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COLD. BRIGHT LIGHT. Distant chirping. Murmuring voices.
Nash tried to sort out the sensations, but his brain refused to make sense of them. He gave up. Surrendered to the darkness.
The next time he awoke—at least he assumed he’d been asleep because he’d been dreaming about floating down a river, a falcon circling above—he forced his eyes to remain open.
A hospital room? Couldn’t be.
That op was over and done. He’d come through slightly scathed, had been patched up, discharged, and back on the job. Or had he? Had he dreamt about the rehab, the light duty, the dog-and-pony-show assignments?
Had he died? Was he in hospital purgatory, waiting to discover his fate?
Too much. The dreams were better. He closed his eyes.
When he next returned to a semi-conscious state, some of the cotton had wandered from his brain to his mouth. He tried to swallow, to lick his lips.
Someone spoke. “For a few minutes.”
Shuffling sounds. Squeaking sounds. He groaned. Croaked was more like it.
“Drink this.” Miraculously, a straw appeared in his mouth. Maybe he’d made it to heaven after all. He sucked in the cool wetness.
Someone took the straw away. Not heaven, then, or he’d be allowed to drink his fill.
“That’s enough for starters.” A disembodied voice came from a distance.
Something familiar about the voice. Nash blinked, trying to bring things into focus.
Olivia.
Okay, he wasn’t in heaven, hell, or a waiting room. A few pieces slotted together. Olivia had been on his last op. Vague, blurry memories of her bending over him, saying things like, “Hang in there. Stay with me.”
He must have been injured. “How long?” Nash asked.
“Three days,” Olivia said. “You’ve been out of it, which is a good thing.”
Three days? Nash reached for his jaw. The stubble confirmed it.
Another figure appeared. White coat. Stethoscope. Nash raised his gaze. Raised it more. The man loomed high above the bed. As lean as a long-distance runner. Dark hair, dark skin. Doctor? Nurse?
“That’s enough for now,” the man said, his voice rumbling up from deep inside. “You can come back later.”
Olivia squeezed Nash’s hand and smiled. “You’re going to be fine, Rambler.”
Could be worse. The newcomer might have been a priest.
The man spoke, his voice less rumbling. “Good afternoon, Mr. Hanley. I’m Doctor Mabry. How are you feeling?”
“Fuzzy,” Nash said. “Throat sore. Thirsty.”
“Understandable. You’ve had surgery, which included inserting a tube down your throat to keep you breathing.” Dr. Mabry rewarded him with another sip of cool water.
Nash sucked in as much as he could before the doctor took the blessed water away. As he drank, the man’s words wandered around his brain like squirrels looking for acorns. After a moment, one word registered. He shoved the glass away.
“Surgery? What surgery?”
Dr. Mabry put the water on the bedside table. “I’m not permitted to say at this time. Dr. Terrance will be in to go over everything shortly. First, on a scale of one to ten, how much pain are you in?”
Nash stopped to assess his body. Until the doctor had mentioned it, Nash hadn’t felt any pain, only fuzziness. He tested his head, neck, arms, legs. He’d felt worse after one of Manny Rodriquez’s PT sessions. “Five?”
The doctor’s brows lifted, as if he didn’t believe Nash. “That’s good, but the sedation will be wearing off soon and your pain level will likely increase. I’ll send the nurse in to explain the PCA and how you can control your medication. It’s important to stay a step or two ahead of the pain.”
“I got it. Now, what happened? When can I go home?”
“Not until you’re well enough to travel,” Dr. Mabry said.
Travel? Nash closed his eyes again as the exertion from asking those few questions drained him. He drew in long, labored breaths. “Keep talking. I’m awake. Where am I?”
“You’re in Brownsville General Hospital.”
Brownsville. Texas. Where they’d briefed for the op. Across the border from Matamoros. Not San Francisco, where Blackthorne was headquartered. Was that good news or bad? Not good, obviously, because he was in a hospital. If he’d been severely injured, this was probably the closest hospital, which made it bad news.
His head throbbed. Thinking was too much work.
“Can I see my friend?” Nash asked. Olivia would know more, tell him more than this doctor, who was avoiding the important questions. Like what kind of surgery? What the hell had happened?
“Dr. Terrance will discuss everything with you, and I’ll send in the nurse.” Dr. Mabry wrote on his chart and left the room, his rubber soles squeaking on the floor.
Did Dr. Mabry’s reluctance to share mean something horrendous had happened? A few memories surfaced. Nash replayed what he recalled. They’d located the women they’d been sent to find. There’d been others. He remembered gunfire. Had he been shot?
He lay there, staring at the ceiling. As his head cleared, pain made its way to the surface. He wiggled his toes, taking inventory, moving up his body a muscle at a time.
He’d reached his calves, noting they both seemed in working order, when the door opened and Olivia returned.
“Tell me what’s going on,” he said over the pain in his throat. “The doc was no help.”
“Mabry’s an intern.” Olivia stood at the foot of the bed. “Your surgeon’s fussy about what he’s permitted to tell patients before he talks to them.”
“He didn’t tell you?” Nash asked. “Or did he swear you to secrecy? Give. I deserve to know. It’s my body someone cut into.”
Olivia moved to his side, and Nash shifted to face her. Not smart. He was barreling way beyond the pain level of even the most killer of Manny’s PT workouts. He winced. She rested a hand on his shoulder.
The door opened, and a woman Nash assumed was a nurse strode to his bedside and shooed Olivia from the room.
“Don’t go far,” Nash said.
Olivia paused at the door and waved. “I’ll be here.”
