CHAPTER FIVE

Hannah opened her eyes to look down at her ankle and saw a small array of shiny screws and other bits of metal she couldn’t easily identify on the floor, all around the stool on which her leg still rested. It didn’t make sense. Then, she focused more closely on her leg. The discoloration was… It was gone.

“What the heck?” she whispered. “What did you do?” Her gaze flew to the doctor. He was frowning, his focus still on her foot.

“Just give me a moment more to get rid of the rest of the swelling,” he said through clenched teeth. She took a good look at him and realized he looked paler than he had. Almost sickly, but determined, his teeth set in a near-grimace. It was as if whatever he was doing came out of his own personal energy.

She wanted to pull away, but Carter squeezed her shoulder, drawing her attention. “Let the man finish,” he urged.

This, she realized, was why he’d been so insistent that she see his friend, the doctor. Rick had some kind of…amazing ability…a gift, if such things existed. And, after experiencing what she was experiencing right now, she had to believe it did, in fact, exist. Rick was a healer, like something out of a fairytale. He was healing her with his touch.

She could feel the pain leave her. The pain that hadn’t quit since the day she’d been injured. It was gone. And her ankle looked almost normal. As she watched, the final traces of swelling went away as if by magic.

“Now, that’s just weird,” she muttered, watching the latest round of bruising fade from her skin. She looked up at Rick as he removed his hands from her ankle and leaned back as if he’d just run a marathon. “What are you?”

“These days?” Rick sighed tiredly. “I’m not even sure of the answer to that myself.”

Captain Haliwell reached down and began picking up the various bits of hardware off the floor. When he had it all, he straightened and placed the small pile on the table next to Hannah.

“No way to hide this, I guess,” Haliwell said.

Hannah just stared at the pile of bits. “Did all that come out of my ankle?” Her throat was so dry she could barely get the words out.

“Your surgeons did a good job, but that stuff was never going to hold your bones together in a way that would actually work,” Rick said. He definitely looked tired. Drained. Whatever he’d done had taken a lot out of him.

“What did you do?” she asked, unable to articulate all the questions competing for space in her mind.

“Try to move it,” Rick said in response, the amused curl of his lip daring her to give it a whirl. He shifted his gaze from her face to her foot and just watched.

Feeling as if she was in a dream, she moved her foot slightly. It didn’t hurt. For the first time in ages, it didn’t hurt! She tried another small movement. And another. She rotated the ankle gently, then pointed and flexed her foot. This was a dream. Had to be.

“No way,” she whispered, even as she kept moving her foot in ways it hadn’t moved since her injury.

Tears sprang to her eyes that she didn’t bother to hold back. It was a miracle. An honest-to-goodness miracle.

She looked up at the doctor, tears streaming down her face, her eyes wide. “I don’t know what you are, or how you did that, but I...” She paused to catch her breath. “I can’t thank you enough. There are no words...”

“Don’t thank me yet. Let’s see you stand on it,” Rick said, brushing her words aside as if embarrassed.

Standing? Seriously? He wanted her to stand on her shattered ankle?

She hadn’t stood—really stood—on her own two feet in months.

Hannah lowered her foot off the stool. It didn’t hurt when it made contact with the floor. Hope rose higher in her heart. She’d pretty much resigned herself to never running again. Or dancing. Or doing much of anything that required two reasonably working ankles.

Rick stayed seated opposite her, as if he didn’t have the energy to stand, but also watching her foot carefully. Everybody else seemed to hold their breaths. Carter was right behind her, ready, she had no doubt, to catch her should she fall. He was that kind of guy.

Gingerly, she put weight on her feet and then pushed to a standing position. Nothing hurt.

Sweet Lord, nothing hurt!

Hannah stood on both feet, then tried just the injured foot. It held her weight easily, though her leg muscles felt weird from not being used in this way for a while. Not painful. Just a little weird at first.

She stood. Then, she walked. Heck, she felt like turning cartwheels!

