CHAPTER THREE

Jaden

At zero-five-fifteen, the on-duty gate guard told me to report to the Director of the Naval Medical Center’s office. So here I sat waiting for Captain Elizabeth Adriano to call me in so I could find out why my orders were changed, and what she wanted me to do.

Thirty minutes later I was walking to my car still shaking my head at what she’d told me, and shared when she sent the patient’s file to my tablet. Late yesterday morning, the son of one of the base commanders had been in a horrific accident on the eight freeway when a semi-truck rolled over onto his top-down convertible, crushing one of his lungs, his stomach and liver, and twenty-six bones in his body, including both femurs, knee caps, tibias, fibulas, and ankles. Insult to injury: he was San Diego State’s starting quarterback.

The commander insisted on having the best Navy orthopedic surgeons attend to his son, Axel, which was why my orders had been changed. I was one of three Navy orthopedic surgeons in San Diego, and one was deployed. The other, Dr. Harley Weaver, was already in surgery working on Axel at UCSD Health’s trauma center in Hillcrest with two of their trauma surgeons.

There was too much damage for the three surgeons assigned to Axel’s case to handle all that needed to be repaired. Two had been working on him since he’d arrived at the hospital yesterday, and they’d barely made a dent. Harley told Captain Adriano he needed me to attend Axel to make sure there were enough of us to rotate through all the work that needed to be done to put this guy back together.

I met Harley and the two other surgeons at zero-six-thirty and we spent an hour going over what’d been done, what more needed to be done, and we started mapping the alternatives to achieve results while figuring out the best way to keep Axel alive through all these procedures. Everyone acknowledged this was the first round of multiple surgeries that Axel was going to need before he could start the lengthy journey to truly healing.

From what I saw from the imaging, and what I learned from the other surgeons, we were in for a long haul.

I wasn’t going to be deployed for months.

***

Kahli

At nine-thirty at night, as Lissa and I were halfway down the walkway between of the lab building and the parking lot, she stopped and let out a loud half-laugh, half-shout of, “Ha.”

I stopped alongside her, angled my body into hers and asked, “What?”

She grabbed my chin and turned my head to face forward.

In the first row of the parking lot, leaning against his car wearing his leather Navy bomber jacket over his blue scrubs, Jaden had his arms crossed over his chest and his gaze lasered on me.

Lissa and I became best friends sophomore year, and we told each other pretty much everything. She knew all about last night’s fight, and Alex Weinfeld.

“Seems the good doctor didn’t trust that Alex,” she snorted, “wouldn’t walk you out to your car again.”

“Shit.”

“Hey. If I ever found a guy who looked at me the way Jaden is looking at you, I’d marry him on the spot.”

I glanced down at my platinum wedding band, which was embedded with diamonds, stared at my finger and said, “I’ve never seen him look at me like that before.”

“You never had Alex walk you out to your car before last night.” She gave me a shoulder shove. “You best get your ass over there wifey or hubby’s gonna blow a gasket.”

I started talking as I was walking. “You knew Lissa was driving me home. What are you doing here?” Hehehe. Yep. I was intentionally winding him up.

“Where’s your jacket?” was his response.

I had to think about how I should answer. If I said I left it in Alex’s car when he took me to lunch, I feared Jaden would indeed blow a gasket. So I went with the truth. “I left it in Lissa’s car.”

He pushed away from his lean, walked right past me and headed to Lissa, who was standing by her driver’s side door.

“Hey, Jaden,” I heard her say.

“Hey, Liss.” He tipped his head to her car. “Is Kal’s jacket in there?”

Lissa opened her door, leaned in and pulled out my jacket. “Here you go,” she said with a huge smile.

“Thanks. Drive home carefully.”

“Will do.” Still grinning, she waved at me, then got in her car.

Jaden waited until she drove off then walked back to me and held my jacket open for me to put my arms through. “It’s the end of November,” he said by way of explaining his gentlemanly behavior.

“It’s temperature controlled in the lab. I didn’t even notice the chill until you said something.”

He nodded, grabbed my hand, and walked me to his car.

It took major effort not to trip, screech, or drool.

