Page 40 of No Greater Love
"Doc, there's no evac coming in time," Miller said, his voice steady but gentle. "You know that."
I ignored him, working frantically, methodically, my training a litany in my head. Stop the bleeding. Maintain the airway. Treat for shock.
"Come on, sweetheart," I pleaded, switching to chest compressions as her breathing stuttered. "Come on. Don't do this."
Her mother wailed, a sound so primal it seemed to vibrate in my bones. Her father spoke rapidly in Arabic, pressing his forehead to his daughter's, tears falling onto her increasingly pale face.
"She's losing too much blood," I said to Miller, to anyone listening. "I need a line in. I need fluids. I need—" My voice broke. What I needed was a fully-equipped trauma center, not a dusty room in a half-demolished building with a limited field kit. What I needed was to be back home, in Virginia. What I needed was to have never come here.
But I kept working. One compression. Two. Three. Pause to check. Nothing. Again.
"COME ON!" I screamed, abandoning all pretense of professional detachment. Sweat and tears mingled on my face, dropping onto her still chest. "BREATHE, GODDAMNIT!"
I was aware of the room falling silent around me except for the mother's keening and my own desperate counting. I was aware of Thompson sinking to his knees, of Miller standing helplessly nearby. But they receded to the periphery as my world narrowed to the tiny figure beneath my bloodied hands.
One compression. Two. Three.
Her gaze had emptied. The frantic rise and fall of her chest, now only moving because of my hands, stilled when I paused.
"Doc." Miller's hand on my shoulder. "Doc, she's gone."
"No." I shook him off, resumed compressions. "No, she's not. She can't be."
I ripped open another field dressing. Packed another wound that had stopped bleeding only because there was no more pressure behind it.
"She just needs more time. She just needs—" My voice caught as I felt the first signs of rigor already setting in around her jaw. Even then, I couldn't stop. "She's just a kid. She can't?—"
"Doc." Miller's voice firmer now, his grip on my shoulder tightening. "She's gone. We need to move."
Thompson had curled in on himself, rocking slightly, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust on his face. "We shouldn't even be here, man, we shouldn’t even fuckin’ be here..."
I stared at my bloodied gloves, at the combat gauze soaked black, at the tiny, still figure beneath them. Time seemed to bend inward on itself.
I couldn't save her.
I hadn't saved her.
fourteen
tasha
The sheetsstill held the warmth of our bodies, tangled together in the soft darkness of Nate's bedroom. I drifted in that peaceful space between sleep and wakefulness, muscles pleasantly sore, mind unusually quiet. It had been good. It had beenbetterthan good. The careful control Nate maintained in every aspect of his life translated to a focused intensity that left me breathless. But there had been tenderness too, vulnerability in his eyes that I hadn't expected.
A slight movement beside me drew me partway back to consciousness. Nate shifted in his sleep. I reached for him without opening my eyes, palm finding the solid warmth of his chest, feeling the steady rhythm of his heart.
The rhythm that suddenly wasn't steady at all.
His breathing changed first—quickening, becoming shallow. Then his body tensed beside me, muscles coiling like springs. A small sound escaped him, something between a whimper and a groan.
"Nate?" I murmured, still half-asleep.
He jerked suddenly, violently. His arm flung out, narrowly missing my face.
I sat up, fully awake now, switching immediately to assessment mode. His heart was racing; he was breathing fast and shallow, sweating profusely.
"No," he mumbled, head thrashing on the pillow. "No... get me an evac... bleeding out..."
My stomach dropped as understanding dawned. PTSD. Not just the garden variety stress reaction, this was a full-blown episode.
