12 Minutes (#2 in Military series)

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Julia stood in front of the full-length mirror and stared at her reflection. Her wet tousled hair was combed back from her face and ran down her back.

Water droplets were running down all over her body and staining the carpet of her bedroom in which she stood, but she couldn't move.

She just kept staring at the woman in the mirror. Her skin was littered with scars like a battlefield but it was the scars she couldn't see that were causing her the most pain.

The woman in the reflection raised her arms from her side and ran her fingertips across her lower abdomen. A life should have been growing inside of her right now but that was just something else that Afghanistan had taken from her.

She knew that now. Doctor Barter had told them that afternoon.

Doctors Barter and Fellows had placed her scans onto the screen and pointed to the murky, distorted lines of her uterus.

'All of this is scar tissue.' Fellows had told her.

'Somehow the explosion caused you worse internal damage than we had first imagined.' Dr Barter's shoulders had deflated somewhat when he said it.

'The scar tissue is weakening the walls of your womb,' Dr Fellows explained, 'So that it can only sustain a fertilised egg for so long before they collapse and that's when you suffer your miscarriages.'

'But you are carrying for longer each time so I do not think that we should give up hope. Not yet.' Dr Barter had been quick to add.

That was easy for him to say.

As she imagined the ripped and torn muscles inside of her womb, the bedroom door opened and Marc halted on the threshold.

Jules looked at him and saw the way his eyes travelled over her body. There was a warmth to them that hadn't been there for a while and Jules's heart began to race.

She took a step towards him.

Something seemed to snap inside of Marc, and Jules. She wasn't sure who had moved first but suddenly they were clutching at each other. Jules could feel the water on her body soaking his clothes.

Marc didn't seem to care, or notice, as he mashed his lips to hers in a kiss. An angry kiss, full of teeth and tongues and bruising pressure as he pinned her arms to her side so that she couldn't move.

But Jules didn't want to move when a few moments later the kiss changed and became almost tender. Marc released her arms so that she could wind them up around his neck, pressing their bodies closer still.

She felt his hands resting on her waist, burning her flesh where he touched her.

Marc teased her mouth with his tongue, scraping along her teeth and dancing with her own as he started backing her towards the bed.

Jules felt the bed hit the back of her knees and as she went down, with Marc on top of her, she began to pull at his shirt but at the fabric left his skin, Marc came to his senses.

Marc jack-knifed it off the bed and simply stood there watching her.

Cold air rushed into the space where Marc had been. Sitting up, Julia felt the strange desire to cover herself.

"Marc?" She spoke because somebody needed to. She couldn't handle the silence that had seemed to fall over the entire street right then.

"I'm sorry," Marc choked out, "I- I can't."