Graham’s heart froze. He hauled the limp figure from the churning floodwaters, catching her face in the dim, flickering light.
It was Evelyn.
Her face was ashen, her eyes shut tight, a gash on her forehead leaking thin streams of blood.
Unconscious, she clutched two sodden books as if they were lifelines.
Panic and grief surged through Graham like a tidal wave.
His trembling fingers sought her pulse–faint, almost imperceptible.
“Evelyn! Evelyn, come on, wake up!” He tapped her cheeks gently, his voice cracking with sobs as
he pulled her close, using his body to shield her from the rushing current and drifting debris. They had to get out. Now.
A sickening groan echoed from above.
The flood’s relentless pounding had finally compromised the crumbling building’s foundation. A fractured beam, tangled with bricks and sludge, plummeted toward them.
Without thinking, Graham shoved Evelyn into the relative safety of a corner alcove, throwing himself into the path of the collapsing wreckage.
Boom!
The heavy thud resounded, laced with the faint snap of breaking bone.
Graham’s vision blurred. Blood surged in his throat, and he coughed it out, the warm spray splattering across Evelyn’s pale face and clothes.
The impact drove him to his knees in the water, but his arms, rigid as steel, braced on either side of her, carving out a fragile pocket of safety with the last of his strength.
Pain and suffocation engulfed him. He stole one final glance at the unconscious woman beneath him before darkness claimed him.
When he came to, he was on a jolting rescue boat, icy rain stinging his face. Voices pierced the storm’s roar:
“This one’s alive! He’s hurt bad–hurry, to the hospital!”
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“There’s a woman too! He was shielding her–she’s still breathing!”
Graham tried to open his eyes, to ask if she was okay, but his body refused to move. Darkness swallowed him again.
Banner City Hospital was a maelstrom–overflowing with the wounded, grieving families, and the pungent mix of antiseptic, blood, and damp mold.
The weight of despair pressed down on everyone.
Evelyn woke on a makeshift cot in a crowded hallway. Her forehead was bandaged, her body scraped and bruised but intact.
A nurse explained she had a mild concussion and minor cuts, and needed monitoring for aspiration pneumonia, but she would pull through.
“The man who brought you in…” The nurse hesitated, her face shadowed. “He’s in bad shape. Multiple spinal fractures, internal bleeding, lung damage. He’s still in surgery. He took the hit to save you.”
Evelyn’s heart clenched. Her mind flashed to the last moment before she blacked out–Graham’s bloodshot eyes, blazing with panic and resolve, and the scalding spray of blood he’d coughed up.
She dragged herself off the cot and stumbled toward the surgical ward. In the hallway, a few mud–caked soldiers slumped on benches–Graham’s aide, Frank, and some of his old comrades, their faces etched with worry.
Frank stood when he saw her, eyes red. “Ms. Hart… the General…”
She raised a hand, silencing him. She didn’t need to hear it.
Leaning against the cold wall, she stared at the harsh red light above the operating room door, her
emotions twisted into a chaotic knot.
She was stunned. He had thrown himself in harm’s way–risked his life–to save her. The raw fear in his eyes, the unhesitating way he had shielded her–it was real, undeniable.
But beneath that flicker of warmth, a colder current of fear and resistance surged.
She couldn’t erase the past–the way he’d abandoned her at the funeral, his silence while she lay in a hospital bed, the bowl of chicken soup he’d forced on her when she was at her lowest, the rat–infested room where he’d left her trapped, haunted by nightmares.
She was terrified of him.
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Even more, she feared letting herself soften.
She had fought too hard to crawl out of that abyss. She wouldn’t fall back in.
