by Moxie North
Today was a bike to rehab day. She got the idea when she was at the hospital delivering some hats to the NICU and saw someone heading into the rehabilitation center next door. The woman entering was on crutches with one leg that stopped just above where her knee once was.
Pru started thinking that it must be hard to undergo such a drastic operation and to only have tape and antiseptic pads as a constant reminder. In Pru’s world a little color and softness solved any number of problems. Who wouldn’t want a soft fuzzy cozy covering their hurt?
That was how Pru’s brain worked. If something was sad or scary or painful she’d try to find a way to make it better. So here she was sitting waiting for permission to start helping those that she thought needed a little pick-me-up.
“Miss, uh…”
Prudence looked up to see a man—in a dress shirt and tie that was about four decades out of style—staring at her with a harassed expression on his face.
“Boyer, but please call me Pru.”
Prudence got up and thrust her hand out to shake the man’s hand. She had a huge grin on her face and could see the man’s confusion at her enthusiasm.
“Could I speak with you for a few minutes? I have an idea that I would like to run by you to help your patients.”
“Sure, I have a few minutes.” The man gestured for her to walk ahead of him through the door behind him.
Straightening her shoulders, she strode through the door determined to make a difference.
Chapter 5
Prudence unlocked her bike and took an extra moment to take a few deep breaths. The tears that were threatening to spill over on her cheeks would not be a simple single tear. If she let it, they would be a torrential downpour of grief at the pain she had witnessed.
Pru didn’t blame Mr. Gill, the manager she’d spoken with. She had pleaded her case and explained what she wanted to do and why. She told him of her experience with babies and children at the hospital and how her knitting group’s blankets and hats brought a smile to so many faces.
“I appreciate that, and I see what you mean. But we don’t always have the most willing patients here. Rehab for adults is different. Rehab for veterans is even more different. We have those that come in from surgeries or injuries that need rehab, but we also have those that have been recently wounded in action. Those are the ones I’m more concerned about.”
“I’m very friendly, Mr. Gill. I’ve won over the grumpiest of patients.”
Mr. Gill sighed and stared at her for a moment. He was leaning over in his chair with his elbows on his knees. It was a close position that Pru knew was a posture to convey seriousness. Her father often took that position with her when he was trying to reason with her.
She kept her chipper expression until Mr. Gill invited her into the main rehab room. There were a few older people on stationary bikes smiling up at their therapists. Another woman was trying to balance on a big rubber ball. Then Mr. Gill took her into a large room in the back that had huge padded tables that were just a few feet off the ground.
There she didn’t see smiles. She saw sweat, tears, anger, and so much pain it took her breath away.
Men and woman with burns, missing limbs, and mangled body parts. They were sweating trying to straighten a limb that had been frozen with scar tissue. They were grimacing past the agony of trying to walk for the first time on a new leg. There was swearing, aggression, and despair.
It was a like a giant crushing weight on Prudence’s chest seeing so much hurt in one room. She was about to turn and run out like a coward when she heard clapping and cheering. In the far corner she saw a young woman that couldn’t have been out of her early twenties holding a small foam ball in a hand that was missing fingers and looked like it had been torn apart and put back together.
The mood in the room changed. Those that had been focused on their own struggles took a moment to give the woman a small smile and a head nod in recognition of her efforts. It wasn’t a tiny victory; it was a monumental one that needed to be celebrated.
Prudence wasn’t going to give up on a simple project when these people were working so hard to get their lives back.
She turned to Mr. Gill, who was watching her closely. “I can do this. They need to know there are people cheering them on.”
“You are a persistent one, Ms. Boyer. What do you need from me?”
Prudence made a plan to come back the next day to talk to a few people and get a feel of who might be interested. Maybe see if anyone was willing to let her take some measurements and talk to her about things they might need or want.
