Swap Out (36 page)

“…unknown head injuries…”

My body sags, and I know I need to stay out of their way as they work over him but I just can’t stand it, to be so useless when he’s so hurt. He’s not supposed to be this hurt when he’s so strong.

He…he can’t die.

“…pulse is still dropping…”

“…not going to make it to surgery…”

“Do something!” I shout, tearing free from Scott but a medic throws out his arm to keep me back.

“Someone get her under control!”

“Zoe…” I hear Scott pleadingly choke out, and then his arms are hugged around me again, but this time he turns me to face the elevator wall. I throw back my elbow to loosen his grip and spin around, but there’s nowhere to go in this claustrophobic space of too many people. My eyes peek over Scott’s shoulder and my back is pressed against the wall, seeing as the nurses and doctors move faster and faster, their faces tightening in determination.

“We’re losing him!” a doctor shouts, and terror paralyzes me, my voice locked with my breath and I can’t think about anything but his smile and his voice and his eyes and
Luca
…

“Get it charged!
Now!
” another commands, and I realize the thing I don’t want to know is possible.

Luca isn’t moving: not his head or his eyes or his chest, and with a desperate speed the doctor pulls off the oxygen mask and starts CPR, breathing and pushing and counting and listening, but nothing is happening.

He can’t…

My eyes blink as tears flow down my cheeks, and I faintly feel Scott tremble as he holds me tighter. But I can still see over his shoulder and when the doctor straightens and holds his hands out, someone hands him two white paddles connected to a machine, and I know what this is.

No.

No, this can’t happen.

He lays them on Luca’s chest, then shouts, “Clear!” and all at once, everyone takes a step back from his fragmented body, their gloved hands held up in surrender and covered with his blood.

He’s dead.

He’s dead he’s dead he’s dead.

“Luca!”
I shriek, the sound shrill and frantic and it cuts right through the air, and then my whole body goes rigid as his chest jerks vertically up.

LUCA

All I know is numb. Heavy, thick and fuzzy.

Something is
wrong
.

Doesn’t help that all I can remember are nightmares. Being back in country and flying with Scott, but every person we went to rescue was Zoe and she died, over and over and over again. I thought it would last forever. I thought I was dead, and that was my hell. It felt like hell.

But this feels different, sounds different. I concentrate as much as the sand in my head allows, and a throat clears before a low breath blows out. I try to open my eyes, but they’re sealed shut or something. They finally pull apart with a bunch of resistance and a slice of pain, and I groan when fat discomfort throbs from my shoulder and down the length of my body.

“Luca?” a hazy voice that sounds like Scott’s asks, and my eyes wander over bright lights in the ceiling, failing to focus. “Luca, can you hear me, man?”

I swallow and try to speak, but my mouth is dry and I can barely get out, “Wa…”

“Holy shit,” he breathes, a chair scraping harshly over a floor before a sink runs, and then there’s a plastic cup in front of my face. I reach up to take it and hiss when something snags in my right arm. “Easy, buddy, just take it easy and don’t move. Here…”

His hand settles behind my head and tilts me forward, and he carefully lets a few drops of water trickle into my mouth. It’s like air after being suffocated, and I can’t get enough.

It takes a while, but I slowly drink it all and let my friend guide my head back onto the pillow. I take deep breaths, trying to reconcile what I remember with what I’m seeing, and I don’t understand.

I remember standing at the base and staring up at North Six Shooter tower, taking in the crack and the redness of the rock and the sun in my eyes. I remember the pain of the crack squeezing my toes and my knuckles protesting as I locked my hand into the split while Scott whined about me not tying in. I remember—

I fell.

Shock, icy and cold, trickles through me from my scalp to my fingertips.
I shouldn’t be in what I can only assume is a hospital. I should be
dead
.

My eyes close, and relief barely trumps how exhausted I am.

I’m alive.

“Do you,” Scott asks hesitantly, “do you know who you are?”

What is that supposed to mean? I peel my eyes apart again and dizziness leads an attack of nausea threatening to steal the last traces of my dignity. Long and slow, I fix my gaze on a point on the far wall, breathing in and out. But with every inhale there’s a tallying poke of discomfort, like a mallet banging down my rib cage. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but it seems to be not good.

The nausea finally dissipates and I close my eyes, drained from breathing. Yeah, that’s not normal at all. Why did I open my eyes in the first place? I need to go back to sleep, let my body heal and hopefully when I wake up, this will be better, gone even.

