Hannah yawned, her head dropping to his shoulder. For a long moment, he enjoyed the comfort of the weight of her against him. A solid, steady presence. He couldn’t have gotten through this without her. Not in his current mental state over things with his team, with Robbie. But it wasn’t fair to take advantage of her and expect her to stick it out the rest of the night.
“You don’t have to stay.”
She didn’t even lift her head. “Yes I do. I’ve already taken off tomorrow. I’m not leaving you here alone.”
He didn’t deserve her kindness.
“Everyone deserves kindness,” she murmured.
Apparently, he’d spoken aloud. “I didn’t treat you with kindness.” It was the truth and it was out there. He might as well make his apologies and address it, even if it pushed her away. “I’m sorry I behaved like a jackass.”
She straightened. “You said you had a reason.”
That reason detonated in his head, his heart, as his brain conjured images of his friend. Of the smile and the terrible jokes he’d never hear again.
Ryan took a slow breath. “This is the longest stretch I’ve been off in about four years. I’ve been on deployment, going from mission to mission with my team. When you’re out there, in the middle of all the violence, it gets where that’s the only thing you can see. It’s the only thing you know. I didn’t think too much about it. Part of our training involves compartmentalization. We deal with what’s in front of us. Nothing more, nothing less. And we don’t get attached to much outside the team. It’s normal. Our normal, anyway. I don’t know when I stopped expecting more, stopped seeing anything else.”
His thumb stroked along the back of her hand, taking comfort, even now. Her face held no judgment, just patience and curiosity.
“But you made me think about it. You made me want something else. Sometime while I’ve been here, you blew that objectivity and compartmentalization all to hell. I stayed longer than I intended, partly because of Percy’s lack of cooperation, but partly because I didn’t want to go back. I didn’t want to walk away from you. I started thinking about all those what ifs I don’t allow myself in the field. About what it would be like to not be dealing with battle trauma and death. To get out, go to med school, and specialize in something where seeing my patients doesn’t remind me of my failures. Where nobody’s permanently maimed or dying. And I want that so fucking bad, I can taste it.”
The hand he held tightened around his fingers. “There’s no shame in that.”
He dropped his head. She had no idea how much shame there was in that for him. “Right after I left you the other night, I got a call from a friend. One of our team was injured on an op. There was a fucking trip wire and a homemade bomb. Robbie didn’t survive long enough to make it on the helo for extraction and treatment.”
“Jesus. I’m so sorry.” She pressed a cheek against his shoulder, just holding on, and he welcomed it even as he cursed himself for the weakness of needing it. Needing her.
“I should’ve been there. If I’d been there, I could’ve done something. And instead I was here, with you, pretending I could have another life.”
For a long moment, she stayed silent. “Am I correct in assuming that they wouldn’t have run the mission without another medic as part of the team?”
“Yeah.”
“Another medic with the same training as you?”
“Yes, but—”
“No, no buts. You cannot blame yourself for this, Ryan. The only one at fault here is whoever set up that tripwire. Not you, not whoever was standing in your stead, not anyone else on your team. Be angry. Grieve the loss. But don’t blame yourself.”
There were sense and logic to her words, and everything in him wanted to reject them. “Easier said than done.”
“If you’d pulled away from me sooner, if you’d been there for Robbie, you wouldn’t have been here today for Percy. Even if I’d managed to get in the door, I wouldn’t have known what was wrong or what to do. I’d have waited for the fire department, if for no other reason than I wouldn’t have been physically able to get Percy off the floor. I wouldn’t have had the training to know he needed water or that he needed to stay awake.”
It was easy, far too easy, to see the picture she painted. To see the probable outcome. He wanted to block it out, deny the possibility, but she was still talking.
“There was a medic on the team, and Robbie didn’t make it. Maybe if you’d been the medic, Robbie still wouldn’t have made it, and that’s horrible and tragic. But then Percy might be gone, too. And that wouldn’t have been your fault either, because even here, outside a warzone, tragedies just happen. There’s only one of you, and you can’t carry everyone on your shoulders, no matter how impressive they are. No matter how much you believe you can control everything, you can’t. And I think, somewhere deep down, you know that.”
Knowing and accepting were two very different things.
“The other day, you accused me of hiding out from my life, of making do with what I have here instead of doing whatever was necessary to get back to my real life.”
Hearing his words, Ryan winced. “I can’t believe I said that to you. I was wrong. Dead wrong.”
“I accept your apology. But you weren’t speaking to me, were you? Not really. You were angry with yourself because you don’t want to go back.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t.”
He whipped his head toward her. “What?”
“If you’ve reached a point where you’re that reluctant and conflicted about going back after a few weeks off, if you’re questioning your ability to compartmentalize yourself in order to do the job, then maybe you’re getting to the point where you shouldn’t be doing the job.”
That there was more than a kernel of truth to what she said scared him down to the marrow. He wanted the choice. All those down-the-road plans were for when he was ready to walk away. He didn’t want to be forced into the decision because he wasn’t capable anymore. He wanted to leave on a high note. On his own terms. Not as a failure. “It’s not that easy. I have obligations to my team, a contract. I—”
She held up a hand. “I’m not saying walk away today. But give yourself permission to think about it. Seriously consider it. You chose an incredibly difficult profession. I can’t even fathom how hard you worked to get where you are. One of the elite. But you can only do that effectively if you can maintain your edge. Psychologically, that’s got to wear on a person. That doesn’t make you weak or a failure. It makes you human.”
Somehow, staring into her big, blue eyes, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. How was it that this woman understood him so well after so little time? How had he come to crave that so much, so fast?
“Mr. Malone?”
He jolted at the voice, rising to his feet as the doctor approached him. A white lab coat flapped around her legs.
“I’m Dr. Campbell. I wanted to let you know that Mr. Gannaway is going to be okay. We’ve stabilized him, and expect him to make a full recovery, though we’d like to keep him for a full forty-eight hours to make sure we get his levels worked out. Provided everything goes as expected, he can go home Christmas Day.”