I Know You ~ J.Seresin

31

It wasn't long until they retrieved Tate's body. The medical team had assured Bradley that she was stable and she would push through. Bradley waited for his mother and father in the waiting room of the VA hospital. He bounced his legs anxiously as he waited for something to happen. Anything.

"Lieutenant Bradshaw?" A voice calls out to him. He looks up to see Tate's doctor standing in front of him. He sits up and wipes his face.

"Would you like to see her?" he asks. Bradley nods, instantly standing to his feet.

He follows the doctor out of the waiting room and down to the hallway to the end where Tate was residing unconsciously.

Bradley enters the room and is welcomed by the beeping of monitors and the soft hums of other machines.

He looked at his best friend lying in the hospital bed. Breathing tubes were attached to her, IV needles were in her arms, and bandages were on her arm.

His tears fall once more as he looks at her. He couldn't believe she had been through something like that.

He couldn't believe that he was looking at her in this state.

He cries softly as the doctor purses his lips and rubs the man's back.

"She's going to be okay. She is stable,"

Bradley looks at the doctor with tears in his eyes, streaming down his face.

Before he would ask him anything, the door opens, revealing a nurse and their parents.

"Oh my god," Sara says in a shocked hushed tone as she enters the room, Tom right behind her.

Sara rushes to her daughter's bedside and grabs her hand sobbing.

"My baby, oh my sweet baby," she sobs looking at her daughter.

Tom walks up to Bradley and puts his hand on his shoulder. He looks at his father and instantly wraps his arms around him.

Tom embraces his son as tears filled his own eyes.

"Mr. and Mrs. Kazansky, your daughter is stable. She's currently sleeping due to the pain meds we have given her,"

"Is she going to wake up soon?" Sara asks to cry as she looks at the man. He nods his head. "It shouldn't be long until she does. But she will be in pain, she suffered a few dangerous injuries,"

Tom lets go of Bradley as the doctor walks up to the foot of the bed, grabbing the clipboard that was hanging there.

"She dislocated her shoulder from its socket as she exited her aircraft, and due to it erupting in flames, her left arm is burned from the top of her shoulder to the crease of her elbow,"

Sara sobs at the words from the doctor. He daughter had been through the worst pain she could think of.

With the exception of childbirth.

"Tatum has suffered some head trauma, but nothing alarming. She may wake up with a headache,"

Sara sighs relieved and looks back at her daughter, her sobs subsiding for now.

"But, depending on her recovery, there is a slight chance that she will never be able to get into a cock pit of another aircraft ever again,"

Both Bradley and Tom look over at the man shocked. Tate was stubborn much like Maverick.

Nothing was going to stop her from getting into a jet, and this wasn't going to stop her.

Which is what scared both Tom and Bradley.