Page 91 of The Order of Disorder
“He called me,” Damian says, tightening the BP cuff on my arm. “We packed the hole, ran him to a field doc in Redwater. Cost two grand and a bottle of Booker’s.”
Ryder huffs a laugh, eyes still on the road. “Worth every penny. Doc stitched me, then taped my mouth shut ‘cause I wouldn’t stop trying to say your name.”
My pulse thrashes so hard it kicks the monitor into a double-beep. “You were alive all this time.” Grief, relief, and guilt all try to occupy the same space in my chest. The collision makes it hard to breathe.
Ryder’s gaze flashes to the mirror again, soft heat flickering behind the exhaustion. “Never stopped looking for you, Maxwell.”
The van falls quiet except for the low thrum of tires and the whisper of prairie wind leaking through the cracked pane. For a heartbeat I’m suspended between two timelines—the night he died and this impossible now.
Damian presses a clip to my finger, looks up at a monitor displaying my pulse. Heat rolls through me, then flips to ice. I shiver under the foil blanket.
“One-ten over seventy,” says Damian, checking a monitor. “Not awful, considering.”
The scanner hisses with open static, then a female dispatcher breaks in: “…confirm ATF en-route, ETA eight minutes. Report of one DOA at scene —” Jake hits the scanner, and silences it again.
Wind buffets the side panel. The floor’s vibration settles into a weird, painful peace. We’re together again. Wyatt’s alive. Ryder’s alive. I’m alive. It’s overwhelming. Too much to process. Especially with Damian’s administrations making my bones vibrate. Everything is hyper real and surreal at the same time.
Damian digs in the med kit. “Ah, perfect. Promethazine. For the pukes coming your way.”
“How do you know all this?” I manage to ask.
“Used to be on the other end of the Narcan,” is all he says. He holds out the tablet and a bottle of water, and I take it.
My stomach heaves at the mere thought, but I swallow the pill, water sluicing like acid down an esophagus raw from bile. My joints ache, my skin itches from the inside, and my thoughts tumble out of order.
I force a slow breath. I think of Ryder’s house, Leathernecks, Jake and Damian’s house. All the places I’ve missed so much.
“Are we going home?” I ask weakly.
“Not yet,” answers Damian. “Wyatt needs the medic, and then we’ll hole up somewhere safe while we wait to see what the fallout is.”
Jake clears his throat. “But first, we’re rendezvousing with Damian’s truck at an old grain elevator. Swapping vehicles, going dark. Ryder and I’ll torch this ambulance after we wipe the prints.”
“Burn it?” I ask. “Why?”
Ryder glances at me in the mirror. “Because we stole it from county EMS,” he says. “And the decals are magnetic.”
Wyatt’s laugh cracks the hush—warm, incredulous, instantly regretful. He clamps a hand to his bandaged side. “Son of a bitch, that’s…that’s funny.”
Damian tightens Wyatt’s chest strap. “Try not to breathe too deep.”
The van drones. Outside is nothing but blacktop and the raw Wyoming dark. My eyelids flutter, heavy with the riot starting in my veins.
I anchor myself to the only constants I have left. Four men. Four compass points in the wreckage of my world.
I lean my head back on the bench and let a single, aching truth settle in my bones: Love didn’t save me tonight. Love carried me, bleeding and half-dead, out of hell. And for as longas we’re breathing the same air, I will crawl, run, or burn to keep them alive in return.
Somewhere ahead, where the highway bends into star-clotted black, waits a future where no one owns my body, and the only currency is the promise we just made in silence: we leave no one behind.
The van keeps humming, half lullaby, half war drum, and I close my eyes against the blur of tears and headlights. I have been caged, collared, drugged, paraded, violated. But tonight I ride toward dawn with four ghosts made flesh, and the horizon, though jagged, finally feels wide enough for the life I intend to live.