“Jack,” I said, softly, but forcefully. Let me in you dumb sonofabitch. “What happened? Last time I ask. Tell me, and I’ll drop it. But I need to know.” If I was honest, I could have done his therapy without knowing. He barely needed physical therapy, frankly; but his doctor didn’t know what else to do with him and he had the cash for it, he claimed. At least for a little while. Saint Michael’s never turned down cash.
He didn’t answer immediately. Not until I sighed, and took a step toward him so that I could work with his legs and finish this, and then get him assigned to José.
When I took that step, Jack snarled at me. “You want to know what happened to me? I won a fight. A fight I should have lost. You think I look bad? Shoulda seen the other guy. I beat him half to death. With my bare hands. I ain’t no pansy boxer, lady; I’m the real deal. The kind of guy who kills people.
“And they guy who lost? He was a fuckin’ killer, too, and he’d have fuckin’ killed me if I let him. Maybe someone told him he should. That’s the kind of people I call ‘friends’, you see? And one of those ‘friends’ put a lot of money on me to lose. More than people like you and me probably see in ten years of honest work, but Valentino, his money ain’t honest.
“His money’s red,” Jack said. “Bloody, covered in rotting fucking brains and bone. You get me? What I lost him in cash, he wanted outta my fuckin’ skin.”
Every word hit me, slid down my stomach and fell at my feet until the pile of them had me weighed down and stuck to the ground. The veins of Jack’s neck stood out, and his face was red. It was clear he was in agony, but the rage of what had happened to him—I didn’t think he was really angry at me—must have been worse; enough to cover up the pain for now. He’d hurt for real when that faded. If it ever did.
“You’re a cage fighter,” I said.
“You’re one brilliant fuckin’ doctor, or nurse, or whatever the fuck you are, aren’t you?” Jack barked, laughing. “Yeah, I am. I was. I will be again, next chance I get, too. You know why?”
I shook my head. Not because I didn’t know—I thought maybe I did—but because it was all I could think of as a response.
“Because I love the violence of it, Naomi.”
The way the words came off his tongue, the look he got in his eyes… it wasn’t that different than the looks he’d given me. That was it, then. To Jack, fighting was like sex. I wondered if sex was like fighting.
No, I didn’t.
Jack went on, his whole body trembling with impotent rage that was only checked by the physical limitations the beating had imposed on him. “I love that feeling of my fist hitting bone. I love the sound ribs make when they crack. I love to see another man drop unconscious to the floor, and I love that the crowd fucking loves it when I nearly kill him. I love getting all the pussy I want, when I want it, because every fucking woman who sees me fight gets her fuckin’ panties soaking wet waiting for me to look at them, much less fuck ‘em. They beg to choke me down, two at a time. I don’t even remember their fuckin’ names because you know what? All I care about is winning the fuckin’ fight.”
He snorted, an angry, ugly sound, and dropped back against the bed where he’d sat forward.
“Wanna help me?” He said, looking back out the window again. “You thinkin’ about all the people I’m gonna put right here in this very room once you have?”
I wanted to cry. At his outburst, or what happened to a person to make them this, or at whatever circumstance made Jack think he couldn’t get out of it, couldn’t stop, or that he didn’t want to. Maybe it was just being so close to that inferno that I got burned on the inside. I don’t know why.
But I didn’t. I swallowed it down, kicked the weights of my feet, and set my shoulders. “We’re done for today,” I said quietly while Jack continued to fume, to stare out that window with murder in his eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack. Try to get some rest.”
When I said it, he turned, looked at me for a long time with some inscrutable expression. Not anger. Not that predatory leer. I didn’t know what to call it, but he watched me as I left quietly, and closed the door behind me.
I held it together all the way to the bathroom.
Chapter 4
Naomi
The following day, Yvonne looked up from her magazine in the break room and frowned when she saw me.
“One of those days?” I tried not to be offended straight away.
I sighed, and almost wanted to laugh. “Do I already look like it’s one of those days?”
