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BECAUSE OF YOU CHAPTER 7
Three weeks since he’d been shipped out of Iraq and he was just as useless now as he’d been when he’d first arrived. The only difference was now, he was slightly less stoned and every single nerve burned with energy, both real and imagined. He looked down at his right arm as an itch crawled up his wrist toward his elbow. He shuddered, unable to do anything to stop the sensation it felt like a spider was crawling over his skin.
Nurse Ratchet had confiscated the coat hanger he’d transformed into a scratching stick.
Bitter helplessness tasted like sand in his mouth. He scrubbed his hand over his face, wishing like hell he could shave. That he could take a piss by himself. That he could do anything other than sit here.
He was stuck. Between the pins sticking out of his legs and the stitches holding his abdomen together, the cast on his right arm and the tube sticking out of his dick, he was a damned invalid. He clicked through the channels searching for anything related to the war, but all anyone was talking about was some pop star’s latest stint in rehab.
He was going fucking insane.
The door to his room slammed opened and Shane glanced over, expecting to see one of Nurse Ratchet’s pals.
Shane’s mouth fell open, but no sound squeezed past the knot in his throat. He barely recognized the man who walked into his room. His face was covered with a bushy red beard, his dark red hair grown out and slicked back in some Irish version of the Fonz. He’d let his hair grow out of that stupid red patch months ago, but this? This was ridiculous. Cold shock crawled up his spine when he saw Carponti’s bandaged arm. Several inches too short.
Holy fuck.
Carponti strolled in like he didn’t have a care in the world and flopped into the chair that was reserved for visitors. Except for Laura who visited him regularly despite his less than charming attitude it had gone basically unused since Shane had arrived. Not that he wanted company anyway.
Reclining in the chair, Carponti kicked his feet up on the edge of Shane’s bed. ‘You’re still in the hospital? Legs get blown all to hell and suddenly you can’t walk. What the hell is the army coming to?’
Shane finally thought to close his mouth, then struggled to smile at his best squad leader. The last time he saw him ‘You survived that explosion?’
‘Nice to see you, too. Asshole,’ Carponti said with a grin. ‘You tried to send me out on the MEDEVAC. I ended up dragging your heavy ass onto that bird instead. With my arm half torn to hell, I might add.’
Carponti continued, oblivious to Shane’s silence. ‘Is this what you’ve been doing for the past month? Sitting back here relaxing? And you still have all your limbs? That is such bullshit! Put a Band-Aid on that shit and get your happy ass back over to the sandbox.’
‘What are you on?’ Shane was reasonably certain Carponti had lost his mind.
‘Me?’ Carponti’s eyes widened in pure innocence, an expression that was both familiar and unsettling. It meant he was into something. Something bound to get Shane’s ass in a sling one way or another. ‘Nothing. Well, nothing much.’ He held up his bandaged arm and waved it around like a flag. ‘Check this out. Makes buttoning up shirts a whole new adventure. The only thing that sucks is that sometimes my fingers still itch. And the docs don’t have a pill for that. At least not one that works.’
Shane could barely form a complete sentence as deep disquiet crawled over his skin. ‘When did you get hit?’
‘There was another IED after you went down. My arm got pinned in between one of those heavy armored doors, and the truck. By the time they got me out, the arm was pretty much dead. So the docs over in Germany did a quick little nip and tuck and sent me on my way.’ Carponti was chomping on mint gum, like a Valley girl at the mall. ‘Boy, I’m sure glad they didn’t stop my combat pay right away. I took Nikki shopping in Italy so she’d stop hovering over me. Man that woman can shop.’
Shane struggled to smile. To do something other than gape at his friend. The guy had lost part of his arm, and he made it sound like nothing.
‘CID gave her leave?’ Shane asked, struggling to pull his thoughts together to form at least one coherent thought. Carponti had swaggered into the company tactical operations center about four months back, bragging that his wife was now a full-time investigator at the Fort Hood Criminal Investigations Division and that everyone had better watch their asses. He’d had a feeling that Carponti hadn’t been kidding when he’d mentioned it to LT Randall.
‘Yeah. She’s working gangs in Killeen and the Central Texas area with the feds. Man, you’d be shocked at how many gangs send guys into the military. They try to buy people off, too, especially armorers and guys with access to weapons repair parts. You’d be amazed at what she can’t tell me.’
Shane struggled to keep up with Carponti’s stream-of-consciousness dialogue. Damn it, but his brain was clouded. Carponti continued, oblivious. ‘We thought we’d lost you. But I knew it was going to take a whole lot more than a couple of bombs to knock your disgruntled old ass off the planet.’
Finally, Shane’s thoughts cleared as his lips cracked into an awkward smile. ‘I’m only five years older than you, dickhead.’
‘I rest my case. So anyway, when are they sending you home?’
Shane didn’t want to talk about home or his lack thereof. His mom had been more of an incubator than a parent. His dad? Well, he assumed his dad was one of the random truckers his mom had pretended Shane didn’t know about. And he’d closed out his apartment when he’d deployed, never dreaming he’d need to have a place to stay before the end of the tour. No, home was the last thing Shane wanted to think about.
Carponti was fine, cracking darkly inappropriate jokes as always. Suddenly that was the most important thing in the world to him. Why was he freaking out if Carponti wasn’t?
‘I have no idea. Who else got hit?’ Who else had he let down when he’d been taken out of the fight?
‘Adkins broke his arm in like four places, but he pissed and moaned so much the docs let him stay. He’s riding the rest of the rotation out in the orderly room, but he’s happy because he’s still with the boys.’
Shane’s smile slipped more firmly into place. The knot around his heart loosened. Just a little. It was so good to hear Carponti’s voice. To hear about his men.
‘How’s Captain Davila doing over there?’
Carponti’s jaw slowed on the gum and his gaze went a thousand miles away to the Iraqi desert. ‘He’s holding up, I guess. There were rumors flying around that someone in our battalion had killed some Iraqi civilians. Bad shit, any way you shake it.’ And he flipped the switch, and was instantly back to his chipper self, chomping away at the gum. ‘But you’re back here sitting around staying stoned and getting fat, so what do you have to worry about?’
Brett Michaels wailed about wanting nothin’ but a good time from Carponti’s phone. Carponti glanced at it, then dropped it back into his pocket. ‘Hey, man, gotta run. Wife’s downstairs. Have you started physical therapy yet?’
‘No. Not till this thing comes off.’ Shane lifted his casted arm a few inches off the bed. The itch was getting worse.
‘Oh, yeah, well. Anyway, I’m going to be in here every day at nine. So anyway, I’ll see you around, okay? Hurry up and get back to work, will ya?’
He swung open the door and Shane heard a loud, ‘Oh, hey, Jen.’
Jen came walking back in, wheeling a portable blood pressure machine. She barely glanced in his direction, her movements quick and efficient. Shane cleared his throat, trying to tamp down on the emotion churning inside of him. Still, his words came out more gruff than he intended. ‘How the hell did Carponti know I was here?’
Jen wrapped a blood pressure cuff around his arm, waiting as it inflated. ‘I figured if anyone could annoy you enough to get moving, it would be Vic.’
Shane stared at her, blinking slowly, unable to hide his surprise. He searched her face, stunned to silence. She’d rounded up the one soldier who could be counted on to be a pain in Shane’s ass. It was something Shane would have done to get his guys motivated. ‘You did that?’
‘Yeah.’ She smiled faintly and finally met his gaze. The uncertainty he saw there shamed him. ‘I thought having Vic around might help.’
She finished taking her notes, then headed from the room before Shane could find the words he needed.
The words to thank her.
ONE CLICK BECAUSE OF YOU
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