Brawler's Baby: An MMA Mob Romance (Mob City Book 1) (25 page)

A
month
ago hiking up a five thousand foot tall mountain with a forty pound rucksack on my back would have been a piece of cake – but looking at the metal bars in front of me, my stomach fills with an overwhelming sense of dread, and all I want to do is turn round and hobble back to my hospital bed.

"What if I fall?" I say, eyeing the rehabilitation equipment doubtfully.

"You're a big boy, aren't you?" Katie bites back with a sly grin. She's right, I know what I need to do, but that doesn't make it any easier. We still haven’t addressed the elephant in the room: the fact that three months ago, I fucked her like she’s never been fucked before, and as soon as I was finished, I left to go to war.
What must she think of me?

"Do you think playing me like that's going to work?" I grin, "I know what you're doing…"

"Playing you?" she smiles back, flirting with me as wickedly as she did that night, "what makes you think I'm messing with you? I'm just doing my job…"

"But seriously, what happens if I fall? Won't my stitches open up?"

"Maybe," she says with a sad look on her face, "but if you don't start trying to walk now, while the tissue's healing…"

"Then what?" I ask, concerned by the sudden turn the conversation's taking.

"No, I don't want you to worry. It's nothing," she says, flicking her hair in a nervous gesture and turning away, pretending to busy herself with clearing up the detritus left after a previous rehab session. It doesn't fool me, I know what she's doing – she's just trying to distract me from a truth she doesn't think I'm strong enough to hear.

"You can't just say that!" I protest. "I'm obviously going to worry now," I say, hobbling over towards my crutches and grabbing her gently on the shoulder. The thrill of the touch sends me spinning for a couple of seconds – I still can’t believe I’m so close to the woman I spent so many weeks fantasizing about. I want to look at her – actually, I want her to see me – to see what effect her slip of the tongue has had on me.

Her soft, delicate skin feels warm to my touch, and I don't know what comes over me, but I leave it there for perhaps a second too long. I quickly realize from the subtle widening of her eyes and the tightening of her lips that I might have overstepped the mark.

"I'm sorry ma' am… I didn't mean to –," I begin, but don't finish – because just as I start saying it, my left crutch slips from under me on the unforgiving, slippery plastic floor, and I start tumbling to the ground. The crotch drops to the floor with a clatter and I stick my arm out quickly, reflexively, and grab hold of one of the parallel metal bars that I'm supposed to be doing my exercises on – and as quick as a snake, from the other side Katie grabs hold of my torso. At a hundred ninety pounds I'm too heavy for her to stop completely, but she does a pretty good job of protecting my bad leg from bearing the brunt of the fall.

All of a sudden, I'm sitting on my ass on the cold hard ground, my left hand still gripping so tightly to the metal bar I caught hold of on my way down that my knuckles have gone white. A jolt of pain rocks my legs, and as I'm processing it – slowly, because my brain seems to be running at half speed, if that – Katie says something.

"You were saying, Mike?"

I look to my right and see, with horror, that I brought her down with me. All thoughts of self-pity suddenly drain from my head.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry…" I say, realizing that Katie’s now awkwardly kneeling on the ground in front of me, her arms wrapped around my waist, and my arm clinging to her shoulders.

"Don't worry about it." She says with a smile on her face. "But Mike?"

"Yes ma'am?" I blurt out, stiffening up with embarrassment. And I can’t help but notice that another part of me’s stiffening up as well.
Clearly no long term damage where it counts…

"You can let go of me now…"

My cheeks flush red with embarrassment as I realize how tightly I'm still clinging to her.

"Yes, of course, Miss" I reply, conscious of how enjoyable the feeling of touching her soft, firm flesh is right now, after days of having doctors and nurses poke and prod at my body with the best of intentions, but too little time for the overworked staff to translate them into anything other than a pressed and harried, all too impersonal examination.

Sadly I let go.

"And Mike?" She asks with a cute little smile that lights up her face.

