Chapter 8
Time fractured as Finn, Liam, and Fiona launched themselves like human missiles toward Celeste’s falling form.
CRUNCH
Three bodies collided into a flesh–and–bone safety net–CRACK–WHINE–CRUNCH. Stella catálogued the symphony of fractures with ER–nurse precision while standing frozen twenty feet away.
Then memory artillery struck.
Last lifetime. Field training accident. Her femur snapped clean through.
Finn’s frost–laced verdict over the hospital phone, “Clumsy much?”
The children? They’d screened her Medevac calls.
=
Now crimson seeped through Finn’s dress blues where he cradled Celeste his shattered leg already swelling against the polished parquet. Fiona’s collarbone jutted like broken rifle stock.
“I’m the punchline of my own tragedy,” she realized as chaos erupted.
“Medic! Colonel Finn Reynolds‘ down!”
Amidst shouting generals and clattering champagne flutes, Stella watched medics strap all four onto gurneys–Celeste miraculously unscathed atop her human cushion.
“Next of kin! Sign surgical releases!” a nurse shouted.
Stella signed the forms without reading them.
Walter Reed’s surgical wing hummed for hours. Finn emerged first, collarbone pinned with titanium rods. Liam and Fiona followed in full torso braces, anesthesia still glazing their eyes.
“Celeste?” Finn rasped before his eyes fully focused.
Stella adjusted his IV drip. “Not a scratch. Your ribs broke her fall perfectly.”
Only then did his body sink into the pillows.
Days bled into sterile routines:
Finn sipped water through Stella’s hands only to demand, “Has anyone checked on Celeste?”
Liam jerked away from her bandage changes: “I want Aunt Celeste!”
Fiona swatted the hairbrush, “You braid like a blind nun! Aunt Celeste does fishtails!”
Pitying glances followed Stella down hallways.
“Heard Colonel Finn Reynolds signed her discharge papers from ICU-”
“-kids requested transfer to Dr.Brooks‘ private suite yesterday.”
“Bless her heart,” nurses whispered. “Caring for ingrates.”
Stella absorbed the orders like battlefield static–mechanical, impersonal.
Discharge morning blazed with cruel sunshine.
Finn emerged in dress blues, medals gleaming over healing fractures.
“I’m escorting Celeste to Pearl Harbor Command. Collect the children.” He didn’t glance at her sling–bound arm
Stella stood curbside as the military SUV vanished toward Joint Base Andrews.
Chapter 8
BookSnap
Google Play
INSTALL
7.62%
Sunlight warmed her
Stella Morrow pivoted
ОП
for
the
first time in decades.
her
heel.
Her Oxfords clicked west toward Union Station while Finn’s convoy vanished east toward the sea.
allent
Beaters, a single savings passbook, and Columbia’s journalism program acceptance letter diets.
The Brentwood manor stood tomb–s
Stella’s duffel bag swallowed three
fifteen years prior.
Halfway through packing, the phone shattered the silence.
“Mom!” Fiona’s voice crackled through the hospital phone like faulty comms. “Where the hell are you? The nurses say these damn discharge papers need your signature now!”
Liam snatched the phone. “Aunt Celeste left with father hours ago! Move your
ass!”
Stella cradled the phone like a wounded bird, her voice barely a whisper. “Isn’t that Aunt Celeste’s job? ”
Stella traced the Columbia crest on her letter. “I’m sure you’ll manage.”
“But hospit-”
11
“I have a prior engagement.” She hung up to the sound of their sputtering disbelief.
At Union Station, boarding calls echoed:
USO charter to Pearl Harbor now boarding Track 9…
Stella bought a one–way ticket to Chicago as the announcer called Finn’s deployment. On opposite platforms, two trains exhaled steam
-one gleaming silver, one industrial blue.
Track 9: Military transport carrying a colonel, his surgeon, and their shared delusion.
Track 3: Acela Express bearing a woman who finally remembered her name.
Whistles shrieked in harmony. Finn’s train surged toward Pacific sunrises. Stella’s accelerated into the Midwest’s amber twilight.
Her reflection in the speeding window smiled–the first real smile since her wedding day. A caged hummingbird tasting open sky.
Chapter 8
