Broken Safe Haven - Chapter 3

Previous Chapters

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Jordan rushed into the training room, an old basketball gym now a labyrinth of training mats, punching bags, and blunted weapons. The musk of sweaty bodies and athletic clothes their owners neglected to wash hung in the warm air. Jordan’s boots thumped against the wooden flooring as he stomped across the room.

“What the fuck did you do?” he growled angrily at Mitch. Mitch glared silently at him.

Stephanie was unconscious on the mat. Her body was covered in bruises, black and blue tapestried her skin like sadistic camouflage. The mat’s brown color couldn’t quite hide the blood splattered on the floor.

“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?” The accusation in Jordan’s voice made it less a question and more an indictment.

Jordan effortlessly picked Stephanie up; he was nearly twice her size at 6'1 "and 220 pounds of muscle, and she was 5’ 2” and barely 115 pounds.

“You stay away from her. This will never happen again. You hear me?” Jordan’s face burned with anger. Mitch remained silent, but the expression of indignation showed no remorse for his actions. Jordan carried Stephanie quickly out of the room. Practitioners in the room stopped and stared as he passed by their training areas.

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Jordan nearly tripped as he scrambled into the infirmary. A nurse, unfazed by the situation, led him down the hall to a room. He lay Stephanie on the bed. The nurse asked how long she had been unconscious as she took Stephanie’s vitals and checked her body.

“Uh, maybe, 15, 20 minutes,” he said. The nurse nodded as she prodded at a particularly nasty-looking spot on Stephanie’s abdomen. She worked her way down to Stephanie’s feet before she spoke again.

“We don’t have a working bedside monitor right now, so I need you to stay with her until I can get one. Dr. Marshell is extremely busy, but I’ll let her know we have an emergency case here. I won’t lie to you, it may be a while before she can get in here.” The nurse looked apologetic as she spoke. “The good thing is she’s breathing on her own, but if that changes or her breathing becomes weak, there’s a bell outside the door. Ring it loudly, and we’ll come running.” Jordan nodded in acknowledgement, then the nurse turned and left the room.

Jordan pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. He watched and waited. Stephanie twitched and stirred occasionally, but did not awaken. A few moments of eerie silence passed by. Jordan and Stephanie weren’t particularly close, but he felt a responsibility for her as the team leader. She was certainly not the muscle of his group, but she had an uncanny ability to make people instantly trust her, which Jordan used to his strategic advantage. She was his infiltrator.

A commotion in the hallway caught his attention. He went to the door and peered out. Several nurses had gathered at the end of the hallway. Two of them were propping the doors open, a third was pushing a gurney, and a fourth was carrying two litters. Outside, a large pickup truck with a shell on the back had backed up to the doorway. A man with long hair, whom Jordan recognized as Jeb, opened the rear of the truck, revealing four people inside. The nurses extracted the first person: a man likely in his 30s, whom Jordan vaguely recognized; he seemed to think the man’s name might be Quinten or Kayden. The man growled, and his face contorted with pain as the nurses laid him on the gurney. Jordan could see blood on the man’s shirt, but couldn’t determine the man’s injury. The second person was a middle-aged man Jordan had never seen before. He was unconscious and limp as the nurses laid him on one of the litters. It took three of them to get the man out of the truck. The third person was a young woman, perhaps early 20s. She was slim and athletic, easily lifted by a single male nurse, also unconscious and limp. The fourth person was presumably in the back, guarding the three captives; Jordan recognized him as Esra, Jeb’s most trusted team member. He hopped out of the truck with a rifle slung over his back and a pistol in hand. As the nurses whisked the three injured people down the hallway, Jordan heard something about an SUV that rolled over and that three other people had been killed in the accident. The man Jordan thought to be Quinten or Kayden had been in the truck and had taken a bullet in the upper chest; the other two had been in the SUV when it rolled. Thank goodness for seatbelts. The hallway went silent as quickly as it had come to life, and Jordan returned to this seat.

The room was hued to orange from the evening sun pouring in the window when Dr. Marshell finally arrived. Electricity was at a premium, so lights were kept off whenever possible. The doctor’s brown curly hair was pulled back in a messy ponytail, her face looked tired with dark bags under her eyes, and her stature suggested she was ignoring a gnawing pain somewhere. Her breath smelled so strongly of coffee that Jordan caught a whiff of it from the other side of the bed. She spoke slowly with exhaustion in her voice.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

“Mitch.”

“Oh.”

She worked quietly, rechecking Stephanie’s vitals, pupil responses, for broken bones and ribs, and looking for cuts or wounds that needed disinfection. Jordan watched in anticipation, holding his tongue to let her work. She took many notes on the bedside clipboard. After several minutes, she finally spoke.

“I don’t see anything that looks life-threatening, but she’s going to be in quite a bit of pain for a while.” She leaned on the edge of the bed at a slightly awkward angle that Jordan assumed helped alleviate whatever pain she was in. She sighed and continued, “Unfortunately, we’re low on pain medication, and I need to ration what we have left for surgical patients. I can give her a little when she first wakes up, but she’s gonna have to push through after that.”

Jordan sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, that’s gonna suck, but at least she’ll be ok.” He thought for a moment, then added, “Maybe I can round up some whiskey.”

“You bring me a full bottle of that, and I’ll owe you a favor.”

He chuckled slightly. “I’ll see what I can do. Everything is scarce these days.” Now Jordan sounded exhausted.

“You need anything else? I have about a dozen other patients I have to check on before I can get some shut-eye.”

“No, I think we’re ok for now. Thank you, doctor.” Jordan replied.

Dr. Marshell nodded, then winced as she lifted herself from the bed. She paused and took a deep breath, as if negotiating with the pain, then turned and shuffled toward the door. Just before leaving, she said over her shoulder, “Tell Mitch to stop taking out his rage on our own people.”

The quiet lasted only a moment before squeaky wheels entered the room. The nurse from earlier had returned with a bedside monitor. The light was dim, and the room seemed cold and stale as the nurse connected Stephanie to the machine.

“We’re very busy and spread thin, but you have my assurance we will do everything we can to help her recover.” The nurse said. Her short blonde hair was somehow still neatly brushed, and she had the appearance of someone who had once been overweight but never bothered to find smaller clothing when she slimmed down. Jordan acknowledged and thanked her. He took one more look at Stephanie, then left the infirmary.