"Yes Ma’am?" I reply, on my best behavior as I realize the vivacious young nurse might well be able to read me like a book at the moment. I'm pretty sure that the blow to my head that I took on top of that hill scrambled a few eggs up there…

"Yes miss, yes ma'am," she parrots, but mimicking me with that same smile dancing on her face to let me know that she's just joking, "you can call me Katie, you know. I mean, after what you did to me that night, it feels kind of weird that you aren’t…"

"Yes m-," I say, almost falling back into old habits. "I mean, yes Katie."

She’s talking about our night together. That must mean something, right?

She smiles, indicating that she caught my mistake. Not that it was a bad one, or anything like that, but still – she's quick this girl.

"Come on, we've got work to do," she says, breaking the tension that’s beginning to form between us. I’m not sure I want her to…

"Do we have to?" I ask doubtfully. "I'm not sure I've got the energy for this."

"Every little helps, Mike," she says encouragingly, "and don't tell me you can't do just a few minutes. A brave man like you? I've heard what you've done…"

I freeze up, close up. The memory of Katie's laughter is just that now, superseded by the much stronger thoughts of terror, the faded smell of cordite and explosives, the feeling of heat beating against my body. She notices.

"I'm sorry, Mike – I shouldn't have…"

She looks ghastly, and looking at her response, I suddenly realize how bad I must look. With a monumental, conscious effort I shrug off the alien feelings that beset me only a few seconds ago.

"Don't worry about it," I grunt, any hint of levity shorn from my voice, "you couldn't have known."

She laughs, but this time there's no mirth in the sound. "Couldn't have known?" she asks. "It's my job to know not to do stuff like that. It was stupid of me, I'm sorry, Mike. I let myself get too close, because of-."

"Seriously, forget about it," I say, "let's just get on with the rehab, okay?"

She nods, but doesn't seem convinced by the stoic front I'm putting on. Honestly, nor am I. She lightly rests her hand on my upper right arm, and again the dancing sparks of electricity jump up the limp.

"If you need to talk about it, we have therapists on the base, you know?" She says, her face a picture of concern. A feeling of dread runs through me. Maybe it's not dread – terror, perhaps? I don't know, it's hard to tell, but my palms have gone all sticky, and I'm breathing raggedly all of a sudden as I try and contemplate a reply.

"No!" I grunt, "I'm fine, let's just get on with this, okay?" I say.

"Seriously, Mike – you should talk to someone," she says, pushing her luck, even if I am willing to give her a lot of leeway, given who she is, and what we’ve done together, "it'll do you good to get it off your chest…"

"Do me good?" I hiss, "you don't know what you're talking about," I hear myself say, almost as though I'm experiencing some kind of out of body moment.

I barely have control over my own thoughts right now, it feels like all the adrenaline in my body just got dumped into my bloodstream. I know Katie's not the enemy, but my body is doing its damn best to convince me she is.

I bite my tongue, close my eyes and lick my lips, trying to reassert some semblance of control back over my body.

"Mike? Mike – you alright?" I hear her ask in the background, her voice emanating from somewhere deep inside the fog inside my brain.

I grab my crutches, set the fleshy part of my palms on the handles, and swing myself out of there fast as I can. "I'm sorry…" I mutter as I brush past her, the rational part of me embarrassed and ashamed by my actions, but unfortunately not in control.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a shocked, almost distraught look on Katie's face. I catalog the thought for future examination, because my brain doesn't have the horsepower to work out the ramifications of that look right now.

Later on, I'll realize that Katie's not the enemy – in fact, she's about as far from that as you could imagine, but at the moment I'm so confused, and so consumed by nerves and worry, and what must be some kind of latent, anxiety-driven fight or flight reflex, that I know I've just got to get out of this room.

And so I do, leaving her behind me with a hand clapped against her mouth.

I
need
to get Mike his dog back. That much is painfully apparent, even to me – and I'm the one who was dense enough to push Mike to a place he clearly wasn't willing to go. I could have easily waited, given him time to come to me of his own accord.

