Numbly, I wait. Then something occurs to me. Why are they using the siren for a broken leg?
I barely have the thought before my fingers grow cold, and my thoughts begin to get fuzzy, muddled.
What the hell?
But then it doesn’t matter, because I’m so fucking tired. Nothing matters, not the pain, or the lack of it, or even the girl.
My arms and legs grow heavy and I close my eyes, a sigh rattling my ribcage.
The girl. Her blue eyes are the last things I see before I close my eyes.
It seems like only minutes before the ambulance shrieks to a stop and I’m being bustled out.
I grab one of the EMTs arms as they race me into the hospital.
“What’s wrong?”
He stares down at me as he runs. “Don’t worry. They’ll fix you.”
I fall back onto the gurney and all I can do is watch everything happening. Waves of utter exhaustion and sleepiness pass through me and all I want to do is close my eyes.
So I do, but I can’t sleep because some damn faceless person keeps asking me questions, all the while other faceless people prod at my leg and cut off my pants.
What’s your name?
“Brand Killien,” I mutter.
How old are you?
“Twenty-seven.”
Are you allergic to anything?
No.
Can we call anyone for you?
“No.”
I open my eyes when they jam an IV into my arm, and the lights are bright, and the medicine feeding into me blurs it all together.
A nurse’s face blurs in front of me.
“You’re going in to surgery, sweetheart,” she tells me. I can’t see her face even though my eyes are wide open. “Your artery was nicked. They have to fix it.”
My fucking artery was nicked?
You’ve got to be kidding me. I survived the bloody hills of Afghanistan. I’m not going to bleed to death here. No fucking way. Holy shit. Why didn’t I have them call Gabe or Jacey… just in case?
I try to mutter that, to tell them to call Gabe, but they can’t understand me.
Another face blurs over me, someone with black hair. “Everything will be all right, sir. Just count backward from one hundred.”
The light swirls, the noise echoes.
Ninety-Nine.
Ninety-E