“I do,” Reagan smiled at him.
“From this day on, and every day after shall be shared together as one. The highs, the lows, the best and the worse, Reagan and Carter will spend each day forth as partners, best friends, and husband and wife. By the power installed in me by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and with permission from the State of Tennessee, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may now kiss your bride.” His mother smiled as emotion flooded her voice.
Reagan leaned down and placed her lips on his. Their smiles connected their kiss with the promise of forever. Carter would face whatever came next, knowing he was married to the woman of his dreams.
He signed the marriage certificate and then watched as Reagan did so. Porter and Parker signed as witnesses and then it was complete. They were officially married.
“Next,” Ava said gently as she smiled at them. “Get the gauze and twist the end so I can pack the wound.
Cy got ready to apply pressure. The second he had everything ready, Ava pulled the bloody gauze packing out and shoved the new one into the wound. Cy’s hands immediately applied so much pressure Carter groaned. Lights flashed behind his eyes from the pain.
“Is that punishment for marrying your daughter, Dad?”
Cy chuckled. “No, this is me keeping you alive so you can be a husband to my daughter.”
“The bleeding is slowing. Keep the pressure up.” Ava told him, looking down at the old blood-soaked gauze. “That’s good. You’re doing really well. The bleeding hasn’t stopped and won’t until after surgery, but at least we have a chance to make it to the hospital before you need a transfusion. We already know you can move your feet and arms, so there’s likely no spinal cord injury. The location of the bullet tells me that it most likely nicked your femoral artery, causing a small leak and fracturing your pelvis. Once you arrive at the hospital, you’ll head into surgery. But we’ll be right here for you as soon as you get out. How are you feeling?”
“Lightheaded and weak. I feel as if I’m floating,” Carter told her.
“It’s from the blood loss. You’re lucky it wasn’t a tear in the artery. You’re close to hypovolemic shock. Luke, how much longer?”
“We’re twenty minutes out now. And I can probably make it in fifteen since I’m getting onto the highway and out of the mountains.”
“Make it in fifteen,” she ordered Luke. “Hang on, Carter. Let me check you over.”
She felt his head and arms and listened to his heart and breathing. “You’re still good. You’re heart rate is high, but not too high. And your breathing is still strong. If your heart rate increases anymore or your breathing turns shallow, I’ll do a person-to-person transfusion if anyone here is a universal donor.”
“Okay,” Carter told her as Reagan bent to rest her forehead against his.
“Where should we go for our honeymoon? Someplace where we can walk the beach and you can show off your scar? You know the old saying that chicks dig scars, right?”
“Anywhere you want to go. Tell me about where you’d like to go,” Carter told her. As Reagan talked, Carter spent the time memorizing every freckle on his wife’s face. The way her nose slanted and the fullness of her lips. He traced her hand with his fingers, cherishing the feel of her hand in his. If this was all the time they had together, he was going to savor it.
Carter felt his breathing growing shallow. He grew thirsty and felt cold. He wasn’t going to make it. He heard yelling. His father and Cy were yelling at him to come back. He heard crying. His mother was crying out his name. “Fight for us,” he heard Reagan say. And then he heard nothing at all.
27
“We’re here!” Luke yelled from the front seat.
Reagan continued to talk quietly into Carter’s ear praying he’d hear her. He’d lost consciousness one minute before they arrived, his breathing was so shallow that Ava had started breathing for him. Even though the bleeding had slowed, he’d lost so much blood over the past twenty-plus minutes that his body couldn’t handle it and was shutting down.
The tailgate was flung open and people were there. Before Reagan was ready, she was kissing her husband of fifteen minutes goodbye as they whisked him through the ER door and took off at a run toward surgery.
“We have limited blood supply on reserve here,” a nurse said to them. “If any of you want to be donors, follow me to be tested and to donate.”
Kenna and her mother took Reagan’s hands in theirs as they all followed the nurse. Porter and Parker quietly brought up the rear as Luke reassured Will and her father they had done all they could, and Carter was in good hands at this small hospital between Knoxville and Chattanooga.
“Are you the wife?” the nurse asked Reagan as she led her back to get her blood drawn.
“Yes,” Reagan said as her voice cracked.
“It’s okay, honey,” the nurse said soothingly as she set her down in the chair and tied the rubber tourniquet around her arm. “Your husband will be just fine. We’ve treated plenty of gunshots here. Hunters, ya know?”
Reagan nodded as the needle slipped into her vein. The nurse continued to talk, but Reagan didn’t hear her. Would she be a widow on the same day she became a wife? Tears began to push against her eyes, but she blinked them back. She’d cried enough. She was determined to be strong for Carter and the last thing he would want was her crying over him.
“All done, hon,” the nurse told her as she taped down a folded piece of gauze to the needle site. “Send the next one in. We’ll take everyone’s blood and have it typed and tested. Whatever we don’t use on your husband, we’ll save for the next patient in need.”
“Of course,” Reagan whispered. Talking seemed to take too much energy. But then her father was there with his arm around her as Will entered the room to donate his blood.
“Come on, Reagan. Come sit with me. Let me tell you about this one time I was shot,” Cy said, trying to reassure her.
Reagan took a seat in one of the uncomfortable chairs lined up outside the lab as her father slipped his arm across her shoulders and pulled her against him. “It was a long time ago in Russia,” her father started to tell her. Reagan may have heard it, but what she mostly heard was the steady beating of his heart as she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt the vibration of his voice and closed her eyes. She prayed. She begged. She pleaded with anyone and everyone to let Carter live.
“You poor thing, bless your heart,” Aniyah called out from the end of the hall as she ran surprisingly fast on her hot pink heels toward them. Reagan opened her eyes and sat up. Riley and her husband, Matt, were close behind, followed by DeAndre, Piper, and the Rose sisters.
“How is he?” Riley asked, taking the seat next to her sister as Will came out of the lab and Kenna went in. Reagan couldn’t talk. Instead the tears that had threatened to burst forward began to flow as she shook her head. “Oh, Rea.”
“He lost consciousness right when we got here,” their father told the newly arrived group. “They rushed him into surgery, and we’re all donating blood. He’ll need transfusions.”
The Rose sisters surrounded Kenna who sat stone-faced and pale. Did Reagan look like that? Probably worse after the crash and running through the woods for the past twenty-four hours.
“Reagan,” Ava said gently, drawing her attention away from Carter’s mother. Ava stood in front of her with blood still on her clothes—blood that belonged to her husband. “This is Dr. Monroe.”
Reagan looked up at the doctor, who seemed to be in his early sixties. His hair was still brown but had gray at his temples. He had round wire-rimmed glassed and wore scrubs. Fear strangled her voice as she responded, “Yes?”