Author's note: So I did do a little research for this chapter, but I also figure that post-apocalypse there would be a shortage of equipment, manpower, etc, so things might work a little differently at the Norfolk naval base. So maybe just go with it, okay?
Thank you, as always, for reading, and please leave a review if you like it (or even if you don't!)
Chapter 14 - Norfolk
Of all the things Dr Hope Riley had expected to find in St Louis, love had definitely not been one of them. Friendship, sure, she'd hoped so; satisfying work, a new start, absolutely. But walking into an elevator and meeting the man she was increasingly sure was the love of her life, well, that was a surprise.
"They creep up on you, these men." Rachel Slattery said with a smile. They were sitting in the hospital cafeteria, Rachel with a pot of tea and Riley with a very strong coffee. Their nascent friendship had taken a leap forward since the St Patrick's Day party, and as Rachel's lab was practically next door to the hospital - and had no canteen - it had been easy for them to start meeting for the occasional coffee break.
"Oh no, Wolf hit me right between the eyes." Riley confessed. "Minute I saw him, I thought 'uh oh, lady, you're in trouble'." She laughed, "He took a little more convincing though."
"So did Mike." Rachel laughed too. "I mean, it took ages for either of us to act on our feelings, but I cracked first."
"What did you do?" Hope asked curiously.
"Oh, you know." Rachel blushed just slightly, "I put myself between him and the door and took my shirt off."
Riley sputtered with laughter, "That'll do it!" She hesitated, then shot Rachel a naughty look, "I went to Wolf's place with nothing on under my coat."
It was Rachel's turn to splutter, then raise her teacup for a toast. "Good for you!" They grinned at each other for a moment before Rachel asked, "How are you managing with him away?"
"Oh, it's alright." Riley tried to brush it off, ignoring a little pang of missing Wolf. "It's not for too long, and we speak every day."
"That's good." Rachel nodded. "Mike and I tried to do that, when he went to Asia. Well, before he was captured." A pained expression flashed across her face.
"It must have been awful." Riley said quietly.
"It was. I was pregnant, which didn't help, and I found out through the TV news, which didn't help either."
"I can't imagine." Riley murmured.
"Anyway!" Rachel exclaimed, "It all worked out in the end. And now he's on land, and provided the world doesn't go to hell in a handbasket again, there won't be another separation like that-" She stopped abruptly and clapped a hand over her mouth. "Sorry, that was so insensitive-"
"It's fine." Riley reassured her, "I grew up in a military family. I was bred for this." She smiled like she believed it, but Rachel was too perceptive for that.
"Really? You're allowed to hate it, you know."
Riley battled with it for a second, but then sighed. "You know what? I never wanted to actually join the service, but I chose ortho as my specialty so I could work with veterans. Rehabilitation, you know? The service was bred into me, I always believed that, and I respect it. My daddy died for this country, so did my youngest brother, and I feel proud about that, I do." She hesitated, "But when Wolf told me he was taking the commission and joining the US Navy, my heart broke just a little bit."
Rachel grabbed her hand across the table, "Of course it did. You can respect the service all you like - I do too - and still hate it sometimes for stealing your man."
Riley looked up and saw Rachel's expression was entirely genuine, even with just a hint of a smile breaking through. She laughed reluctantly. "Thank you. I'd not been feeling too good about it."
"Any idea when he's due back?" Rachel asked.
"Another month, maybe. Depends on progress. It sounds hard, I mean, he doesn't say that, but..." She thought about Wolf's voice on the phone, how tired he sounded.
"I know there are a lot of issues in Norfolk." Rachel agreed, "Mike's there again at the moment. Between you and I," She lowered her voice, "He's worried they're trying to run before they can walk with some of this training. But everyone's so desperate to get the military back up to strength."
Standing on the dockside in Norfolk earlier that morning, Wolf had formed the very same opinion as Mike Slattery. Only it was more that some of the selected trainees were trying to run before they could crawl. He rotated his shoulder with a wince as he tried to ease the discomfort, and looked out with growing despair at the figures in the water.
"Not that way!" He bellowed, "Follow the damn chain!"
Pulling up the hood of his dive suit, he prepared to enter the water.
An hour later, he'd managed to get most of his trainees - all relatively experienced sailors but still novice divers - through the exercise. Today's focus was about learning to manoeuvre skilfully around volatile objects in the water while wearing full kit, and despite supposedly already receiving a few months of training, some were still struggling. He weighed up whether to make them all take a second shot at it, but decided enough was enough.
"Right, ladder time!"
He caught a few groans, but most of the small group started to swim obediently towards the rope ladder hanging over the side of the decommissioned aircraft carrier that had been repurposed as a training hub. On good days, Wolf let them take the easy route out of the water and onto the dockside. On bad days, it was the ladder.
Watching from the water as they took it in turns to make the sixty foot climb, his thoughts wandered, as they often did, to Hope. He hadn't told her yet, but he was almost certainly going to be on a plane back to St Louis for the weekend that night, and he was tempted to just surprise her. As the last trainee reached the top of the ladder, Wolf was trying to picture the look on her face when she opened the door to him.
He focussed back on the task at hand as he took his own turn to climb, still trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder. A weekend of rest would help that too. Carrying the last of the equipment in his other hand, his weight distribution was off, making the climb harder. It might look easy from a distance, but in dive kit and carrying heavy equipment, the climb was a challenge, even for someone as fit and experienced as he was.
As he reached the top of the ladder, Wolf hefted the equipment over and onto the deck, and in that moment, his shoulder gave out completely, his fingers slipping uselessly from the top rung of the ladder, momentum dragging his body backwards. He tried to catch hold of the ladder as he fell, but his hand closed on empty air, and in the helpless seconds before he hit the water, all he could think was, this is going to hurt.
In St Louis, Riley and Rachel were finishing up their break when Rachel's phone rang. Making an apologetic face, she answered.
"Mike?" Riley watched as her expression changed, and then Rachel held the phone out towards her. "He needs to speak to you."
Her heart jumping into her throat, Riley took the phone. "Hello?"
"Doctor Riley? This is Captain Mike Slattery."
Riley's throat suddenly felt like it had been squeezed shut completely. Slattery sounded so serious, and that look on Rachel's face...
"Riley, I'm sorry to inform you that Wolf Taylor has been seriously injured in the course of his duties."
And in that moment, Riley couldn't be a doctor, or a military brat, or a pragmatic thinker, or any of the other things that she would have thought had equipped her for a moment like this. All she could do was try to keep breathing.