But there's something about Mike that I can't get out of my mind. It's like he's a lifeline, a rope of hope someone's casting at me to save me from the dark, suffocating black hole of stress and depression my life's descending into. After that night we shared, he’s all I’ve thought about for months. Maybe that's not fair to him, but he’s all I've got right now. I just hope he’s got a place inside his heart for me.

In fact, I don't even know if he's the reason I'm doing all this. Is it selfish if I'm doing it for me – because it's something
I
can control, something
I
can do? Is it still selfish if he gets his dog back anyway? The dog's just a goal to me at this point, it could be anything, but it's an aim that I can keep clinging onto to get me through the days.

The beeper at my waist goes off.

Again.

I'm sure that the first few months over here weren't this bad, I'm sure that there weren't this many casualties, injuries, and worst of all – deaths – for me to deal with. Or maybe there were just more staff at the hospital to help out, maybe I wasn't exposed to as much of the misery. I push myself back to my feet, heaving a long-suffering sigh of abject dissatisfaction. I want to go home, but what I want doesn’t pull much weight – I signed a contract, and I can't afford to break it.

I start running, the same thought drumming itself into my head over and over again.
I'm sure it wasn't this bad when I first arrived.

Ever since they started withdrawing, the base has been shrinking around me. Sometimes I'll go for a run in the morning, and I'll realize the army's dismantled another aircraft hangar or weapons storage hut overnight. It's like watching one of those documentaries about the Second World War that shows you a picture of a company of soldiers, and then greys them out one by one as they get killed, except I'm watching it happen day by day.

If it was just the buildings, I wouldn't mind so much – but it's not. There might be fewer soldiers left in the country, but that doesn't mean the war is any less vicious, or any less deadly.

No, it just means that people have stopped caring. People at home, that is. It's really not surprising, after all, people can't be worried all the time. So then they just think about what's going on over here from time to time, and before long, it's just too much effort, and they don't bother at all.

But that doesn't mean that we've gone anywhere. The lucky ones have, they've already been shipped back to the States. Whole battalions of soldiers, planes loaded up with expensive weaponry, tanks and vehicles have gone back too. But there are still some of us left. Too many for my liking, and too few to handle the responsibility we've been left with.

I shake my head.

Snap out of it, Katie,
I think to myself. Thoughts like this aren't helping anyone – not me, and not Mike and descending into this misery definitely isn't helping get his dog back. My long legs easily pick up the pace, sneakers kicking up little puffs of dust and sand as my feet hit the ground. By the time I make it a hospital, my thighs have an ever so slight, but agreeable burn. I miss running back home, through the woods and forests, hell – even on the sidewalk. Over here it's either too hot, or I'm running to save someone's life.

Kind of takes the fun out of it.

I crash through the flimsy prefabricated hospital's doorway, rolling up my sleeves and ready to help.

"What's the situation?" I call to the nearest person dressed in scrubs, a tall African-American man I've not seen around here before. Must be new.

"Gunshot wound," he says, greeting me with a serious, harried nod, "self-inflicted."

My shoulders sag with frustration.
Not again
. This is easily the third or fourth suicide attempt this year, and it's only just begun. We've been lucky so far, we've saved everyone. But our luck's going to run out at some point.

"Where are the doctors?" I ask, looking around desperately for someone in a white coat. The hospital's busy, chaotic even, white pieces of paper scattered across the linoleum flooring; hospital trolleys shoved wherever they would fit – some still covered in the detritus left behind after a serious wound: sticky, drying blood, discarded, blood soaked bandages, and the empty packages they came in. It looks like a war zone.

I suppose it kind of is. Just a different kind of frontline.

"Busy. A squad came in earlier, all shot up. It's up to us, shit, I don't know what to do!"

The kid's panicking. That's the last thing I need. "What's your name?" I ask, trying to inject as much reassurance and my voice as possible. I need him onside, concentrating, and in this fight with me.

"My name?" He asks dumbly. "Why –? It's Brian."

