There’s only one more hour left on my shift and I can say I survived my first day back.
All I have to do is deliver their results and discharge them with medication. So far, their tests have come back negative. I look at the following patients on my care list, and one of the names seems familiar.
Rooker, A.
I don’t know many Rookers, but if it isn’t Enzo Rooker, Danny’s close friend, who could it be?
I walk into the room and I see a woman with her child. They are asleep on the bed, cuddled against each other.
As I approach her, her cell phone on her side lights up brightly. I freeze in my tracks when I realize what her wallpaper is. It looks like a family of four, a happy, wide-eyed Enzo Rooker with his wife and two daughters.
This is Rooker’s wife.
Holy shit.
I shouldn’t be surprised. All service members and their families get treated on base for the most part.
She flutters her eyes open slowly when her phone buzzes with text messages. She lets out a deep breath, stretching her arms upward, and I give her a comforting smile.
“Sorry, I fell asleep. It’s been a while since anybody has seen me,” she rasps, yawning. She stretches her arms over her head.
“I’m so sorry about that. I’m Ari. I have your daughter’s test results. How is she feeling?”
“Ari? Like Ari Alvarez? Paul’s sister? Danny’s girlfriend?”
Her questions jump at me one after another in shock, ignoring that I told her I had her daughter’s results.
“Yes, yes, and yes.” I smile.
“Wow, the woman that tied down Danny Rider. I feared that man would always live the bachelor life and never settle down,” she jokes, crossing her arms.
I laugh as I grab a stool and sit next to her.
“I’m just as shocked as you are.”
“Huh.” She bobs her head as if she’s impressed. “Well…” She looks at her sleeping daughter, pushing her hair out of her face. She has red hair and freckles on her nose.
She’s adorable.
“Her fever broke about ten minutes ago after she was swabbed for the flu.”
“That’s excellent news!” I exclaim. “She’s good to go home. The results came back negative. She doesn’t have strep or the flu. It’s probably just a virus that has to take its course. Tylenol for the fevers and make sure she’s getting lots of fluids and rest.”
“Well, that’s a relief. She’ll probably be better in a few days then. Enzo told me I overreact, but I can’t help it. Whenever they get sick, I freak out.”
“That’s understandable. I would be the same way…” My heart sinks when those last few words leave my mouth. I clear my throat; my smile disappears and I try to push the thoughts of losing my baby deep into the back of my head.
It takes me back to the day I went to the doctor’s office for the first time, alone because Danny was on deployment and my mother still didn’t know.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to come back to work.
Noel notices the awkward shift in my behavior and changes the subject.
“Enzo and I met in a bar, just like you and Danny.” She stands, grabbing her purse.
Noel has short brown hair, slight silver hair poking from the root, and hazel eyes. She’s taller than me.
“You did? Which bar? It wasn’t El Devine, was it?” A small laugh escapes me as I roll my eyes, expecting her to refuse.
“It was. It was my bachelorette party.” She blushes, raising her brows and shrugging as if the memories are now hitting her. After ten years, Noel still blushes as she thinks of the day she met her husband.
“No way. Wait, your bachelorette party? Like you were engaged to someone else at the time?” I try to control my face.
What a ballsy move.
“I know, I know. I’m not a slut, I promise. Or maybe I was. I don’t even know anymore. We’ve been together ten years already.”
She lets herself get lost in the recollection. She stares at the ceiling and lets her feet hang over the bed.
“I literally had my engagement ring on my finger when he came up. I had a shirt that said bride to be, and that still didn’t stop him. I had I’m taken written all over me. But Navy SEALS are stubborn as hell, which I’m sure you’ve realized by now.” She finally looks at me, shaking her head with a giddy curve of a smile.
“Danny Rider? Stubborn? No way,” I say sarcastically as the blue-eyed operator enters my vision. The night I saw him drinking alone at El Devine in his baseball cap, I should have noticed he was a broken soul then, but I didn’t. I was too mesmerized by his presence.
“I think you’re with the most stubborn one out of them all. Danny is…he really isn’t bad like I know he thinks he is. He is the most giving, even if he won’t admit or see it in himself. I will say this. I’ve never seen him so consumed by anything or anyone in his life that wasn’t his job.”
Butterflies swirl in my stomach.
“How long have you known Danny?” The way she talks about him, I feel like she’s known him her entire life.
“As long as I’ve known my husband. Almost ten years.” She sighs.
I purse my lips.
“Enzo is wise, the peacemaker of the team. He holds everyone together when the morale is low. I love that about my husband. He tries to keep the team from killing each other when times get tough. Kane is the golden retriever, sensitive yet intense when he needs to be. And Lopez…well, he’s the youngest one out of the group and has a lot of growing up to do, but as far as I know, he’s a goofball. A Mexican cowboy from Texas.”
