Troubleshooter

Chapter 19

Mac sat nervously in a vinyl-upholstered chair by the door, his tousled hair and two-day stubble roughing out his appealing features. He stood at Tim and Bear's approach, hefting his gear-heavy belt and throwing a sigh that smelled of Clorets. As Dray's partner he was sometimes territorial; that he nursed a long-standing and hopeless crush on her didn't help ease tensions between him and Tim. Tim took a moment to smooth down his annoyance at the sight of this man sitting sentry outside his wife's room.

"Any change?" Tim asked.

Mac shook his head. "Nurse is with her now. But they're only letting in family."

Tim pushed on the doorknob. When Mac went to follow, Bear laid a thick hand on his shoulder.

"Can't I come in with you, Rack?"

"I'd rather be alone with her."

"Look, can I just-?"

"Not right now."

Sleeplessness and grief had left Mac looking loose and a touch unpredictable. He appeared to be working up a retort, but Tim slid past him into the room.

A nurse leaned over Dray, her arms moving industriously. Thumb on one lid, then the other, click-click of a pen flashlight. Over her shoulder: "Hello, Mr. Rackley."

Tim sank into the bedside chair. "Hi. Have we met?"

She turned, showing off her name tag, her jet-black hair twirled around a pen. "The night Andrea came in. We spoke a few times."

Beige liquid coursed up a clear plastic tube through Dray's nose and into her body. Her finger swelled into a pulse-oximeter. The cardiac monitor blipped deadeningly.

The nurse made a fist out of Dray's pliant hand and slid two fingers in. "Now, squeeze my fingers, Andrea. Go on and squeeze."

"She's Dray," Tim said, "unless you're mad at her."

The nurse smiled and tried again, using her nickname. She looked up and gave Tim a little head shake before jotting on a clipboard. When she finished, she used a moistened washcloth to wipe an iodine stain from Dray's forehead.

He worked up the courage to ask the question. "How's it look?"

"The doctor will be in to talk to you in a second."

Tim's vision went a little glassy. "I see." As the nurse walked past, he took her arm gently. "Thank you. For cleaning her face."

The doctor entered a moment later and greeted Tim warmly.

"No surgery," Tim said.

"That's the good news. The pellet is wedged against her rib cage at the back of the chest in the serratus anterior. It's not bothering anyone back there, so we're gonna leave it in her."

"What's the bad news?"

"The longer she stays unconscious…"

"Yeah?"

"The odds diminish."

"Of what?"

"Of her coming back. Or coming back easily. But it's not even been twenty-four hours. It's early yet."

"The baby?"

"By all indications the baby's healthy. Of course, this is a fragile situation. Do you know the sex?"

Tim shook his head.

"Do you want to?"

"No. We wanted to wait."

"Okay." The doctor paused at the door. "I'm sorry for what I said when you came in. When I talked about myself. I made some assumptions, and, frankly, my timing sucked. Husbands losing wives is a tough one for me. I'm sorry I didn't use better judgment."

"Believe me, I've used worse." Tim offered his hand, and the doctor took it. "I'm glad she's in your hands."

"I'll take care of her."

"Please."

The door clicked, leaving him with the headache beep of the monitor and the white noise of unseen moving parts. Dray's hair remained dark at the tips from dried sweat. Tim rested a hand on the mound of her stomach. His thoughts took him to the waiting crib in their nursery, and he remembered his first three weeks home with Ginny when C-section complications had left Dray hospital-bound. He tried to envision those three weeks of solo parenting stretched into eighteen years, and then he pictured not even having that option.

The thrill of their honeymoon, a four-day weekend in Yosemite he'd squeezed between deployments, had been heightened by his impending departure. The orange glow of moonlight filtered through tent nylon. Dray's form emerging from the flannel sheath of a sleeping bag. The muscles in her tapered back, arranged like river stones beneath her smooth skin. Her face smudged up against her shoulder so her cheek grew chins. A fall of lank hair split over her left eye. Tim tended hot-the exertion had overheated him-and he was sitting Indian style at her side, fingertip-tracing the dip between her shoulder blades.

Her voice was muffled by her shoulder. "How 'bout if I lost a leg?"

"No."

"Both arms?"

"Nope."

"Hysterical blindness?"

"We'd get through it together."

"Chronic halitosis?"

"We'd figure something out. Buy stock in Listerine."

"Hmm." Her eyes were closed; she moved toward his touch like a contented cat. "Would you divorce me if I started collecting Hummels?"

"No."

"God, you really took those vows literally. Just so you know"-with exaggerated exertion she shoved herself up so she could look at him-"one false move, I'm outta here, pal. I'm talking allergies, facial tics, whistling while you pee, disfiguring scars, referring to yourself as 'this guy,' bringing home sport-themed couch pillows-"

"I'll watch my step."

She hugged him at the waist and curled into him, suddenly serious, inundated with feeling. She spoke to his ribs in a hot whisper. "I want you to always be happy. If anything ever happens to me, you can marry someone else."

She was twenty-two and new to emotion. He was twenty-five, convinced of his greater maturity, and invincible.

"Nothing's going to happen to you," he'd said.

Now her milky arm protruded from the papery gown, exposed to the armpit. He lifted her hand. It came limply, as if detached. He ran his thumb across her short-cut fingernails, then over the recent wrinkles that pond-rippled from her middle knuckles. He pressed his face to the skin at her inner wrist-the smell of her, disguised by hospital soap and sweat. He slid his finger into her fist to feel the soft press of her skin all around him. "Squeeze, Dray. Go on, squeeze."

He waited for the faintest pulse. He lowered his head, closed his eyes, choked on a breath.

What are you doing here?

"Visiting you."

Leave the hound-dog-at-the-grave routine to Mac. He's got nothing better to do.

"I wanted to see you."

Great. Wring your hands. Rend your hair. Fall asleep on the visitor chair, too-that one always looks good on TV movies. This isn't me. Come on. You spent thirteen years enlisted, eleven with Spec Ops. You know better than to sentimentalize this.

"What do you want me to do?"

She laughs, crow's-feet bunching around her impossible green eyes. Get out there and bag some crooks.