Page 111 of Exit Strategy

My failing hopes were propped toward dusk the next night, the high-pitched grinding whine of an engine broke through the surf, cutting above the sound of the constant wearing wind. Eventually, that whine became louder and louder and eventually the irregular “whump! whump! whump!”of a boat bottom smacking into the surface drew closer, the motors whining down as it pulled up alongside the sandbar.

“Kurt! Callie!” a woman’s voice,Sadie’svoice, cut over the sounds of the water.

“Here! We’re over here! Help me!” I cried and Ididcry, my tears of despair turning on a dime to tears of joy as the shadow of a boat cut across the glare of the setting sun.

“There!” I heard Roan’s voice and the motor kicked up as I shielded my eyes from the light behind them.

We were saved.

* * *

Kurt layin a hospital bed in the basement of the mansion. It was a state-of-the-art ICU, one that Roan had said they’d “Blessedly never had to use.”

Doc Max had met us at the house’s garage with a full nursing staff and gurney, swiftly wheeling Kurt away, down a ramp that switch backed under the house, to a full surgical theatre and this room right here.

I didn’t know what to make of that.

Kurt hadn’t needed surgery, thankfully, but he would be staying a while. I held his hand by the bedrail, his wrists wrapped in soft but thick buckled restraints. They’d needed to give him morphine and he’d reacted even worse on it this time than the last and his “altered mental status” as Doc Max had called it, led to one of the nurses being tossed aside like a broken toy.

“That’s going to cost extra,” Kyle had said flatly, and Sadie had punched him in the arm and looked my way as we’d watched everything on the monitor. I knew my face was pinched with worry but Kyle’s soft “Sorry, Callie,” had made me crumble and cry.

I was so worried for Kurt, and they wouldn’t let me in there. Instead, I was wrapped in one of those crappy and sparse wool blankets like you saw on television watching my loverona television struggle with the medical personnel charged with saving him.

It had been a nightmare. I just wanted to be with him but “not until he’s stable” was the rule and Ihated, hated,living by other peoples’ rules anymore.

Look what it’d gotten me.

“Come on, sweetie,” Sadie urged in a soothing low voice, rubbing up and down my shoulders. “Let’s get you cleaned up and warm. They’ll take good care of him, I promise. Look, Roan is there now.”

And he was and I was grateful, and I think that was the only thing that had allowed me to get up from my seat and let Sadie lead me away.

I had bathed, and she had helped me get the seaweed out of my hair and had helped me wash the stink of petroleum products that’d been floating in the water we’d landed in out of it. Now, here I sat in an expensive satin nightgown and matching robe, looking far more glamourous than I had a right to, willing Kurt to just wake up and look at me with my mind.

Of course, he didn’t. On top of the opioids, they’d had to sedate him.Heavily.

“How’s he doing, Love?” Roan asked from the doorway. I looked up and over and wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand, refusing to let his go.

“Sleeping, um… I don’t know, really. I mean, I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

“Remarkably, nothing too terrible,” Roan said dryly. “The worst of it is some broken toes, the rest?” He gave a little blasé shrug. “Soft tissue damage, he’ll hobble for a bit, but he won’t look like me.” He used the cane he had a hold of to tap on his false leg twice for emphasis.

I turned back to Kurt’s bruised and sleeping face. “I wouldn’t care either way as long as he’s here, as long as he stays with me.”

I reached up and caressed the stubble on his cheek and muttered, “What were you thinking?God,you crazy idiot.” But of course, there weren’t any answers except the soft sound of the blood pressure cuff around his bicep doing its automatic inflation. He was under monitoring and observation. Just to be safe.

Safe…I didn’t feel like it. Not with Kurt unconscious. I didn’t know that I would ever feel it again if he didn’t get healthy. Safe was the only thing I felt when in his arms and nowhere else.

“Come now,” Roan said, limping into the room.

“I don’t want to go,” I said. “I won’t.”

He chuckled and said, “A bit vague of me, yeah? No, I meant to help you into bed. You look exhausted.”

“What, with Kurt?” I asked, surprised. “Won’t the doctor—”

Roan chuckled and shook his head. “This isn’t a hospital in the traditional sense of the word, Callie. No one is going to scold you here.”

He came over and hung his cane on the bed rail and held out a hand to steady me. I took it and stood, and he raised it up gently, indicating I should step on the chair and use it as a ladder. I did and I got into the surprisingly wide hospital bed, lying down beside Kurt carefully, and gingerly laying my head on his shoulder.

---