The Calling (25 page)

He nodded, smoother this time.

“Do you want her mourning you when all you have to do is jump?”

“N-n-no, sir. I don’t.”

“Then, follow me.” He wrenched Brian’s fingers from the cold metal just as a colossal wave hit portside. The rigging sank deep into the waves, the boat tilting at an ever-steeper angle. With terror in his eyes, the kid scuttled backward to grab the winch.

Justin seized both of Brian’s arms before the boy could attach himself to the boat again. No longer anchored, they both slid down the deck to the waiting water.

He pushed the kid over the railing that still peeked above the waterline. Brian’s eyes grew mad with fear. He thrashed uncontrollably in the waves. Justin jumped in after him, then looked up at the helicopter to identify the bucket’s position. It hit the water five feet away.

He sucked down a deep breath and swam to Brian’s side. The kid reached out with desperate hands and clawed at his shoulders as if he were a tree to climb. In his panic, he ripped Justin’s swim mask off.

“Brian!” he yelled, just before the force of the kid’s body plunged Justin beneath a wave. He dove several feet under the boy, breaking free from the kid’s desperate grasp. He emerged behind Brian and wrapped one firm arm around the kid’s neck. “Be still!”

The kid was lost to fear. With flailing arms, he thrashed out of Justin’s grasp. His elbow nailed Justin’s nose.

Justin’s head snapped back. The piercing pain shot straight through his eyes.
Christ!
Brian fought him, the waves, anything that’d bear the brunt of his thrashing arms.

Fuck.
The kid was going to get them both killed. Justin reared back a fist and drove it forward. He clocked Brian square on the jaw. The kid’s eyes dimmed as if he were counting stars, then his body went limp.

Justin flipped the mask over his head, settling it around his eyes, only to stop at the slightest pressure to his nose. When he pulled the mask back, a puddle of blood had settled into the recesses. He groaned while securing the strap around the back of his head. He might as well be shoving a knife up his sinuses, but without the mask, the waves assaulting his eyes would make seeing impossible.

Gritting his teeth against the pain, he wrapped an arm around the kid’s neck. Fighting the currents threatening to tear Brain from his arms, he swam toward the basket. A wave smashed against the steel hull of the boat, and his focus split between getting Brian to safety and keeping track of the boat surging toward them.

The deck railing rose several feet above the sea’s surface. With only five feet between the rescue basket and the vessel, he was aware of the deadly situation they’d be in if a wave tossed the boat into them. Maybe he could do something about that.

He reached deep into his core, calling on his powers, waiting for the hum of energy to fill his body. The weakest of trembles coursed through his limbs, barely touching the water engulfing him. He grunted and closed his eyes, aware of his vulnerability, but he had to try. Nothing. He was spent. The stabbing pain from his nose, the burning of his muscles, the fatigue, all combined to make him useless.
Gonna have to do this the human way
.

Justin opened his eyes as the boat heaved toward them. He tensed when Brian slipped from his grasp, then quickly latched onto the kid’s collar. “You awake?”

The boy’s eyes fluttered open, the fear rising anew in his expression, but his limbs remained limp in the water, the tides swaying them side to side.

Time to go
. With a knee in the kid’s back and both hands on the kid’s shoulders, Justin shoved him toward the basket. “Grab hold.”

Brian clutched the metal bars and scurried in. The teenager settled inside, his back resting against the side grate. Justin’s mind homed in on his next move. First on the agenda was putting a good distance between him and the ship.

He braced his legs against the bucket, preparing to back away and give Ty the thumbs up. A tug on his drysuit sleeve lurched him to a stop. He jerked his arm, but the fabric was caught between the bucket grates. When he glanced down, he saw a sharp point of metal jutting through his suit. Christ, they’d been doing so many rescues, they hadn’t had time for repairs.

Justin tugged his arm toward his chest, but the metal held tight. Given the thickness of his drysuit, ripping the thing would be a bitch.

The bucket began to rise. Justin’s gaze snapped up. He hadn’t given the signal to lift.
What the hell?

With only a split second to spare, he grabbed onto the structural bar and tried to hoist himself inside. He’d ride with the kid and free his arm on the way up.

As he heaved upward, the water ripped out from under him. A huge space opened below him after a swell plowed by, leaving the trough directly underneath his dangling legs. His muscles trembled from holding himself aloft. Jesus, he was worn out. With one last effort, he sucked in a deep breath and lifted his spent body upward, his torso clearing the threshold of the basket.

Just before he could fall in, a massive wave clocked him from behind. Every bone in his back popped as he slammed into the metal. His grip slipped, and his arms gave out. The only thing between him and the inky water below were his fingers holding tight to the basket.

The bucket swayed under his weight, and he knew he didn’t have the strength to do another pull-up. A cramp seized his right arm. He moaned against the invisible fingers wringing the life out of his bicep. With his right arm in the cusp of a spasm and his left arm caught on the bucket, Justin began to panic.

Stay calm
. Ty would lower the bucket. Or maybe Justin was where Ty had always wanted him—at his mercy.

The hoist accelerated upward. Justin fought against the cramp and tried to clamber aboard. The boy must have forgiven the punch because he scooted toward him, wrapped his hands around Justin’s arms, and attempted to tug him to safety.

The basket tipped.

Justin’s fingers slid down the structural bar before catching on the ridge of the basket. He looked down to see the floodlights illuminating the boat fifteen feet below. Christ, he was dangling directly above the vessel’s railing, his altitude ever increasing.

Brian’s eyes widened as he slid toward Justin. The kid scrambled backward, but he was in a useless fight against gravity and the rain-slicked metal. The further he slipped, the more the basket tilted.

