Page 44 of Just One Silver Fox

“But you bought a car first.”

“True. Transportation was more important. The hand, though, will trump a house.” He watched her, his eyes gleaming in the darkness. She knew from the intensity of his expression that they would be all greeny-gold, even though she couldn’t discern their color in the light. He was smiling slightly, as if he was humoring her, and Sonia guessed that he was. “Any more questions?”

Sonia shook her head and smiled down at him. “Do you have nightmares?”

Six

It was the obvious question, but Nate didn’t really want to answer Sonia. The last thing he wanted to do in the night was talk about what haunted him.

“Is that what just happened?” he asked instead.

Sonia nodded. She was sitting on the side of the bed and even in the sparkly light of the fairy lights, he could see that she was looking uncertain.

Vulnerable.

It was too intimate to ask what her nightmare had been about.

Nate pulled her down toward the bed instead, keeping his tone light. “Then you need a story to get back to sleep.”

He felt Sonia smile against his shoulder. She curled against him, her hand on his chest, her hair spilling over his arm. “Do you have bad dreams?”

“Everyone does.”

“About losing your hand?”

To his own surprise, Nate found himself answering. It seemed so natural and easy, as if any confession made in this glittering cave would go no further. She had to be practicing for being a therapist. “No. That happened so suddenly. It took me a long time to even remember it.”

“What then?”

“The flight,” he admitted. “When they air-lifted us out.”

“They must have sedated you.”

Nate laughed a little. “Maybe that’s why. The memory is kind of like a hallucination with a lot of gaps, but strong impressions. I remember those.”

“Like what impressions?”

“You’re way too easy to talk to, you know.”

“Working on my professional style,” she said lightly, proving his theory right. “Help me out.”

Nate frowned. “Well, I remember the pain, of course. There’s probably not a sedative good enough to obliterate that, given my injury.”

“They might have given you morphine. That can lead to some impressive dreams, I hear.”

“Maybe.”

“What else? Paint me a picture with words.”

“I remember how busy it was.” Nate closed his eyes to recall. “People—nurses—moving so fast from stretcher to stretcher. It was dusty and dark, lots of flashlights. The smell of blood. Some moans. The sounds of the carrier being readied to leave, more vehicles arriving, people talking. A nurse swore as she was securing me, I remember. ‘Lucky you,’ she said. ‘It’s a busy day in paradise.’ I guess they had a lot of casualties to take to Germany that night.”

“I can see how that would fuel a nightmare.” Sonia was speaking with confidence now, gently leading him forward. She would be a good therapist. “You must have been afraid, too.”

“Uncertain. A little too out-of-it to be afraid. That came later when I woke up and saw exactly what had happened.” Nate frowned, returning to that night. “They brought in one last guy and put him across the aisle from me. He was in really bad shape. Lots of blood everywhere and he wasn’t moving. But the thing was that there was a dog. A big German Shepherd. The nurse was arguing with someone about the dog, but that dog wasn’t going to be left behind. He was staying with that guy, no doubt about it. He had to weigh more than a hundred pounds and he shoved that nurse aside, then jumped onto the stretcher with that guy. He laid down behind the guy’s knees and put his chin on his hip, watching him closely.”

“How could there be a dog?”

“He was a bomb sniffer and the guy was the dog’s handler. When they told the nurse that and the pilot shouted that we had to go, she tried one last time to evict the dog.”

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