Five Days Grace (16 page)

The woman in question had stripped down to panties and a T-shirt and gotten into the shower, practically, with Aidan, and the way she'd looked standing there, all wet... Was there really a man alive who'd need more than that to be fucking thrilled with his life, with his own stupid luck and the whole damned world at that point?

Aidan didn't think so.

Adventurous?

Gotta be nothing but a way to try to deflect attention from the idiot's own shortcomings or his own stupid behavior.

But the word had hit Grace hard, and it made Aidan furious. Grace, who was undeniably beautiful, funny, sweet and sexy, very sexy. Just holding her in his arms while he slept had been delicious. His hand practically burned remembering wrapping itself around her breast.

Now, he'd kissed her, had that one, sweet, hot taste of her luscious mouth, and that was something he would not forget soon.

He simmered with anger toward her husband as he found a place to park in the shade at the hospital. Grace took the dog for a little walk, which consisted mostly of him sniffing every bush in sight rather than actually doing what he was supposed to do. Then, once again, they put the dog in the car, and he was whining, with his giant head stuck out the window, watching them go like they were leaving him forever in a cruel place and he had absolutely no hope.

Aidan feared he might be as pathetic as the dog when Grace walked away from them later today. Was he really going to let her walk away from him? Could he stop her from doing that, if he tried?

He kept a hand on the little indention at the base of her spine as they walked, just because he wanted to.
Mine,
the hand said, true or not
.
He could feel the slight sway of her hips as she walked and was close enough that he smelled the clean, sweet womanly scent of her hair and skin.

After they saw Maeve, he'd take Grace back to the cabin and figure out how to talk her into staying. He'd take care of her and let her take care of him. They could forget about their screwed up lives for a while, like a little timeout from reality. She deserved it, he decided. He did, too.

The ICU attendant didn't want to let them in—family only—but eventually, the nurse they'd talked to that morning showed up, and he and Grace were in. She said no one else had shown up to see Maeve, who at least deserved the reassurance of knowing her dog was being taken care of.

By then, Aidan was thinking of excruciatingly slow, painful, highly satisfying things he could do to Grace's husband. Or was he her ex-husband already? Aidan wasn't sure, and that was certainly a point he'd like to have clarified ASAP. Castration came to mind as a proper punishment.

He was distracted, and it wasn't until they got to Maeve's bedside, deep within the ICU's big, open space, with a dozen patients clustered together around an open nurse's station, that the smell of the place hit him.

That sickening, unmistakable hospital smell.

Maybe ICUs had distinctive scents of their own, or maybe the hospital scent was more highly concentrated there, because it seemed to envelop him all at once. He froze for a second. Grace stopped, too, studying him. When he could, he motioned for her to go ahead because abruptly he realized he couldn't.
Shit,
he shouldn't have come this far, not without some preparation for the assault on his senses.

Of the five, smell was the one most strongly associated with memory, he'd learned in counseling for PTSD. If a man wanted to be hurled back to a certain time in his life, a scent from that time would likely elicit the most visceral response. Unfortunately, the sense of smell didn't take into account whether one actually wanted to remember something.

He glanced at the hospital bed, where Maeve looked grey and half-dead, had all manner of tubes and needles sticking into her. And yes, those were external fixation pins going down through the bandages and into her femur to try to stabilize it. Aidan had had those not long ago.

Fuck.

In a daze, he listened as Grace promised she and Aidan were taking good care of Tink. Vaguely, he felt Grace take his hand and tug him forward to stand right next to Maeve, whose eyes were open, although she didn't seem to be all there.

"See? Remember Aidan? He helped get the tree off of you yesterday. He took Tink home with him. If there's anything you need..."

Grace's voice seemed to be coming from farther and farther away. Or maybe the noises in his head were getting louder, noises from the crash.

Aidan couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't stand to be there. Maybe it was the pins in her leg, knowing they went all the way into the bone. Maybe it was recalling the moment yesterday when he'd realized a woman was trapped, hurt, bleeding, broken, and it was up to him to get her out.

At first glance, he'd thought she was dead, another dead body for him to pull out of wreckage. But he'd helped get her out of there alive, and he thought he'd come farther than he realized from the crash and every fucking thing that happened afterward.

But maybe not, he decided, standing there by Maeve's hospital bed.

That smell...

For a moment, he was sure he was going to throw up, and then he just had to get out of the ICU, of the hospital. He bolted. He could hear Grace calling his name, but he ignored her as he fled.

* * *

It was the nurse who watched Aidan rush out of the room in that odd, not-quite-all-there kind-of-way, who said it.

"PTSD?"

"Yes." Grace remembered now. He'd told her so, in the midst of a long list of other things that sounded even more dire at the time.

"A lot of those guys have it," the nurse said understandingly. "My husband was in the first Gulf War. That kind of thing... You never know exactly when it's going to hit them."

So it seemed, Grace realized.

"Was he wounded over there?" the nurse continued.

"Yes." No doubt that's where it happened. Iraq or Afghanistan, or someplace where the U.S. would never admit to sending troops.

"Recently, I'd say, by the way he's still favoring his right side." She looked sad and lost in her memories. "If it was bad, I'm surprised he could even walk into the hospital today. My husband couldn't do it for years. He'd rather live with the physical pain than subject himself to the flashbacks."

"I should go to him," Grace said. "Make sure he's okay."

The nurse stopped her with a kind hand on her arm. "Let him be for a minute. He probably just really needs to breathe some fresh air. You never know what's going to trigger a flashback, but with my husband, it's often scents."

"Yes, Aidan, too," Grace realized. He'd told her that, too.

