CHAPTER 9
There were only a few places on Fort Hood to take a PT test. At least, few places that were officially sanctioned. You could take a PT test anywhere you damn well pleased, but let one soldier fail and every inch of your location would be inspected.
So naturally when there was an approved, flat area, everyone on the installation used it.
Sarah stretched alongside the formation of mostly junior soldiers. She was one of the few officers taking the PT test today. Thank God Claire had come through for her and had dropped Anna off at the daycare so Sarah could sit in her car for an hour and wait to take a PT test that technically, she shouldn’t have to take for an executive officer who hadn’t even bothered to show up.
But the XO had said be at the railhead at five, so that’s what Sarah would do. The fact that the PT test wasn’t going to start until six thirty was completely irrelevant. Captains did what majors told them to do. She wasn’t going to let Wilson piss her off. At least not until she had her coffee.
She stretched her leg carefully and tried not to worry about the run. She had to run two miles in under twenty-one minutes. She could do that in her sleep.
Except that she hadn’t done it, not for a record PT test, since she’d gotten hurt. And while yes, she was in her rights to demand a diagnostic PT test before she took one for the record, she was already on thin ice with Major Wilson. She would be perfectly within her rights to refuse to take the PT test—that’s what the profile was designed to do, but in the current environment, giving Wilson any more reasons to target her was only going to cause more trouble. Trouble that Sarah didn’t need.
So she’d take the damn PT test.
Sarah stretched and told herself she was fine. She’d been running and stretching and doing everything her doc told her to do. The burns hadn’t gone into the muscle.
But the minute the PT test started, she knew she was in trouble. Her shoulders were tight and didn’t loosen up until she’d done more than twenty push-ups. And once she started the sit-up event, the skin on her thigh felt stretched too thin. Like it was separating with a thousand tiny tears with each repetition.
Both events went by fairly quickly, though. She’d lost a few push-ups—thirty-eight instead of her normal fifty. She needed to work on that. But she’d passed those two events and that’s all that mattered right now. She could work on a better score. Right now, she just needed not to fail.
And failing was starting to feel like it might be a reality. Her left thigh was tight and stiff as she walked to the starting line for the run. She’d be fine. She’d loosen up once she started running.
The whistle blew, and Sarah took off with the rest of the pack. She wasn’t sprinting. She needed to pace herself. Her leg remained tight the first quarter mile. It loosened up a little bit on that second quarter mile but not enough.
Her stomach knotted as she rounded her third quarter. Her leg was no longer merely stiff; it felt like it was actively tearing open, like the fire was eating at her flesh once more. She bit back the pain, just focusing on running. As long as she didn’t stop, she could finish the run. She wouldn’t fail.
She wouldn’t fail.
She’d never failed a PT test in her life.
But the second mile was half a world away. Her leg burned. Was weak.
She kept going. Just keep going. One foot in front of the other.
She saw the finish line ahead. Twenty minutes. She could make it. Left. Left. Left Right. She repeated the cadence in her head.
The finish line was farther away now. At the end of a tunnel, getting darker.
“Sarah!”
She heard her name from a far off distance as the fire licked up her leg and consumed her.
* * *
Sean was used to fear but when he saw Sarah go down on the track, he was hit with a level of panic he hadn’t known since the last deployment, when his TOC had gotten blown up.
He raced to her as she stumbled off the asphalt and crashed into the grass surrounding the track. She was already pushing up to her knees by the time he got to her. It didn’t escape his notice that the NCO from her unit was not rushing over to make sure she was okay. What kind of bullshit unit was she in?
“Don’t!” She pushed up to her hands and knees. Both were scraped and bloody. “You can’t touch me, or I’ll fail the PT test.”
“Shit, are you serious? You’re fucking bleeding.”
“I just tripped and skinned my knees. I’ll be fine.” She tried to stand and wobbled. “I have to finish.”
“Fuck this,” he said. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and guided her off the track.
“No, no, no. I have to finish.” But her voice was shaking now. She hadn’t tripped. No fucking way.
“There’s a fine line between hoah and stupid, and you just crossed it,” Sean snapped. “Sarn’t Madeira! I need the combat lifesaver over here.”
Sarah finally stopped fighting to get back onto the track and sank into the grass. She started to cover her face with her palms but stopped, finally noticing the blood.
