Page 69 of Mountain Challenge

Beau ran through the open front door, though he could just as easily have stepped in through the hole in the wall. Ry wondered how stable the hut was at this point. Beau stopped to look at Getty’s unconscious form, his jaw clenched tight. “The helicopters are here,” Beau informed them. “The storm is dying down. Let’s get everyone ready.” And then Ry heard it, loud and clear, the sound of the whirling rotors. From her position beside Laura, Isla raised her eyes. Their gazes met and held, and in her gaze Ry read the trauma she’d been through … but also something else, something that looked a lot like hope.

36

Ry

"I’m fine,” she said, her tone growing in impatience. This was the ninth or tenth time she’d said the same thing in the past hour. “The doctor said so.”

Ry tightened his grip on her hand—the one that didn’t have an IV line stuck on the back. He forced himself to take a deep breath. The doctorhadsaid Isla was going to be fine. He’d also said a lot of other things, about her levels of dehydration, and the bruises on her body … things that made Ry wish he’d killed Getty instead of knocking him out.

“You’re thinking about him again,” she said, squeezing his hand. Her tone held understanding, but no condemnation.

“I’m sorry,” Ry said. “Are you sure you’re not in pain?”

“I’m fine. Can you please go see Hugo and Laura?”

Ryhadbeen to see Hugo and Laura, multiple times in the last twenty-four hours, since they’d arrived in the hospital. He couldn’t believe it was night-time again. He’d caught a few naps,here or there, but sleep was a commodity he wasn’t sure he believed in anymore. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d stretched out on his bed.

Because Val was a doctor at the hospital, Ry had been able to get real-time updates from her, so he knew Laura was doing better and resting comfortably. The pressure in her skull, which had worried the neurologist at first, had been released, and her condition had stabilized. The doctor was confident that she was out of immediate danger and that she’d wake up on her own when she was ready. It was the most anyone could have asked for, after what she’d been through. Her family had come up from Brussels and was with her now. Ry had met her parents, but they kept asking about Hugo, and he didn’t know what to say to them.He might never walk againdidn’t seem to be what they needed to hear.

“If you’re sure,” he said. Isla nodded, but still Ry hesitated. And he understood that this fear of leaving her alone was on him—something he was going to have to come to terms with. He stood up, his cracked ribs protesting. “I’ll be right back,” he said, giving Isla a kiss on the forehead, one of the few parts of her body that wasn’t bruised.

He walked down the stairs, heading straight to the first floor waiting room. He hadn’t yet told Isla that Hugo was in surgery again. Last night, the doctors had hesitated to perform the high-risk surgery to remove the bullet when they’d seen how tightly it was lodged against his spinal column. But today, after consulting a team of specialists from all over the world, it’d been determined that, for a man of Hugo’s age and fitness level, the risk of leaving it inside was greater. One of the specialists consulted, a surgeon at Paris’s famous Hôpital Saint Louis, had traveled to perform the surgery herself.

Ry forced a deep breath into his lungs, realizing he’d stopped breathing. He felt the weight of responsibility pressing on him.This was killing him. Hugo was his friend, his teammate. He’d risked everything to get Isla and Laura back. And now, Ry was torn between the absolute relief that Isla was safe, and that Laura was healing, and the fear that Hugo wouldn’t recover. Because Hugo was going to live, but Ry didn’t know what kind of life this would be for him, if he couldn’t walk again.

Exhaustion settled over him as he pushed the door open to the waiting room. Every time he came down here, there were more people in the room. People who cared about them. The entire team was here, of course—Beau, Alex, Tristan, and Lorenz. Yvette sat next to Alex, their hands intertwined. She rushed up as soon as she saw him. Ry swallowed hard through the lump in his throat, knowing he was close to making a fool of himself.

“Yvette,” Ry said, leaning down to hug her. She must have come straight from work.

“How are Isla and Laura doing?” Yvette asked. By now, the rest of the group surrounded him. His team, but also colleagues from their sibling PGHM unit. Damien, their leader, was there, sitting next to Beau. Drake, Damien’s second-in-command, who Ry knew was Hugo’s good friend and sometimes sparring partner, with his wife, Isolde, who was one of the psychologists at the station. Ry’s gaze stuck for a long instant on Kat, their pilot. Luc, her fiancé, who was in a wheelchair, wasn’t with her. He must have stayed home with their babies. Knowing Luc, he wouldn’t have wanted his wheelchair to serve as a reminder of what was at stake for Hugo.

Ry updated everyone quickly on what he knew, then asked his own question. “How’s the surgery going?”

It was Beau who answered. “Valentina came out a little while ago and told us he’s out of surgery and in the recovery room. The lead surgeon will be here to update us soon.”

“Did they get—“ The words stuck in his tongue, but he pushed them through. “Did they get the bullet out?” He felt the world around him start to spin, the heavy fluorescent lights overhead growing dimmer.

“Sit down, Ry,” Yvette said, taking him gently by the hand. “Head between your legs.” Ry swallowed back a groan as his rib muscles contracted, but the position helped. Slowly, the stars behind his eyes dissipated.

“I’ll bring a coffee,” a voice said.

“No more coffee. Bring him some water.”

He took the cup of lukewarm water someone placed in his hand and sipped. “I’m okay,” he said. He didn’t want people fawning over him, when he was fine, but Hugo wasn’t.It should be the other way around, a rough voice inside him whispered. If anybody had to pay such a hefty price, it should have been Ry, and not Hugo, to pay it. But that wasn’t the way the world worked. And there was no going back in time. All they could do was move forward.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the surgeon stepped into the waiting room, still in scrubs, her face etched with exhaustion. If she was surprised when she asked for Hugo’s immediate family and they all stepped forward, she didn’t say anything. Val stood next to her quietly.

“The surgery was complicated,” the surgeon began, her voice measured. Ry held his breath. If this was bad news …Stop it. He forced himself to keep listening. “We removed the bullet, but there were some challenges with the surrounding tissue. There’s still a risk of infection, and we’re monitoring him closely for any sign of nerve damage.” Ry heard what the doctor wasn’t saying. She wasn’t saying Hugo was going to walk again.But she’s not saying he isn’t, either.

“We have to wait,” Val said, as if reading Ry’s mind. She reached over and squeezed his hand gently. “He’s waking up now. Would you like to see him, Ry?”

Ry nodded, swallowing back a sob as he followed the doctors through the doors into the restricted area.

“In here. You have five minutes, okay? And don’t tire him,” Valentina instructed.

Hugo’s eyes were closed when Ry let himself into the room. Lying on his side on the white hospital bed, with tubes and monitors tracing across his body like a network of wires, he looked pale and frail. It felt wrong, when Hugo was always so strong. But he was alive, Ry reminded himself. And that had to count for something.

Hugo’s eyes opened. “Ry. I was hoping it’d be you,” he said, his voice raspy.

---