Chapter 3 - The Valley of the Shadow
The wail of the sirens tore through the moss-draped live oaks of the Savannah estate like a scalpel. Within six minutes, two Chatham County ambulances and three police cruisers pulled onto the manicured grass, tires churning up mud and throwing torn sod across the pristine white carpet Sloan had spent six months choosing.
Paramedics swarmed the patio.
"Female, late twenties, T-12 paraplegic, acute trauma to the right shoulder and possible lumbar hyperextension," Callum barked the moment the lead EMT dropped his trauma bag. Callum hadn't left my side for a fraction of a second. His tuxedo was completely ruined—smeared with crimson blood, gray stone grit, and sugary white paste. He spoke the medical shorthand with the crisp, unmistakable cadence of a combat veteran handoff. "Vitals were tachycardic at 118 upon impact. Glasgow Coma Scale 15. Laceration to the left dorsal forearm, bleeding controlled with direct pressure."
The EMT looked up at him, startled by the precision. "Copy that, brother. We've got her."
"Callum!"
Sloan was hysterical now, pacing behind the yellow crime scene tape an officer had already begun unspooling across the ruined reception area. Her maid of honor was trying to wrap a shawl around her bare shoulders, but Sloan shoved her away, her eyes wild, her veil hanging crookedly off her head.
"Officer, don't listen to him! It was a domestic dispute! She tripped! My sister is mentally unstable, she threw herself into the table to sabotage my day! Arrest *her*!"
A stone-faced Chatham County deputy, whose badge read *Miller*, turned toward her with a clipboard in hand. "Ma'am, step back behind the line. We have three eyewitnesses and wedding photographers who just handed us raw video footage showing you placing both hands on the victim's mobility device and shoving it with forward momentum."
Evelyn rushed up, her voice trembling with manufactured gentility. "Officer, I am Evelyn Holloway. My late husband was Judge Thomas Holloway. This is an internal family misunderstanding. My older daughter suffers from severe combat-related delusions. We don't want charges pressed. We decline to press charges!"
Deputy Miller looked at Evelyn like she was something rotten on the sidewalk. "Ma'am, in the state of Georgia, you don't decide whether to press felony assault charges when there is physical injury to a disabled person. The state decides. And right now, your daughter Sloan is facing felony battery against an individual with disabilities."
As they lifted me onto the backboard, a bolt of agony shot up through my collarbone. I let out a sharp cry.
Callum’s hand instantly closed over mine. His grip was an anchor in a raging sea. "I'm riding in the rig," he told the EMT.
"Family only, sir," the paramedic said automatically.
"I’m her squadmate," Callum replied, his eyes burning into the medic's. "And I'm the primary witness. I'm getting in the rig."
The medic looked at Callum’s ruined tuxedo, then down at the St. Michael medal around my neck. He stepped back. "Climb in."
Inside the ambulance, the door slammed shut, cutting off the shrieks of my mother and the shrill, desperate wails of my sister. The rhythmic beeping of the cardiac monitor filled the narrow space, accompanied by the hiss of the oxygen mask they fitted over my mouth.
I looked at Callum through the clear plastic. His face was pale beneath his tan, his jaw locked tight.
"Ghazni," I managed to whisper, my voice rough and cracked. "May sixteenth. Route Copperhead."
Callum squeezed my hand so tightly his knuckles turned white. A solitary tear cut a clean path through the sugar dust on his cheek.
"You remember," he breathed.
"How could I forget?" I closed my eyes as the ambulance accelerated, memories rushing back like flash floods. "Third Platoon. Bravo Company. You were the team leader who stayed in the turret when the second IED blew out the rear axle. You wouldn't stop firing that fifty-cal until we got the three wounded boys into the ditch."
"And you ran across fifty meters of open, scorched kill-zone with an eighty-pound medical aid ruck," Callum said, his voice shaking with a reverence that made my throat close up. "No cover. Sniper fire pinging off the asphalt around your boots. You threw yourself over my chest when the mortar landed. That was your shrapnel, Mave. That was the piece of steel meant for my neck that caught your spine."
He had never known my civilian name. In the field, with helmets, goggles, Kevlar, and blood covering everyone, I was just *Doc*. When the MEDEVAC bird finally touched down, I had already slipped into a shock-induced coma from internal bleeding. By the time I woke up in Landstuhl, Germany, Callum's unit had been rotated out, and I was shipped home to an empty VA hospital room in Augusta.
"When I got back stateside," Callum whispered, looking down at our joined hands, "I looked for you everywhere. But the casualty reports had your maiden name misspelled as 'Holliway,' and the VA liaison told me Valkyrie Six had died of complications during the flight to Ramstein."
"They almost lost me three times on that bird," I murmured, the morphine finally beginning to dull the sharp edges of the pain. "My mom... she didn't want the military around. When I was discharged in the chair, she told me that part of my life was over. She said I had to put it in a box and never speak of it again, because it made people 'uncomfortable.'"
Callum let out a bitter, furious breath. "And then I met Sloan at a charity gala six months ago. She told me her sister was a reclusive invalid who lived off her mother’s generosity. She never told me your name. She never let me see a single picture of you. Every time I asked to come to dinner, she made an excuse about you having a 'tantrum' or being 'too bitter' to meet guests."
May you like
The pieces fell together with sickening clarity. Sloan hadn't been hiding me because she was ashamed of my wheelchair. She had been hiding me because she knew Callum was looking for the medic who saved his life—and she realized the moment we were in the same room, her carefully manufactured world would implode.
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