Law & Beard

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Winnie

  “And what’s your chief complaint?” I asked the young girl.

  The girl was cute. A blonde in her early twenties. Her face, though, had a tinge of green to it.

  “I have pain,” she whispered, then pointed down to her crotch. “Down there.”

  I didn’t even blink at that.

  Pain ‘down there’ was a pretty normal occurrence in the ER. This complaint was seen quite a bit and I wasn’t sure anything could phase me anymore.

  “When did this pain start?” I asked, standing up and walking around the desk.

  “Ummmm, about four days ago. My boyfriend and I did some…things. It got pretty wild, but neither he nor I have been able to really remember what we did. I just know that next morning I woke up with my downstairs hurting and a killer hangover.”

  Oh, to be young again.

  I nearly grinned as I tugged the blood pressure cuff off the wall and took her vitals.

  “Have you been running any fever?” I questioned as I aired the cuff up.

  “No?”

  “You’re unsure?”

  She nodded. “I’ve been cold. More so than usual.”

  I took her blood pressure, wrote it down, and then reached for the thermometer.

  101.8.

  “You have nearly a 102 degree fever,” I told her. “Fevers sometimes make you have chills. Especially one this high.”

  The girl nodded miserably.

  “Okay, let’s get you back there.”

  I gestured for her to follow me, and then walked her back to the only room available.

  With the full moon around the corner, we’d had an influx of crazy patients today. Hopefully this girl would just be routine.

  “All right,” I pointed at the bed. “There’s a gown here for you to change into. You can leave your bra on, but everything else has to come off. They will need a urine specimen. The cup is on the counter. Bring it back here to this room. Then have a seat and a nurse will be right with you.”

  I walked out and waved when I saw Sean pushing through the ambulance entrance, followed shortly by his much sexier father. God, the man did things to me.

  An excited shiver rolled over me as our eyes connected, and I met him at the nurses’ station with a smile on my face.

  “Hey,” I whispered.

  He winked and then turned to talk to Dr. Tommy Tom who’d come up on his other side. I brushed my backside up against him as I let Ellen know that she had a patient.

  “She’s complaining of pain down below,” I explained.

  Ellen nodded, looking a little frazzled.

  “Can you come in with me?” she asked. “All the other nurses are busy with other patients. You can start an IV for me once I get a look at what’s going on…if it’s needed, that is.”

  I nodded and turned to follow her, and felt Steel’s hand brush my backside.

  I grinned at him over my shoulder but kept going.

  Once inside the room, I pulled the curtains open and smiled at the patient.

  She was now in nothing but a gown just like I’d instructed.

  She was shifting on her bottom, just like she’d done in the triage room, wincing every time she did.

  Poor girl.

  “Hi, my name is Ellen. I’m going to take a look at you today.”

  “Nice to meet you,” the girl lied.

  My lips twitched.

  “All right, scoot to the edge and let’s have a look,” Ellen said.

  Five minutes later, we were back at the nurses’ station, Ellen standing next to Dr. Tommy.

  “Uhhh,” Ellen said. “Could you come look at something for me?”

  Dr. Tommy’s eyebrows rose. “Why?”

  Ellen was completely competent and rarely asked Tommy for anything. This time, though…

  “Ummm,” Ellen just shook her head. “I just…I don’t even know what’s going on right now.”

  Tommy shrugged and gave Steel a look. Steel nodded at him. “I’ll wait.”

  Tommy Tom and Ellen disappeared into the exam room.

  “What’s going on?”

  I knew that he wasn’t asking in general, but what was wrong enough to warrant Tommy Tom’s help.

  I shook my head.

  “That woman has some things wrong downstairs,” I finally settled on. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Tommy Tom came out long moments later and gestured at me with his head.

  I went.

  “Can you go get me a suture kit, some saline flushes and a whole lot of gauze pads?”

  I nodded and hurried to do what he asked, dropping them off to him a moment later.

  Just when I was about to leave, though, Ellen said, “Please, stay. We may need assistance.”

  I didn’t want to stay.

  Not when I’d seen what I’d seen.

  “Ummm,” I hesitated.

  Ellen gave me a look that said if I left, she was going to kill me after she was done.

  I nearly laughed.

  I stayed, but I stayed far enough back that I couldn’t quite see what was being done.

  Not until Dr. Tommy moved slightly, allowing me to see what was between the girl’s legs.

  Maggots.

  Lots, and lots of maggots.

  I nearly lost my lunch.

  An hour later, I was white-faced, and walking out with Dr. Tommy and Ellen.

  “That was…” I tried to find the words.

  “That was a goddamn nightmare,” Dr. Tommy muttered.

  “What happened for it to get that way?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Apparently, she thought that it’d be a grand idea to shove a piece of chicken up there for her unborn baby to have something to eat…”

  I nearly vomited in my mouth.

  “And it rotted?”

  “And it rotted,” he agreed.

  “Gah, Dr. Tommy…” I did a full body shiver.

  “Call me Tommy already. I feel like we should be forgoing the formal names, don’t you?” he joked.

  I shrugged.

  Yes, and no.

  Steel was the president of the motorcycle club, The Dixie Wardens, or better known as the Dixie Warden Rejects around these parts. Steel spent a lot of time with them, and Tommy was right. I spent a lot of time with them, too. I probably should call him by his actual name instead of adding the ‘Dr.’ in front of it. But I couldn’t do it. Not at work, anyway.