It didn’t stop her mind from replaying what she’d seen. They were in rehab, so that meant they had already been going through the pain and suffering for days, weeks, months, or even years. Yet they were still there. Doing the work, taking the steps. It was humbling and Prudence felt grateful for their sacrifices.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled up her skirt and tucked it into her waistband on either side to keep it out of the bike chain, exposing the black leggings she always wore underneath when she rode.
Kicking off, she headed down the street towards the Two Knotty Ladies to start her shift. She also had emails to send out to her group about their new project. Prudence had a new project and new mission.
Maverick sat at a picnic bench located outside the camp’s bar. There were a few people milling around. Members working on their bikes, probies washing bikes, and a few random women trying to “help” with the washing. They were mostly managing to spray themselves with the hoses in an attempt to mimic a bad music video montage.
Mav took a draw on his e-cigarette and sucked in the pungent tobacco flavor. He’d started smoking while he was overseas. His wolf had hated it because it screwed up their sense of smell. There wasn’t much to do in your downtime and everyone did it. It was easy to pick up the habit.
When Maverick returned stateside he wasn’t able to smoke in the hospital, so he took it as an opportunity to quit. He found the need for nicotine was harder than the ritual of smoking.
He picked up vaping to fill in the gaps. He liked his nicotine hit without the smell. His clothes now smelled like wind and trees from riding his bike instead of old cigarettes.
The guys gave him shit about it, but only to the point they knew they wouldn’t get their asses kicked.
Maverick felt a body come up behind him and waited to see if the new guy would talk first. He didn’t know why this particular member even liked talking to him. He should be glommed onto Ranger. He was VP. Deacon had offered him the job when he joined the club. Rooster was the VP at the time, but was ready to retire. Tiny was the Sergeant at Arms and with his state of mind at the time, Mav thought he’d be better with the hands-on than helping to run the club.
Latch was quiet, stuttered a bit, and kept to himself. Maverick’s wolf told him there was a reason he was so skittish, which was very unlike a wolf. Latch hadn’t shared his story yet. Deacon was probably the only one that knew how Latch made his way into their pack and club. Still, he had Maverick’s wolf sitting up and taking notice. The young man was in his twenties, but seemed much younger.
“Fuck, Latch. Why do you have to creep up on people like that?” Maverick didn’t turn around to see Latch flinch. He knew he did. He almost always did.
“Sssorry, Mav. Is there an-anything you nn-need?”
“Yeah, go walk Lulu. A real walk. Don’t let her convince you to pick her up. You guys are a bunch of pussies around that dog.”
Lulu was a rescue dog, as in the club rescued her after she darted across the road one dark night causing one of the brothers to dump his bike on the pavement. Lou was pretty scraped up but would heal. He was more pissed about his bike than the missing skin. The crew was more concerned about the tiny Chihuahua that was shivering in the headlights of their bikes.
Deacon had picked up the little creature and looked it in the eye and gave her the biggest alpha growl he had in him. Damn dog stopped shaking and licked him on the end
of the nose.
Maverick watched in shock as his Alpha took that ridiculously tiny dog and tucked it into his vest and then gave the signal for the club to move out. She became Lulu in honor of the sacrifice Lou had to make with his bike.
Lulu had been a fixture ever since. Totally spoiled and a useful tool to make the new guys understand that they had to earn their place in the pack. Lulu always ranked higher than a probie. Picking up tiny dog shit also was a good test of doing whatever a full-patched member asked.
“I-I don’t think s-she likes me much.”
“She probably doesn’t. She’s smarter than most of you. Just walk her, then feed her. Don’t forget to warm her food.”
Maverick was thankful no one else was hearing this conversation. He worried about the day that little dog died. He wasn’t sure the club could handle the trauma. Bunch of big tough wolves gone gaga over a dog.
He took another drag on his sad excuse for a cigarette and blew out the vapor. He refused to use one of those pansy flavors like vanilla. He wanted to taste tobacco so that’s all he used. Fuck him, there was grape flavored. He’d started making the probies go get him his juice for his e-cigs since he felt like a douche buying it from a store full of bongs and Grateful Dead stickers.