“Only a little,” she said. She studied something about me as I sat down, and reviewed my patient list for the day.
“Mr. Bradberry,” I started to say.
“Jack Hawke—” Yvonne said at the same time.
“You go ahead,” we said almost in unison.
I clamped my mouth shut.
Yvonne had figured my question out though. She pressed her lips together, and from that alone I knew what she had to say.
“Shit.”
“It had nothing to do with his hip,” Yvonne said. “Or the fall. His heart just gave out. He’s got a DNR order, so…”
I shouldn’t have cared. Bradberry was a mean old man, who gave me nothing but trouble. He was progressing slowly because he didn’t trust me, or what I was doing for him, even though he had made actual, measurable progress. There was nothing I could have done to prevent a heart attack, much less see one coming, but I still felt that I’d lost him, somehow. Never mind that it wasn’t my job to keep him around; just keep him somewhat mobile under his own power.
“When?” I asked.
“A little after three this morning. Ang-Yi told me about it when I got here.”
No one had mentioned it to me until just now. They’d just taken him off my schedule.
I passed a hand over my face, brushed a stray hair back behind my ear, and gave Mr. Bradberry a moment of more respect than he’d ever given me. Strange, the things you get used to; the people you get used to. “So,” I said, “what about Jack Hawke?”
“I just wondered how it’s all going, that’s all.”
“Slow. I at least got him to cooperate, mostly and…” I did want to find some way to help Jack out after all of this, but spreading his personal life around felt wrong, after the way he’d reacted to my pushing him for it. Besides that, somehow it felt a little bit like a secret… something only I knew about him. He was a mystery to everyone else, at the moment.
I shouldn’t have cared about that. I didn’t, really; it was more like having only a little bit of something and not wanting to share. It’s not selfish, it’s just practical, somehow.
“And…?” Yvonne wondered, an eyebrow raised suggestively.
“Nothing,” I said, quicker than I meant to. “Just, I’ve got a plan for him. If he’s here long enough to see it through.”
“Uh huh,” She grunted. But she wasn’t going to dig. It wasn’t like her to go where she wasn’t wanted. At least, when it came to friends. Patients didn’t get that luxury. “Well, glad someone’s getting through to him. Must be something special about you.”
“I don’t think so,” I said honestly. “I think I just leaned on him long enough and he broke.”
“Naomi Ellis,” Yvonne intoned, “asshole wrangler.”
We both pursed our lips a bit.
“That didn’t quite have the ring I thought it would,” she muttered.
We shared a giggle, but when it petered out Yvonne was momentarily serious again. “Last night, seems Mr. Hawke was asking his nurses about you. Nothing really serious. Just casual stuff about whether you were from around here, how long you’d been working as a PT, things like that.”
Had he, now?
I was more amused than Yvonne was. “Just between you and me—and I mean that—maybe make sure you’re not… you know, giving off any signals. Could be trouble. Not just Jack Hawke—though I guarantee you that man is trouble incarnate—but, you know, the faculty. If they think something might be
going on…”
Now, I was offended, even if she was just looking out for me. “Excuse me? Yvonne—you know me. I would never… that’s just… is anyone talking about this?”
She was quick to allay my sudden panic. “No, no, no, hon,” she said. She hopped up from her chair and crossed the room quickly to sit in the chair near me. She leaned in a bit. “No one’s saying anything, or making any accusations or rumors. This is just from me to you—I’ve seen it start that way. Not the… well not between a patient and a nurse or something, but I mean the talk. You might want to let Jack know what’s off limits.”
I wanted to tell her that I’d tried to. And that I’d apparently failed, and that Jack made me think things that I knew I shouldn’t be thinking about a patient—or for that matter Jack himself just on the basis of who he was.
But now it was out there, or at least now that it might get out there, I couldn’t. “I’ll put a stop to it,” I sighed. “That man, I swear to God is the most irritating patient I’ve ever had.”
