Chapter 458
[ 498 words ]
Chapter 458:
But she didn’t. Her shoulder struck the metal shelving with a dull clang, and Brenna, who had been watching her too closely to be fooled by her composure, lunged across the aisle and caught her under the arm. Dr. Croft was there a second later, bracing her from the other side. Together, they lowered her onto the nearest empty cot before she could collapse completely.
Caroline blinked hard, fighting to drag the world back into focus. The tent came back in fragments: Brenna’s frightened face, Croft’s hand at her pulse, the sharp scent of antiseptic.
Then the temperature in the room seemed to drop.
She looked up and found herself staring into a pair of eyes burning with a white-hot, terrifying fury.
It was Jarrod.
He had finished his emergency briefing, his mind already back in the tent with her. When he’d ripped open the flap and found the cot empty, a cold, primal panic had seized him. It was the same feeling he’d had in the ruins, the gut-twisting certainty that she was gone. But this time, the panic had not lasted long. There was only one place Caroline would have gone, and some bitter, unwilling part of him had known it before he even turned toward the medical center.
He stood at the entrance of the medical tent, his right arm still locked against his chest in the heavy brace, his splinted left hand held stiffly at his side. He had not caught her. He could not have, even if he had torn himself apart trying. That helplessness made the fury in his eyes even worse.
“Who,” he said, his voice a low, deadly growl that cut through the noise of the tent, “cleared her for duty?”
Every word was perfectly enunciated, dropped into the air like a chip of ice. The sheer force of his anger radiated from him, creating a bubble of silence. Everyone nearby froze, their attention snapping to the scene. Dr. Croft and Evelyn Reed stared, their faces pale with alarm.
Leaning back against the cot, her body still weak, Caroline tried to explain. “I… I just wanted to help.”
His gaze snapped to her, then to Croft, then back again. “Help?” he hissed, his voice dripping with scorn. “Is this your idea of helping? Passing out in the middle of a medical tent? Becoming another casualty for my people to deal with?”
𝖣і𝘀𝖼o𝘷𝗲𝗋 𝘩і𝘥𝘥𝖾n 𝗴𝗲ms 𝗈𝗇 𝗀𝖺𝘭𝗇𝗈vе𝗅𝘀.𝖼о𝗆
The words were sharp, cruel, and they struck her with the force of a physical blow. The color drained from her face.
She bit her lip, a spark of defiance flickering in her eyes. “I’m fine. It’s just low blood sugar. They need me here.”
“They need you conscious,” he snapped. “That is the bare minimum, Caroline.”
Dr. Croft stepped between them before the silence could turn lethal. His voice was calm, but there was steel under it. “Colonel, she was assigned light triage under supervision. She overextended herself, but she did not wander into danger blindly. She stopped when she went down, and we have her now.”
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