Her fingers tightened momentarily around the card.

She spoke succinctly, her firm unshakable voice somehow piercing the echoing clatter of feet and jangling equipment. "ABCs, people. Airway. Breathing. Circulation."

Her gloved finger swiped his mouth, pulling free a J-shaped device that had secured his tongue flat. With quick efficiency, she slid a tube down his throat, setting up oxygen and suction into one system while the flight nurse took vitals and called out updates.

Monica peeled back the bandage.

"Damn." The word hissed from between her teeth, her only hint of emotion before she began to flush out the wound.

Monitors squawked a half second before the flight nurse called, "He's crashing."

"Paddles."

The cavernous aircraft filled with activity. Equipment rolled from offstage closer to the litter holding their patient. Medical staffers moved around each other at breakneck speed, all focused on the patient yet never impeding one another's momentum. An absurd ballet of life and death. Organized pandemonium.

"Switch to 300. Clear."

The body jolted.

Silence.

Twice more she repeated the routine until defeat slowly filtered onto every face. Except Monica's.

"Two minutes down, Doctor," the flight nurse called.

"Get me the rib spreaders," Monica called.

A brief hesitation.

"Spreaders." No shouting, just an irrefutable order that elicited instant results, her complete control essential when seconds counted. Her assertiveness, that bossiness he teased her about, took on a new complexion, a forgivable trait in light of what her job demanded.

She leaned over the private with the oversize tongs.

He would never forget the sound. Like cracking open a chicken carcass.

Blood splurted.

He heard gagging behind him, followed by retching fading with running feet heading to the side of the plane.

He didn't turn, immobilized even as his own supper knocked around inside his gut.

Never leave your wingman.

She reached her hand inside the prone man's chest. Looked up. Closed her eyes. He watched the gentle ripple of muscles flexing under her sleeve while she held the man's heart in her hand and squeezed, again, again.

Silence.

Stubbornness and confidence stamped on her features. No wonder this woman gave off the air of never needing anyone.

"Four minutes," the flight nurse said.

Her jaw tightening, Monica kept squeezing.

"Dr. Hyatt, it's been six minutes."

Her eyes closed tighter for—hell, he didn't even know how long—before her chest deflated with a sigh, eyes opening.

Her bloody hand slid out of the chest cavity.

The roaring pandemonium stopped. Short. Quiet. Nothing but blood, hanging tubes and still people remained.

Shit. Jack's fist clenched against the metal of the plane. His eyes closed.

"Time of death..." Monica checked a watch, continued the pronouncement of calm facts riddled with bitter undertones.

This woman did not accept failure well. Being responsible for her family, her patients—feeling the weight of someone's life in her hands—had to be one helluva load to carry.

Jack looked down, saw a pair of boots beside his, not even sure when someone had joined him. He glanced up, found the Colonel, not looking much steadier than he felt.

Monica tore off her gloves. Snap. Fling. Restrained anger and frustration filled the belly of the plane.

He started to go toward her, but realized she wouldn't be ready for comfort. Not yet.

At least he'd learned something from the Vegas mess.

Backing away, he left Monica to her patient, the Colonel to his troop. Jack cleared the ramp, pivoting back toward the mobile command post, the death gurgle still echoing in his head.

A shadow snagged his attention.

Across the cement, near the main terminal door, a lone female figure stood with a military cop a few feet to the side. Yasmine. What the hell was she doing here? Regardless, the last thing Monica needed was round two of a hissing match with her sister tonight.

Here was something he could do to help her. Jack strode across the open tarmac toward Yasmine, his steps heavier than just ten minutes ago but no less determined. Slowing but not stopping, he gripped her arm to guide her through the door. "You need to be inside."

She dug in her heels with far more strength than her size or weight would dictate. "Who?''

"What?"

"Who was hurt? How bad is it? Monica wouldn't tell me anything."

What did it matter to her? She knew her sister was fine and she'd only just met the rest of them. Could she care that much about the Colonel after only a few days?

Of course, he'd been knocked on his ass five seconds after seeing Monica for the first time.

Jack gentled his hold on her arm. "One of the troops—a private—was injured during a training exercise."

He left out mention of the death until the rest of the deployed soldiers could be told. Still couldn't quite wrap his brain around it himself yet.

Yasmine blanched, flinched. Then undeniable relief flooded her face. "But Colonel Cullen is all right?"

"Yes, he's fine. I saw him myself less than a minute ago." How odd that she hadn't waited to ask Monica.

He knew Yasmine was scared spitless of him, but she'd opted to question him rather than her own sister.

Her sister.

Yasmine was his sister-in-law.

What a strange damned thought right now. But after a life spent in a tight-knit family, the connection niggled at him. This woman wasn't just a pain in the ass, she was also at least temporarily his family, which made her his pain in the ass, too. His responsibility, even if things went to shit while she was here, the woman's connection to Monica was permanent.

"Thank you, Major Korba, but maybe if I stay a while longer they will have more information."

"Come on, Yasmine, you really do need to be inside before one of the security police makes a scene none of us needs tonight." He reached for her arm again.

She almost managed to suppress her fearful wince. Just as proud as someone else he knew. But she wasn't leaving without more of an answer.