So she stayed, to give Aidan some time and to give the nurse her phone number, in case Maeve woke up and needed anything. Then Grace realized she couldn't give the nurse Aidan's, because she didn't even know his number. It seemed like such a strange thing not to know, when she felt so much for him already.

"What can I do to help?" she asked the nurse. "Aidan, I mean?"

Grace's new friend Roberta talked about triggers. He might have more than one. And Grace could do only what he would let her do, and it was really hard when you wanted to help but weren't allowed to do so. Grace thought about the day before, when she had insisted on cleaning and bandaging Aidan's incision. It wasn't a PTSD issue, but maybe that was what worked with him. Helping anyway, insisting on it. Refusing to take no for an answer.

She thanked Roberta for all her help, then went to find him. He was right where Roberta had thought he'd be—just outside the hospital doors, gulping in the fresh air. Standing with his back against the brick wall, he had his head tilted up to the sky, eyes closed. He was slowing his breathing through deliberate effort, some kind of relaxation routine, she suspected. She let him run through several cycles. When he seemed calmer, she walked to his side, not touching him at first, not wanting to startle him.

Finally, he opened his eyes, looking either embarrassed or mad, she couldn't quite tell which. Well, she was mad, too. And maybe he could handle that better than her being freaked out or sorry or sad on his behalf, so she went with it.

"Dammit, you didn't have to go in there today," she said. "I could have easily done it myself. All you had to do was say something."

He looked surprised, probably because she'd come at him with anger. "I didn't want to say anything."

"Obviously. Some stupid man thing again?"

"No, Grace. Not that—"

"Oh, please. I know the stupid man thing when I see it." She was still mad, but she reached out and took his hand in hers, daring him to resist. She wanted to hold him, but wasn't sure if he'd allow that, so she settled for just his hand.

"Okay, maybe a little bit of that," he admitted, squeezing her hand. "But I needed to come today—"

"Of course, you did. To prove you could. After all, why not torture yourself, if you have the opportunity—"

"It's not torture," he began.

"Isn't it, Aidan? Isn't that exactly what it is? Taking yourself back in your mind to that awful place? Whether it was the hospital after you were hurt, or back to when you were injured? Isn't that exactly what torture is for you?"

He put a hand to the side of her face and looked at her. "Honey, I don't know if this makes it any better or not, but I've been tortured for real, and this isn't it."

"Oh, my God!" Grace's mouth fell open. She thought of the more minor marks she'd seen on his body and then imagined someone inflicting them deliberately, slowly, intent on causing as much pain as possible. Her eyes flooded with angry, outraged tears.

"Ahh, don't," he said, pulling her into his arms. "Please, don't do that. I shouldn't have said that. It wasn't anything you needed to hear."

Grace held onto him, her face buried in his chest, his chin resting on the top of her head. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I know that. I know you care, and it's very sweet—"

"Sweet?" She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye. "It's not sweet. I'm mad. I'm so mad that anyone would hurt you, especially deliberately. I mean, I know all of it was deliberate, but... slowly, personally—"

"Forget about it, okay? Please. Just forget it. I have."

"And I'm mad at you, too. You didn't have to walk into that place today. There was no point in it, and for you to do that anyway, instead of just telling me what the hell was going on—"

"I can walk into a hospital," he insisted.

"I know you can. I just saw you do it. Congratulations, you've proven your point, no matter what it cost you."

He gave her a tiny smile, which made her even more furious. Then he held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, but in my own defense, it wasn't just the stupid man thing. I had another reason, a good one."

"Right." Grace was sure she understood. "To torment yourself?"

"I can control it. I've learned how. It's the smell, mostly. That fucking hospital smell. It's a mind-game, Grace. I just have to be ready for it. But today, I was distracted, and I didn't do what I should have done. By the time I realized it, it was too late. We were in the ICU and that smell was all over me and inside of me, and... I'm telling you, if you prepare for it, stay ahead of it, it's okay. But I had a reason for needing to be there today."

"A reason?" She crossed her arms and waited.

"I needed to see that the woman was okay. Pulling her out from under that mess... It was hard. I had to fight to keep the memories at bay while I did it. But I did it, and today I needed to see for myself that she was okay, because... Ahh, fuck." His eyes glistened with moisture. "The last guys I pulled out of a mess like that didn't make it. So it meant something to me to see her. I needed to see her. Do you understand?"

Grace let that wash through her.

Not a single guy he'd lost, a single friend.

Guys.

How many, she wondered?

He pulled them out of some sort of crash, and they hadn't survived.

In spite of all those memories, yesterday he'd pulled a seriously injured Maeve out from beneath a different kind of mess, and she was humbled by the strength that must have taken. Here he was now, standing there in front of her, waiting to see how she'd handle what he'd told her.

"I understand." She made herself look him in the eye and forced a smile across her face. "Sorry I... You know. Yelled at you and called you a stupid man."

It was the right thing to say, because he let out a little bit of a laugh and pulled her tightly against him for a quick moment. When he let her go, he looked better, looked like himself and not so caught up in things like being tortured and pulling dead bodies out of crash scenes.

Thank God.

"Come on. Let's get out of here," he said. "I think I hear our dog crying."

"Our dog?" she asked.

"Yeah. We're in this together now. You and me."

* * *

They made a quick stop for groceries, asked there if anyone knew Maeve and got the number for the mailman who handled their route, so they could ask him about Maeve. Then they drove back to the cabin.

Tink bounded out of the car and danced around Grace as she walked down the path to the cabin. Aidan followed a few steps behind, watching and almost wishing he was the dog. So much less baggage involved. He'd just dance around Grace and let her fuss over him. He wished so much to be anyone but who he was for her—a man still recovering from war wounds, impotent and every now and then, having PTSD flashbacks.