how the blood gushed freely without the barrier of his hand, and how it now began to seep into his shirt at a horrific speed.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” I whispered.
He reached for a lock of my hair and smiled. “I was thinking ‘bout you.”
I reached for his hand, but it went limp, the multicolor of lights in his eyes flushing shut when he closed them.
I became frantic. “Charlie? Charlie?”
His lack of movement stopped my breath, yet if he would just speak, or move, even for a moment, then I knew that I could breathe again.
Reid began cursing into the headset and kicking the co-pilot chairs. I hardly heard all of the noise over my own silent panic. He would be okay, right? This bleeding would stop and he would wake up and be fine? I took his wrist and clutched it to me desperately, brushing his fingers against my cheek and keeping my thumb and forefinger against his pulse.
“You’re not allowed to die, Charlie Hays. It’s simply not acceptable.” I bit my lip to keep my tears from spilling. “Who else is going to keep me out of trouble?”
Despite the orchestrated alarm, Ben Walden was at ease. It was eerie the way he walked around the cabin with his shirt sleeve drenched in the blood of the man I loved. Unlike Reid and Yuri, he was completely composed, almost indifferent to the possibility of his friend bleeding to death. Somehow they had managed to hide Charlie’s wound from me during the bedlam of Singapore and grabbing the nearest taxi. The realization angered me. I had been so eager to get off the ship and back on land, or perhaps eager to ignore the blood, assume it didn’t belong to anyone I cared about.
“Damn it!”
“What is it, Reid?” Ben confirmed Charlie’s pulse and sat in the seat adjacent to him. “Why haven’t we taken off yet?”
“I can’t get confirmation that we’re clear. Wallace was the only one who could speak Mandarin. Most of the air traffic controllers speak English, but I can’t get a goddamn one to clear me.”
“Just go!” Yuri yelled
“And crash into something else coming in?”
I hated it with every inch of me, but I let go of Charlie as gently as I could manage. The idea of leaving him even just to walk a few yards ahead was putting splinters in my heart, but at the same time I also had the feeling we weren’t going any place at this rate, which meant he wouldn’t get the medical care he desperately needed.
So I whispered in his ear, “I’ll be right back, promise,” and made my way to the cockpit, practically jumping over Polo.
“What do you have to say to them?” I sounded much braver than I felt.
Reid whirled around and glared at me; I had done nothing but cause him trouble. “Get the hell out of here.”
While it may have been late in coming, the adrenaline was coming down on me hard. I didn’t have time for Reid and his pettiness; Charlie was hurt and needed help. If Reid was going to get in the way of that, then I would figure out a way to remove him from this current equation.
I yanked the headset from him before he had time to respond. The only advantage I genuinely had was his underestimation of me. Furiously, he lunged for it, but was already buckled in his seat, so I just took a step back, completely stoic and waiting.
I spoke the words into the small microphone and wrote down a series of numbers on a pad of notebook paper. A woman on the other end laughed at me, but spoke patiently enough that I sensed she sympathized with me.
“Thank you.” I spoke into the headset. If nothing else, I knew my basics well enough and there seemed to be plenty of individuals at air traffic who spoke Mandarin and well as Chinese.
The other end beeped four times as she had directed and I pulled it from my head and pushed it back in Reid’s face.
“You’re good to go.” I was positively seething.
He gawked at me.
Before we took off, I reclined Charlie back in his seat to elevate him. From an overhead deck, Ben pulled out a large tackle box and dropped it in the aisle.
He cleared his throat. “He’s had worse.”
Nervously, Ben laughed and surveyed the menagerie of supplies that lay in the box. In actuality, it was a first aid kit stemmed together from what looked