She knows them all so well. I only genuinely know Danny and Kane. Lopez and Rooker are mysteries.
Wait, she’s been a military spouse for ten years?
“You’ve been living this military lifestyle of constant deployments for ten years?”
I’ve only been with Danny for a few months, and it’s all too much. The constant worry, the anxiety I feel whenever I look at my front door. I can’t handle it.
“Yeah, ten years have flown by. It’s funny because I told him the night we met I didn’t ever see myself being tied down to a man in the military. Yet he charmed me as soon as I looked into his hazel eyes. I told him,” she lifts her index finger, ‘one, I’m with someone already. Two, I will never date a military man. And you know what he did?”
“Oh, Lord, what did that man do?” My eyes circle in curiosity.
“He said, ‘One, I don’t care—engaged ain’t official. And two, you won’t date one, but, baby girl, you’ll marry one after tonight.’”
Damn.
I clap my hands, raising my eyebrows, fighting the curve of my lips.
“So, he whisked me away from my girlfriends. We talked and danced all night until El Devine closed. I’ve never connected with a man so fast. I felt like crap because I should have felt guilty about it, but I didn’t at the end of the night. I ended it with my ex-fiancé the next day.”
“Is that usually how it goes with these men? Fast-paced?”
“Honestly, it’s cliché, but yes. But I think it’s for a good reason. These men who serve our country are almost always gone, depending on the type of job they have, of course, but this life is hard and it makes you appreciate every second you have together because you don’t know when it’ll be your last. I think that’s why things tend to be more fast-paced.”
I’m just sitting in this chair, soaking every word Noel shares with me. I don’t know if I want to be with someone who’s always gone.
I know I want Danny, though.
The Navy will always have the upper hand in our relationship, demanding his skills and taking time away from our normal life at home.
“You don’t know if they’ll be gone on training, missions, deployments. It’s hard on the wives, especially our children. I’ve been begging him to leave the Navy, but it’s an argument I won’t win. He almost died this last time.” She chokes up and takes a deep breath, closing her eyes. She massages her brows with her fingers before collecting her emotions.
“I’ve come to accept he’s retiring in the Navy. It only took me ten years to accept it.”
She opens her eyes and looks at me with a comforting smile.
“Thank you, Ari.”
“What for?”
“Enzo told me Paul’s little sister helped save his life in Iraq. You gave me my husband back, alive. Thank you. I don’t know what I would do without him. He’s my other half.”
She looks at me straight into my brown eyes, and I feel a wave of confidence in my skills.
“I will be forever grateful to you for that.” She nods, crossing her arms over her chest.
“I don’t blame you for feeling that way. I’ve only been with Danny for less than a year, and I’m already intimidated by his schedule. I-I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure if I can continue being worried like this. Especially after my brother’s death. This life is hard, just like you said.”
She relaxes her posture by lying back in the hospital bed, studying me. I have to gather her discharge paperwork before she can leave.
“Your feelings are completely valid…” She pauses, intertwining her fingers and relaxing them on her lap. “But I’ll tell you something.” She bites the inside of her cheek.
“Yes?”
“If you leave Danny, it’ll destroy him. He loves you. That man is so in love with you; he’s in dire cavernous trouble with how he feels about you.”
I can’t help it, but even Noel can say those three words for Danny, and he still hasn’t.
He has told me time and time again he isn’t a man of words, but a man of actions. He doesn’t have to say it. I know the way he feels about me. At least, that’s what I tell myself.
I clear my throat.
“Well, Noel, I will be back with your discharge paperwork so you can get home to your other baby and husband,” I tell her as I reach for the doors.
“Thank you, Ari.”
I give her a nod in response, flashing a smile, and walk toward the nurses’ station.
I palm my lower belly, feeling that same pit of anxiety I’ve been trying to escape.
“You’ll never guess what case I’m working on right now.” Lori drops her clipboard on the counter desk and rubs her eyes, frustrated.
“Oh no, you need help?” I offer.
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“Then what is it?”
She looks at me, furrowing her brows so hard, trying not to laugh.
“A Mason jar got stuck somewhere.”
“What? Like where?”
“Somewhere the sun doesn’t shine.”
I gasp, holding my hands over my mouth. This is the first time I’ve heard about this.
“Like…in the bu—”
She cuts me off, placing her head on the counter so I can’t see her anymore.
“Yes,” she squeaks through a heavy breath.
Her forehead rests on her forearms as she squats down, stretching as a frustrated groan releases.
“How did it not break?” I ask, lowering my voice closer to her ears. Well…this is a first.
She lifts her head so her chin rests on her forearms, pieces of hair land on her face, and she blows air from her mouth to clear them away.
“By the grace of God.”
