Page 33 of Shielding Instinct

And after all that, after everything that had happened in the last few hours, the conclusion of theMisadventure of the Alien Eyeballturned out to be so anti-climactic.

At precisely eight o’clock, Petra arrived at the reception desk and was shown immediately back to the doctor.

In her hand, she held the motion sickness patch in a bag, and Hawkeye’s theory on her lips, along with the taste of his kisses.

“There’s a circle of iris,” the doctor said, accepting the vial of drops the nurse gave her at the hospital. “What color are your eyes normally?”

“It depends on my clothes. On my passport, it says gray. My eyes can also look greenish some days or pale blue. It depends on the color reflection.”

“Okay, you’re within the normal spectrum of your iris color. There’s some reactivity, as you noted. This was discovered yesterday afternoon, not yet twenty-four hours?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m going with your theory. I see nothing here that fits neatly with any other diagnosis. However, if it’s not completely cleared up by the forty-eight-hour mark, I’d like to see you back.”

“I’ll be home Monday. Can I wait until then to see my ophthalmologist?” Petra asked, sliding damp palms down her lap. This had been scary; she could admit that to herself.

The doctor leaned his shoulder against the wall, considering her, then said, “If you’re not back to normal, I’d like to run more tests before you get on a plane with the pressure changes. I say that as a precaution. I think it was the patch. We need a backup plan if it doesn’t pan out the way we think it will.”

Think it will.Hawkeye hadn’t made love to her this morning for fear of changing pressures.

Would she keep that last bit to herself?

Just how horny was she for Hawkeye? She wondered as he pulled up beside her.

Pretty damned horny, she thought, as she tugged the door open and climbed in.

Yeah, she’d be willing to take the risk of eyeball pressure changes for him to give her an orgasm.

Or two.

Petra reached for the seatbelt and then leaned over to kiss Hawkeye before snapping it in place. “Thank you for bringing me.”

They started their thirty-minute trek back to the hotel, where Reaper told her to stay for her time on the island. Petra turned to Hawkeye. “Okay – that was an unexpected adventure.”

“I can imagine you felt like you got rolled by a wave. Everyone telling you that you were in danger.”

“Believe it or not, I’m happy about it all around. Mostly, I’m glad that you figured out my medical mystery, otherwise it would have hung over my head in perpetuity.”

“I get that.” He glanced at the phone navigation display and took a left out of the parking area. “If no one figured it out, you’d always be looking at that eye wondering if it would happen again and if it was a missed sign of something dangerous.”

Petra pulled her lips flat as she nodded. He was right. “I have professional-grade ruminating skills. I’m grateful for all the people who helped me in ways big and small—from Levi helping me on the airplane stairs to Halo managing Cooper. Reaper giving up this room. The people on the plane who didn’t complain, not out loud anyway. Kind, competent people all around, not the least of them you.” She knitted her fingers together as she watched the scenery fly by from behind the polarized lenses the doctor wanted her to wear. “And I’m glad I had a hand in all of this, too.”

“If you’re up to sharing, I’d like to hear.”

She glanced his way for a moment, then turned back to the passing houses. “I was thinking about how civilians would come in as volunteers at Quantico. We’d have some scenarios—terror events, mass shooters. The organizers would hand out signs that they would hang around their necks with the basics of their fictional medical situation.”

“At Quantico, it was the FBI doing this? Why?”

“FBI, yes. In the civilian world, law enforcement has to clear the scene before the medical first responders can go in. This isn’t army medics trying to stay under the strafe of bulletswhile they patch people up. At the FBI, we don’t give first aid of any kind until we secure the area. At that point, we could offer assistance with medical aid. The scenarios were set up to teach us to run by screaming, begging people.”

“Rough.”

“Incredibly. The adrenaline was insane. The volunteers were dedicated to their roles. They didn’t just have the sign hanging around their necks. They had moulage, a makeup technique used to apply mock injuries to a person making things more realistic for responders in training. They look like they’ve been shot or stabbed. They even have these latex limb stumps. The volunteers can bend their legs and pull them on. Put a jacket or bag over the bent real-world limb, pour out a puddle of theater blood, dim the lights, and the brain can believe the scene. And we’d have to run by, knowing they’d bleed out while we secured the building.”

“In battle, if you stop and help a fallen soldier, everyone falls. The faster you gain control, the faster help is available. But yeah, I get it. Theory and reality are different beasts. It’s hard as hell to do with a stranger. Nigh on impossible when it’s a brother. But you stick to your training.”

They came to a stop at the red light, and Petra could feel Hawkeye looking at her, so she turned his way. “When I went through training, we had these dummies that were very lifelike,” he said. “They’d be gurgling and spurting blood.” He screwed up like he was smelling spoiled meat. “It was a bit of a mindfuck to be trying to do a field trach on this dummy when it looked so real. And sometimes, it would just spontaneously start screaming or sit up. I’m telling you, whoever developed this animatronic thing wanted to plant the seeds of nightmares.”

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