“What happened?” he asked me as he continued to poke and probe.
I glanced at the two cops standing there and bit the inside of my lips. No way was I saying anything in front of them.
Doctor Jensen saw my concerns and asked the cops to step outside. Maybe go grab some coffee.
The two of them looked at each other then both shrugged their shoulders.
Once they were on the other side of the curtain, I relaxed just a little. Doctor Jensen continued to stare at me, waiting.
“I got jumped,” I said as I shrugged my shoulders. A sharp pain shot up the back of my neck, reminding me that I’d twisted something back there.
Doctor Jensen continued to stare at me with a deep frown. “They don’t usually put the victim in handcuffs.”
Again, I shrugged and said, “Just because I was jumped, doesn’t mean I came out on the worse end. You should see the other guys. They’re probably on their way here now. I’m pretty sure the three of them are worse off than me. There is at least one broken jaw. A torn ACL, maybe two. And probably a ruptured spleen.”
He looked at me as his brow furrowed. “That explains the handcuffs.”
What could I say, I was trapped. If I had let them beat the crap out of me then I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. But because I had fought back. Now I was the bad guy. Sometimes this world didn’t make sense.
He slowly shook his head as he started to write stuff on his clipboard. While he was doing that the nurse started cleaning up my wounds.
“That’s going to need stitches,” Amy’s dad said as he pointed to the cut above my eye.
“it won’t be the first time,” I answered.
“Exactly,” he said as he shook his head.
My stomach turned over as I realized this was going to affect Amy and me. Her father was going to hate me. He might even try to stop us from seeing each other. Suddenly, the idea of jail wasn’t my worst nightmare. Now I had something else to worry about.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Amy
As I paced back and forth waiting, an ambulance pulled up. I gasped when Willie Dawson and two other boys climbed down. One of them was lowered into a wheelchair, an air cast around his leg. The others were wrapped in bandages with cuts and bruises.
What had happened? They looked like they had lived through a train wreck. Had Luke done this? Was this why he was in trouble?
Willie shot me a hateful stare as he was led past me. My stomach clenched in fear. Why did he hate me? What had I ever done to him?
The admitting nurse jumped up to lead them to the opposite side of the ER. They did this I knew, to keep enemies apart. What had Luke done? I noticed one of the cops that had brought Luke in step out from the back and pull out a notebook as he followed the three boys.
My heart sank. This was serious. And if the three of them looked like that. What had happened to Luke? There had been three of them. What had they done to him?
I was just getting ready to storm into the back when my father stepped out of the ER and gave me a quick smile. My heart began beating again. I had been so worried.
“He is going to be fine,” he said as he put two hands on my shoulder. “At least health wise. I don’t know about his legal problems.”
“What happened?” I demanded. Maybe finally someone could tell me what was going on.
“It seems he beat up three other students.”
“They started it,” I said immediately. “I know they did. They’ve been after him ever since he came home.”
My father slowly shook his head. “It is out of our hands.”
“What’s wrong with Luke? Why did they bring him here?”
My dad took a deep breath. I could he was wrestling with himself over telling me.
“Dad, you know Luke would want me to know. If you don’t tell me I will have to go in there and find out for myself.”
He sighed and nodded. “A concussion, some cuts and bruises and maybe some broken ribs. He’s headed up to X-ray right now.”
My insides calmed down. I had imagined all the worse. What he was telling me was that Luke would recover and we could go back to normal. I sighed heavily. “When will he be released. I can drive him home.”
Dad frowned and slowly shook his head. “We’ll be done with him in the next hour. But I don’t know if he will be released. Those boys were beaten pretty badly.”
“What?” I yelled. “What do you mean not released. It wasn’t his fault. What are they going to do?”
He shrugged his shoulders and pulled back. “I’ve got to go back in and help. Why don’t you go home? I will call you when I find out what is going on.”
My brow scrunched up in disbelief. Who did he think I was? But I also knew it was useless to argue. I nodded for him to go back in as I turned to leave. My father frowned for a moment, obviously surprised at my reaction. Then he shrugged slightly and left me there.
I waited until the door closed behind him then raced down the hall. I knew a back way to the X-Ray lab.
As I came around the corner I slid to a halt. A heavyset cop was sitting outside the lab flipping through a magazine. He looked up and frowned at me. Obviously remembering our encounter in the school when I’d tried to stop them from taking Luke.
I glanced at the lab door and then back at the cop. What should I do? I needed to see Luke. Sighing heavily, I plopped down in the chair next to the policeman and tried to control the bubbling worry tearing at my stomach.
“It’d go a lot better for him,” the cop said, “if he would tell us what happened.”
I bit the inside of my lip. If Luke wasn’t telling them then I wasn’t going to. Not until I had talked to him. The cop looked at me for a long moment then shook his head and returned to reading his magazine.
My insides continued to churn and gnaw at me. How could I fix this? What was going to happen to Luke? It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t the world see that?
