Protector (Navy SEALS Romance Book 3) (3 page)

“
T
hanks for checking in
, Ruiz, but there’s no new developments. Our missing surfer’s still AWOL, and I got Tanner and Jake scouting the wash zone while Mike mans the bus. How are things on your end? I mean...with your mom?” Knox cringed while he waited for an answer, silently praying that it was good news.

“No news yet, but she’s hanging in there,” he said, mentally tacking on the words, for now. “It’d go better if I could get a particular ghost from the past outta my head.”

“A ghost? Whaddya mean--oh god, not Maddie the Baddie? What’s she doing there? I thought she took off and got married or something!”

“I thought so too, but she’s a nurse in the ICU, and my mom is one of her patients.”

“Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

“I don’t know…” His question gave Angel pause. He sure hadn’t been thrilled to see her, but if he had to pick someone to see his mom through something like this, even he had to admit that Madison--despite his personal feelings--was strong and smart and more than capable at her job. “I guess I’m glad she’s here. She loves my mom, but more than that, I know she’s not gonna bullshit me around. Good news or not, she’s not gonna sugar coat it or blow smoke, you know?”

“Yeah, I totally get that. But it sounds like… no, never mind,” Knox said, stopping himself and changing course.

“Don’t hold back now, man! You’ve already put it out there. What were you gonna say?”

“Well, I was gonna say… it’s been a long time since you’ve cared about somebody, other than the team, I mean. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk about any woman like you just talked about her.”

“I didn’t talk any kind of way,” Angel protested, but there was no fight in his words.

“No, ‘course not. Like I said, I didn’t mean anything.” Knox cleared his throat, then changed the subject. “Hey man, I gotta get an update to the guys and check in on their twenty. Keep me posted about your mom, all right? And Ruiz? We’re, uh, we’re all praying for her.”

“Thanks, man. I really do appreciate it. Keep me in the loop on your search, and I’ll be back just as soon as I can.”

“You got it, buddy. Over and out.”

Angel hung up his cellphone and stared at it in his hand for a few moments. Knox had some nerve, implying that he… no, it was too pointless to even analyze. He had nothing for Madison now, no feelings whatsoever. That door had been slammed shut years ago, back when she told him she could never be a soldier’s wife, much less a SEAL wife.

But you're not a SEAL, remember? There's nothing stopping you from…

No. Ruiz gripped his fist hard enough to notice the fragile phone in his hand. He turned it over and inspected its ballistics case for signs that he'd damaged it. No, Madison had made her choice to turn her back on him, and that was the kind of thing he couldn't just ignore.

His phone rang again almost immediately.

“Angel? How's Mama?” the oldest of his three sisters asked. “I hate to call Manuela, she's either got to be at work or catching up on her sleep.”

“Hey Maria. There's no change,” he answered wearily, then launched into what he'd learned the last time he was updated. Blood pressure, blood volume, brain waves, EKGs and EEGs, he could spout off the numbers like he was playing the lottery. In some ways, it actually did feel like they were playing a lottery, one to see if his mother came through this okay. It was all getting so rote, leaving him feeling detached from it. Being detached was the best thing he could feel, under the circumstances.

“So, Manna tells me you've got a special friend at the hospital,” Maria said, trailing off into a very leading hint at the end.

“Is that right? Remind me to thank her when I see her again.” Angel ran his hands over the back of his neck, feeling the slight growth where his usually shorn hair was due for a cut. Was everyone talking about Madison? First Manuela, then Knox, now Maria? At this rate, his mother would be sitting up in bed when he came in, asking how Madison and he were getting along.

Angel turned back towards his mother’s bedside and reached for her hand. He rubbed his fight-worn fingers across the papery thin skin on the back of her hand, avoiding her IV port. He gave her hand a small squeeze, just to remind her that he was near.

Mama, if that was all it would take for you to wake up, I'd marry her tomorrow, no matter how I felt about her.