"Okay Brian, you need to calm down, got it?"

He nods mutely, but anyone can see his hands are shaking.

"Good. Now where's our vic?"

"Vic?" he asks, looking thoroughly confused.
God, he's green.

"Victim. Where is he?"

The realization of what I'm talking about dawns on his face. "Oh, right. He's in operating room B."

I don't hesitate, I start striding down the long, dismal corridor to the operating theaters. "Who is with him?" I ask Brian, calling over my shoulder to the man scurrying along trying to keep up.

"I think she's called, Sophia?"

"Sophie," I say, grabbing a pair of latex examination gloves from a dispenser on the wall as I feel the cool, calm sensation of my training asserting itself. "Good – she's a safe pair of hands. Stay in the background, okay – don't get in the way."

It came out a little bit harsher than I had intended, but I did mean it, or at least the thrust behind my words. The rookie's so green that, right now at least, he's more likely to kill our patient than help him. That'll change. I was like that nine months ago.

I barge through the swinging doors to the operating theater, crashing into them with my shoulder to avoid touching them with my sterile gloves. Brian squeaks through after me, just avoiding getting hit by the closing doors.

"What've we got, Sophie?" I call out without stopping. It looks bad, but head wounds always look bad, it's all the blood. And there was
a lot
of blood. It wasn't quite a slaughterhouse, but it wasn't far off.

"Katie, good – you're here," an exhausted looking Sophie replied. "Gunshot wound, bounced off the skull."

"Bounced?" I ask, surprised. That didn't sound – well – likely.

"Okay, grazed," Sophie concedes, "it's not done too much damage, but he's losing a whole load of blood right now. Here, hold this," she says, thrusting my hands onto the soldier's bleeding head before she'd finished asking, "maintain the pressure. I need to hook him up to some blood bags. Who's the kid?"

"I'm –, I'm –." Brian stammered, clearly rocked on his heels by the disarray of the operating theater. When you're used to the clean, ordered operating rooms back home, Afghanistan's bone shops can come as quite a surprise.

"Spit it out, kid," Sophie shouts over her shoulder, brusquely but not unkindly, as she rustles her way through the fridge.

"How you doing, private?" I ask the terrified young private lying on the operating theater table. His head's grazed from the middle part of his jaw, along his temple and up into his hairline from where the bullet travelled after leaving the barrel of his gun. It's what happens when you try to end it all with a rifle. Harder to aim, especially when you're trembling with fear, anxiety and desperation.

He doesn't reply, not in words anyway, just lets out a horrible, haunting moan, screwing his face up in pain and fear. I pat him on the shoulder, well aware of the futility of my gesture in making him feel better. "It's going to be okay, private. It's just a flesh wound – looks worse than it is."

"Need. A. Doctor…" he pants underneath me, every word an effort.

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that, private," I grin reassuringly down to him. I hope it's reassuring, anyway. I think that's the kind of thing I'd want to see if I was lying on a hospital bed – how bad can your injuries really be if the person treating you is smiling?

Not bad. At least, I hope that’s the impression I’m giving.

"Okay, I'm ready," Sophie says, coming back over with two full bags of blood, plastic tubing trailing off each of them.

"Good. It looks like the flow of blood's slowing down a bit, we should be able to suture him up soon," I reply. My patient squirms underneath me, making it extremely difficult to keep hold of him.

I'm just about to tell him to stop, but Sophie jumps in before I get a chance. "What are you doing?" she asks sternly, "we're trying to help you, but you need to help yourself, okay?"

The young man's eyes are flicking all over the place, never staying focused on a single for too long. It feels like he's searching for sources of danger, it's like he's an animal being hunted – prey.

"What's wrong?" I ask gently, lowering my head to his ear in the hope that it’ll seem more intimate, and more soothing. "Can you keep still? Can you do that for me?" I ask reassuringly, almost as though I'm talking to a child.