But it was something that gave him a much needed distraction when he was waiting around for someone to fuck up. A lot of his job was reconnaissance. Sitting on his ass waiting for someone or something to explode. Sometimes that was literal.
A year ago the club had helped chase out a bunch of dealers that had set up a meth lab in an old RV that they had parked near a school.
Maverick persuaded them to relocate by busting one guy’s jaw and breaking the other guy’s arm. After the pair hobbled away and the area was clear, Maverick made sure that no one would stumble across that RV or use it to make more drugs. He had the probies clean it out of anything dangerous and drive it as far out into the country as they could. Then they lit the fucker up.
Watching all that filth burn was satisfying. He’d seen too many of his fellow soldiers get hooked on drugs, prescription or otherwise, when they returned home. Assholes parking a bomb near where kids played didn’t set well with him or Deacon.
It was a case of the neighborhood businesses wanting the dealers gone, and they were willing to pay someone to take care of it. Redemption MC was known to skirt the law for a price.
Maverick felt that there was a natural order to things. Humans didn’t understand that they still needed to work in a pack. They thought they had evolved past it, that they were better than animals. Humans may deny the fact they are animals, but Maverick had seen enough of those same humans act worse than animals. They looked down on those that were happy in their place in a group. Knowing who was above you and below you wasn’t about being better than someone. It was about knowing who you were responsible for and who was ahead of you watching out for you.
Lulu understood pack hierarchy. She could teach the noobs all about it.
Maverick watched Latch cautiously approach Lulu, who was sunning herself in the grass. Someone had stuck a pink shirt with a rhinestone skull and crossbones on her. Like that made her look badass or something. The dog weighed less than five pounds—there was nothing badass about her. Mav was pretty sure it was the older members that kept buying her the pink shit.
“Latch, she can’t even open her mouth wide enough to bite you. Just pick her the fuck up.”
Latch looked over his shoulder at him. “She nips. Not h-hard, but still.”
“Pussy,” Maverick chuckled.
Latch earned his nickname after latching on to Deacon like a baby to a tit. He followed Deacon around like a lost puppy. In a pack of wolves that garnered some mocking. Latch came from a pack that didn’t tolerate defects. They found his stutter detrimental to their pack’s genetics and future and kicked him out. That was the simple story. Mav figured there was more to it, but wasn’t going to ask.
Maverick’s family pack had never been like that. Each pack ran differently and he couldn’t imagine trying to grow up in one that didn’t allow any sign of weakness. There were even tougher packs than their own motorcycle club. That was seriously saying something.
Deacon and Mav worked hard to keep their own brothers from tearing each other apart. Figuratively and literally. There was a joke for a while that they were like a pound for unwanted pets. Not that they would say that to anyone outside of their circle. But plenty of them thought of themselves as unwanted. That’s why Redemption was the safe haven for those without a place.
Latch managed to capture the dangerous four-pound ball of terror and walk off with her, holding her at arm’s length.
Maverick surveyed the grounds. There were days that he couldn’t wait to leave the camp and others that just having extra heartbeats around him was a stress reliever that was better than anti-anxiety drugs. Not that he’d ever taken any in recovery. He’d seen the dull-eyed look of those around him that had to use them to get through the day. Damaged psyches that were suffering from PTSD. Even when they started to get better, they had grown so used to the medication, they no longer had the skills to cope on their own. It was a slippery slope that he didn’t want to venture down.
Glancing down at his phone to check the time he saw he needed to head out to rehab for his fitting. He kept his business his own when it came to his time outside the club. Only the new and inherently stupid would ask him about what he was up to.
Typing off a text to tell his Alpha he was leaving, Maverick walked over to his Ford F250. Not knowing how he was going to be feeling later, he chose to leave his bike at home. It was also a chance to pick up groceries. Climbing in, he started the truck and pulled out, glancing in his rear view mirror to see Latch walking Lulu on a thin pink leash. The little dog was excitedly bouncing her way across the yard while leading the biker to where she wanted to go.