Yvonne didn’t comment on that. She did give me a hanging look for just a couple of seconds before she stood. “Well, I have to get back to it. The never ending crusade. I hear some idiot trust fund baby came in drunk, with something lodged in his rectum and is in surgery. Guess who has post-surgery care?” She groaned, and ran her fingers through her short hair. “Did kids that age ever have sense, or is it just a millennial thing?”
“I can’t recall anymore,” I said. My college days hadn’t involved that kind of stupidity. They had involved other kinds, though.
Yvonne waved to me, and stepped backward through the break room door. It swung shut when she’d gone, slowing at the last possible second to close slowly to the tune of an airy hiss.
***
Jack was quiet when I met with him for the third time. He looked grim. I took him through the first few exercises, the same as the day before, and tested range of motion, and marked down his progress, which was impressive. Not because of me, I thought. Jack was just one of those resilient guys who was used to being injured. His body knew how to heal, was used to it.
It was me that broke the stony silence. “Jack,” I said, “I was told that you were asking some of the nurses about me.”
His first word that morning was, “Yep.”
Surely he knew it was inappropriate? He didn’t give me this indication. “You can’t do that, Jack.”
He looked up at me. “Why’s that? Don’t want ’em to know somethin’s up?”
“I don’t want them to think something’s up,” I corrected him. My hand was still on his bare arm. I took it away casually and reached for the clipboard with it. I didn’t need the clipboard, though, and wasn’t done with his exercises so… I just scribbled along the lower margin as though I were writing something important. Notes. Medical jargon. Nothing to see here.
“Oh,” Jack said. “Yeah. Of course. My lips are sealed.” There was a bit more of that amused light in his eyes; and the more his face started to improve, the more of those eyes I could see. Some kind of bright hazel?
“No; Jack,” I sighed. “There’s nothing to keep them sealed for. There’s no…” Chemistry? Attraction? Interest? “…thing here. Between us. You get that, right? This is important.”
“My daddy never said much that was any use,” Jack said, instead of giving me an answer, “but once upon a time he did tell me that a man who speaks the truth can always hear a lie.” He frowned, thoughtful, and then shrugged. “I think he told me that right before he beat the shit out of me. That might have been one of the times he knocked me out, come to think of it; I could have dreamed it. Anyway, let me tell you something, Naomi. For free.
“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar.”
Don’t look at me like that, I thought at him. His skull was too thick to hear it, I guess, because he kept on doing it. Like he could see inside me, or through me; or at least through my scrubs. He looked as though he liked what he saw and I wanted him to.
I mean, I wanted him not to. In a few days, Jack was going to be out of here, out of my life, forever. He’d go back to the ring, probably, or to this Valentino character—that name was familiar, why was that? —and I’d probably never see him again. We ran in different worlds. Mine was this; this slog, the daily grind, the good work for no thanks and not enough pay. His was that; the other. The danger, and the skin of the teeth, and the near misses and the extended hospital stays because he pissed off an already angry local deity. His life was lived in the present, with no forethought or expectation. Mine was planned. I had a path. Work, save, put in my time, retire, right? Because that’s what you did.
“Funny how I’m the one that let my guard down, huh?” Jack said, shocking me out of my daze of thunderous thoughts. “Me, the fighter. Go figure. But, I know I’m just a job to you. I get that. Now you know the truth, guess it’s a harder job than you bargained for. Way over your pay grade. Just so you know, I don’t mind that one bit. Everybody walks away, one point or another, and that’s okay, Naomi. That’s life.”
“I’m not walking away,” I said. I put the clipboard down. “Lift your arm.”
He did, and I held it, and took him through the exercises on this side of his body.
“I know you’re not walking now,” Jack said. “But when you do, do it clean, you know? I don’t expect you to carry me around with you. Don’t want you to. That’s all I’m saying.”
I stretched him slow, gently. “Pull,” I instructed, and he did. “I don’t just turn away from people like that,” I told him as I resisted his tugging muscles with my own arm. “I asked about your life, and you told me, and I didn’t ask for no reason. I wasn’t just curious about you, Jack.”