* * *

M
adison made
it home from her shift feeling as wiped out as ever. ICU nursing was mentally and physically the hardest thing she’d ever put herself through, but there wasn’t a single day that she could even imagine doing anything else.

She dropped her keys on the small plant stand by the door that served as a table, then walked down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, flipping lights on as she went. When she reached the small kitchen, she lifted the lid on the tiny crock pot and took a deep sniff. The smell of minestrone soup already permeated the small apartment, but the comforting scent wrapped itself around her like a blanket for just a second.

Madison dropped her phone on the kitchen counter, hurried through a bowl of soup from the crock pot, then went to take a shower. She’d wondered before how her neighbors felt about a second shift nurse who came home in the middle of the night then made all sorts of noise, but tonight she was too tired to care.

This week, though, was the hardest of her career. It wasn't just the patients or their distraught, stressed families this time...it was the unexpected reappearance of the one person who'd ever stolen her heart.

Now, the look in Angel’s eyes was dead. Worse, it was like she was the one who was dead, at least to him. But Madison had to admit that it was all her doing. She wasn't just dead to him, she'd killed herself in his heart.

What else would he feel, even after all these years? He’d turned his back on what they had, but for a noble purpose. Who could fault a man for ditching her to serve his country? He wasn’t a cheater or abusive or a lazy slob; quite the opposite, in fact. He just had an ambition to lay down his life for others, if that’s what it took...was that so very different from what she did each and every day?

She had to push that way down deep, though, and do her job. Her past relationships weren't going to help her patients, and they were her first priority, her only priority. It was part of why she'd never really dated since moving back to Abilene. Madison was tall, with clear topaz eyes and naturally blond hair that flowed down her back when it wasn't twisted up into a severe, functional bun for work. Her looks managed to catch a lot of guys’ attention, but her fierce devotion to nursing and her crazy hours at work meant there wasn't usually an offer of a third date.

She jumped in the shower despite the late hour, skipping turning on her Bluetooth speaker so she didn't wake her fellow third floor residents. It was tempting to let the water run over her until it ran cold, but she had to get to bed in order to be at the hospital to cover an early morning shift.  Her patients needed her, and she could never abandon them. Her face might be the last one they saw on Earth, but she would make sure to work for them right up until their last breath.

One heart patient...one suicide attempt gone wrong...one drug overdose...two car accident victims...and of course, Angel’s mom.

Angel...her angel.

As soon as her head hit the pillow, though, Madison was wide awake. She kept replaying the way it felt to walk past that sterile-looking hospital room and see Angel sitting there, looking as close to tears as she’d ever seen him. She’d been with him through a lot in the years they’d known each other, first as friends then while dating and then while engaged, but she’d never seen him so broken.

He’d managed to speak to her that day, which had felt good at first, but then it nagged at her mind all throughout the rest of her shift. It wasn’t that he had or hadn’t talked to her...but why did she care?

Madison had done a great job of learning to suppress all emotion when it came down to the wire. She could detach herself from even the most heart-breaking of situations--an elderly person clutching her hand in fear as the life left his body, a child so small it was barely visible in the arms of the fireman carrying her in--when her job demanded it. The same had been true of her memories of Angel.

The pain had been unbearable for the first few months, and every day--more than once, most days--she’d had to fight not to pick up the phone and beg him to forgive her. It had left her empty inside for longer than she cared to think about.

“Angel, why’d you have to come back now?” she whispered as she finally drifted off to sleep.

I
t was happening again
. His eyes were closed, he was sure of it, but he could see bright daylight stretched out in front of him. The sand dunes in the distance shimmered in the heat while the ruins of tan buildings jutted up from piles of rubble around him. He clutched his weapon as he frantically scanned every corner and shadow, looking for signs of the enemy.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!

The rapid, rhythmic sound set Angel’s senses on fire. He turned in circles, looking for the source of the beeping. He could see his team members up ahead of him, and they, too, searched desperately for the source of the bomb.

