Page 6 of Rescuing Baylee
As the weapon clicked empty, she pushed out of their barricade. Crossing to the dead men in the doorway, she tossed her weapon away, then grabbed up one of the Taliban weapons. She looked at the men on the floor, and she caught a flash of dirty blue and white fabric. It flashed in her mind, and she felt a surge of satisfaction. He had been number three.
Fuck them all.
There was a rustle of boots down the hallway, and Baylee lifted her weapon again, praying she had enough bullets toprotect her and Olivia. She’d just started to squeeze the trigger when Olivia screamed at her to stop.
The man standing in the doorway was obviously American. He wore American gear, and he held up his hands to them, grinning. “I’m American. Thought you all might want to get out of here.”
Baylee dropped the enemy weapon as two more Americans came into the room. She stumbled toward the first man. “You have to help Olivia. You have to get her out of here.”
The first man seemed to be the one in charge, and he turned toward Olivia. Baylee slumped, leaning against the door jamb. One of the soldiers said something to her, but she was kind of in a fog. Her body was throbbing with pain, and she wasn’t even sure she would be able to walk out of here under her own steam.
“Baylee,” Olivia called. “Go check on our people.”
Baylee straightened and turned to do what her supervisor had told her to do, finding some last reserve of energy. When she walked into the hallway, though, nausea churned. There were bodies everywhere. There were several American soldiers— were they SEALs? — moving dead Taliban out of the way so they could deal with the few living left. Baylee walked through a hallway of dead people, seeing indicators of the people she’d known. That looked like Myrna’s hair, and that bandanna had been what Charles wore when he was on duty to keep the sweat out of his eyes.
Desperately, she looked for someone alive that she could help, and she spotted one doctor. He was moaning on the floor, and Baylee dropped down beside him to treat the gunshot wound through his gut.
Baylee lost herself in bloody, gritty work. Olivia was placed onto a stretcher, and a big medic worked on her for a while. He pumped several syringes of fluid into her IV bag, and when the helicopters arrived, Olivia was the first one out the door.
Baylee wanted to go to her friend to tell her she was sorry again, but she was whisked away. That was okay. Olivia needed care as soon as she could get it.
More relief arrived on the helicopters, and Baylee found herself gently nudged out of the way. Then the big medic was there, smiling gently down at her. There was a long scar running down the man’s face, and she stared for a long time. That was how she was going to look.
“Baylee,” the man said. “My name is Truck. I thank you for everything you’ve done, but I think it’s time you got care now. Can you sit down?”
Baylee dropped to the lowered gurney the man positioned behind her, then he crouched down in front of her. “Will Olivia be okay?” she asked, her voice rough and raw.
Truck nodded as he removed the bandage from her face. “I think she will be. The last thing she said to me, though, was that she wanted you cared for. You’ve done a lot to care for the people here, Baylee, and now it’s our turn to help you. Okay?”
Tears stung her eyes, and she nodded, exhaustion washing over her. She slumped on the gurney, and when Truck nudged her to lay down, she didn’t fight him. The hard mattress felt good under her abused body.
Abused. Used. Suddenly, the emotions she’d been cramming down inside burst out of her, and she sobbed. Curling on her side, she pulled her legs up, gasping as she dragged in air and fought not to scream. Truck stayed by her side, and he seemed to sense that she wouldn’t want him to hold or comfort her. Instead, he talked softly to her, telling her that she did everything exactly the way he would have done it. And that he wished he could have shot the fuckers for her again. He praised what she’d done, and it was weirdly what she needed. When she reached out to him, he gripped her hand so tightly that shethought it was going to break, but it was exactly the stability she needed in that storm.
CHAPTER TWO
Baylee’s anxiety was screeching at her, but she tamped it down. She had a job to do, and she would do it well.
Man, she hated full-moon nights.
When the call went out that there was a squad inbound with a 30 weeks’ pregnant gunshot victim, probably the Jainaof a gang member, they all went onto high alert. They had built a pediatric emergency trauma response team for situations just like this, and Baylee was proud to see them all shift into their temporary roles as they headed downstairs to save a mother and child.
The emergency department of Dell-Seton Medical Center was bustling when they hurried in. The city was in the middle of a spike in gang activity, and all the hospitals in the area had been reeling from overcrowding, in addition to dealing with a nationwide nursing shortage. Baylee could tell as soon as she walked in that they needed help, and she sent her nurses to do what they could until the squad got there with their patients. She found the bay where they would treat them and checked the pediatric supplies herself. She wasn’t down here very often, and it was prudent to re-familiarize herself with the set-up. Dr. Mendez, the Emergency OB, was on her way in. Hopefully, she would arrive before the squad.
Baylee rearranged a few things, then stopped in the bathroom real quick. The night had already been busy, and she hadn’t yet had a minute to herself. That was good, though. She’d taken this shift deliberately tonight, because she hadn’t wanted to think about the date. It was the anniversary of the Rebellion, and the media was going crazy with coverage of all the celebrations. They’d beaten back the Taliban eleven years ago today, though it had been the greatest loss of American forces in the past twenty years.
Baylee was intimately aware of the date, and she wished she’d been able to call Rex and Olivia, but she hadn’t had a chance. She’d sent a message, promising to call in a couple of days. She had hoped that by working tonight, she would be too busy to think about the date, and mostly, she had been.
It was so hard to see the most painful, traumatic day of her life celebrated.
She washed her hands, glancing up at the mirror. It had taken her years to get used to the scars on her face. The deepest, most obvious one started at her temple, ran down through the middle of her cheek, over her jawbone and down her neck. It had silvered with time, but still immediately drew people’s attention. The second scar traced through her left eyebrow and across the bridge of her nose, nicking her right cheek. One of the plastic surgeons had told her that the angle they had cut her at had been lucky, because she could have very easily lost an eye.
Baylee had never felt lucky, in that respect, but it wasn’t worth arguing with them about.
She’d gotten used to the reactions of people meeting her for the first time. It was why she loved working with babies and kids. They didn’t care what had happened to her, only how they were treated in the moment. They took everything at face value, so to speak, and if they had questions, they asked. She had no problem answering their curiosity.
It was the people that gave her sidelong glances or whispered about her behind their hands that bothered her. In her mind, even eleven years later, Baylee just knew they were talking about her. Even after years of counseling, she still worried about what other people thought. She tried to be upbeat, but it was hard sometimes.
Maybe that was why her neighbor bothered her. She’d lived in the same apartment for years, so she knew a lot of the people in the building, by face if not by name. When the new guy had moved in down the hall, the entire building had been wondering who he was, Baylee included. Now, she could care less. She’d had enough of his dark, scowling looks. Every time he looked at her, it was like she’d crapped in his Cheerios, or something. Fuck him.