We sat there, waiting until the lab door opened and Luke was wheeled out in a wheelchair. Our eyes locked and for just a moment my world felt right again. He looked so hurt. His face was puffy, black and blue. A long string of stitches above his right eye tore at me. But it was the pain in his eyes that really tugged at me.
Then I saw the handcuff around his wrist attached to the chair. I cringed inside and jumped up and raced towards him before the cop could stop me.
“Are you okay,” I asked as I gently pushed the hair out of his eyes.
He gave me that silly smirk of his and said, “I’ve had better days.”
My heart melted as I wrapped my arms around him and gave him a hug.
He groaned a little and I jumped back, terrified I had hurt him.
“That’s enough,” the cop said as he stepped between us.
“What are you going to do to him?” I asked as I put my hands on my hips and stared the cop down.
“Stay out of this Amy,” Luke said as he shook his head.
“We’re taking him down to county. He’ll probably get booked for assault. Unless he’s willing to tell us what really happened.” The cop lifted an eyebrow as he stared at Luke and I realized they were pressing him because they wanted something on the Dawsons.
Luke gritted his teeth and ignored him. Instead, he looked up at me and shrugged.
“Just tell them,” I said to Luke as an anger began to build inside of me. Why couldn’t he see that he could end this all right now if he just told them what they wanted to know?
“They wouldn’t believe me anyway,” he said with a sadness to his eyes.
“There were three of them,” I exclaimed. “What? They think you attacked three guys at the same time?”
He just shook his head and I knew he was thinking about his record and how that would cloud people’s judgment. How they would jump to the wrong conclusion. Even my own father was like that. I could see it all. It was Luke’s word against theirs and he was a known criminal.
My heart broke with the unfairness of it all.
Maybe the only way he could get out of this was to tell them how the Dawsons were pressing him for his gang contacts. But he wouldn’t. Not Luke.
Luke sighed heavily, obviously upset that I didn’t understand. How could I understand? I wanted to yell at him. This unspoken code of his. This refusal to cooperate. Where did it come from? Why? It was so stupid.
He glanced at the cop and nodded down the hall. The cop shook his head and started pushing the wheelchair back to the ER.
I sighed heavily as I watched them turn the corner. My heart broke. Luke was going to throw it all away. Why?
Realizing they had left me, I hurried after and followed them all the way to the ER until they took him in the back and once again, I was blocked.
I slumped into a chair in the waiting room just in time to see Jenny and her mom rush in. I jumped up and pulled Jenny into a quick hug.
“He’s okay,” I told them. “But the cops … I don’t know.”
Jenny’s mom frowned then sat down and stared at the floor. “Why? Why does he keep doing this.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I told her with a little more forcefulness than I should have.
She looked at me with heavy doubt. Jenny wiped at her eyes and sat down on the other side of me.
The three of us sat there. Lost, each suffering in our own way.
.o0o.
Luke
I lay on the gurney and thought about the day I brought Amy in after our night in the forest. The smells still tickled the back of my throat, but the sounds were different. The hustle and bustle of a busy ER. Distant conversations, machine beeps, and the constant movement of people all served to remind me where I was and why I was there.
Why did my life changing moments seem to revolve around this place? Every bad memory in my life ended up in the Emergency Room.
I must have sat there for half an hour before Amy’s dad walked in holding up some X-rays and peering through them at the light above.
“A hairline crack, here. See it?” he said as he pointed to the X-ray. He could have been showing me a picture of a starship for all I knew.
“All we can do is wrap you up tight and give it time,” he added as he pointed at the ace bandages the nurse had wrapped around me earlier.
I nodded as I swallowed hard. That was it then. Next step jail. Would I get a chance to see Amy before I left? Probably not and I knew instinctively that this was the last man to ask.
As if to confirm my worse fears he put the X-ray down and frowned at me as he studied me for a long minute before slowly shaking his head.
“I want you to stop seeing Amy,” he said with a heavy sigh.
My heart slammed to a halt as if I’d been kicked in the stomach.
“She has a life in front of her. A good life,” he continued, “I was willing to ignore this high school crush. But not now. I won’t let you pull her down into your world.”
I stared at him as my mind raced to try and figure out what to say. But deep down. I knew he was right. I think I had always known it. Amy was going places and I was just an anchor on her future. The realization sent a pain to my heart. A deep, bruising pain that I knew would never go away.
My head slumped to my chest as I realized my world was over.
“So, we are agreed then? You will stop seeing Amy. You have to face it, you are not good enough for her and never will be.”
My guts twisted themselves into a knot. The man was right.
The curtain behind swished open as Amy stepped in, her eyes as big as apples.
“DAD!” she cried.
My heart jumped. Had she been listening the whole time? Had she heard me fail to defend her. To fight for us? Or had it just been the last bit?
The fear and hurt in her eyes told me all I needed to know. She had heard enough. But that didn’t change the fact her father was right. She didn’t belong in this mess. My life was a shambles. The last thing she needed was me being in her way.
“Amy …” I started.
She turned on me like a lioness ready to make a kill. “Don’t you dare agree with him.”
I swallowed hard, how had I let things get to this point.