A red flashing light beneath a massive, chopped up slab of asphalt caught Angel’s eye. He called out to his team to get down, but no sound came out. He yelled louder, but they kept advancing towards the light. No matter how hard he bellowed, they never heard him.

The force of the explosion blew him backwards, knocking the air out of his lungs. His weapon flew out of his hand when he landed and went clattering across the ground. Angel struggled to his knees to search for his team, but there was no one left standing.

Beep! Beep! Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep!

Angel spun around. The bomb had gone off, everyone was dead...why was he still hearing the sound? There were no lights this time, no team members, only the constant pulse of the bomb…

The pulse
…
her pulse.

Angel sat up, dazed. He looked around his mother’s hospital room for only a second before realizing that the sound was coming from one of her monitors. He stood up, but before he could get to the door to shout for help, it flew open and a horde of people raced in. He stepped back in shock to give them room, but someone took him by the arm and half-shoved, half-carried him to the door.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Ruiz, you can’t be in here right now. Go to the waiting room.”

He stared at the door that shut behind him, trying to process the whole transition from violent nightmare to medical emergency. He managed to back towards the adjacent corridor, then turned to do as they’d instructed, praying the entire way.

Without realizing it, he turned the corner and collided with Madison.

“Oh thank god it’s you!” he said, grabbing her by the upper arms.

“Angel, calm down, what’s the matter?” she asked, her purse and her lunch tote slipping from her shoulders when he grabbed her.

“It’s my mom! Something’s happening, they kicked me out of her room. You gotta find out what’s happening in there!”

Madison didn’t reply. She threw down both bags and tore down the hallway, leaving Angel to watch her disappear. She raced to the room and tenderly opened the door, peering in at first to make sure no one was in the way.

“What have we got, Diane?” she asked the nurse filling Gabriela’s IV line from a syringe.

“She coded all of a sudden, that’s all I know right now.”

“From heart failure or brain activity?”

“I’m not sure, but they’re thinking more the nerve signal. Her heart’s looked good all this time, so unless there’s some fluid building up around it, there’s no reason for her to go into heart failure.”

“Do you know how long she coded?”

“Not even a full minute,” Diane answered with a sigh of relief.

Madison nodded, then looked at her patient. In her peripheral vision she could see the rest of the ICU team standing around the bed, watching the patient as though they were afraid to turn their backs on her. One by one the team began to filter back to their tasks until eventually Madison was left to stand guard.

She turned when she heard the door open, and smiled when she saw Angel look through the crack with one eye.

“You can come in now,” she said softly. Angel stepped through the doorway and held out her purse and her lunch.

“Okay. Is someone gonna tell me what’s going on?” he asked, his voice somewhat shaky. He was still on edge from the aftershocks of his nightmare, and thanks to the death circus that greeted him when he woke up, he hadn’t been able to relax no matter how long he breathed through it.

“Don’t get mad! But I’m still waiting to find that out myself. Someone will be by soon to tell us, but in the meantime, I’m staying with her.”

“You don’t have any kind of guess?” he pressed, watching his mother for signs that she might slip away again.

“Well, it’s really not professional of me to tell you that. I mean, I just got here, I wasn’t even here when she coded. I know you know what that means, so just...think about that for a second. Obviously, when your heart stops, there’s some reason why it’s not beating. It could be a heart attack, it could be actual damage to her heart from the accident, or a lot of other things. But typically with a patient in your mom’s condition, their heart can also get out of whack if the brain isn’t telling the heart to beat.”

“You make it sound like that’s worse than a heart attack,” Angel said, willing himself to breathe.

“In some ways, it is worse. A heart attack is a blockage, and if a patient has a heart attack in a setting like this, we can often save them. But if your mom’s brain isn’t telling her heart to keep beating, that’s not as easy,” Madison said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. “It could be a sign of swelling in her brain, which has to be gotten under control. It could be a contusion to her spine that we weren’t able to see on X-ray...it could be a lot of things. We just won’t know anything until they run some tests.” She paused and looked away to keep from seeing the tear that slipped down Angel face, not so much for his stupid dignity as for her own emotional crash. “Anyway...I’ll stay with her until they know something. I won’t leave her. And Angel? I’m sorry I had to be the one to tell you this stuff.”