The nurse fussed under the bed. Memories of his previous hospital stay rushed back. Another tube up his dick. He’d hated it then, he hated it now. She changed the bag collecting his piss, checked readouts, and made notes on a chart.
“The doc said you’d explain the pain meds,” he said.
She explained the machine. “You can’t overdose, so don’t be reluctant to use it. Dosages are metered.” The nurse handed him the control button. Nash wasted no time in pressing it.
“Please send Olivia back in. She’s ... family. While not the literal truth, any Blackthorne operative was more like family than Nash’s own. They’d been out of his life since he was twelve.
Should he let his father know? Would it make a difference? Not enough brain power now. Nash would deal with it another time.
The nurse left, and seconds later the door opened. Instead of Olivia, another white-coated man entered the room. This man was as short as Dr. Mabry was tall, paunchy where Mabry was lean, and as fair as Mabry was dark.
“I’m Doctor Terrance, trauma surgeon at this hospital. I performed your nephrectomy.”
Nash’s ears pounded. What was an effing nephrectomy?
“Wait,” he said. “I want Olivia in here while you tell me what you did. The nurse kicked her out while she was doing her thing.”
At the doctor’s hesitation, Nash added, “Please. I’m fuzzy-headed. She has medical training, so she’ll help me if I forget what you’re telling me.”
Dr. Terrance pursed his lips and left the room. When he didn’t return immediately, Nash wondered if he’d ticked the man off and he wasn’t coming back.
The door opened a moment later. Nash blew out a calming breath when Olivia accompanied the doctor.
“As I was saying,” Dr. Terrance said, “I performed a nephrectomy.”
Nash interrupted him. “Speak English, please.”
The doctor’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”
“Given my brain is a bag of oatmeal, no, I have no clue what’s going on.”
“A nephrectomy is the removal of a kidney,” the doctor said.
Nash tried to sit up, but a wave of dizziness and a pain in his gut called a quick halt. “You took out my kidney?”
“The damage was too great to save it. Be assured, Mr. Hanley, you can live a normal life with one. I also removed a second bullet from your leg, one that tore your hamstring, and repaired the damage. To be truthful, you’ll probably experience more discomfort from that injury than the nephrectomy.”
Dr. Terrance moved to the left and pulled Nash’s blankets aside. “I want to check the dressing.”
Nash closed his eyes. A cool hand gripped his. Olivia. She of the comforting bedside manner. He peeked. Bandages. Tubes. Nothing gory.
“It was a fluke,” Olivia said. “Your vest shifted up just enough so the bullet did some damage. If you’d been standing—”
“I get it,” he said. “Doing my job cost me a kidney.”
“But not your life,” she said. “The doc’s right. Lots of people are walking around with one kidney.”
“Doesn’t mean I like being one of them. You know the saying. Two is one, and one is none. Which means, effectively, I don’t have a kidney.”
“No need for such concern,” Dr. Terrance said. “Given the circumstances and your bleeding when you arrived, quick action was more important than trying to be delicate. I’m afraid your scars will be more pronounced than if this had been a scheduled laparoscopic procedure, but otherwise, aside from more frequent checkups and minor dietary modifications, you can resume your normal activities within a few months.”
Another squeeze and a tiny frown from Olivia kept Nash from pressing the doctor for more details.
Did the doctor have a clue what normal activities were for a Blackthorne operative? Had whoever’d provided his medical information mentioned what Nash really did? The covert side of Blackthorne was just that—covert—and his public employee information said he worked as a research assistant in the Investigations Department.
Dr. Terrance finished his explanations, most of which sounded as though he’d recited the litany hundreds of times before—which had to be good. It meant he must have performed the surgery hundreds of times.
He left, and Nash fought the urge to crawl into his dream cave. “The op? The hostages? The team? I don’t remember anything after Scrooge told me to get the woman down, and we hit the deck.”
Olivia sat in the bedside chair. She held Nash’s fingers, avoiding the tubes and monitors. “On paper, the op was a successful mission, with one injury on our side. Since the injury is yours, you probably feel otherwise.”
Nash shrugged her comments off. The mission came first, and one kidney weighed against the lives of the women they’d saved was a small price. “The guards? Who were they?”
“All around nasties,” Olivia said. “Into drugs, weapons, you name it.”
Thinking about the op meant Nash wasn’t thinking about the pain. Could he give himself another dose? That’s what it was there for. The nurse said it was regulated. He thumbed the button and closed his eyes.
“I’m listening,” he said.
“In and out like the wind,” Olivia continued. “Women reunited with their families. Goons in custody, with gratitude from the Mexican authorities. Dapper Dan subdued the three goons watching the hostages. They never saw him coming. Scrooge eliminated the two who thought that by holding a hostage close, they’d be safe.”
Subdued. Eliminated. Nash translated. Taken into custody. Killed. Scrooge had killed two men, bad guys or not. Nash recalled the first life he’d taken. And more. They never left you.
“How’s Scrooge?” Unlike most of the operatives who came from military backgrounds, Scrooge had been a civilian. Competitive shooter. He shot targets. Not people.
“He’s dealing,” Olivia said. “Knowing he saved lives helps.”
Nash lay there, eyes closed, vaguely aware of chairs scraping against the floor, and a quiet good-bye from Olivia. Later, more comings and goings of hospital staff, often enough to make sure you couldn’t get a decent stretch of rest. He endured their ministrations, never emerging all the way out of his dream cave.
Two missions. Two injuries severe enough for hospitalization. Was he cut out to be a Blackthorne operative? What else would he do?