Page 60 of Choosing Jenny
The impact hit my left shoulder hard enough to knock me face first into the wall. It rang my bell for a second and made me lose my balance. The boom of it pulsed in my ears. I started to slide down the infirmary wall but caught myself on a drawer I had pulled out. As I stood back up, the intense pain in my shoulder tried to steal my breath.
I spun around as fast as I could to figure out what the fuck had happened.
Sam stood, doubled over at the waist, vomiting on the floor. A hand cannon was on the ground near my feet. As the booming sound stopped pulsing in my ears, I could hear her between vomiting, “Please, I’m sorry—take it—I can’t do this anymore—gonna die!”
I was dizzy from the pain in my shoulder, so when I bent to take the hand cannon, I almost fell onto the floor. Somehow I managed to grab it and aimed it shakily at Sam.
“You shot me?” I rasped, trying to make sense ofwhy.
She nodded, sobbed and puked some more.
The scent of her vomit overtook the infirmary and made my own stomach start to revolt, so I barked, “Stop that!”
“Can’t…they’re all gonna die!” she wailed.
Jac’s voice came over the ship’s comms. “What the fuck happened back there?”
“Sam shot me!”
“Are you okay?” Jac asked, his voice tight with alarm.
“I’m not dead,” I said gratefully. “I’ll be right there.”
I steadied the hand cannon at Sam, both pissed and confused by her behavior. “Come with me. Now.”
To her credit, she stopped and threw up only one more time before we made it to the cockpit. She kept crying, though, and mumbling, “I’m so sorry.”
When we walked in, Jac took a second to assess us, to make sure I was in one piece, before he went back toCheesecake’scontrols. “What the fuck, Sam?”
She tried to answer but choked on her own dismay. I retrieved her water with herbs so she could clear her throat and speak. When she could talk again, she repeated herself, whispering, “I’m so sorry.”
Jac pursed his lips at her. “The route you gave us took us in the opposite direction of the coordinates Tiger gave us—”
She broke into a fresh round of tears. “I can’t believe he’s alive.”
“How far are we from him?” I asked Jac. I was in too much pain to deal with Sam’s freak out. I curled my left arm tightly to my body, otherwise, I’d pass out from the sheer agony.
“Far,” Jac said, his tone grim. “At least an hour, and that’s if I don’t worry about setting fire to the treetops from our speed.”
“Fuck!” Anger coursed through me and I lashed out, kicking Sam in the shin.
She collapsed to the floor. I didn’t think it was from the kick, so much as from her own emotional breakdown. She began to rock back and forth in a fetal position, mumbling apologies.
“Suck it up!” I snapped at her. “You were woman enough to abandon people and shoot me, so fucking deal with it!”
She stared up at me with watery eyes but said nothing.
Jac glanced at Sam with a frown, then to me. “When we realized it was Tiger on the comms, I patched through to Deacon’s ship,Allegiant, so he could listen in. They heard everything that just went down, so I’m letting them know you’re okay. They were already on their way to find us at Gram’s, so they’re much closer to the Vulavi island than we are now. They’re probably ten minutes out.”
I let out a shaky breath. “Thank god for small favors.”
Jac’s gaze searched my body. “Where are you shot?”
I turned to show him where I’d been struck in the shoulder. “How bad does it look?”
“Fuck,” he said, and winced. “That is not good.”
“I can’t move my arm,” I told him, still trying to deal with the excruciating pain radiating in that area.
