Whatever Gods May Be Part 33

"Uh-huh. Mid-air refueling, so we'll do the straight nine-thousand-whatever miles to the East Coast...No, I'll stay in DC for a bit to make sure everything's okay...Yeah, Rebecca said she'll meet the plane." Sounds so real. Opening her eyes, Jamie gingerly s.h.i.+fted her head toward the sound. Looks real, too. A woman stood turned away from her, facing a bed that exhibited the rumpled signs of occupation.

Jamie blinked at the bed, trying to understand what it meant while she contemplated the woman. It's true. That's Lynn!

"Yes, good," Lynn told the comlink with a concluding tone.

"Thank you, Springer. I'll talk to you in a couple hours. Bye." And then Lynn's shoulders slumped slightly as she tossed the * 269 *

comlink onto the other bed. Oh. Oh wow. She's been staying in here.

With me. Jamie could almost taste the abiding comfort of it.

"Sti' hanging wi' us jarhezz, huh?"

"Jamie!" Lynn spun around, her face in a broad grin, and stepped quickly to the bedrail. "How do you feel?"

"'Kay. Dunn hur' so mush." But the pain circled back toward her, taking aim. Jamie's eyes shut. Trying to kick and squirm out of her body made it worse, so she forced herself to lie motionless, to think only about breathing. Wait! Why is Lynn here? "You..." Jamie battled to get her eyes open, to find out. "Wha' 'bou' you? You 'kay?"

"Shh. Don't worry. I'm fine. Not a scratch." The way Lynn stroked her head was so familiar, made her feel so safe. "You just rest now, Jamie. I'll be here when you wake up."

v "f.u.c.kih pharma."

Jamie would have screamed if she could have screamed. Every cell in her body roiled and shrieked. She was nauseous, dizzy, caught upside down in a vast, surreal spider web of images and impressions, able to form one thought only: Gotta try again.

She sent the fingers of her left hand crawling toward the needle in her right forearm. It was difficult work. The wound in her left arm was all wrapped up, and her fingers were thick and stiff.

"f.u.c.kih pharma."

They were shooting it into her right arm on purpose, no doubt.

Because getting her left hand over there to pull out the G.o.dd.a.m.n needle was really hard. But she was making progress this time. Her left hand had s.h.i.+nnied all the way to the middle of her belly. Now came the tough part, where she had to stretch and reach...

"At it again, Jamie?"

The wavering image of an older woman with curly red hair loomed. The woman gently placed Jamie's left arm at her side, then held her wrist, taking her pulse.

Wearing civvies. Not a nurse-maybe a doc. Jamie decided to complain. "f.u.c.kih pharma."

"Yeah, yeah. This f.u.c.king pharma's the only reason you didn't have to be sc.r.a.ped off the ceiling."

* 270 *

"Doe nee yih."

"Yes. You. Do. Now behave. You promised Lynn you wouldn't make the nurses put you in restraints again, remember?" Jamie tried to pull her arm from the woman's grip. The woman held on.

"Come on, Jamie. You remember."

"Lynn."

"That's right, and she's due back any minute."

"Plane?"

"No, she's just down the road at the Capitol."

"Plane," Jamie repeated, closing her eyes, trying to shuffle a jumble of faintly remembered sights and sounds into meaning. It seemed to make sense for a moment before she slipped into sleep.

v "Hey there," Lynn said the next time Jamie's eyes managed to open.

"Lynn." Jamie smiled, a surge of warmth filling her chest and spreading across her shoulders. "Still here."

"Of course I'm still here." Lynn leaned over her and kissed her forehead, then stroked her cheek. "You look a lot better. Not so pale.

Rebecca says you're a fast healer."

Jamie exhaled with a small, delicious tremor at Lynn's gentle kiss, always on her forehead, followed by the salving touch that began with Lynn's fingers combing back her hair, then the palm of Lynn's hand slipping smooth and soft along her cheek and jaw. This greeting had become a ritual her body craved, though it was almost entirely lost to her memory. Just as Jamie concluded this, she registered the name Lynn had spoken: Rebecca.

"Your Rebecca?"

"Yep. She said you still seemed a little disoriented and thought your pain meds should be adjusted." Lynn pulled a chair closer to Jamie's bed. "Seems to have helped-"

"She's seen me?"

"Several times. I would've introduced you yesterday, but you were asleep when I got here."

"The woman with the red hair."

* 271 *

"That's her."

Jamie felt her face heat with embarra.s.sment. "I thought she was a doc."

"She is." Lynn s.h.i.+fted her weight in the chair and suppressed a smile. "I couldn't bring you to her, so I had to get her to come to you, which wasn't hard. She wants to thank you."

"Me? Why?"

"For showing up the Pentagon's best intel wonks, who were convinced that I'd been grabbed by the PIA. They told Rebecca it was all over but the gruesome execution video and the crying. Now she's made me promise to never travel alone again."

"She didn't want you to go to the Palawan, huh?"

"No, she sure didn't."

"Reamed you when you came back."

"Oh my yes. She reamed me. Our daughters reamed me. My chief of staff reamed me. Ben Embry reamed me. Even Rebecca's unflappable mother reamed me." Lynn laughed softly. "And it all felt wonderful."