“He’s right. We aren’t meant for each other. You deserve better.”
Her face drained of all color as she scowled at me. I could tell she was both angry and hurt. It tore at my soul but I knew I needed to end this now. Like pulling a bandage off a sore wound.
“We’re done. This isn’t going to work,” I said as I held her stare. If I looked away she’d know I didn’t want it to end. But I had to do this. I was headed to jail and a wasted life. She was headed to college and wonderfulness.
No. This was the only way.
Her mouth dropped open in surprise followed by a flash of pain behind her eyes that would haunt me for the rest of my life. I had let her down. I had failed her.
“We can fix this,” she said. “You’re not guilty. Eventually, they will realize that.”
I could only shake my head. “Even then, it won’t work. The two of us. You know it. You’ve got a future I can’t be a part of.”
She closed her mouth and shot her father an evil stare just as my friendly shadow stepped in and said, “We done Doc? I need to process him before my shift ends.”
Amy shot an evil stare at the cop as her father nodded and signed a piece of paper before handing it to him.
That was it then. Like the final nail in my coffin. The cop unclipped the handcuffs from the bed and had me stand up so he could handcuff my hands behind my back.
My cheeks grew warm with embarrassment. I couldn’t believe Amy was seeing this happen. It just confirmed everything I had told her.
“What? You can’t do this,” she said to the cop. “We aren’t done.”
“Yes, we are Amy,” I said before I nodded to the cop. He grabbed the handcuffs just in case I changed my mind and stopped being cooperative. I think even he knew how close I was to losing it.
Sighing, I flexed against the handcuffs and growled under my breath. I was going back to jail. And this was big boy’s jail. The kind of place that could ruin a guy’s life in about five minutes.
I was throwing it all away. I knew I was. But it was the only way to make her life what it should be. The fact that it was tearing me to pieces was beside the point. This had to be about Amy. She might not see it at the moment. But eventually, she would realize I was right.
As I passed her, Amy started to reach out to me but pulled back as it finally sank in. We were over.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Amy
A numbness settled over me. A cloud of disbelief mixed with a scrambled mind that fought to understand. I had gone from the luckiest girl in the world to a devastated wreck. How was this possible?
Every thought was tinged with fear and pain. Every emotion from anger, to hope, to terror, flowed through me on repeat cycle. Over and over.
I watched them lead Luke away and my heart shattered. It was over, it was really over. He didn’t think I was worth fighting for.
But he needed me. Especially at a time like this. Didn’t he understand? How could he toss me aside like this? Especially now. And my father … A burning rage flared inside of me as I turned on him and gave him my most hateful stare.
“Amy,” he said as he reached for me.
I shrugged away from him and stormed out of the ER.
He had ruined everything and I would never forgive him. I knew deep in my soul that our lives had changed. Never again would I look on him as the fountain of knowledge and what was right. I wouldn’t accept his belief for anything. He could say the sky was blue and I wouldn’t believe him.
The realization of what I had lost with my dad hurt but not near as much as what I had lost with Luke.
As I got outside, I stepped up next to Mrs. Prescott and Jenny. The cops were putting Luke in the back of a police car. A hand on his head to make sure he didn’t slam it into the car. When they slammed the door, he twisted and our eyes met. He l
ooked so lost, so alone. My heart broke. Even now. Even after he had kicked me to the curb, even now I still loved him.
He grimaced, then turned to stare forward. Dismissing me. Dismissing us. The us that I thought would last forever.
As the police car drove away, I felt my world disappear.
Luke’s Mom and Jenny both put an arm around me. The three of us stood there, too stunned to even process what was going on. Finally, Luke’s mom gave a heavy sigh and said, “I guess I need to go talk to a lawyer. I should probably use the same one as last time.”
Jenny wiped at a tear as she nodded. I looked at them and it sank in. It was over. Really. There was no hope in the world.
.o0o.
Luke
The loud clang of the cell door slamming shut sent a shiver down my spine. I had vowed to never hear that sound ever again. Once again, I had failed.
The cell smelled like Clorox, piss, and fear. That unique aroma of our finer penal institutions. The kind of smell that forced a man to examine his life and his many failings.
Taking a deep breath, I rubbed my wrists and sat down on the edge of the metal bench and examined the stainless steel sink and commode. This is just a holding cell, I reminded myself. The hell that was real jail still lay in my future.
As I closed my eyes, I let the words of Doctor Jensen sink in. He was right. So right. I didn’t deserve to be in the same world as Amy. She was destined for so much more. He was right. I wasn’t good enough.
The realization sat at the bottom of my stomach.
As I came to accept my worst fears, I wondered what my life might have been like if things had been different. Those flights of fancy automatically pulled me into thinking of my future without Amy.
A long dark torture chamber lay before me. There could be no other way. In fact, the only reason I wasn’t already headed there was that my parole had expired last month. If that had still been hanging over my head, I’d be back inside so fast, I’d have to add whiplash to my busted ribs.
My Best Friend's Brother (Hometown Heroes Book 3) Page 17