Page 64 of Deadly Strain

She crossed her arms over her chest and attempted to relax enough to lower her blood pressure, but her mind wouldn’t stop revisiting their impossible situation.

Marshall blamed her for the death of his son. She understood that. She blamed herself for his son’s death, too. What she didn’t understand was his belief that she was somehow culpable for the deaths of his patrol. They hadn’t followed procedure. They’d waited too long to put on their protective gear. Yet, he seemed absolutely certain she was at fault. Had his rage compromised his objectivity? That seemed likely. And she’d dragged the A-Team into this mess and now Cutter was dead.

She should tell them all why Marshall had seemingly gone nuts, but she needed them to help her complete the mission.

The mission came first.

Exhaustion weighed her eyelids down, and she didn’t have the physical resources to fight the oblivion of sleep.

The rattle and shake of the helicopter kept waking her up to snippets of the conversation around her.

“Why the fuck does Marshall hate her so much?” Hernandez shouted.

“I don’t know,” Sharp answered. “She didn’t buck any of his orders until we got to the village and he wanted to just bomb the place.”

“Maybe they’d had an altercation before?” Hernandez’s question faded into a fog.

A hard bump of turbulence woke her to hear Runnel saying, “It’s like he’s gone crazy of the batshit-crazy variety.”

She knew why he wasn’t acting rationally. The IED explosion two years ago had damaged the living as much as the dead.

Faces slid past her mental eye.People shouting, hiding, shooting. Someone calling out for medical help. She had to get there fast—dodge soldiers taking defensive positions and reach the bloody man on the ground outside of his destroyed vehicle. He was dead. She continued forward. There were two of her nurses, both dead, but the man underneath them was alive. His calls for help spurring her to... A shout from the right and—She heard herself screaming.

Men were yelling, the voices indistinct. The whole room vibrated at a rate that felt wrong and uncomfortable. The discomfort rose, helping her fight her way back to complete consciousness.

“What the fuck happened to her, man?” Hernandez shouted.

“I don’t know,” Sharp yelled back. “Unlike most women, the doc doesn’t talk about personal stuff.”

Wonderful, they were talking about her.

“What happened during that convoy attack?” March asked Sharp. “Did you read the entire report?”

“I read the official citation for her medal and talked to one of the men who was there,” Sharp answered. “He said she more than earned it.”

“So, what is this?” Hernandez demanded of all of them. “Post-traumatic stress?”

“Yes,” Grace said, opening her eyes and trying to sit up properly, but Sharp put his hand on her upper back and urged her to keep her head down. As much as it comforted her, as much as she would like to crawl onto his lap and hug him for a year, she waved him off. Not in front of the team. “I started experiencing panic attacks a few months ago in response to specific stimuli.”

“You sound like a textbook, Doc,” Hernandez said. “PTSD doesn’t follow a textbook.”

Tears dripped down her face, but she found the strength to smile anyway. “I’ve discovered that the hard way.”

“What’s Marshall’s problem with you, Doc?” Sharp asked.

She didn’t want to remember. “Someone died during that attack. Marshall blames me for that soldier’s death.”

The men of the A-Team stared at her. They didn’t need to give voice to the question on all their faces.

“No,” she told them, weary to her bones of carrying the guilt for events out of her control. “I wasn’t personally responsible for the death Marshall blames me for. I think I could have prevented it, had I made different decisions, but then other people would likely have died. It was a no-win situation. Hindsight sucks.”

Everyone but Sharp nodded. He watched her with narrow eyes and a tilt to his head that told her he knew there was more to the story.

“Nothing about the way he’s conducted himself is rational,” Sharp said. “Maybe he needs some time stateside, or counseling, or there’s something else we don’t know about going on, but it’s clear he’s advocating actions that are questionable, if not illegal.”

The face of every soldier on the aircraft transformed, becoming cold and calculating. No one said a thing, but they didn’t need to.

They were on her side.

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