Page 32 of Married to a SEAL

Chapter 10

Patrick groaned as medics rushed him down a hallway on a rolling cot. People rushed around him shouting out orders. Where was he? What was going on? It felt like his entire abdomen was on fire and that his head was splitting in two. The bright lights shining above him in the hall caused him to cringe, and waves of nausea washed over him.

“He’s lost a significant amount of blood,” a voice above him said in a clipped tone.

“We administered morphine to help with the pain,” a second person said. A hand gripped his wrist, checking his pulse. There was blood covering his arm.

His own, he realized.

A loud beeping over the loudspeaker pierced the otherwise silent hallway. “Code blue, code blue. Report to OR 1.”

They rounded a corner, and white-hot pain shot through him. His ribs felt like they’d been snapped in two. Like he’d never be able to take a normal breath again. The burning in the open wound on his side was searing. Agonizing. Never ending.

He clenched his fists, willing the pain to subside. Trying to imagine he was anywhere else but here suffering. Patrick tried to take a breath, but there were tubes of some sort rammed down his throat and an oxygen mask covering his mouth and nose.

He tried to move his arms, but they were either strapped down or he was too weak to lift them.

“On my count—one, two, three!”

He was abruptly lifted from the rolling stretcher onto a gurney, and it felt like someone was jamming a hot poker into his side. Someone was cutting off his torn, bloody fatigues. He vaguely realized his flak vest and helmet were already long gone. Probably abandoned after the flight out to wherever the hell he was.

He moaned as Rebecca’s face again flashed through his mind. Seconds later it was images of the kids—Logan, Abby.

He had to get home to them.

“Let’s get him into surgery. Page Dr. Powers.”

The searing pain in his side was too much to bear as they pushed him forward down a different hall, and he once again surrendered to the darkness.

***

Rebecca gasped as she sat up in Patrick’s bed, the horrors of last night all rushing back. A cold sweat broke out over her skin as her pulse sky-rocketed, her heart nearly beating out of her chest. She reached over and scrambled to grab her phone off the nightstand, frantic that she’d missed a call from his CO.

That it was too late.

5:21 a.m.

No missed calls, no messages.

Nothing.

Blowing out a breath, she relaxed slightly, nausea replacing the immediate panic she’d had. Her stomach roiled, and she held a hand to it, taking a deep breath.

Was it morning sickness again? A panic attack?

Her phone dug into her palm, she was clutching it so tightly.

She willed herself to calm down, breathing deeply for a minute as she slowly counted to ten in her mind.

Exhaling, her body began to relax a notch.

No news was good news in some ways. She hadn’t missed an urgent call saying Patrick didn’t make it. Hadn’t missed someone from the military showing up at the front door. That had to be the worst job of all—showing up on the doorstep of some unsuspecting family, telling them that their loved one had been killed and was never coming home again.

Barely any time had passed since she’d left the hospital, yet it felt like a lifetime ago. Before and after. Everything had been okay when she’d arrived at the hospital to see Alison. Back then, the worst she could imagine was that her baby was coming a month early and would end up in the NICU.

And then, in a flash, Rebecca’s entire world had begun to fall apart.

Stubborn tears began to roll down her cheeks, despite her will not to cry. If the kids saw her in a couple of hours with red eyes and a tear-stained face, they’d know right away something was wrong. Abby had been so young when her dad was killed, she didn’t understand or remember that much about him.

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