Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 32: Are You Really Eight?

Chapter 32: Are You Really Eight?

Many would have thought this was insane as I held up my hair and let Bai Long Qiang look around my body for where he wanted this tracking device to go. But as far as I was concerned... this was our wedding band.

He would always be able to find his way back to me, and if he couldn’t, I could find my way back to him.

"Here," he said, pointing to a spot behind my left shoulder. It would be easy for me to put in, and there was nothing in the area that would be impacted by the incision.

"Done," I smiled as I hopped up onto the bathroom counter. I angled my body so that my left shoulder was practically touching the mirror, and I took my number 15 blade and made the smallest of cuts.

"Don’t do it too big," Bai Long Qiang warned, his eyes never leaving the section of my skin that was currently bleeding. "I don’t want anyone who kidnaps you to know that you have a GPS tracker or for them to be able to dig it out of you."

"Would you like to do this?" I asked, raising my eyebrow and the scalpel so that he could take over. Luckily, being the smart man that I knew he was, he simply shook his head and took a step back.

"I’ll leave it to the professional," he laughed as he held his hands up.

I stuck out my tongue in reply and held out the scalpel for him again. "Hold this, please."

With my right hand now free, I grabbed the sterilized forceps and took the tracking device out of its dish of alcohol, and went back to the mirror. Slowly and carefully, I maneuvered the chip into the incision I had made, not really caring about the pain.

This was nothing compared to what I was used to. I would have to remember to grab some skin-numbing cream for him when he got the second device.

Once the chip was secured, Bai Long Qiang gently moved my hands out of the way so he could clean up the incision site.

"Okay, now the big question," he said, spinning me around so I could look at him seriously. "Do you want the Hello Kitty Bandaids, the unicorn Bandaids, or the teddy bear Bandaids?"

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"You need to just go," said Bai Long Qiang’s mom as the three of them sat at the dining room table. Graduation was going to be in two days, and all the families at Trinity High School had started to prepare for the big event.

"Excuse me?" demanded Bai Long Qiang, and his father’s head shot up at his tone of voice.

"Watch yourself," he snarled, ready to clip his son in the ear. No one spoke to his wife like that. Absolutely no one.

"She is too young to understand what is going on. She thinks of you like a brother, a protector. She is never going to see you as anything else unless you leave and give her the chance to grow up," pressed his mom, but Bai Long Qiang could only let out a bark of sarcastic laughter.

"She is too young to understand?" he asked incredulously. "You do realize that while she might be eight, she has the highest GPA out of anyone in the school, myself included. I know for a fact that some of the teachers go to her for clarification on things, and she is the valedictorian of our school. You think that she is too young to understand that I am going into the military? She applied and got accepted into almost every medical school in this country but picked A University just so she could be closer to me."

"Like I said, she thinks of you as a brother, a protector. You are going to harm her yourself if you don’t back off and give her some time to grow up," continued his mom as if he hadn’t made some valid points.

Bai Long Qiang turned to look at his dad. He had to know what he was going through right now; he should have been able to tell his mother that it was not acceptable to split the two of them apart for four years. Bootcamp was done in 6 months. He could spend plenty of time with her after that.

"Listen to your mother," was all his father said. And the case was closed. None of the men would go against their woman for an outsider... not even their own child.

"Understood," replied Bai Long Qiang with a nod of his head. He quietly finished his dinner while his parents were talking around him and then excused himself.

Walking up the stairs to his room, his body felt heavy. There was no way he was going to be able to go four years without seeing her. Taking his phone out of his pocket, he quickly turned on the GPS locator.

She was in her room at her parent’s apartment.

He stared at the tiny dot for a while as he got ready for bed and lay down.

Suddenly, his phone rang.

"If you keep staring at me, someone is going to think you are nothing more than a creepy stalker," came the childish laughter over the phone.

"How do you know that I have it on?" asked Bai Long Qiang, a smile appearing on his face. The heaviness that he had felt since dinner was lifted at the sound of her voice.

"Are you Bai Long Qiang?" she demanded.

"I am."

"Are you breathing?"

"I am."

"Then you have the GPS app up and running," she finished, and he could hear the smirk on her face.

"Fine, you caught me," he grumbled.

"So, what do you need to talk about? Why didn’t you just call?" she asked softly, all trace of the previous playfulness gone.

"Mom wants me to just get up and leave. She doesn’t want me to say goodbye or do anything ’dramatic’, whatever that means," he grumbled, happy that he would finally have someone to take his side on the matter.

"So? Give her what she wants. She’s your mom," was the response that he got instead.

"You are okay with that?"

"No. I’m not. But there will be times in the future that you can’t tell me when you have gone or where you are going. Isn’t that part of the whole reason why we got GPS?" she laughed.

"Are you really eight?"