The colonel pointed toward the wounded man.
“Move him.”
Captain Natalie Shaw didn’t.
The military hospital ward became silent.
“Captain.”
Natalie remained beside the bed.
“With respect, sir, he is not medically stable.”
Colonel Reeves stared at her.
The patient was a captured enemy fighter brought in after an explosion.
He had undergone emergency surgery less than two hours earlier.
Military investigators were waiting to question him.
Natalie had already refused them twice.
Now their commanding officer had arrived.
“He may have information that could protect soldiers outside this hospital.”
“I understand.”
“Then move him.”
“He could die.”
Reeves stepped closer.
“And someone else could die because we waited.”
Natalie looked at the unconscious patient.
That was the part that made everything difficult.
She understood the colonel.
She understood the investigators.
Somewhere outside the hospital, soldiers were still operating in the same area where the prisoner had been captured.
Information mattered.
Time mattered.
But the monitor beside the bed told Natalie something else.
The man’s blood pressure was unstable.
His breathing remained weak.
Moving him was dangerous.