The last time Jaden held my hand was when we got married in his parents’ backyard by an officiant named George. That hand-holding episode lasted as long as it took for Jaden to slide on my wedding band, and for me to slide on his. Before that, he’d held my hand at my parents’ funeral when I was eleven.

I was so excited about this hand-hold, in my head I was doing the Alex jig and became deeply involved with self-congratulations. Therefore, I didn’t notice Jaden had opened the passenger door and was waiting for me to get in.

When I realized we were standing next the car, I gave him a small smile and dropped down into the seat.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, he rumbled, “You’re not usually this spacey. Something specific on your mind?”

“Not really,” I answered in as casual a tone as I could manage. I glanced over, saw his jaw muscle jumping, and had to push my nails into my palms to keep from laughing. He thought my musings had something to do with Alex.

Then I realized I was being way too self-indulgent when I knew his day must’ve been shit, so I asked, “Did you find out why your orders were changed?”

“Yeah.”

Hmmm. Someone wasn’t feeling chatty. “Temporary delay, or total change of plans.”

He turned his head and gave me a wickedly satisfied grin. “I won’t be going anywhere for at least four or five months.”

I wanted to do backflips at the same time I had to acknowledge he thought staying home meant he could make sure Alex didn’t factor in my life. Either way, I got what I wanted. Months to make my husband my husband.

When we got into the apartment, I was able to take a good look at him in the light, and saw written all over his face, he was wiped out. “You okay?”

He threw his jacket on the back of the club chair. “Long fuckin’ day.”

My jacket joined his, and I put my backpack on the seat of the chair. “Wanna talk about it?”

For a quick moment, he looked surprised, which sort of made me feel guilty that every other conversation we’d had over the past few months had been a rip-roaring argument. But, from the moment he began his let’s get married assault, I made it my mission to force him to admit he felt more than brotherly love for me. And getting in his face meant he had to react, and if it took a chainsaw’s worth of me hacking at his armor, I was going to get in there no matter what.

I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that my brother had hung a “Do Not Touch” sign around my neck when it came to Jaden—and all of the other guys in the world, but especially Jaden—and how after Raffie was killed, Jaden put his feelings in a vault and was all about taking care of me like a brother would.

Except a brother wouldn’t ask me to marry him. He’d hover. He’d be all up in my business. He’d scowl at guys I dated, and he’d lecture me endlessly. But marry me?

Jaden was a wonderful person, but he and my brother had gone through women at a breakneck pace. A man with his appetites did not get married just to be a good guy who intended to take care of his dead friend’s sister.

When he sat on the edge of the couch and clasped his dangled hands together, he lifted his gaze to mine and in his eyes I saw pain. “A nineteen-year-old kid is hanging onto to his life by a thread.”

“Oh, no.” I went to sit beside him. “What happened?”

Jaden told me about the accident, the commander’s request, and how Jaden had been in the operating room working on this kid for nearly thirteen hours. “The good news is Axel is an athlete, and before the accident was in excellent shape. His heart is strong, and he’s fighting to stay alive. The bad news is everything else.”

“Did his father come by?”

“I was told his father, mother, grandparents, and two sisters were camped out in the waiting room the whole time we were in surgery. When Axel was finally back in the ICU, his parents stood at the window looking into his room until Harley and I convinced them to go home.”

I put my hand on his knee. “He’s fortunate you’re one of his surgeons. I know you’ll doing everything possible to make him whole again.”

He laid his big hand over mine. “Thanks,” he rasped out. “I gotta hit the sack. Harley and I are taking shifts, and I’ve got six hours before I have to head back.”

Well shit. If I hadn’t put the idea of Alex making moves on me in Jaden’s head, he would’ve been asleep already, instead of driving up to UCSD to make sure I was where I was supposed to be, and was with whom I was supposed to be.

“You take the bathroom first.”

He nodded, patted my hand then stood and went into the bedroom to get his stuff. While he was in the bathroom, I pulled out the bed from the sofa, and made it up with lots of pillows in case he couldn’t fall asleep right away and needed to watch TV to unwind.

What I really wanted was for him to sleep with me so I could hold him and try to soothe away his shit day.