Chapter 902

Dr. Reed gave him a look sharp enough to cut wire. “For four hours of supervised sleep, yes. Because keeping her here will turn this room into a command post and I refuse to host that circus. She comes back at 0600. No training clearance until I personally decide otherwise.”

Caroline pushed herself up on one elbow. “I’m not being pulled from the course.”

“You are being pulled from anything I say you’re pulled from,” Dr. Reed said.

Caroline looked at Jarrod.

He held her gaze for a long moment.

Then he said, “Medical profile stands.”

The words hit harder than she expected.

Not because they were wrong.

Because they were not his protection disguised as strategy. They were reality.

Her body had limits, whether she resented them or not.

Caroline looked away first.

A medic brought dry base sweats, thick socks, and her boots. Not her soaked fatigues; those were still sealed as evidence. She dressed behind a curtain with slow, careful movements, every bruise announcing itself. When she emerged, K.C. had a wheelchair ready.

“I can walk,” she said.

“No,” Dr. Reed and Jarrod said at the same time.

Caroline glared at both of them.

K.C. placed one hand on the chair back and waited.

She sat.

The trip back to the barracks was silent. No helicopter. No secret landing. No deserted training field. Just a medic walking alongside her, K.C. pushing the chair, and Jarrod moving behind them with controlled, injured stiffness, close enough that she could feel his presence without being touched.

When the barracks door opened, the room went still.

Brenna was on her lower bunk, her broken right hand still secured in its bulky white cast and sling. Beatrix stood near the center aisle in a borrowed sweater over her fatigues, one arm wrapped around her ribs, her elegant face pale with sleepless tension.

They had not been told she was dead.

No one had listed her as MIA.

They had watched the floodlights hit the ravine. They had heard the emergency sirens. They had seen the medics carry her out on the rescue litter, alive but wrapped in silver and not moving.

That was worse in some ways.

Knowing she had survived had not stopped them from imagining the moment she might not.

The second Brenna saw her, she let out a sound that broke in the middle.

“Oh my God, Caroline.”

She tried to rush forward, but the cast and sling made the movement awkward. Beatrix caught her before she stumbled, then crossed the room herself with a controlled speed that betrayed everything her face tried to hide.

“Don’t crush her,” Beatrix said, voice thin and imperious. “She looks like one aggressive hug away from internal bleeding.”

Brenna burst into tears anyway.

Caroline tried to smile. “Nice to see you too.”

Brenna hovered, terrified to touch her. “They wouldn’t let us in. They said you were alive, but they wouldn’t let us see you. They just kept saying medical stabilization, medical stabilization, like that meant anything.”

Beatrix’s eyes were red-rimmed, but her voice stayed cool. “You have a talent for making an entrance, Thompson.”

“Thought I’d try leaving through a ravine first.”

“Never do that again.”