“It feels fine,” she said, a bit breathless from the awe that filled her at these developments. “Like nothing ever happened. Like the last few months were just a bad dream. A nightmare from which I’ve suddenly woken up.”

Yeah, she was crying. She didn’t care. These were happy tears. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Rick stood, still watching her progress as she turned to face him again. She walked right up to him.

“I have little doubt you outrank me, but can I hug you, sir?” she asked, unable to keep the tears out of her voice.

Rick smiled, looked a little surprised, but opened his arms. “Sure. Why not?” He let her hug him and then stepped back with a little red flush on his cheekbones, though he bore it well. “A hug is more than I get from these guys, even after I save their miserable lives.”

“If I’d known you were so easy to please, Rick, I wouldn’t have bought you that case of scotch,” Hal put in, clearly amused at the doctor’s expense.

“Or the Army-Navy game tickets,” Carter added.

That’s when Hannah realized that this amazing doctor had been healing the guys in his unit. “You’re why Carter isn’t still on crutches after having a bullet taken out of his leg,” she blurted the thought as it came to her. “I thought his wound was worse when we were in the hospital, but then he shows up walking as if he’d never been shot.”

Rick nodded a bit sheepishly. “Guilty as charged, I’m afraid. There’s not much else for me to do around here, now that we’re sidelined,” he said. “When I see something that needs fixing, I fix it.”

“Like you fixed me,” she thought aloud again, wonder in her voice.

“Sergeant,” Hal broke into her awestruck silence. “Why don’t you join us in the mess? We can discuss this over coffee.”

Shaking her head, Hannah followed the captain out of the room and down the hall. The others peeled off, going their separate ways, but Carter remained by her side. She’d wanted to thank Rick again, in case they hustled her away now that she’d been seen and treated, but he slipped away down a side corridor before she could speak.

When they reached the mess hall, which was really just a large room with a cafeteria-style serving area on one side, opposite a bank of windows that looked out onto the beach, Carter led her to one of the tables. Hannah had marveled the entire way about her foot, which seemed good as new, as if nothing had ever happened to it. There wasn’t the slightest twinge of pain from the joint. Some of her muscles weren’t used to moving normally anymore, and they would require strengthening, but that was nothing. Not when she could walk again.

The mess hall was empty, but a coffee urn stood ready, hot go-juice in the half-full pot. Hal walked directly to the coffee urn and started dispensing black java into three cups. He handed the first to Hannah, and she took it gratefully, moving to get some creamer and a dash of sugar for hers from the supplies to the left of the urn. Carter got the next cup, leaving it black as he waited for her. Once Hal had his own cup, he led the way to a table in the far corner of the large, empty room.

She could just hear faint bumps and clangs from the kitchen area. Staff in the kitchen on the other side of the buffet line were probably preparing the next meal. The corner Hal chose for their conversation would give them privacy. There was no way the kitchen staff would be able to overhear what they talked about unless they started shouting, and she certainly didn’t plan on any of that.

She was too grateful to these men. This unit…and their incredible doctor.

“The first thing you need to know, Sergeant Sullivan,” Hal said once they’d all sat down, “is that nothing you see here can ever be repeated to anyone else. This is all top secret at the highest levels. I wasn’t comfortable bringing you in on this, but Carter—and some others in our group—felt you deserved a chance after the mall incident. You were cool under pressure during the shooting, and it impressed the guys who saw you in action. The fact that you were already injured, and that we might be able to do something to help, weighed heavily on our minds. We had more than one discussion about your situation before I gave Carter the go-ahead to contact you.”

“I didn’t realize that, sir,” she said when Haliwell paused long enough that she thought perhaps he was waiting for her to say something.

Haliwell nodded. “I didn’t expect you would,” he replied. “But the fact remains that, while we all felt it was important to see if Doc could help you, there are farther-reaching issues that must be considered. Secrecy being the main one.”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” she assured him. “I won’t tell anyone what happened here just now. Frankly, nobody would believe me.” She couldn’t help the smile that curved her lips as she imagined how that might go down. Yeah, better to not say anything, rather than end up in a padded room.

