Page 7 of Zorro

The hallway of Bunawan District Hospital smelled like antiseptic, blood, and jungle sweat. The power flickered once, then steadied, casting a yellowish hue over the peeling walls and overflowing triage bays. Gurneys lined both sides of the corridor, makeshift beds for the wounded who couldn’t fit into the trauma wing, their IV bags taped to mop handles or dangling from rusted hooks overhead.

The buzz of Tagalog and English medical shorthand hummed through the space, broken by groans, shouted vitals, and the rhythmic slap of wet boots on tile.

“What do we need to do with this little guy?” he called.

A nurse pointed vaguely down the hall, then vanished behind a curtain. Zorro cursed under his breath and started walking. The newborn’s sleepy little eyes looked up at him, a fragile miracle nestled in borrowed fabric made for war. Zorro’s side throbbed with each breath, but this pain was easy. What stuck with him were the near misses. Especially with Buck. That fracture lived inside him now. Seconds always mattered, but that was time. Their lives, like this little wonder, mattered more. That’s when he heard her voice.

“Pressure’s dropping. Get another line in, now. We don’t have a transfusion kit, so improvise.” Sharp, clear, commanding.

His hands ached to help, but Everly was all this patient needed. He wondered how she felt about the lives she lost. Every life he saved made the ledger heavier, not lighter. No matter how many lived. He ached for the ones he lost and remembered the ones who almost didn’t.

He turned the corner, and there she was. Dr. Everly Quinn, a.k.a. Dr. Sunshine, sleeves rolled, gloves slick. He’d been walking wounded for hours, adrenaline holding him upright, memory trailing like smoke behind him. But she punched his heart back into overdrive. She didn’t see him. She was bent over a patient, fingers deep in a wound, her face set in fierce, infuriating calm.

God help him…she hadn’t changed at all. Her blonde hair was up in a messy, haphazard way, the only thing about her that never seemed to be tamed, wisps clinging to her temple from heat and haste. Her pale skin bore the faintest trace of freckles across her high cheekbones, the kind that always made him think of summer, of innocence none of them had retained. Her eyes, blue-gray and sharp as a scalpel, cut across the room. The same fire, the same fury. God, she was beautiful. He bet she still hadn’t forgiven him for existing.

He pressed his shoulder against the wall, dizzy for a moment. That disjointed memory from the last time he’d been here drifted over him again, slippery and persistent. He remembered the post-op morphine drip dulling his edges, the weight of guilt bearing down on his chest. Everly Quinn. Her name stirred something low and hot in his chest. Her lips had tasted like heat and salt and something he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to want. Not from her. Not then.

He chuckled quietly to himself, shaking his head. Definitely dreaming, he muttered. No way she kissed me.

She couldn’t stand him. Hell, she barely tolerated the sight of him in Niger. Every exchange between them had been flammable. She had no reason to comfort him, especially not like that.

Yet…his fingers flexed against the boy’s tiny body, remembering the shape of her jaw, the brush of her breath. There’d been a tenderness there he hadn’t imagined. Couldn’t have imagined. Could he?

He sighed and turned away. If it had been real, it meant something he wasn’t sure he wanted to look at too closely. If it hadn’t, well, that was almost worse.

2

“Doc,” someone called behind Everly, the voice cracking through the haze that had settled over her.

Fatigue pulled at her with greedy hands, dragging her down with every breath. She had lost track of how many hours she’d been upright—long enough for the edges of her vision to blur and her muscles to tremble with the kind of exhaustion that lived in her marrow.

She didn’t look away from the patient beneath her hands. Blood slicked her gloves, hot and tacky, the cloying scent of iron and sweat clinging to her skin and sinking into her pores. The wound was deep, messy, arterial. Her fingers pressed hard against the source, trying to stanch the flow. Pressure was the only thing keeping this man alive long enough to make it to surgery.

“Clamp.” She placed the small instrument, and the rush of blood subsided.

“Vitals are holding,” someone murmured at her side.

“Good. He’s ready to move. Dr. Callahan is waiting for him in OR Three.” She nodded toward the gurney.

Two nurses stepped in to stabilize the transfer. Everly pivoted, stripping off her gloves with a snap. Her knuckles ached. Her neck burned from tension and fatigue. She was officially off shift, her body running on caffeine and adrenaline now, and not much else. She focused on the nurse who’d called her.

“You’ve got another one,” a nurse said, jerking a thumb toward the hallway. “SEAL. Took a hit and won’t sit down.”

Of course.

Everly exhaled and nodded, pulling the energy she needed. She pressed gauze into a medic’s hand, gave a few clipped instructions, and stepped back. Her mouth lifted in a tired smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“He agreed to finally give up that baby.”

“Baby?”

The nurse blinked, then shook her head in disbelief. “Newborn, actually. He delivered it in the field. Saved the mother, too. What a miracle.”

Everly’s chest tightened. A miracle. Yes.

She pushed through the triage room. The air grew cooler as she stepped into the hallway, quieter, too, though not by much. The harsh flicker of overhead fluorescents gave the corridor an eerie, half-lit quality, yellow light blooming then vanishing.

There he was…Mateo “Zorro” Martinez, cradling a newborn like it was his own. The sight stopped her breath. That towering man, all grit and muscle and sharp angles, was holding the infant with a tenderness that struck something raw inside her. His large hands supported the child with instinctive care as he passed him to the waiting nurse. A moment later, the doors burst open, and a man rushed in, eyes wide, chest heaving. He froze mid-stride, staring at the baby like he couldn’t believe he was real.

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