From the weight of Justin’s body, his sleeve jerked free, the fabric gashing open, the sharp metal tong scratching at his skin. He maneuvered his arm away from the spiked point, firming up his grip. If he fell, he’d hit the boat with a force that could kill him.

Brian struggled to right the bucket. He couldn’t steady himself against the wet grates, and he slipped down the incline.

The basket tipped further.

With his heart thundering louder than the sea, Justin stared at the ship directly below him. The vessel heaved upward under the force of a massive wave, the railing rocketing skyward, reaching for him.

The wind howled, and rain dripped down his brow. As he clenched the cold metal, a desperate whoosh of air left his lungs. He had only two options, and he didn’t like either of them. He could hold on and hope they made it to the helicopter before they both tumbled to their deaths, or he could let go.

Justin closed his eyes, said a prayer to his bastard god, and let go.

Chapter 18

Mandy stood at the nurse’s station with a pen clutched in her hand. She scribbled the medication request for Room 224, then set the clipboard on the desk to free her hands for a much-needed massage. Every muscle in her body ached from picking up so many extra shifts, but she knew if she stayed home, parked on the couch, she’d just worry about Justin battling the insane weather.

As she rubbed the tension from her neck with her knuckles, a pink blur rushed down the hall. She turned toward the motion just in time to see Amelia, a nurse on her floor, skid to a stop and come rushing to her side. Amelia’s eyes were wide, and she gasped for breath.

Had the toddler in Room 230 taken a turn for the worse? Oh, God! She hoped not. That sweet angel had a quick smile and an easy giggle, even though she was fighting a nasty respiratory virus. “Is Abigail okay?” she asked, the worry in her voice too thick to mask.

Amelia nodded, but her face grew grimmer, and the silence between them became its own entity, arms stretched wide enough to envelope them both.

The bad weather. Amelia’s expression. The sick feeling that sat heavy in her gut.

“Justin,” Mandy whispered, knowing that something had happened to him. She could feel it down to her very core.

“He had an accident,” Amelia said.

She could hardly coax the next words out, too afraid of Amelia’s answer. “Where is he?”
Please be alive. Please be alive
.

“ER.”

She whimpered with relief. “Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know.”

The relief disappeared as if it had never been. She threw the pen onto the desk, whirled toward the elevators, then stopped in panic. Who would cover her patients?

“Go,” Amelia said. “I’ll take care of everything.”

She tried to squeak the word
thanks
past her tight throat, but nothing was going to get through the vise of her teeth until she knew Justin was okay.

“You need to hurry,” Amelia whispered.

A fog descended on her. Like something out of an old-school horror movie, the white mist shrouded her, cutting off all her senses. She didn’t remember the ride down the elevator or the jog to the ER or asking where Justin could be found. Yet somehow, she was standing in front of the CT scanner room, and she knew he was in there.

With trembling fingers, Mandy pushed open the door. When she caught sight of Justin, the haze retreated as if shocked into oblivion. His eyes closed, he lay on a gurney next to the machine. His normally golden skin was sickly gray, and beads of sweat blossomed across his forehead.

Two nurses stood on the far side of the CT table. In unison, they leaned over, grasped the sheet Justin lay on and used it to pull him onto the table. He gasped, his face contorting in agony. Mandy whimpered, half elated that he was conscious, half horrified to see him suffering.

Holding back tears, she hurried inside and grasped his clammy hand in hers. Justin opened his eyes and stared off into the distance, his gaze dim. His lips were the same color as his cheeks, ashen and dry. She wanted to kiss him, to ease his cracked skin with her touch, but he seemed so frail she was afraid the slightest pressure would hurt him.

“Can you give him anything? Maybe morphine?” she pleaded.

“Not until after the CT,” the nurse responded.

Mandy nodded, knowing it was protocol to hold back pain medicine until the extent of a patient’s injuries was known, but it seemed damned cruel now that her Justin was the one hurting.

“We need to scan him,” the nurse added in a respectful whisper.

Mandy leaned down and kissed Justin’s forehead gently, his skin moist beneath her lips. “I’ll be right back.” She reluctantly inched away, hugging herself tightly as the machine whirred and beeped, and Justin disappeared inside.

For her own sanity, she watched his vitals on the portable monitor—blood pressure stable, heart rate accelerated, but not abnormal, and oxygen levels slightly lower than normal, but not dangerously low. His vitals might’ve been okay, but she worried he was slowly bleeding to death from the inside.

Ten minutes later, she sat holding his hand in the ER. The incessant beeping of the heart monitor drummed a reassuring tune that he was alive. Every day in her job, she listened to that noise but, sitting next to the man she loved, she thought the sound sweeter than an angel’s voice.

Mandy inhaled a calming breath and let her gaze follow the thin tube that snaked from the clear fluid bag toward the crook in his arm. She shook her head, tears trailing down her cheeks, and studied her brave Justin lying fragile and pale, attached to a half-dozen monitors and tubes.

He was strong, a proud lighthouse standing tall among jagged rocks and crashing surf. She was the weak one. Of the two of them, she should be lying in the hospital bed, not him. The thought knocked a memory loose, and Justin’s words echoed in her mind.
You don’t know if your cancer’s coming back, anymore than I know if I’ll die in a car wreck tomorrow
. This was the wreck he’d been talking about.

Justin gritted his teeth and stared off into space. She had seen that look before on patients who were in too much pain to even hear their loved one’s voices. She prayed his diagnosis would come fast so they could properly sedate him.

When the doctor walked in, she jumped from the chair. “What’s wrong with him?”

The doctor pushed her glasses higher up her nose. “He has a small tear in his spleen and five broken ribs.”

Mandy choked back a sob. “Is he bleeding internally?”

The woman shook her head. “His abdominal cavity has trace amounts of blood. If that increases, we’ll send him straight to surgery. For now, he’s going to ICU for monitoring.”