“You’re going to the clinic.”
“I’m not leaving the course.”
“You’re going to the clinic.”
“I can recover here.”
“No.”
“I need the completion time.”
“You need medical evaluation.”
Vega straightened.
“She’s going.”
I turned toward him.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“Actually, I do.”
“You’ve spent six weeks waiting for an excuse to remove me.”
His jaw tightened.
The medic stopped what he was doing.
I regretted the words as soon as they left me, but I was too exhausted to take them back.
Vega looked at the scars visible beneath the loosened garment.
“If I wanted you removed, Mercer, I wouldn’t have waited until mile ten.”
That was not an apology.
It was not forgiveness.
But it was the closest thing to an explanation I had received.
“Why did you keep pushing me?”
I asked.
He looked away.
The question seemed to find a place in him he had been carefully guarding.
“Because you never asked for help.”
“That’s not a reason to treat someone like a problem.”
“No.”
His voice roughened.
“It isn’t.”
The medic’s expression softened, but he said nothing.
Vega rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
