Page 46 of Misadventures in Blue
He’s too young and he’s too heroic.
I’ve loved those young heroes before. I know what happens. I know how it ends.
I cry for a long time into his big, muscled shoulder, leaving streaks of mascara on his hospital gown. I slide my hand over his chest to feel the thump of his heart, and I listen to the machines, and I tell him, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
And before I leave, I kiss his stubbled jaw and say, “And I’m so fucking sorry for what I have to do.”
Chapter Fourteen
Jace
I’m too dizzy to open my eyes.
Sounds bleed through the haze of strange dreams—sounds I don’t recognize—and I can’t open my eyes to see what they are because the world is spinning, spinning, spinning.
I smell something familiar. A delicate, French perfume, and the smell conjures a face in my mind.
Cat…
But before I can manage to speak her name, heavy, drugged unconsciousness pulls at me, the sounds receding as I disappear back into the spinning dark.
When I wake again, the dizziness isn’t so bad, but Cat’s scent has disappeared into a miasma of cleaning chemicals and fast food. I manage to pry open my bleary eyes to find my parents sitting next to me, McDonald’s cups in hands, talking in low tones about replacing the fence in their backyard.
“Mom?” I rasp.
“Oh!” she says, setting her cup down and rushing to lean over me. “Oh God, Jace, you’re awake!”
She sounds happy and sad all at once, and even in my groggy state of mind, I can see the drawn lines around her mouth and eyes, the ashen cast to her face. Whatever I’ve been through, she’s suffered more watching me go through it. My dad joins her on the other side of the bed, taking my hand.
I’m so glad to see them, although the reasons why are hazy…
“Where’s Cat?” I whisper. “She was here, I know she was…”
Mom and Dad exchange a look over me. Mom’s look distinctly says I told you so.
“She’s been here constantly,” Mom says as she looks back at me. “We sent her home today to get a change of clothes and a nap. She hasn’t been taking care of herself since you came in.”
I close my eyes, pained that Cat has been suffering but hopeful too—hopeful that if she’s been here and had to be forced to leave that it means something for us. For our future.
“How long?” I ask. My voice is dry and raspy. “How long have I been here?”
“Three days,” Dad says. “The first day was the hardest—”
His voice cracks, and he clears his throat in a manly sort of way. “You got moved down from the ICU yesterday. They say you’re in good shape—no sign of infection so far. They’ll be in to assess potential nerve damage later.”
Infection.
Damage.
The haze clears a bit around what I’m feeling in my body—like my right arm is on fire—and why I’m feeling it. Gia’s face, florid and angry, her hand shaking around the gun so hard that she could barely keep it still.
Cat, slender and cool, eyebrow arched as she stared down the barrel without so much as flinching.
The barb of real, primal terror that lodged in my heart when I realized Cat was about to die. I’ve never felt fear like that. Not even in Afghanistan.
Funnily enough, I was also never actually wounded in Afghanistan. It was here, on these mean suburban streets, by a Vassar grad with a flair for supplying terrorists with rare metals. Who would’ve guessed?
With my parents’ help, I sit up and manage to chew some ice chips, and then I fall back asleep, the seductive pull of the pain medicine too strong to resist. I don’t dream much, but what I do dream is strange and warped and distressing. And always, always about Cat.
