Page 6 of What is Lost

“Stop!” Driver hacked off the rest with a savage cut of his right hand. “Iknowthe regs, Lieutenant. And so, youmeasured?” Driver was toe to toe with her. Spit flecked his lips. His features were ruddy and choked. “Thenwhyis that nameplatecrooked, Lieutenant?”

“Because of what’s underneath it, sir.”

Oh, crap. John’s heart skipped a beat. He knew Roni and where this was headed, what she meant.No, Roni, don’t do it.

“Underneath?”Driver’s brows knitted. “What are you talking about, Lieutenant? What do you mean, what’s underneath?”

“I mean what’sunderneathmy nameplate, sir.”

“And what’sthat?”

“Why, sir,” Roni said with just the slightest inflection ofwell-duh, “a breast?”

Half the classdecided she was suicidal. The other half thought she wanted to be kicked out and probably would be since Driver would send her to the base commandant for a reprimand, maybe even a dishonorable discharge. The Army couldn’t bethathard up.

“Seriously,” Horner, an orthopedist, blustered, “she’s not even really a doctor, is she? I mean, she’s ashrink.”

“She’s got MD after her name,” John said. “She did an ER residency.”

“Yeah, that’s the point. She switched. I bet I can guess why, too.” Horner’s wolfish grin gave way to a broad, self-satisfied smile that showed all his teeth. “Because she couldn’t cut it. That’s why shrinks go into psychiatry in the first place: because a shrink hospital’s the one place where the nuts feed the squirrels. If they have to bringmeinto an ER, I sure wouldn’t wantherto be the only doc in the hospital.”

There was some general shuffling of feet from the others, a few coughs, but no one rushed in to defend Roni, and John gave up. Why was he even arguing with this moron? Horner was nothing more than a glorified bone carpenter. Everyone knew orthopedists were strong as bulls and twice as smart.

When an hour and a half passed and still no Roni—Horner opined that maybe Driver had sentfor a firing squad—the others drifted off to chow. John stayed behind and fretted. If Roni were booted, that would be bad. On the other hand, John had only known her for, what, a month? Heck, they’d probably get assigned to different bases right off the bat and he’d never see her again. Except the idea of Roni being booted out left him feeling as if someone had taken a melon baller and scooped out his guts...

That thought derailed as the barracks door squealed. He looked over in time to see Roni motoring for the stairs.

“Hey.” Popping off the couch, he took the distance to the foyer in three strides. “Hey, Roni, wait!”

Of all thepeople who might’ve hung around—most were ghouls, anyway, eager to feed off her misfortune and distress—she never expected John Worthy. She’d noticed him noticing her, of course. Even thought about him...thatway. Not that she ever encouraged him because she’d already decided: no entanglements. DCC was only six weeks long. Sure, that was enough time for some people to make like jackrabbits and hop from one bed to the next. She had plenty of other ways to work off steam and, in fact, she’d already decidedwhat she would do next: get her rental, grab herself a rifle, and...

So, she could’ve kept going. She hadn’t gotten this far by caving in to anyone for anything. Yet she stopped and turned—though she kept one foot on the bottom step just in case she was wrong, and John turned out to be a turd.

“Yeah?” That was all she could think to say.

“Are you...” A flurry of emotions chased over his features too quickly for her to read, but was that indecision? Shyness? “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Wow, she had to be blowing him away with her clever repartee, so she added, “I’m fine.”

“What happened?” But then, before she could answer, he held up both hands like a traffic cop. “I’m sorry. That was wrong. It’s none of my business.”

“It’s okay.” Which was the truth, so she lied, but only a little. “We didn’t talk about much.” There, how was that for vague?

“Talked.” He goggled. “You andDriver? Aboutwhat?”

“Just…” Reaching behind her head, she tugged an elastic band from the end of her braid. Her hair was, a stylist once said (and not without a trace of envy), a really luscious shade of chestnut mingled with auburn highlights and completely her own. When she started her ER residency, she’d debated about cutting her hair because she worried the guys inthe program wouldn’t take her seriously. When she switched to psychiatry, an analyst told her that her hair might inspire fantasies in her male patients. She decided the analyst was simply a dirty old man hiding behind a Freud-style goatee and disregarded the advice. Anyway, her hair was just long enough to brush the wings of her scapulae. “Stuff,” she said, finger-combing out kinks. “We just talked about stuff.

“Stuff,” he echoed.

“Yeah.” She felt a smile flirt with her mouth. “Stuff.”

“Uh-huh. So, are you stillhere? Did you get kicked out?”

“Kicked out?” Her fingers stilled. “No. I mean, he wasangry.”

“Seeing as how you were kind of a wise ass?”

“Ow.” She gave him a mock scowl. “Whose side are you on?”Wait, are you flirting?

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