It’s when my limbs turn to jelly and go numb that I worry I’m about to meet my maker, but Iris’s voice is there, gripping my soul and telling me not to let go.
Somehow, they get me onto a Hawk, but the constant buzzing has me hallucinating giant dragonflies fluttering around my head.
Delirium is setting in, or coming back, I’m not sure.
The darkness pulls me under, and I try to fight it, but Iris’s voice is softening now. He sounds like he’s underwater.
Ringing in my ears intensifies as I’m jostled left and right, and then a steady, controlled, beeping echoes as if in surround sound, but it gives me something else to focus on now I can’t hear Iris.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
One, two, three, I count.
As long as I can still hear it, I know I’m alive.
My eyes blink slowly, and then again. Bright light fills the room, and a sterile smell hits my nose. It’s a mix of bleach and something else I can’t quite put my finger on. The last thing I could smell was death, and I have to say this isn’t much of an improvement.
When I open my eyes again, everything gradually comes into focus. Ah, hospital. That’s the smell. But it doesn’t make sense. Shouldn’t I be in some makeshift hellhole in the middle of the desert? Everything here looks new and shiny. And bright. I wince.
My throat is raw, and my lips are dry.
“Welcome back from the dead,” a deep, rumbly voice says.
I turn my head, and nope, nope, nope, that hurts. I’m stiff everywhere—even my hair hurts.
“Don’t try to move.” The face attached to the voice appears above me.
It’s a dude in his early forties maybe, a giant of a man with soft brown eyes and thick stubble on his chin. His body looks like he could kill, but he has a “Nice face.”
“You must be on the good drugs if you think I have a nice face.”
Oh, I guess that was out loud.
“My name is Travis West.”
That name rings a bell, but I can’t place it, and the harder I try to think, the fuzzier my brain becomes. Then, as if something in my fucked-up body breaks, pain radiates from my skull, and I welcome the darkness once more.
Before it claims me, I hear, “Call me as soon as he’s awake and lucid.”
That doesn’t happen for days. Or what feels like days.
I’m weak, my mind is muddy, and everything feels so … heavy.
I have vivid dreams of Isaac Griffin rescuing me, his easy smile he used to throw around during basic, and of him sitting by my hospital bed teasing me nonstop about him being the one to pull me out of that war zone.
Slowly but surely, I manage to stay awake for longer periods before passing out again. I get movement back in my numb limbs.
Doctors and nurses come and go, and by their accents, I’m aware enough to realize I’m somehow back in the US, but I’m not told anything. I can barely talk, and when I do, it’s a soft rasp.
I don’t know how many days have passed, what the date is, hell, even what time it is when I wake to find Iris sitting by my bed again.
“Great. Another dream,” I mutter.
“Aww, you been dreaming about me, Saint?”
The old moniker feels foreign yet the same to my ears.
Iris stands and hovers over me. “I was starting to worry you might never come back. And by worry, I mean hope.”
“Fuck you.” There’s no energy behind my words.
He touches his chest. “I missed you too.”
I groan. “You really are here, aren’t you? You were the one …”
“To carry your ass up two flights of stairs to get you on a Hawk? Yep. How does it feel to be saved by a military screwup?”
The guy I was ten years ago would’ve been disgusted by the thought. This me? “Oddly reassuring.”
My answer must surprise Iris because his dark eyebrows shoot up.
“Say what now?”
“If someone like you can go on to be successful at something, there’s hope for all the other dumbasses out there.”
Iris cracks up. “Wow. You haven’t changed at all.”
“I’m going to take a guess here and say neither have you.”
“Damn right. You can’t change perfection.”
“Hey, who kicked your ass at every challenge back in the day?”
Iris thumbs behind him. “Wanna go again right now? I’m fairly sure I could take you on your death bed. Or, what I thought was going to be your death bed. Apparently, you’re getting better. You don’t know when to quit, do you?”
I laugh and then cough.
Iris takes a cup of water with a straw and hands it to me.
I take a sip, my forever dry mouth loving the cold wetness. “It’s the only way you’d ever win against me. Beating me while I’m down.”
“I will take whatever advantage I can get when it comes to you. You were a machine back in the day. I low-key hated you for it.”