“The danger isn’t only to yourself, Sergeant. Partially because of what you just saw, we’ve become hunted by agents of at least one foreign government. That’s who you saw shooting in the mall the other day,” Haliwell admitted.

“Yeah, I knew it wasn’t gang-related, but I didn’t say anything. The Navy commander who came to see me in the hospital impressed me with the need to keep my mouth shut, and I figured there were good reasons for covering it up. I confess, I didn’t really think it could be enemy action on U.S. soil.” She was appalled that foreign agents had opened fire in the mall. That wasn’t gang warfare. That was terrorism.

Hannah realized why they wouldn’t use the T word. Long Island was particularly sensitive to terrorism after the attacks on New York City, which was only a few miles away. Many people on Long Island worked in Manhattan and commuted there every day.

“It isn’t a full-scale war, but I’m sorry to say, it’s definitely enemy action, and that’s not the first time we’ve had to deal with it since coming back Stateside,” Haliwell told her.

Hannah began to understand how much danger followed this unit’s steps. Whatever they’d done in foreign lands, it had come back to haunt them. She didn’t understand it fully, and perhaps, it wasn’t necessary that she should. She’d received her miracle. She was thankful for that and willing to respect the need for secrecy about Rick’s amazing ability. That was only fair.

“You have my word of honor that I will never reveal what happened here today,” she told the captain, hoping he would hear the truth in her voice.

“Thank you, Sergeant Sullivan. I’m working with base command to get your paperwork updated so that detailed records of your foot injury won’t be in the VA system after today. It’s best if you don’t go back there anytime soon, because there’s really no way to explain your current condition to those who’d been treating you before. Also, I’m afraid you’re going to have to keep up a little bit of the fiction of having a sore ankle for a while, in public. Ease off the crutches and maybe use a cane for a bit. Pretend to favor the ankle as if it’s healing,” Haliwell suggested.

Hannah saw the sense in what he was saying. “I can do that. No problem, sir.”

“Good.” Haliwell slammed back the rest of his coffee and stood but waved for Hannah to remain seated. “Now, the paperwork and computer updates will take a while. I’d like you to stay here for tonight, and we’ll return you to your home tomorrow. My wife, Casey, and Rose, of course, can help you settle in. We have some spare clothing in stock for female personnel, and they can fix you up with whatever you need.”

Hannah barely had the chance to thank him before the captain was out the door, leaving her with Carter. It was only mid-afternoon, and so much had happened in such a short time. She was having a hard time taking it all in.

“Do you want to take a walk on the beach?” Carter asked as he finished his coffee. “Give your new ankle a spin?”

“That sounds good,” she admitted. She hadn’t been able to keep from moving her ankle under the table, aware in one giddy corner of her mind that it didn’t hurt anymore.

She finished her coffee and followed Carter’s lead in placing the used mug in the bin that would presumably be collected by kitchen staff for cleaning at some point. Then, she walked with him out the door and toward the nearby beach, still amazed with every step that she could, in fact, walk unassisted for the first time in months.

They went slow. Carter didn’t speak, giving her time to pick a safe path onto the fringe of sand that met the ocean not too far away. He was looking out at the water, seeming in a pensive mood. Finally, after a few minutes of strolling along, he spoke.

“I’m really glad Rick was able to help you,” he said quietly.

“Me, too. And thank you for insisting I see him. I sense you probably had to jump through a lot of hoops to make this happen,” she said, feeling grateful.

“Not as many as you might think. Fate might’ve brought you to the unit’s attention during the mall incident, but lately, some of us have come to be big believers in it. Your actions at the mall—your courage and steadfastness—impressed a lot of people. Not just me,” he told her.