"In that case, I'd join in. If I wasn't so zonked." Jamie eyed the IV bag dangling above her with suspicion. "f.u.c.king pharma."

"The docs have had a tough time figuring out dosage for you that didn't send you into la-la land. Rebecca says you're hypersensitive. But I'm not sure you would've gotten through the trip home without-"

"Home?"

"Well, almost."

"I don't actually have a-" Jamie tried to push herself up. "Where am I?"

Lynn's hand on Jamie's right shoulder, one of the few places that didn't hurt, stopped her. "This is the Eisenhower National Military Medical Center. Just outside Was.h.i.+ngton. I'm sorry. You seemed pretty aware. I thought you remembered."

Jamie's eyes closed. "Yeah, I-I do remember." When she opened her eyes, she didn't try to stop the tears in them from rolling down her cheeks. "You. You came back on the hospital plane with me. You held my hand."

Lynn leaned closer and took Jamie's hand again. "Yes. I did." v * 272 *

Jamie began to sweat with the effort of lifting her head and shoulders off the pillow. She hadn't expected to wake up to the sight of a major general just standing there next to her bed all by himself like a regular person.

"Easy does it, Jamie," said Ben Embry.

"Sir," she managed finally, trying not to hyperventilate.

"The docs say you're doing better now. You've got only a couple of surgeries left to go, they tell me."

"Yessir."

"I just wanted to come by and thank you for what you did out there, Lieutenant. And I, uh, want to say that I'm sorry for not giving you what you asked me for. I should have."

"Yessir."

"I've recommended you for the Medal of Honor for getting all those people out of that prison camp. You've also been awarded the Navy Cross for your contribution to Operation Repo last November.

There at the end, when you bailed out the guys from the recon unit who couldn't make it onto the helos."

Jamie's pulse had elevated as Embry spoke. By the time he finished, the machines monitoring her had started beeping and tooting.

"Sir," she wheezed. "I respectfully decline the awards." That seemed to get the machines to calm down some. Certainly it made breathing easier. A nurse came in anyway to check things out, but left as fast as she could after seeing the two stars on Embry's uniform.

"May I ask why?" Embry asked when the nurse closed the door behind her.

"For personal reasons, sir."

"Is it because of Lieutenant Sherman? I'm told you'd never lost anyone until he was-"

"Please, sir." Jamie felt her eyes heat up before she shut them.

"It's personal. I-I can't..."

Jamie meant to open her eyes again in a second or two, once the whirling in her head subsided. Just a few breaths, just a few seconds, and she'd be able to deal with him again. When her eyes opened, though, the light had changed and Embry was gone. Lynn Hillinger stood next to the bedrail gazing at her.

"What happened? Where'd he go? Oh jeezus, what time is it?"

"You faded." Lynn touched Jamie's cheek rea.s.suringly. "G.o.d, Ben * 273 *

can be so d.a.m.n bullheaded. I asked him to wait 'til I got here before he talked to you, but obviously he had other ideas."

"Christ, he'll hang me by my toes now."

"Oh no, he won't. He's as humbled as I've ever seen him. And I met him in high school." Lynn sat and rested her arms on the bedrail.

"He said you turned down the Navy Cross."

Jamie nodded, s.h.i.+fting her eyes away from Lynn. "I, uh-I don't believe in medals."

"You asked Major Donato to put in for all sorts of medals for the Saint Eh Mo's people."

"I don't believe in medals for me." Jamie returned her eyes to Lynn. "I'd like to give back the ones I've got. Can I do that?" Lynn reached across the bedrail for Jamie's hand; she so obviously wanted to ask why, but she didn't. "I don't know," she said instead, and then had the grace to change the subject. "But I do know there's someone else who'd-" Lynn turned around in response to a subdued knock. "Ah, here she is now."

"Come in, North Carolina," Jamie said when she saw the corpsman hesitating in the doorway. "How're you doing?"

"I'm real good, ma'am. How about you? I looked in on you a few times, but you were sleeping. We've all been real worried."

"I'm doing okay," Jamie said. "Getting better every day. Sorry I was out of it when you came by."

North Carolina shuffled bashfully. "I'm being released today.

I-I just wanted to say I'm real proud to have served with you, LT ma'am."

Jamie smiled. "You did a fine job, Cordelia. You're one of the best."

A blush rose to North Carolina's cheeks.

"Going home, right?"

North Carolina nodded.

"Anybody special there?"

Grinning, she nodded again. "James Edward Barr, Junior. We're gonna get married and make babies-" North Carolina put her hand to her mouth apologetically. "Uh-"

"It's okay." Jamie kept her own hand from touching the bandage over the four-inch incision low on her belly, kept her mind from thinking * 274 *

about the justice meted out by that fifth wound. "Still got the oves. And if I want babies, I can always adopt some of your extras." North Carolina giggled. "I'm-I'm gonna miss you, LT ma'am."

"Better to miss me than miss James Edward Barr, Junior, huh?"

"Yeah, guess so."

"I won't forget you, North Carolina." Jamie raised her right hand and offered a high-five. "Good luck."

North Carolina gave Jamie's hand a dainty pat. "You too, LT ma'am."