“No,” I whispered. Not in any way a doctor could treat.
“Come sit over here,” he urged, hands now guiding my shoulders back. “Breathe. We’ll get someone on the radio.”
I did my best to comply, moving over and putting my head between my knees since the ground was still spinning.
“Natalia!” he shouted toward the tent, and in a minute he spoke at a normal volume again. “Call the fort, please. Find out the status on Avery Chase.”
I couldn’t believe I was taking up their time when so many patients were waiting for treatment or transport. But I really didn’t think I could walk that distance without learning whether my life had ended. And if it had…there was no point in walking anywhere.
My eyelids fell shut; everything was black anyway. I tried to breathe, tried to hope that our brief kiss this morning hadn’t been the last. I pictured Avery’s face, every precious detail, the way I longed to see it — his beautiful brown eyes sparkling with mirth; his exquisite lips quirked into a smile. My fingers brushing his freckled cheek until he pulled me in for another kiss. No bullets, no blood, no surgical incision. No pallor, no pain, no fear. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, I wouldn’t sacrifice for that.
“He’s at the civilian med center,” a female voice reported. “Still in critical condition. They’re rewarming and transfusing. No further information regarding his prognosis, but he’s hanging on.”
Sudden urgency flowed through me, cascading from neck to knees. Avery was alive. He was barely clinging to life, and I was wasting valuable seconds wallowing in despair. I had to get to him, right now.
I lurched to my feet and reoriented toward the fort, but the medic put a hand on me.
“Can we find someone for you, sir? Captain Lansing, perhaps?”
For a second, I didn’t know who Captain Lansing was. It came back to me like the dream of a dream — Graham’s presence in our community this past year. The music, the laughter…the sex, the sleepovers… It seemed preposterous that I could have spent so much time with someone who wasn’t Avery. That I could have allowed another man to take up residence in our home. I dimly remembered telling Graham that I loved him, and believing it. How could I have thought something so patently absurd? I loved Avery. Only Avery.
“I’m alright,” I told the medical staff. “I just need to get back.”
“We’re transporting another couple of patients, so the team will be close behind you.”
“I’m fine,” I repeated. I strode off into the dusky woods before I realized I should have thanked them.
I didn’t remember much of that walk. Nothing felt real, suspended as I was between death and survival, between devastating loss and miraculous salvation. He was alive, and I had to get to him. And eventually I did.
I found him in the wooden building where the most serious cases were treated. The beds were filled with evacuees from the battle, nurses busy between them, but I didn’t register any face except Avery’s. It looked nothing like the image I’d been fixating in my mind. His eyes were lidded within hollow sockets; his skin was pale and his features drawn. His breathing was shallow, too rapid. A bundle of wires fed beneath the blanket tucked around him, and bright red fluid dripped into his veins. There was a mound where his flat stomach should be — his organs swelling from his open abdominal cavity.
Wild emotions swirled beneath my sternum and bile rose again to my mouth, but I forced it down. Avery needed me. He needed my strength and comfort, not my terror or my grief.
I couldn’t tell if he was conscious, and I didn’t want to cause any more pain by jarring him, so I sat carefully in the chair next to his cot and whispered his name.
When my beloved’s eyes opened and found me, something seared my chest like a branding iron. I couldn’t lose him. Not so young. We hadn’t even shared five years together. After all the hardships he’d overcome, it was beyond unfair that one bullet could destroy it all. It wasn’t right, that our story should end this way.
“Julian,” he croaked through cracked lips. I ached to take his hand, but his arms had to stay wrapped in the blanket to preserve what little heat his battered body could generate.
“I’m here, love,” I choked out, laying my hand very cautiously at his wool-covered shoulder instead. “You’re going to be ok.” I spoke the affirmation not because I thought it was true, but because I required it to be. A command to the universe.
Avery just stared at me, and I fought desperately to keep the fear from my face, because it was stark in his.
“Don’t want to die,” he whispered, barely able to spare enough energy to be heard.
My chest screamed in agony again, but I held his gaze and whispered back, “We’re not gonna let you die, Avery.” He’d have a better chance if he believed that. Which meant I needed to believe it. So I tried, very hard.
There was nothing to do except wait to see if the doctors would be able to reverse the downward spiral of insufficient circulation, impaired blood function, and hypothermia. The lethal triad, they call it: co-occurring consequences of violent trauma and blood loss, each one worsening the others. People who haven’t been in the line of fire don’t usually realize it’s the indirect effects, rather than immediate damage to specific body parts, that make guns so deadly. They’re most effective where medical resources are least available — barbaric weapons befitting a bloodthirsty species.
So we waited. Which might sound like a singular activity, but the actual experience quickly revealed itself to be a never-ending series of physical and emotional torments, both for the suffering patient and for the loved one powerless to help. The emergencies kept coming, minute by minute, hour by hour: a spike in heart rate, or a drop in blood pressure, or new agony stabbing Avery’s stapled bowels or severed abdominal wall. Sudden nausea or uncontrollable shivering. Every time things appeared stable, some new symptom or dangerous vital sign would raise fresh alarms.
There was always another experimental treatment, then monitoring to see if it had been effective, then adjustments in method or dosage. There were frequent tests and checks, invading every conceivable crevice of the body. Countless staccato conversations with nurses and aides. And through it all, attempting to keep Avery calm and alleviate whatever small percentage of discomfort was within control.
Because most of it wasn’t. Mostly I just had to sit beside my husband and watch him struggle: to breathe, to tolerate the pain; to lie still with his belly split open, and to keep his mind from succumbing to complete panic. To handle the indefinable, pervasive feeling of wrongness when there’s not enough blood to go around and each organ and system is on the brink of total failure.
Early in our sojourn through the wasteland of misery and dread, Graham showed up, having left Rae in command of the counter-strike with fresh reinforcements at the battlefront. He made a show of being distraught over Avery’s condition and seemed to expect me to commiserate, but his embrace felt suffocating rather than comforting, so I shrugged out of it. There wasn’t really room for two at the bedside, but he found another chair and dragged it over anyway. I kept my attention on Avery — lifting his head to feed him sips of water; wiping the sweat from his brow; watching intently for changes that might signal further decompensation.