He’d been impressed by her during that first meeting? The thought surprised her. She’d been the one who was impressed by him and the rest of his friends.

She looked out at the ocean. The view from here was incredible.

“You know, I grew up on Long Island, but I didn’t live near the beach. I could get used to these ocean views all too easily,” she said, hoping to get the conversation onto safer grounds, just for a little while. There was so much jumbled in her mind right now, it was good to focus on something normal, like the view.

“Yeah, it is one of the nicer spots I’ve been stationed,” Carter agreed. “I’m originally from Portland, Oregon. We have river views there. Not ocean. And it rains a lot.”

“I visited Portland once,” she replied. “One of my college friends moved there. It rained the whole week I was there, and I was semi-convinced that Mount Hood was a model they set up for tourist post cards, since I never saw it in person from the city. We drove up to Multnomah Falls one day. Pretty place.”

“Yes, it is. And yeah, Portland can be very overcast and cloudy, but when the sun shines, it’s a great city,” he said, a bit of nostalgia in his tone. “Still, I like what I’ve seen of Long Island. Lots of people in a small amount of space, but every amenity you could ask for, close at hand. Lots of airports, too. And lots of sunshine compared to home, though not as bad as the desert.”

“Oh, yeah. That desert sun was brutal,” she agreed. “I liked the adventure of going, but I was glad to come back. Though, I would have preferred to do my full tour rather than come back injured.”

And they were back to what had happened to her, just like that...and what had happened today, to erase the last months of angst and pain.

“How’s the foot?” Carter asked.

“Good as new,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m saying that. I honestly thought I’d never have full use of it again.” She felt tears threatening again, as she spoke but was successful in holding them back this time. “I can’t thank you enough.”

Carter shook his head. “No need to thank me. Rick did all the work. He’s been pretty amazing since he started being able to heal us like that.”

“It came on suddenly?” she asked before she thought better of it. “I’m sorry, I know I don’t need to know. I’m just curious.”

“Don’t worry.” Carter shrugged as they walked slowly along the beach. “I’d be curious in your shoes, too. Now that you know what he can do, I don’t see any real harm in telling you a little more about it.” He didn’t look at her as they walked along. “Rick was a doctor when he became part of the unit. Like I mentioned before, we’re a group of specialists sent in to do more in-depth investigation than most other units are capable of accomplishing. His task, among other things, was to assess any potential bioweapons we might come up against or discover in the course of our missions. He was kind of a germ warfare expert, though I guess since this...change...happened, that’s kind of taken a backseat.”

“It happened in the desert?” she asked in a low voice, not wanting to pry but really intrigued by both the unit and whatever had happened to make the doctor suddenly able to heal with a touch.

“Yeah, we were ahead of everyone else, as usual. Scouting. We came out of a dust storm to find an ancient city in front of us. Empty, but intact. It was the weirdest thing,” Carter told her. “We investigated, of course. There was this tower. We climbed inside and went up and up to the top room of the tower that had a view of the entire city. There was a man there. A man wearing loud colors, like something out of a book. His jewelry was gold, and he had a turban on his head. He was just sitting there, cross-legged, on a prayer rug. Like he was waiting for us.”

“Only one man in the whole city? Were they all hiding?” she asked, breathless, but not from the walk.

“Nobody hiding that we could see. It was just empty. Except for the turbaned man,” Carter told her. “He talked to us for a while. He was stand-offish at the beginning, but became friendlier as he got to know us. He asked a lot of questions about the world and the state of his country and those around it. He didn’t know what the United States was at first, but he caught on. We talked for a long time and then, he said a few more words and sent us on our way. It was the weirdest thing. Normally, we would try to control any interaction with locals. We control the conversation and the timing. We don’t answer questions, for the most part—we ask them. But all bets were off with this guy. We didn’t stick to mission from the moment the dust storm cleared and we found ourselves in that city. It was like we were under a spell or something.”

“Maybe you were,” Hannah whispered, not quite sure why she was whispering.