Chương 3
No one moved for several seconds.
Then Mercer gestured toward the chair beside the examination table.
“Senior Chief, you shouldn't be standing.”
Marcus glanced down at his braced leg.
“That's the first thing you've said today I completely agree with.”
He lowered himself into the chair with an awkward grunt and handed one crutch to the nearest legal officer.
The admiral did not smile.
I did, despite myself.
Mercer's attention returned to the sealed folder.
“Am I authorized to review all of this?”
“Only the portions marked for medical relevance,” the lieutenant commander from legal said.
“Nothing may be copied, photographed, transcribed, or entered into an unsecured medical note.”
Mercer looked irritated by the restrictions, which was almost reassuring.
I had spent months being angry at doors I could not open.
It was useful to watch somebody else meet one.
The lawyer placed the folder on his desk.
A red classification cover sheet hid whatever lay beneath it.
Mercer sat slowly.
“Lieutenant Ward, you will remain here.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Senior Chief, you too.”
Marcus leaned back.
“Wasn't planning on sprinting anywhere.”
Bennett stepped toward the corner of the room and folded his arms.
Mercer opened the folder.
His face changed before he reached the second page.
Not dramatically.
His eyebrows drew together.
His jaw loosened.
He read a line twice, then lifted the page and looked beneath it.
I stared at the gold insignia in my palm.
The pin had left two tiny crescents in my skin.
Marcus noticed.
“Don't bend it.”
“I wasn't planning to.”
“You ruin that thing, I'm billing you.”
“You're retired from active collection duties.”
“I'm creative.”
The absurdity of the exchange steadied me.
Mercer kept reading.
The legal officer standing beside him pointed to a paragraph and quietly clarified an access limitation.
Mercer nodded.
Then he looked at my arm.
This time there was no suspicion in his expression.
There was something worse.
Recognition.
He returned to the report.
I knew roughly what he was reading.
The details had been reconstructed from crew statements because I had lost consciousness before landing.
The aircraft had been extracting a wounded special operations team after an operation that officially did not exist.
A shoulder-fired weapon had struck the helicopter during climb-out.
The blast had torn through the rear cabin.
One piece of fragmented interior paneling had sliced into my left forearm while another destroyed the medical bag strapped beside me.
Marcus had already been bleeding from a gunshot wound near the pelvis.
The blast turned a bad injury into a catastrophic one.
The aircraft lost hydraulics.
The cabin filled with smoke.
The crew chief tried to secure me.
I refused because Marcus's femoral bleeding could not tolerate even ten seconds without compression.
None of it sounded heroic inside my head.
It sounded filthy.
It smelled like burned insulation.
It tasted like blood because I had bitten through the inside of my cheek.
I had been terrified from the moment the aircraft began shaking.
Mercer reached another page.
His hand stopped.
“What does ‘manual vascular compression maintained for thirty-seven minutes’ mean in this context?”
The lawyer looked at me.
I said nothing.
Marcus answered.
“It means she kept her hand inside the wound.”
Mercer looked at him.
Marcus tapped two fingers against his own lower abdomen.
“Artery was torn where a tourniquet couldn't do much good.”
Mercer's eyes moved to my damaged forearm.
“With that arm?”
“Mostly.”
I finally spoke.
“My right hand was stabilizing the packing.”
Mercer stared.
“The report says you had extensive soft tissue trauma and suspected nerve injury.”
“I did.”
“And you continued direct compression.”
“Yes.”
“Why wasn't another medic assigned?”
“There wasn't another medic.”
“The crew chief?”
“Busy keeping the aircraft from becoming a lawn ornament.”
Marcus's mouth twitched.
Bennett's did not.
Mercer turned another page.
“Why weren't you restrained?”
No one answered immediately.
That silence belonged to me.
“The pilot ordered me to secure myself,” I said.
“And you refused.”
“Yes.”
Mercer looked up.
“That could have killed you.”
“Yes.”
“And potentially injured others if you were thrown through the cabin.”
“Yes.”
His tone sharpened.
“So this report doesn't establish flawless judgment.”
“No, sir.”
Marcus shifted in his chair.
“Captain—”
I cut him off.
“He's right.”
Marcus gave me a look.
I kept my eyes on Mercer.
“I disobeyed an aircraft safety order.”
“You did so to preserve a casualty's life.”
“Yes.”
“Those two facts can coexist.”
“They do.”
Mercer studied me for a long moment.
That was the first time all morning I felt examined rather than accused.
He returned to the file.
The next sheet must have been the crew chief's statement because his eyes tracked slowly across several dense paragraphs.
I had heard pieces during debrief.
Not all of it.
After we took the hit, the crew chief had tried twice to strap me into a restraint point.
The first time I shoved him away.
The second time I screamed something at him I still could not remember.
Marcus knew.
He had refused to tell me.
Mercer read aloud before the legal officer could stop him.
“Lieutenant Ward stated, ‘Touch me again and I'll break your hand.’”
Marcus looked delighted.
“That sounds familiar.”
I closed my eyes.
“I was busy.”
“You threatened the crew chief.”
“He had terrible timing.”
Bennett rubbed his forehead.
The younger legal officer abruptly became interested in the floor.
Even Mercer almost smiled.
Almost.
Then he reached the photographs.
I knew because the remaining warmth vanished from his face.
The images had been taken after landing.
My left sleeve had been cut off.
The arm looked wrong even to me when I first saw the pictures weeks later, swollen and blackened in places, the skin split open by debris.
Marcus lay beside me on the flight line in one photograph.
His face was covered with an oxygen mask.
My right hand was still pressed against his wound even though I was unconscious.
They had needed to pry my fingers away.
May you like
Mercer closed the folder.
The snap of cardboard sounded very loud.