“It’s your job,” he said. “I know. I got hit in the head—a lot—but I ain’t stupid yet. I’m not just a problem patient, I’m a freakin’ nightmare. Guys like me, real problems, we get in the system and it spits us back out. There’s other problems, easier problems; things you can fix, so you do.”
“You’re right about part of that at least,” I sighed.
Jack smirked up at me. “Am I givin’ you nightmares, Darlin’?”
I let his arm go, and made my notes on the clipboard. “I’m too busy, too exhausted, to dream anything. Believe.” I put the pad down and waved a hand over my face. “I didn’t pencil all these lines on my face; each one is a patient like you.” I snorted, and shook my head. “Well, not just like you.”
Jack squinted at me, searched my face, and then leaned back against his pillow from where I’d had him sitting up and laughed out loud. His ribs exacted a steep price for it. “Oh,” he said through his pained laugh, “I get it. You’re one of those.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, not sure if I should be perturbed or not. I folded my arms anyway, just in case. “What the hell is that supposed to mean.”
“Nothin’, darlin’,” he said. “We done here? Got another problem to deal with out there?” He waved at the door.
I stared at him, and made the quick decision to let go of whatever it was he’d meant, done sparring for the day. “Yeah, six of them.”
Jack nodded like it made all the sense in the world. He closed his eyes, maybe an attempt to dismiss me. For real?
“Look,” I snapped, suddenly angry. I couldn’t quite tell why but just then didn’t care. He’d broken some last straw I hadn’t noticed was the last one. “You think you’ve got problems that no one understands or cares about?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “As a matter of fact I do.” His eyes were still closed.
“Well, you’re wrong, asshole.” He opened his eyes then. They were calm but simmering. My finger was in his cage, though. I should have just taken it back out. “I didn’t get conscripted into this job. I put my whole life into it, so that I could help people. People like you—yes, just like you,” he had opened his mouth to talk but I jabbed a finger at him, “because you’re not special, Jack. You’re not unique. I’m not the system, jerk; I�
�m someone who’s just trying to help you.”
“If I’m just another jackass,” Jack asked, his eyes watching me carefully, looking past my pointed finger. “Then why do you care so much if I care?”
“Because you’re…” I choked it off. The problem with my temper is that I almost never lose it. Jack, this bruised, broken asshole with his stupid isolationist nonsense and his ridiculous body—I mean… I mean his ridiculous… just all of him—managed to slip right under my threshold for bullshit and set me off.
I was used to putting up with shit. I wasn’t used to what happened when I couldn’t anymore. My own words echoed in my head but, thankfully, stayed here. Because you’re an asshole but you’re more honest, more real, than any man I’ve met and I don’t want you to die and not be in the world.
“Because no one ever seems to,” I said finally, all of the other thoughts throwing me off balance inside. It wasn’t true, at least not entirely, but it was maybe in a general sense.
“You do this job for the thanks you get?” Jack rolled his eyes. “Listen, darlin’, there’s something you need to learn about this world that I learned a long, long time ago. Nobody gives a fuck what you do for them. Even you, what you said just now? If you do this for the praise and the appreciation, what do you think that means about you? You’re just like me, just like everyone else; you do what you do for numero uno and nothing else.
“You want someone you can help that’ll make you feel real good about yourself? Go find some old lady who’ll bake you some goddamned cookies after.”
That seemed like the end of it. I was furious, still, so that was fine; I needed to get out of there, clear my head, get a hold of myself. Jesus, how had I so totally lost it?
“‘Course,” Jack said a moment later, smiling his crooked smile again like nothing had happened, “I’m more into showing than telling anyway. If you want me to show you how much I appreciate what you’re doing for me, I’m happy to oblige.” He looked me over in that way of his; like he wasn’t broken from head to toe, like he was in that bed only because he wanted to be, and if I said yes he’d get right up out of it and…
The Hitman's Baby - A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance (With extra added bonus novel for a short time only!) Page 21