A wide hand lays tentatively on my left forearm. He asked me a question, I remember. I should probably answer before he freaks out and calls a doctor, thinking I have brain damage or something. I need to suck it up.

I open my mouth to speak, but I have to take a deep breath in preparation to push my voice out, and that hurts like a bitch. Yeah, I’m gonna need a sec before talking. The world starts spinning again, despite my eyes still being closed, and I lick my lips to rewet them. God, I’m so dehydrated.

But I need to answer him. I need to let him know that despite the confusion and the pain, I’m all right.

“I’m Luca, Scott,” I manage to get out, having to pause to let the pain subside before I finish. “Your hero, and worst nightmare.”

He laughs, but it sounds strangled. I open my eyes again, waiting for the dizziness but it’s thankfully a little less than before. I glance over at him, and he looks away, clearing his throat.

“You look like shit,” I tell him, because he does: stubble more than a week old and wrinkled clothes, bags under his eyes.

“Yeah well,” he says, crossing his arms and putting on his “tough” face. “You’re one to talk.”

I spare a quick glimpse at myself, and my right arm is bandaged halfway up my forearm, an IV at the inside of my elbow. My left arm is bruised and has some small bandages on it, but seems otherwise fine and when I test my left hand, I find I can make it into a fist. I’ve got some sort of sling of tape that starts at my right shoulder and is wrapped around my chest, a blanket pulled up to my stomach and bandages just fucking everywhere, and my right leg looks a little bulky under the covers. I try to shift but between the four hundred pound fog sitting on me and the pain that just screamed through my chest and shoulder, I can’t find the strength to move. Or maybe, I just
can’t
.

Oh God, am I paralyzed? I grit my teeth and flex my left foot, and it moves. Barely, but it moves.

Okay…okay.

I barely raise my left fist, and Scott bumps it with his own.

“How bad is it?” I ask, my voice still thin and weak, and his face falls.

“I’m um, don’t move, I’m going to go get a doctor. And…” He looks around nervously, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “Look, I should probably warn you: Zoe’s here and—”

“No,” I say immediately, my pulse spiking and my breaths hastening, and it fucking
hurts
.

“Luca…”

“
No,
” I say again, using every bit of strength I have to sit up in protest as much as I can, and I have to beat the black spots appearing in my vision. I can’t pass out: he has to listen to me. She can’t be here.

“Look,” he snaps, “I’m really glad you’re awake right now, so don’t make me knock you back out. You have no idea the hell she’s just been through and so help me God, you’re going to listen to her.”

“Screw you,” I grit out, and my body gives up, head falling back to the pillow as my eyes wander over the lights in the ceiling. Not even when I was shot was it like this; everything hurt but at least I wasn’t so damn disoriented and weak.

“Real good, Luca, hurt yourself more,” he says, and I would flip him off, but I can’t. “See what being a stubborn dick gets you?”

Instead I glare at him, my defector of a best friend, and he doesn’t say anything else before walking towards the door.

But before he opens it, he looks back over his shoulder and says, “I know you’re pissed, and to be honest I’m mad as hell at you. But it’s still good to see you awake, man.”

My brow furrows, but he’s gone before I can ask what that means. How long was I asleep?

I do another survey of my body, thankful when another wave of nausea leaves as fast as it hits, but I don’t have more than a minute before the door swings open; a guy in scrubs and a white coat who can’t be older than me strolling in with a determined gait that speaks of no time for bullshit.

“Luca, I’m Dr. Brooks,” he says. “How you feeling?”

“Um,” I start, and mental fatigue from the last five minutes alone threatens to pull me under, but it doesn’t stop me from seeing that right on his heels are Scott and a wide-eyed, total-wreck-looking Zoe: no makeup and disheveled hair, wearing jeans and one of
my
fucking t-shirts.

And I want to look away, but it’s still
Zoe
and despite how much I want to get up and storm out, the only thing I can do is swallow thickly as I stare at her. My mind races over the last time we were in a room together, recalling the viciousness of the words I shouted and the hateful tears that blurred my eyes, and I’m nowhere near ready or strong enough for this confrontation. It’s so unfair that I’m being ganged up on when I’m basically trapped. But she’s apparently reveling in it: her whole face lighting up as she gasps, her hands clasping over her mouth when she spots me.

