Day 2 Morning

Amelia woke with a start, her eyes wide. She stared around, not moving her head, aware that she was finally back to the land of the living, and yet she couldn't recall everything that had led up to her arrival in this place. She hoped for more answers, and, as she rolled her head to the side, it landed on the electric gaze of the huge man sitting beside her. She blinked again, thinking she might have imagined him, but he was still here.

He got up, walked over, and asked gently, "How are you feeling now?"

"Water?" she asked in a raspy voice.

He immediately held out a glass for her, and she drank deeply. When she had emptied the glass, he asked, "Do you want more?"

"No, I'm good." She sagged back and took a moment to recover from the pain of her exertions, closing her eyes.

"My name is Mountain," he offered, and her lips twitched at that.

She opened her eyes and gave him an odd smile. "Did your parents have any idea what size you would be?"

"No, I don't think so," he replied, with a laugh. "Apparently they guessed, and I would say correctly."

She gave him a small smile. "You've been here looking after me, haven't you?"

"I have been," he confirmed. "Though looking after you might be an exaggeration of my skills, but I've definitely been keeping an eye on you. We do have a doctor for the true looking after."

She looked over at him. "Do you know what happened?"

"No, and I'm really hoping that you can tell me."

She frowned, as she stared up at the ceiling again. "It's pretty hazy," she muttered and glanced at him. "You also look familiar."

"That could be for a lot of reasons," he explained calmly. "I think I saw you in the village once or twice, although mostly in passing. I don't think we ever spoke. You may also have been to this base and seen me because I've certainly been here plenty of times. However, I don't know that we've ever been introduced."

She swallowed and winced at the pain reverberating up her side. "Where's the doc?" she asked, her pain evident in her tone and her breathing.

"She'll be back in a minute," he replied, checking the time. "She stepped out to grab some coffee for us," he shared, with a note of amusement. "She'll be back soon."

She heard his words and then it hit. "Coffee?" Suddenly a hint of hope filled her tone.

He snorted. "I'm glad to see you're on the mend, but I'm not sure that the doc will let you have coffee this soon." She gave him a frown, but he wasn't swayed either way. "An awful lot of people need to hear what happened to you, so anything that would get your brain kicked in and functioning would help."

"In that case, I need coffee," she stated firmly.

The door opened then, and Amelia watched, without moving too much, as a graceful woman of about her age stepped into the room, carrying coffee for two. Another man was at her side, and both of them were laughing. As they approached, Sydney looked over in delight. "Wow. Look who's awake."

Amelia gave her a slight smile. "Apparently I owe you my life."

Sydney shrugged. "I don't know about that," she argued, with the same enthusiasm. "I certainly would have preferred to see you before you got into this shape, particularly since you didn't come to me after you'd been shot the first time."

Amelia gave her a flat stare, then looked at what was in her hand. "Mountain said there's coffee."

"Did he offer you coffee?" Sydney asked curiously.

"No, he explained I probably wouldn't be allowed to have any."

Sydney chuckled. "And I suppose you disagree." She came over, picked up a blood pressure cuff, and immediately checked Amelia's vitals. When Sydney was finished, she noted the data on her e-tablet, ignoring everyone else around her.

When she stopped tapping on the screen, Amelia broke the silence in the room. "So, what's the verdict on the coffee?"

Looking at her carefully, Sydney spoke. "You're more concerned about the coffee than anything else?"

"If anybody starts asking me questions, believe me, I will need coffee."

"We can send Magnus down to get you a cup," she offered, turning to look at Magnus, as he nodded with a smile. "Do you take it black?"

"I'll take it any way I can get it," Amelia replied, "particularly right now."

With a chuckle, Magnus nodded and quickly walked out of the clinic, taking Mountain with him.

Sydney looked down at her patient. "Now, while the men are gone, I want to check your wounds, if that's okay with you."

"Are you afraid the coffee will leak out?" Amelia asked, with interest.

Sydney burst out laughing. "Oh, a sense of humor. I like that."

"Sometimes it's all we have," Amelia shared.

Sydney stopped to focus on her and nodded. "Sounds as if you and Mountain have been having quite the conversation."

Amelia slowly lowered her lashes, as she considered that. "He's looking to find out what happened, but so am I."

"You don't remember?" Sydney asked lightly, as she continued to check over Amelia.

"Let's just say, things are a bit on the fuzzy side."

"Let's start with some basics, which I need you to understand," the doc began. "You've been shot, and I'm talking about the fresh wound on your side. You've lost an awful lot of blood, and I don't have any here," she pointed out. "So, you are not to move. You're not to do anything that would stress the stitches or would cause any bleeding. If I had to go back in to try to stop the bleeding, that in itself could kill you."

Amelia stared at her. "Of course," she whispered. "I hadn't considered that."

"No, and yet, even now, you're wondering how to get out of here," the doc stated, looking at Amelia closely. "You need to stop thinking about that. You can't even think about that because, if you open any of those wounds," she repeated, "I can't save you. Your blood count is critically low. The only remedy for that is to get your blood built back up again, and that'll take some time. You're weak, and you won't get out of this bed anytime soon. A simple fall now could start the bleeding again and could literally kill you. I'm not sure how you made it here, but I'm grateful that you came, so that we could at least try to do our best for you."

Amelia wasn't sure what to say to that. The woman appeared to be sincere, but she was from here, this godforsaken military base.

Sydney hesitated and then added, "We're doing our best to keep you safe. There has to be a reason why you didn't come in for help, back when you took that first bullet," she noted, taking a moment to stress her point, "and that's disturbing. Yet the fact that you did come in when you realized the second wound was more than you could handle is a good thing. If you had waited any longer, you wouldn't have made it."

