The Night Is Mine

Chapter 28

28

Emily woke slowly, languidly, stretched out, and clanked her hand against the bed rail of the hospital bed. A quick brush confirmed that the sheets and hospital gown once again covered her.

“How are we feeling this morning?”

Standard nurse question. One she most certainly wasn’t planning to answer directly.

“Fine.” Floating. “No more headache.” Liquid. “I’m hungry.” Smiling with every square centimeter of her body.

Her brain offered to dismiss last night as a mere dream, after all, Mark was in Southwest Asia. And they’d never said a word. Not a single word.

Yet her body insisted she’d been wide awake every single, solitary, soaring, rocketing instant of Mark’s exquisite attention to her tingling flesh. He’d taken her places she didn’t know you could go and still be alive afterward. Places you could only reach with someone you trusted implicitly. She wanted the nurse gone so that she could relish every moment, every instant of—

With a blast of noise and activity, several people entered the room, easily a half dozen by all the rustling.

“Hey, Squirt.” That explained it.

“Hey, Sneaker Boy.” Again the barely controlled laugh from an unseen person in the room. Mark? Was he still here? Or had he departed as silently as he’d made love to her. Or at least to her body. He’d given exactly what she’d needed. Though how he came to be in her hospital room—

The doctors took over. Questions about pain, none. Dizziness, none. Sleep, an hour or so at most. But she wouldn’t mention that. She felt far too alive to mention that.

Chart shows you’re hungry, good. How do you feel?

Frustrated enough to rip your throat out if you don’t do something about these damned bandages, fantastic enough to be dubbed Queen for the Day.

They finally got down to it. Someone ordered the room lights dimmed. Someone else tipped up the bed until she was mostly sitting. And, at long last, the bandages began to come off. They kept explaining what they expected to see and the worst possible scenario.

She’d had better training than these docs’ bedside doom-and-gloom, so she forced herself to focus on the best possible outcome. Focus on strength and you will be strong. Focus on weakness and you will wind up dead.

“I see light.” And she did. Vague, fuzzy, but a brightness through the remaining layers of bandages.

An excited buzz filled the room that the doctor abruptly silenced.

“Even if there is nothing wrong with your eyes, they may be blurry at first. You haven’t used them in three days. Think of it as waking up. But I don’t want you to rub them.”

Not until she acknowledged his instructions would he proceed.

The last few layers came free.

The images were dim, blurry.

Each time she blinked, they became clearer. But they didn’t brighten.

“Why’s it so dark?” She fought to keep the fear from ripping out of her gut.

“The lights are very low in the room.”

She’d forgotten. A deep breath. Two. Three, and she felt better. She glanced sideways at the rack of med equipment, and the brightness of their dials looked normal—she could read them, though she had no idea what they meant.

Emily turned to face the doctors again and blinked a few more times.

“The focus seems good.” She could clearly see two doctors, a nurse, and Peter’s anxious face hovering over her. More were hidden back in the shadows.

She could see. The relief welled up inside until it threatened to bury her. Then the fears rolled forward like an advancing line of tanks. She could see, but how well? In the darkened room, everything was soft edged. And color. Any significant loss of color acuity, and she’d be relegated to flying transports the rest of her life.

“Let’s run a few tests before turning up the lights.”

They swung an apparatus over her face and determined in minutes that she was 20/20. Color tests revealed no failure of rods and cones. Every time someone said, “Normal,” after one test or another, the relief piled up inside her. Building broader and deeper. At first she could crawl, then stand. Soon she’d run, and if they kept going, she’d fly.

A flight surgeon came to the fore and ran his tests, tests she’d had so often that it felt like coming home. And still the room lights remained low, though the tests were often painfully bright.

They put drops in her eyes to dilate the pupils. Peter tried to tease her about something while they waited the twenty minutes for her eyes to react. She appreciated his effort, though it fell flat, drowned in the tension of the crowded room.

Within an hour of when they’d started, they were done with all their inspections and tests. The doctors and flight surgeon moved to step out of the room. She called them back. They’d speak in front of her or not at all.

They might as well have left the room for how much of their medical terminology she actually understood.

At long last, they broke their caucus and the flight surgeon came forward.

“Captain.” He saluted her formally in the dim light. “We will officially wait three more days to be certain of no relapse. But, other than that one contingency, it is my privilege to inform you that you are certified fit for flight.”

She covered her mouth with both hands to stop the scream of joy that tried to burst forth. He remained at attention until she nodded for him to finish.

“No restrictions.”

She didn’t stop the scream this time.

As she returned his salute, a cheer broke out in the room. Doctors, nurses, a round of applause that sounded like the accolades of thousands, though it was more like ten. Someone riffled her hair. Peter. It had to be.

She did her best to simply smile, as for a second time tears streaked her cheeks. Emily didn’t wipe her face, hoping that in the dim room nobody noticed them. She’d fly again. That was all that mattered.

They gave her dark glasses to put on. “We dilated your pupils for the tests. We don’t want them to hurt when we turn on the lights.”

She adjusted the glasses and used the motion to discreetly wipe her cheeks.

A nurse moved toward a wall switch in the now barely discernable shadows.

As she did so, a shadow of a shadow moved through the room. Coming from a distant corner of the darkness, he moved out the door without turning to look at her. Without anyone noticing. Even the Secret Service agents didn’t turn to watch him go.

Mark.

Her hands now knew the shape of that shadow, could still feel each curve against the inside of her palm. And no one else moved like that, the powerful walk of the dominant male of the species, unchallenged wherever he roamed. And, because of his Special Operations Forces training, near invisible in a lit room.

Then the lights flashed on and Emily was forced to squeeze her eyes shut despite the dark glasses.

By the time she could blink them open, he was gone.

The doctors and Peter moved down past the foot of her bed in what looked much like a male-bonding session. Congratulating each other on their part of her recovery. It was her body that had done the hard work.

The nurse who came over to check on her, noticed Emily’s attention on the door. She looked around, a bit surprised, until her eyes finally sought an empty chair in the far corner of the room.

“Oh, your guardian angel is gone then.” Her accent had the short clip of a New Englander. “He arrived yesterday afternoon shortly after the President’s visit. Sat there like a stone for the last twenty-four hours. Night nurse said he never moved. Never said a word. Didn’t give his name, but he must have signed in. A lot of decoration on his uniform. I can see who it was if you’d like.”

“No. That’s okay. Thanks.”

Emily leaned back as Peter and the doctors laughed over their mutual triumph. She closed her eyes and did her best to picture the shadow that had left her room only after she’d been declared fit to fly.

The shadow that had sat silent vigil with her for the longest night of her life and offered his hand in comfort when most needed. Far more important than what she had taken from him afterward. She’d be forever thankful for that hand and the shoulder to cry on.

Could she have found a more unlikely guardian angel than Major Mark “The Viper” Henderson? And who knew angels could make her feel so damn happy.