A Virgin River Christmas by Robyn Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

probably twenty feet by the force of the explosion and by the time Ian got to him, there’d been a couple of gunshot wounds as well—head and torso.
    Bobby looked up at him and said in a hoarse whisper, “Take cover, Sarge.”
    And Ian had replied, “Fuck off. I’m getting you outta here.” Ian scooped him up, and right that second, he knew how bad it was going to turn out. He knew that fast. Bobby was limp as a hundred and eighty pound bag of sand. Carrying him over his shoulder, Ian got him behind the wall of a decimated building, called for a medic, an EMT who could administer battlefield first-aid. Ian put his hand over Bobby’s head wound in an attempt to stanch the bleeding and waited for help.
    The medic who traveled with their squad finally came and opened up Bobby’s BDUs, the desert camouflage battle dress. He rolled him carefully. “It’s through and through,” he said of the torso wound, applying a compress to stop the bleeding. “We won’t know how much damage till we get a closer look. His vitals are hanging in there.”
    “He’s gonna make it,” Ian said, though Bobby was out cold.
    “We’re not going anywhere fast,” the medic said, getting out his gauze and tape to close up the head wound. “We can’t get a chopper in this close. We’ll have to carry the wounded or use litters.”
    “Just keep him going till we get transport,” Ian demanded. But the medic was called to another wounded marine and Ian knew it was down to him to do everything he could to keep Bobby alive, to get him to that helicopter. Bobby was unconscious and barely breathing.
    It wasn’t that long, but it seemed a lifetime, before the medic’s radio alerted them to a helicopter a few blocks away in a safe zone. Ian knew in his gut that Bobby wasn’t getting out of this okay, but he refused to think about it. “You’re going to be okay, buddy,” he kept saying. “You stay with me, I’ll get you outta here.”
    The minute sniper fire seemed to have abated, Ian hefted Bobby into his arms and began to run down the dusty, bullet-riddled streets of Fallujah toward the chopper and the paramedics who had better equipment than what was available in the field. He took sniper fire in the thigh, but it was muscle not bone, and he ran through the pain. He took another one across the face, but he still couldn’t feel the pain. He felt the fire on his cheek. Then he saw the corner of the building on the other side of which would be medical transport.
    He got Bobby to the chopper, where the rescue crew took over. He tried to go back to his squad, when one of the medics snagged his sleeve and said, “Hold up there, Sarge. Let’s have a look.”
    Ian looked down. He was covered with blood. He couldn’t tell his from Bobby’s. Right then, his leg throbbed and his face burned; his vision blurred from blood running into his eye.
    “Whoa, Sarge—you’re not going anywhere. We gotta look at—”
    “Take care of him,” Ian said sternly. “I’ll be fine.”
    “Everyone’s getting taken care of, Sarge,” the medic said, taking the scissors to his pants, cutting them up to his thigh to expose a bleeding hole.
    “Oh,” Ian said. “Damn.” And he swayed a little.
    He sat while the medic attended to his face wounds—a cut across his eyebrow and a flesh wound that ran down the length of his check. While this was going on, while they were waiting for a couple more wounded marines, Ian watched as they worked on Bobby.
    One of the medics said, “No casualties today.”
    Little did they know…
    The chopper finally lifted off and headed for the nearest camp hospital. There was a full surgical setup in tents and hastily erected buildings. That’s where Ian was separated from Bobby. Ian was taken into a treatment area while Bobby went straight to surgery. Some young doctor had shaved off Ian’s eyebrow to get a nice, clean stitch on the laceration; the nurse informed him it might never grow back. By the time Ian had a