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“And the answer kept coming out the same.”

“The answer kept coming out not yet.” He gave her a thin smile. “That’s the trick of it. It’s never no. It’s always not yet. And not yet is a thing you can keep saying right up until you can’t say anything at all anymore.”

Jodie didn’t move. Mac found he couldn’t look at her for the next part. The moth struck the lantern again so he watched it instead.

“I kept thinking I could get us to the next stop.”

And then the next one.

“And every time I made it, I thought, see? Still functioning. Still doing the job.”

The moth continued to mindlessly dive-bomb the lantern.

“My head started pounding first. Then I got nauseated. My heart was hammering harder than it should’ve been for the pace we were keeping.” He paused. “I knew those signs. Everybody in the Regiment knew them.”

Flutter flutter ping. Flutter flutter ping. Over and over above their heads as the moth hit the lantern.

“I don’t remember all of it,” Mac said. “That’s the part people get wrong. They think you’d remember. I remember being really sure I was fine. I remember being—” He searched for it. “Irritated. At the heat. At the ground. Everything had this edge on it, like somebody’d turned the contrast up too far.”

“Mac.”

“And I remember the kid looking back at me.” His throat worked. “One second I was walking. The next, my left boot caught on nothing. I corrected myself and kept moving. Then it happened again. The kid asked if I was okay.”

“What did you say?”

Mac glanced at her. “What do you think I said?”

Jodie closed her eyes briefly. “You told him you were fine.”

Mac nodded. “I told him I was fine.”

Sound familiar?

“Then the next memory I’ve got is being on my back with my kit off and somebody pouring water down my neck and shouting at me in a language I speak just fine, and I couldn’t make the words go together and make sense.”

The lantern hissed as the moth finally found its way in.

“They had to carry my gear,” Mac said. “Three of them. And worse, they had to carry me.”

He forced himself to say the rest.

“The men I was sent there to teach, Jodie. They stopped the movement, stripped their instructor, poured water on him, and hauled him out. That’s what they learned from me that day.”

Jodie made a small, sad sound.

He didn’t look over. He couldn’t, not yet.

“I woke up on a drip. Core temp had been north of forty. They told me later how long I’d been like that and I didn’t believe them.” He shrugged. “Then it’s just medical. Flown out, assessed, then assessed again. More assessments than I could count. Everybody very calm and professional about it, leading me on when they knew the truth.”

Jodie’s hand found his ankle and rested there, warm through his sock.

“All the testing,” Mac went on. “Heat tolerance. You go in a chamber and they run you on a treadmill and watch what your body does, and then they do it again months later to see if it’s come back.” He breathed in. “Mine didn’t come back. Some guys, it does. Mine decided, forget it, eh?”

“Oh, Mac.”

“And the whole time, I’m sitting with doctors answering questions. How much warning did you have? What were you able to do? What were you not able to do?” He rubbed his face. “And I told them the truth. Every time. I was a good patient, Jodie. I was the best darned patient they had, because I figured if I was straight with them they’d clear me faster.”

Her hand tightened on his ankle.