“Oh, fuck, oh, no,” said the voice, backing away.
Hey, come back. .
. .
He felt his thoughts seep away like the last bubbles of oxygen escaping his brain. And the commotion in the hall faded off and all he heard was the bleat of the heart monitor until it slipped off key: Beep beep. . boop.
Boop.
Boooop.
Boop.
And he lost the goddamn beat. .
And his eyes took one last picture of muscles undulating down his arms, and just like he thought, the relentless waves from the storm had followed him right into this hospital room and were rolling under his skin.
Then he just-stopped. Nothing. Nothing erasing him line by line.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
“Oh shit! Call a code. He’s arrested in here.”
Chapter One
Broker was used to sleeping alone because his wife was in the army and, except for her pregnancy and a short maternity leave, she had been absent on deployments to Bosnia during most of their marriage. And he was used to waking up in a freezing sleeping bag because he’d grown up in Northern Minnesota. What he was having trouble adjusting to was waking up alone in the cold bag and seeing the pale stripe on the third finger of his left hand where his wedding band had been.
So he coughed and rubbed his eyes, and the absent ring cued up the agnostic rosary in the back of his mind: You just never know. . never know. . never know. . and it was, yeah, yeah, and he was talking to himself and his lips moved to dismiss the thought, but he had to appreciate the irony. Mister Serious Student of the Unexpected.
Didn’t see it coming, did you, dummy?
She’d left two weeks ago and took their three-year-old daughter, Kit, off to army day care somewhere in Europe.