EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: Until We Fly

Excerpt

“Help!” I call out to the EMTs who are now on the scene. One hears me, and rushes my way, but I wave him toward the girl.

“Get her first!” I tell him. “She’s under that shit. Get her first. It’s crushing her.”

He does as I ask, and it takes two of them to dig her out. I watch them carry her out, I watch how her eyes are still closed, I watch them stretch her limp body onto a waiting gurney before they come back for me.

F*ck. 

“Thank you,” I tell them sincerely. They gingerly move the wood and the drywall and the twisted metal that is holding me down, before they roll me onto a stretcher.

“I’m fine,” I try and tell them, as I attempt to get up.

But I can’t get up. My left leg is twisted beneath me, my foot turned an unnatural way. I stare at it, aghast and astonished, noticing the way my knee is turned out, while my ankle is turned in.

F*ck. 

I don’t feel the pain, so I know I’m in shock. I drop back against the stretcher, as they wheel me toward a waiting ambulance.

My leg was shattered in Afghanistan. I had multiple surgeries, months of physical therapy and I was only just starting to walk without a limp. And for what? To have it annihilated again? Here in f*cking Angel Bay?

F*cking hell.

They load me up and close the door and I stare at the white metal for a second before I close my eyes. This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.

But it’s real.

The sirens, loud and wailing, tell me that.

Numbly, I wait. Then something occurs to me. Why are they using the siren for a broken leg?

I barely have the thought before my fingers grow cold, and my thoughts begin to get fuzzy, muddled.

What the hell?

But then it doesn’t matter, because I’m so f*cking tired. Nothing matters, not the pain, or the lack of it, or even the girl.

My arms and legs grow heavy and I close my eyes, a sigh rattling my ribcage.

The girl. Her blue eyes are the last things I see before I close my eyes.

It seems like only minutes before the ambulance shrieks to a stop and I’m being bustled out.

I grab one of the EMTs arms as they race me into the hospital.

“What’s wrong?”

He stares down at me as he runs. “Don’t worry. They’ll fix you.”

I fall back onto the gurney and all I can do is watch everything happening. Waves of utter exhaustion and sleepiness pass through me and all I want to do is close my eyes.

So I do, but I can’t sleep because some damn faceless person keeps asking me questions, all the while other faceless people prod at my leg and cut off my pants.

What’s your name?

“Brand Killien,” I mutter.

How old are you?

“Twenty-seven.”

Are you allergic to anything?

No.

Can we call anyone for you?

“No.”

I open my eyes when they jam an IV into my arm, and the lights are bright, and the medicine feeding into me blurs it all together.

A nurse’s face blurs in front of me.

“You’re going in to surgery, sweetheart,” she tells me. I can’t see her face even though my eyes are wide open. “Your artery was nicked. They have to fix it.”

My f*cking artery was nicked?

You’ve got to be kidding me. I survived the bloody hills of Afghanistan. I’m not going to bleed to death here. No f*cking way. Holy shit. Why didn’t I have them call Gabe or Jacey… just in case? 

I try to mutter that, to tell them to call Gabe, but they can’t understand me.

Another face blurs over me, someone with black hair. “Everything will be all right, sir. Just count backward from one hundred.”

The light swirls, the noise echoes.

Ninety-Nine. 

Ninety-Eight. 

Ninety-Seven.

Nothing.

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Beautifully Broken - Recommended Reading Order

(standalone stories with interconnected characters)