Looking back at the road he thought about his shopping list. He ate at home even on nights he was at the camp. For the strong wolf he was, he’d never mastered eating in public on his own. That was something that most forty-six-year-olds had come to terms with. It was too lonely to eat at a table in a restaurant with no one to talk to. Maverick’s pack often had community meals and his family always ate together at their big, wooden kitchen table.
There was no way for him to keep the menacing frown off his face when he was out now. It tended to make other patrons nervous, and that caused more issues. He was a big man, over six feet, and all muscle. He wore leathers and was in constant need of a beard trim and a haircut. He didn’t exactly look approachable and friendly. The vibe in a restaurant was never calm when he was there. It was another reminder of all that he had lost in the blink of an eye halfway around the world.
So he’d learned to cook to avoid that situation. Just like you wouldn’t find Mav at the community pool so people could stare at his leg, or lack thereof. He didn’t wear shorts, and he’d be damned if he’d use his crutches again. That’s what got him into the situation he was in now. If he hadn’t been so stubborn and had taken some of the pressure off his leg, he wouldn’t have almost worn a hole in his skin. But being reasonable wasn’t something he excelled at. He didn’t know why it was bothering him so much. It could be the vibration of the bike, or something to do with him shifting. Either way it was a giant pain the ass, or leg as it were.
His ability to use his own pain to harness his drive was something he and his wolf had grown oddly proud of. Being hardheaded was something he clung to. He didn’t want to dwell on it too much. It really wasn’t something to be overly proud of, but when you felt you had so little to count on, you took the things that were formerly negative and manipulated them to become something else.
Chapter 6
Maverick dropped his speed once he hit Port May. He had a sneaking suspicion that outside of revenue generation for speeding tickets, the town’s police wanted people to enjoy the idyllic setting of their little suburb.
Beautiful homes, old b
ut maintained, lined the road. Shops that ran out of those homes along with purpose-built buildings interspersed throughout made the community pedestrian friendly and kept the big corporate stores out.
They had all the usual suspects, like an adorable library run by a woman that was married to the only cougar shifter in town. He was a transplant that Deacon had vetted when he first showed up. He was a mechanic that turned out to be millionaire. Maverick didn’t know what to make of the man, since he didn’t know him personally.
Along with the mechanic shop there were a number of stores that sold knickknacks to the tourists. They did finally get a McDonald’s, but the town only allowed it in when they could prove the design would not take away from their charming aesthetic.
A few mom and pop restaurants, a convenience store, and the like continued down the street until the houses thinned and the small schools started. After the schools came the parks, and then the hospital. Maverick liked seeing the kids out playing, running around and chasing each other. Most people would have you believe that kids sat inside and zoned out in front of their computers all day. While that was probably true, he knew giving them somewhere to go, to run, and burn off that energy was crucial. Kids would always gravitate to sunshine and grass. It was in their DNA.
Pulling into a spot in the back of the parking lot, Maverick surveyed the empty spaces closer and saw there were lots of spaces for those that needed them. Even when he was on crutches, he wouldn’t use his disabled parking permit. It was total macho bullshit, but he didn’t care. He still had one good leg and he’d use it until that one fell off too.
Walking into the rehab building, he made a beeline for the front counter and signed in on the clipboard without speaking to the man behind the counter. He did glance up at him, but that was all he felt like offering.
He took a seat and decided against picking up the water-stained magazine on the table. Since he wasn’t a senior citizen nor a diabetic, there probably wasn’t anything in the magazine relating to him. He sniffed the room and noted a number of things he expected. There were cleaning products, harsh germ-killing and pungent. There was the smell of blood, Betadine, and burned flesh from cauterization. Someone was new to rehab. There was the smell of old coffee sitting too long in the pot in the corner.