“What happened?” he asked as the company medic started rinsing the scrapes on her knees. Sean took gauze and wiped the gravel from her palms as gently as he could.
“My first PT test since I got hurt.” Her voice was limp. Defeated. “Guess I wasn’t ready for it.”
“It’s just a diagnostic,” Sean said. “Try again next week.”
She looked up at him and shook her head slowly. “It was a record.”
“Huh?”
“Major Wilson directed me to take a record. So I did.” Her throat moved as she swallowed, trying to blink back tears.
“Jenks, leave this with me?” Sean said to the medic.
“Roger, sir.”
Sean took her hand in his. She was small and her hand shook where he held her. “This may sting a little,” he said, holding up the bottle of saline solution.
“You guys had a PT test this morning?” she asked.
“Yeah. Good thing, too. Here.” He pressed gauze into her palm.
She closed her eyes and rested her forehead on her wrist. “Shit.”
“She can’t make you take a record PT test if you’re on profile, Sarah,” he said as he cleaned her other palm.
“She already did. And I failed.” She bit her lips together, hard enough that he felt sorry for them.
She sucked in a hissing breath as he squeezed the saline out over her knees a second time. She shifted and her shorts rode up a little on her left thigh.
He paused, taking in the mottled raised skin where she’d been burned. It started halfway up her thigh and disappeared beneath the black shorts. His chest tightened and a thousand emotions ripped through him. She’d been hurt. Badly. The skin was still bright red and hot pink – new wounds, not old. He fought the urge to gather her to him, at once wanting to protect her from something she’d already survived and wanting to offer comfort that she had not asked for.
He looked up to find her watching his quiet inspection of her wound.
“Guess I should expect that I told you so, huh?” She offered a half-assed wry grin and failed.
“I wasn’t going to say that,” he said quietly.
“What then?” She adjusted the gauze in her hand, checking the ripped skin beneath.
“I was going to say I’m glad you came home.” He rested his hand on her calf. Felt the smooth, solid muscle beneath his palm. He had the strongest desire to run his hand down her calf and up her thigh, just to see if she still reacted to his touch.
She swallowed but didn’t look away.
“What if you get hurt?” The echo of that fight rose between them, an unwanted memory.
“I’m a supply clerk. We’re not exactly front line soldiers,” she’d snapped.
God but they’d both been so naïve before the war. Now, long after the war had been going on for years, everyone knew supply soldiers had one of the highest casualty rates from running logistics convoys.
It was a long moment before she responded.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
She didn’t protest as he cleaned the gravel out of both knees.
The NCO who’d been in charge of the PT test came trotting over now that the last soldier had finished. “Ma’am, you okay?”
Sean bit his tongue to avoid ripping the sergeant a new one. Why the hell had they not sent someone to check on her when she’d first fallen? “Roger, sarn’t.”
“I’ll have to mark you as failed, ma’am,” he said, looking down at his clipboard.
“I know.”
Sean watched the exchange silently, fighting to keep his temper in check.
She wasn’t in his unit. She wasn’t his. But the fury he felt at the unfairness of the entire situation burned in his chest. “You have a legitimate complaint, Sarah.”
Her smile was flat. “I’m not filing a complaint against my XO. You know how fast that would end any chance I’ve got of getting out of this unit with a decent evaluation. Officers turn on our own when we call the IG. Wilson would crucify me.”
“So instead of fighting for fair treatment, you’re going to let her mark you as a PT failure?” He taped a bandage to her knee.
“You don’t know what I’m dealing with when it comes to her. She’s going to run me out of the Army if she gets her way.”
“Try me,” he said. He stood and offered her a hand. She winced as he pulled her to her feet.
She studied him quietly. “Since when did you care about what it’s like for me in the Army?”
He took a step closer. The field was empty now. It was as if everyone had scattered the minute PT was over.
There was a faint white scar beneath her right eye, extending down toward her cheek. He wanted to ask her where she’d gotten that, but he didn’t. She didn’t look like she was up for a stroll down memory lane. The concern for her, the old feelings snuck up on him, breaking out of the locked box at the bottom of the well where he kept it buried and restrained and tried to ignore. But now, they broke free and mixed with a powerful storm of new emotions that he had no clue how to process. How to manage. It was too much, too fast.
“Since I lost you for not paying close enough attention the last time.”