It triggers a sudden flashback of proposing to her, of the nervousness in my hands and heart and all the twisting minutes of hopeful longing, the flicker of elation when I thought she’d say yes because she looked just as happy as she does now. And that memory hurts more than any sharp stab of pain because she didn’t say yes. She didn’t want me, or our life, or any of our possibilities. She only wanted out.

Humiliation burns though me when my jaw starts to shake, and I tear my eyes from her and focus on the cream colored blanket draped over my ruined body. But I still see from my peripheral vision when Scott drapes his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder. Which instantly prompts the question: what the fuck?

“See?” I hear Scott whisper. “I told you he was too restless to sleep forever.”

My focus shifts to him, scowling accusingly because he is being unnervingly supportive to the woman that wrecked me and I know how pissed he was when I told him that she aborted the pregnancy. Since when did he take her side in all of this?

“Here,” he says, handing her a handkerchief from his pocket, and she takes it and wipes at her eyes before beaming at me, and I arch an eyebrow at her.

She can’t seriously expect me to just be fine with everything, can she?

“Luca?” the doctor prompts again, and I blow out a breath, turning my attention back to the only non-traitorous person in the room.

“Um, I’m thirsty,” I admit. “And hungry. Really tired and dizzy and more than a little confused.”

The doctor nods, his smile growing. “I expect you would be.”

“Where am I?” I ask, feeling a little stupid, but at least he doesn’t seem to mind the question and it’s getting easier to talk by the minute. My voice is still scraping my throat like it hasn’t been used in forever, but as long as I stay still and try not to breathe too deeply, I can gut it out.

“You are at the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake, currently in ICU. But if the next twenty-four hours goes well we can see about getting you into a regular room.”

ICU. Great.

“Luca, do you want me to go get you something to eat?” Zoe asks, appearing at my side with a glass of water, and I ignore her. Too bad I can’t escape the flood of lotion that arrived with her and is burning up my nostrils. Is she seriously doing this on purpose just to torture me?

At least the fact that I don’t answer her doesn’t really matter because the doctor glances at her, then says, “I’m actually going to suggest we hold off on that for a minute so we can do some routine questions. Sound okay?”

I nod. Carefully.

Zoe slinks back and leans against the wall like she was told she did something wrong, which I acutely know is a feeling she can’t cope with. She hugs her arms around her stomach and a sick part of me wants to laugh out a vindictive, “Ha!” But another part I don’t really want to own anymore kinda feels sorry for her. And that pisses me off even more because I don’t want to care. I just want it to be over.

Dr. Brooks doesn’t seem to notice my distraction though, and he starts a string of brainless queries that temporarily pulls me out of cataloguing a long list of synonyms for betrayal: my name, age, what year it is and what president is currently wrecking our economy. He asks what year I graduated high school and whether I was ever in the military, then my service dates and rank. When he asks about the fall I tell him what I remember, but it basically accounts to, “I was climbing, and then I woke up here.” But the lack of detail doesn’t seem to concern him, or the fact that I’m lightheaded and my words are a little stuttered, simply because I can
talk,
which is really fucking scary.

He finally sets down his iPad—seriously, dude inputted my medical stuff on a freaking tablet—then starts poking and prodding: shining a light in my eyes to check for dilation, follow the finger, make a fist with my left hand, try not to move anything on my right side, yes I can feel it when you tickle the bottom of my foot with your pen. Hooray.

“Looks good,” he finally says, then glances over at Zoe with a reassuring smile. “Looks real good.”

Some mixture of a grin and a sob bursts out of her, and before anyone else can ask what the hell her problem is, she covers her mouth with her hand and darts into what looks like a connected bathroom, shutting the door behind her. Why am I not surprised her first instinct is to bail at hearing I’m okay? And when Scott straightens, his body practically leaping off the wall like he’s desperate to go after her, I want to break
everything
.

“Well,” I start, gesturing to where Zoe just disappeared. “Now that she’s crying, can I have the list?” I ask, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice because it’s not the doctor’s fault that my ex-girlfriend is a master of cruelty, but…

Screw it. I don’t care. Zoe shouldn’t even
be here
right now and everything is weird and hurts, and all I want is three massive double cheeseburgers and a gallon of iced tea and to go back to sleep so I can forget that my buddy and my girl are more worried about each other than anything else. Not for some Doogie Howser doctor to be comforting
them
instead of telling me exactly what kind of injuries warranted a trip to a Level I Trauma Center.

“The list?” he asks, and I roll my eyes.

“The
list
. Broken, fractured, never to blank again,” I supply, and he chuckles.