“Well, this is an unexpected find – and just what I needed,” I muttered to myself as I hauled it open and dropped down into it. It was the entrance to an underground tunnel that ran straight to the heart of the compound – and there I would find the leader of this terrorist cell himself. I needed him alive at all costs; he had valuable information that we in the Coalition needed. While the battle continued to thunder above me, I raced through the tunnel, my firearm at the ready. I was going to capture this guy, and I was going to take him alive.
Then, out of nowhere, a huge Iraqi jumped out from a hidden alcove. He was too close and too fast; I didn't even have time to take one shot before he had his hands on my rifle. We struggled over it with mad violence, and both of us eventually fell to the ground, where we continued to fight.
Then, somehow, a knife appeared in his right hand, and he aimed a stab at my stomach, trying to get the knife in under my bulletproof vest. I grabbed his wrist, but he kept pushing, and the blade kept coming toward me, slowly but surely. My arms were burning from the effort, and I was panting like a dog, and using all my strength to hold him, but he was just too big and powerful, and that knife kept edging closer and closer to me... until it broke my skin. I screamed out in pain as I felt the steel sliding into me, slicing through me, inch by inch—
I woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright in my bed. I was sweating from the nightmare, and I had to take a few minutes to calm myself down. I didn't often get flashbacks or nightmares from the war, but when they did come, they could be pretty intense, as this one had just been.
My shoulder was aching with a dull pain from the gunshot wound I'd received earlier, and my heart was still hammering from the intensity of the nightmare. I leaned over and checked my phone – it was two o' clock in the morning. I felt groggy, presumably from the drugs Jimmy had given me to help me sleep, but I was more or less awake. I stood, gripped the drip stand, and wheeled it over to the window. I parted the curtains and looked across the street at Vivienne's house. All of the lights were off – I guessed she was sleeping.
I felt terrible about standing her up, and couldn't help feeling tremendously guilty about how the evening had gone. I really hoped that she would understand why I had done what I had done, but of course, I had been a complete idiot for not taking my phone with me, and I was prepared to accept the consequences of that. There was no excusing that.
I would go over there in the morning with a big bunch of flowers and some chocolates and ask for her forgiveness. I could only pray that she would give it to me.
As for now, I knew that I should probably head back to bed, as I needed rest to be able to recuperate from my injury. Hey, at least I had proof that I had actually been out doing what I said I was doing; it wasn't as if she could really accuse me of drinking with buddies or something like that when I had a fresh gunshot wound in my shoulder to prove that I'd been where I'd said I was.
I checked in on Jane who was sleeping, got a glass of water and then went to lay back down on my bed. I turned off the light and prepared to go to sleep. As I was drifting off, however, I was jolted out of my sleep daze by the sound through the baby monitor – Jane was crying, and she was crying loudly.
I put the light on, climbed out of bed, and shuffled over to her room again, pulling the drip stand along next to me. I opened the door and put on the light, and was alarmed to see her hair plastered to her head, soaked with sweat. I rushed over to her and put a hand on her forehead. She was burning up.
“Oh no, oh no,” I muttered to myself. “Jane, my lil' sweet pea, are you okay?”
“I don't feel good, Daddy,” she murmured between sobs. “Make it stop, Daddy, make the bad feeling stop...”
I hurried over to the dresser in her room and got a thermometer out and took her temperature. She was at 105 degrees – this was an emergency.
“We have to go see a doctor now, sweet pea,” I said, my heart racing with panic. “Come on; Daddy's taking you to see a doctor.”
I didn't have time to get the drip out of my arm properly, so I simply yanked it out, forgetting that Jimmy was asleep in the guest room. Some blood dribbled out from where the needle had just come out, but I figured it would close up quickly enough. I was dressed only in boxer shorts, so I ran into my room, grabbed the first pair of jeans and the first t-shirt I saw, and pulled them on quickly. I slipped my feet into some flip flops – not ideal, but I didn't have the time to lace up actual shoes – and then raced back into Jane's room. I picked her up and bolted out to the garage, not even bothering to lock the house up or tell Jimmy what was going on.
I hurriedly strapped her into the car seat in my truck, then started it and roared out of the garage, screeching the tires as I careened out of my driveway.
I raced through the back roads, breaking all of the speed limits and blasting through red lights – I had to get my little girl to the hospital immediately.
We reached the hospital after a few minutes of frantic driving, and I raced straight into the ER with Jane in my arms. A nurse ran out to see what was wrong.
“She's running a really, really high fever,” I gasped. “We need help right now.”
“Alright, bring her through,” she said, hurrying ahead of me. “I'll get a doctor right away.”
Some more nurses came to assist, and they helped get Jane into a bed and gave her some medicine for the pain and fever, which calmed her somewhat.
“We'll take it from here, Mr.….?” said the head nurse.
“Everett James,” I replied.
“Okay, Mr. James. If you'll kindly see that nurse there to fill out the necessary papers, a doctor will be on his way. Now, has the child's mother been informed of the situation?”
At the mention of Jane's mother, a bitter taste arose in the back of my throat.
“She hasn't. I'll call her now, though.”
I stepped outside into the hallway and got my phone out, breathing in deeply to calm myself before I called Susan – Jane's mother, my ex-wife. When I felt that I was ready, I called her. The phone rang for a while, but eventually she picked up.
“Everett, what the hell are you doing calling me at 2:15 in the morning?”
Her voice was slurred, and the sound of thumping music was loud in the background; I guessed that she was drunk. Well, that didn't matter – her child, our child, was seriously ill. I decided to simply cut straight to the chase.
“I'm in the ER. Jane is very, very ill.”