“What do you mean?” he asked distractedly.

“I mean… us. Nobody wants to hear upsetting news, but it’s just worse coming from someone that you--”

“That I hate?” he finished for her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch, but he didn’t take any sick pleasure in it. “I don’t hate you, Madison.”

“Really?” she asked after a long pause. “Because I kind of hate me for what I did to you.”

“Okay, I’m fine with that.” Angel laughed weakly, the relief of knowing his mother was safe, even if just for a little while, replacing the adrenaline he’d fought against earlier. “But no… I don’t hate you. It was hard to put it behind me, I’m not gonna lie. But I guess I have to admit that it was better to end things the way you did than to marry me anyway and then hate my guts for going SEAL on you. Or worse… to marry me, and then end up hating me when my job turned you into a widow.”

Madison sucked in a deep breath, shocked. “Don’t say that. I would never hate you for…”

She didn’t finish. Neither of them wanted to talk about death, least of all Angel’s, not with the events of the past ten minutes still replaying themselves in both of their minds.

“You don’t have to say anything. I know what it would have been like for you. I’ve seen it with other guys and their families. Like you said, not getting so much as a phone call that I wasn’t coming home for dinner, while I’m on a jet to the other side of the world to go kill a guy. I just couldn’t see it at the time,” he said, begrudgingly acknowledging her side of it. Suddenly, he felt a strange calm, as though the noose he’d worn around his neck like a shackle had just loosened a little bit.

Madison hesitated. She wanted to say something, anything, but what?
Thank you? I accept your non-apology? You’re totally right, that’s why I broke up with you?
She didn’t have the right words to fit a response that she’d never expected to get in the first place.

“That means a lot to me, Angel,” she finally said. “It’s bothered me all this time how things ended between. How I ended things, I mean. And I’m really sorry.”

“Me too, Madison,” Angel said, looking up and meeting her gaze for the first time since he’d come home to Abilene. “I’m sorry.”

She smiled at him and waited breathlessly for him to return her expression. When he finally did, he reached out a hand to her and waited for her to take it. Madison gently slid her fingertips toward his outstretched hand. Angel gave her hand a light squeeze, but didn’t release it until the door opened.

“Mrs. Ruiz?” a young man in scrubs asked. Angel glowered at him. If the man didn’t know his mother was in a coma and couldn’t answer, then he had no business in her room.

“That’s my mom, what’s up?” Angel said with a low growl.

“I’m here to take her up to radiology for a CT scan. I’ll have her back in a jiffy, you can stay put right here--”

“The hell I will,” he answered, standing up straighter and instinctively clutching the rails on his mother’s bed.

“It’s okay, Angel,” Madison said, intervening when she felt the tension between the two men. “I’ll go with her. They don’t let family in the room during the scan because of radiation. It’s hospital policy. But they’ll let me in there and I promise, I won’t leave her side.”

Angel continued to posture fiercely but finally relaxed just enough to release his grip on the bed rail. The man flinched as he stepped forward, expecting Angel to move back to let him pass but realizing too late that he would have to squeeze past him to unlock the brakes. He promised to take good care of Mrs. Ruiz as he pushed her bed through the doorway, glancing back to make sure Angel wasn’t following him.

“Stay here,” Madison urged him as she followed along behind. “I’ll let you know as soon as there’s anything to tell.”

He nodded, trying not to let the sound of the door clicking closed behind them echo in his brain. He looked around the now oversized room, cavernous now that the bed and several of the machines had left.

Angel paced the room for a moment, then walked over to the window. The sun was beautiful as it reflected off the pond across from the hospital. Instead of cheering him up, it pissed him off, knowing that his mom’s life was still uncertain. The only bright spot in the last few days was seeing Madison, and seeing this new reality between them. He didn’t know where it was going, but he knew it wasn’t anything he’d expect.