The young soldier stops squirming, sagging back into hard metal surface of the operating table, but I notice his eyes don't stop their relentless, hunted flickering. His skin is glistening with a light sheen of sweat, and the more I look at him, the more I think that he's not just in pain, but terrified.

"I don't want to die!" he wails, in the same plaintive, heartbreaking tone as his earlier moan. As before, it has the same impact on the three of us – Brian, Sophie and myself, as the sound of nails being dragged down a chalkboard. We wince, visibly. I've seen a lot of injuries in my time in this hospital; I've seen a lot of casualties brought through crying for their mothers, but this one is having a far greater impact on me than any of his predecessors, and I can tell it's the same for the other two.

"You're not going to die, private," I reassure him, laying my free hand on his chest and stroking him, doing my best to ignore the fact that his skin is slick with blood. "You don't need to worry about that. We'll have you patched up, stitched up and out of here before you know it –."

He interrupts before I'm finished. "I can't be here any more," he says, grabbing my arm powerfully for emphasis, "I can't take it any more." He’s staring up at me with desperate, haunted eyes – eyes which have for the first time halted in their relentless search for a way out. I break away just for a second to look at Brian. I signal to him subtly that I might need help – not now, but maybe. He nods slowly, deliberately to indicate that he understands the thrust of my message.

My eyes return to the gaze of my injured patient. "You've got to help me," he asks, his hands gripping my upper arm again, "I can't go back out there, you've got to stop them…"

"You're not going anywhere right now, soldier," I say, choosing my words carefully. The truth is, I can't stop his commanders sending him anywhere they want him, so to promise anything else would just be lying, and worse, it would be giving him false hope, and that might just lead him right back down this garden path at some point in the future. "We're going to get you better, you understand?"

The tears leaking out the corners of his eyes are streaking through the spatters of dried blood all over the skin on his face, clearing paths of clean skin in the midst of the carnage. "Thank you, thank you," he mutters, and keeps repeating it as his grip on my arm loosens and his eyes closed.

"What –?" I start, wondering if he's crashing, before pulling up when I see the syringe in Sophie's hand. "What did you give him?" I ask.

"Morphine. Not much, just enough to take the edge off things. He needs a psych consult, the cut's not that bad, but if we let him go out there again…" she tails off – leaving the warning unsaid, but not unheard.

"I know," I sigh, my cramping hands getting to work after I noticed the flow of blood from the deep cut on his head has mostly halted, "he'll die. They'll get him, or he'll off himself – it's only a matter of time."

"Isn't… Isn't there anything we can
do
?" Brian asks in an astonished tone of voice. "There must be something!"

"Pass me the thread, will you?" I ask him, deliberately avoiding his question for a second – just to give myself time to think. The thing is, he's going to have to realize what it's like out here: hard, stressful and unrelenting. I had to, he will too. He hands it to me, eyes downcast.

I clean the wound gently with a clear disinfectant spray, making sure there's nothing left inside it that could cause an infection. Luckily, if you can use that word to describe this kind of injury, the bullet didn't go through any cloth, so there's no need to dig that out. Scraps of fabric always cause problems. I start stitching up the wound, and my long practiced fingers make light work of it. Within minutes, the job's done. I silently thank Sophie for pulling him to sleep – it's always quicker when they don't move.

"Listen, Brian," I start, with no great idea of where I'm going. "We can't do much, not out here, anyway. It's better we tell you now, you know?"

"What do you mean?" he asks plaintively, looking like I've just stolen Christmas. "Of course we can, we've got to help them – isn't that why we're here?"

I sigh. It is, and it's not, all at the same time.

"I don't want it to be this way, believe me," I say, watching Sophie glumly clean up the bloody waste that's left strewn all over the operating theatre. "But it's true. There aren't enough of us, you must have seen that – this isn't a job we should be doing, it's supposed to be a doctor's job."

"Yeah, but surely –."

I cut him off. "Surely today’s just a one-off?"

He nods, slowly, as though he's afraid of being caught out.

I laugh bitterly. "I wish. No, there aren't enough staff, and there are too many soldiers for us to take care of."