Free SEAL My Home: Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 2 (SEAL Brotherhood Series 9) by Sharon Hamilton

out.”
    The flickering continued, but he could not see anything clearly. A mask was placed over his mouth and nose even though he’d batted it away several times. He smelled the chemical-laced air as they hooked tubes over his ears to keep the mask in place. He tried to hold his breath against the poison he knew was coming his way, but his will collapsed and he was forced to inhale, expecting his lungs to explode. Spots began to form at the edges of his vision. Just before it turned black, he saw a team of blue-smocked doctors with masks bending over him. One had on a pair of glasses with the distinctive star-shaped pattern of a shattered lens on one side.
    As he lost consciousness the screaming returned, and he realized it was the sound of his own voice.
    When Rory awoke, he felt like he’d been in a rugby match with a team of three-hundred-pound Samoans. His ribs hurt. His mouth hurt and the split lip he’d gotten the night before had worsened. Someone had stitched it up. His arms felt heavy and he had a splitting headache.
    He vaguely remembered being wheeled down hallways with bright fluorescent lighting which nearly blinded him and bumping into the doorway with the gurney on which they were transporting him. When they tried to lift him in the sling they’d devised, the pain caused him to pass out.
    He was nearly flat on his back, with his left leg in a small traction device. Suddenly he realized he couldn’t feel his other leg. He wiggled the toes of his right foot, trying to arch up to look for movement under the thin sheet and blanket that covered him. They were there all right. He could just barely see movement under the covers.
    Thank God! He let his head plop back into the pillow as he inhaled and thanked his lucky stars he was not a paraplegic. He stretched his arms and wiggled his fingers.
    That’s when he realized he wasn’t the only patient in the room. The beds on either side of him were separated by white hospital curtains hanging from a track fastened to the ceiling. The guy to his right had the window side and was out cold, snoring like a frog pond.
    The patient to his left was watching TV and had a smoker’s cough.
    A wave of nausea hit Rory, and he tried to move to the side to throw up on the floor, but he missed and the vomit trailed down the crisp white sheets and snaked its way down his backside and between his butt cheeks.
    “Fuck!” he yelled out.
    Immediately, the guy to his left adjusted his TV monitor down. “Hang on there, son. I’ll buzz the nurses for you. Everything okay?”
    “No, I’m not fuckin’ okay. I got something nasty and bright orange down my back and my ass.”
    The patient in the bed on his right began to stir. He was mumbling something.
    Great. They have me stuck in a funny farm. “Nurse!”
    “Hold on. I already called them. You just quit your complaining and lay back there. Nothing you can do about it until they come.” The door burst open and two uniformed attendants appeared, a small Indian-looking man and a very large black woman.
    “You in any pain, Mr. Kennedy?” She was adjusting an I.V. drip he hadn’t noticed was stuck in his arm.
    “Where the fuck am I?”
    “You’re at Mercy Emergency Trauma Center in Big Bear. You’ve just had a long surgery after your accident.”
    Accident? “What about the fire?” he yelled at her. Did they think he wouldn’t remember that fire?”
    “No fire, Mr. Kennedy. I think maybe you had a vivid dream with all that anesthetic. But I assure you, there is and was no fire.”
    “Nurse!” The man in the bed to his right woke up and was trying to climb out.
    The big nurse with hands the size of basketballs swore under her breath. She left Rory’s side and caught the man as he fell backwards and would have landed on the floor. The small Indian attendant stood idly by, wringing his hands.
    “I don’t know what kind of stuff they gave you guys in surgery today, but it’s been a long time—” She hoisted Rory’s