Amelia winced. "That's why I came when I did," she admitted, "but it was with the fatalistic knowledge that I could be signing my own death warrant."

"I'm so sorry for that," she replied. "I know Mountain will keep you under guard because we aren't sure what's happened or who shot you. That is unacceptable on any side, but we also know that you have friends, family, and connections with the locals, so we also must consider whether anybody there may have had something to do with this."

Amelia looked at her in surprise. "You guys don't know who shot me?"

"No, we don't," the doc confirmed. "We've all been hoping that you could tell us."

"No, I can't," Amelia replied, "and that's bad news then, for all of us."

*

Mountain stepped insidethe medical clinic. He'd been listening on the opposite side of the door, staying in the background, letting Sydney do her doctoring thing. He stepped forward just then and smiled down at Amelia. "Anything that you can remember will be a help," he said in a casual tone. "I need to sort out who shot you, but I also need to sort out a bunch of other issues that have been going on here in our base."

She looked at him and stated waspishly, "Your base is a mess."

He winced at her blunt tone but nodded. "You're right. It has been, but some of that came from your scientists' camp too."

She frowned.

Mountain studied her intently, wondering for a moment if she was aware of the issues pertaining to the untimely demise of her colleagues. "I don't know if you've heard all of what happened." Then he quickly filled her in on Anna and Myles.

Amelia's eyes widened, as she stared at him in shock.

He nodded. "So, as much as I can see that, from your perspective, we're to blame for all this," he explained in a teasing tone, "from where I sit, with a little bit of care and understanding, an awful lot is going on here that I don't think you've known about."

"Good Lord," she whispered.

He picked up her hand, lacing her fingers with his.

She went quiet and stared at their hands. "I feel as if you did this before."

"During the night," he shared, "as you had a lot of nightmares and kept tossing and turning. I needed to keep you calm, so you wouldn't rip everything open and start bleeding again. Sydney would have had my head if anything happened to you," he shared, with half a smile. "She spent the better part of the day stitching you up and ensuring all the bleeding was taken care of."

She stared at him, and he was struck by a very odd look on her face. He shrugged. "I certainly wouldn't do anything to hurt you while you were sleeping. We're all very concerned about your survival. We need you to survive," he added in quick succession, and she was taken by surprise.

"Why is that?" she asked in a curious tone. "If you know that I was shot before and that I didn't come in, then I must not trust anybody here, including you."

As he studied her, his gaze was hard, but then he nodded. "You are entitled to feel that way," he admitted, with an intensity in his blue eyes. "Obviously you're on the outside looking in, so you don't know who here is working in the shadows and who can and cannot be trusted," he argued in a calm tone. He really needed her to trust his people, and that was crucial in getting her help. "I won't ask you to trust everyone here, and that's why you're under guard, but you do need to trust Sydney. She's your doctor, and she's gone to great lengths to keep you alive. I've been here since you were first brought in."

"I can't imagine why." Her tone was curt.

He understood the sentiment. "Partly to see if you can tell us anything about what happened to you."

She snorted, then laughed in a mocking tone.

"And partly to keep you safe because you were already shot twice, and I can't afford to have a third shot take you out this time."

That caught her attention, and she looked at him with a searching gaze, as if trying to understand what really made him tick.

"Whoever has been shooting you, or shooting at you, is undoubtedly still determined, and I don't want him to succeed," he declared bluntly. He couldn't read the odd look in her gaze, but she'd had a lot to assimilate in a very short time.

When Sydney stepped back in to join them, he looked over at her. "Will Amelia be okay?"

Sydney gave him an unreadable look, which meant maybe, or at least that's as far as he was prepared to interpret it. She gave a half shrug. "Obviously she's in a pretty dicey situation, and we need to ensure that her bleeding doesn't start up again. If that happens, it's as good as a death sentence. However, as far as I can tell at the moment, if we can keep her calm and not moving, then we have a good chance of getting her through this."

He looked back down at their patient, whose gaze went back and forth from one to the other. "She came with her dogs, and she left them with Joe," Mountain shared.

Sydney stared at him in surprise. "Seriously?"

Mountain nodded. "She was concerned enough to ensure that the dogs were taken care of before she came in."

Sydney looked down at her patient, and, by the looks of it, she was impressed with how Amelia had handled herself so far. "That was kind of you," Sydney noted, "and I appreciate that you were looking after the dogs, but you also need to look after yourself."

Amelia sighed. "I came in here," she pointed out in a disgruntled tone. "The rest is up to you."

"Remember that you don't always get what you want, and, when I insist on bed rest and keeping you medicated for pain and movement," Sydney pointed out, "it is for your own good."

"I understand."

"You have a catheter also, and you don't need to move anywhere," Sydney added. "So no complaints. I really can't afford to lose you out here." Such passion filled her tone that Mountain himself was hard-pressed not to reinforce her words, but it was obvious that Amelia wasn't protesting.

Amelia winced several times throughout the conversation, and, by the end of it, she studied Sydney, as if she were something new to her. "I could use something for the pain now," Amelia murmured, "though coffee would be lovely too."

Mountain snorted. "You can have coffee after the painkillers."

Sydney quickly gave her some morphine to manage the pain level. "No coffee. Not for now. Expect to sleep for the rest of the day."

"I don't feel bad about that," she murmured. "Honestly I feel like shit."

"Take a timeout then," Sydney ordered. Amelia went under, as the morphine took hold of her. "This will be a long recovery," Sydney noted, as Amelia slipped into a deep sleep.

The doctor kept her patient mostly sedated over the next two days.