  At least, that was what I’d found to be as of late. I’d tried, multiple times, but I didn’t want anyone at work that wasn’t related to this little group of ours to see me being treated any differently.

  I already was semi-liked by all the other nurses and doctors. Apparently, they didn’t think that I needed special treatment because of my stroke. I moved about ‘perfectly fine’ and I could ‘do anything that the other techs did.’

  Well, I couldn’t.

  I still got fatigued easily. I couldn’t pick up a patient because my legs just didn’t have the strength to do it anymore, and honestly? I didn’t want to chance a relapse.

  So, I didn’t do everything the other techs did. Also meaning that I didn’t do the heavy lifting for the nurses and Dr. Stratton, AKA Dr. Douchebag, that didn’t like me.

  Dr. Tommy had never treated me like that, nor had Ellen or Tally.

  Yet, the other nurses, mainly the other charge nurse, didn’t like that she had to do extra work when I was on shift.

  “I’ll try,” I lied.

  Dr. Tommy—Tommy Tom—narrowed his eyes at me. “Why do I get the feeling that you’ll never call me that?”

  “Because, Dr. Tommy,” Tally said, coming up beside him. “She doesn’t want the staff to think you’re giving her preferential treatment because she’s boning the president of your motorcycle club.”

  I choked on my spit. “Really?” I choked out.

  Tally blinked her eyes innocently. “Well, ar
en’t you?”

  I bit my lip and felt my face flush. “Well, yeah.”

  “Then, to be honest, you’re going to get preferential treatment. Just like I do. Just like Naomi does when she comes in the door. All of the women that belong to a Dixie Warden are going to be treated differently by the guys in the club. That’s how it should be, and how it always will be. We’re in a league of our own, honey.”

  Was it bad that I really liked the idea of being in a league of my own with these women? Because I truly felt it in my soul when they all gathered around me whether it be at parties, here at work, or hell, even when I saw them randomly around town.

  When Angelina and Matt had hurt me so badly, I never thought I’d have a friend again. Friending was too hard. The expectations that one had when friendship was involved literally scared me. But around the women of the Dixie Warden Rejects? Yeah, there were no expectations. Only friendship. No strings attached whatsoever.

  And I also knew that none of them would ever do to me what Angelina did.

  Then again, Steel would rather rip his own heart out than hurt me.

  I knew that from the bottom of my soul.

  Speaking of…

  “When did Steel leave?”

  “When are you going to call him Big Papa?” Dr. Tommy asked. “It sounds really weird when you call him Steel. I think there were only two people in this world that called him that, and both of them are dead.”

  My brows rose. “You’re telling me I have to call him Big Papa?” I found myself grinning. “That’d be kind of funny, actually, when we were going at it and I was like “Oh, Big Papa. Yes, Big Papa.” I paused when Tommy Tom and Tally burst into laughter. “It’s kind of like calling him daddy. I’ll never be able to do it. Especially with our age gap. People would look at us weird.”

  “Not us,” Tommy Tom wheezed.

  “We could totally do the daddy thing if you wanted, but only in the privacy of our own bedroom,” Steel’s amused voice said from behind me.

  I whirled around on the tip of one toe and gasped. “What are you doing here, Steel?”

  My face was flaming. Again.

  And Steel’s amused face wasn’t freakin’ helping.

  I started to back away, but he lurched forward and looped his arm around my hip, bringing me into his hard body.

  I patted his chest and smiled, trying to play what I’d said off, but he wasn’t going to let it go.

  “Is that something that interests you?” he teased.

  I shook my head forcefully. “No.”

  He grinned. “We’ll see.”

  ***

  “Ride me, baby,” he ordered five hours later, in the dead of night.

  He’d come home so late that I’d already been asleep when he’d arrived—turning off the alarm and unlocking the door on his own this time.

  I hadn’t even felt him get into bed with me.

  I had, however, felt his hands on my thighs and parting them.

  I’d been partially awake when he’d swung me up over his hips and pushed himself inside of me.

  And now, I was really, really awake as I rode him to completion.

  “Fuck,” he gasped. “Oh, fuck. Don’t stop.”

  I tried, really I did, but the way he’d taken me over the last twenty minutes, despite me being on top, had taken everything out of me. Now all I was able to do was writhe on top of him while my orgasm took me over.

  Before I’d come all the way down, he rolled, placing me on my back in the bed.

  Then he started to take me with rough, hard thrusts.

  “Oh, God,” I mewled. “That feels so good.”

  His cock. The weight of his body pushing me farther into the bed. The breath stalling in my lungs.

  Everything about it was so much of a turn on that one orgasm rolled into the next.

  And just when I felt his body tense, I teasingly called him the name I’d been refraining from using in bed.

  “Fill me up with your cum, Big Papa.”

  He did.

  Oh boy, did he.

  I’d have to remember to say that again to him the next time we did this very thing.

  Chapter 18

  What starts with a P and ends with -orn?

  -Popcorn

  (You’re such a perv.)

  Steel

  “So, will we be like…stepbrother and stepsister?”

  I snorted as, Sean on one side, Conleigh on the other, sat glaring at each other.

  “Conleigh,” I tried to contain my laugh.

  “You refused to let my mother work on your ambulance with you.” Conleigh narrowed her eyes at Sean.

  Sean didn’t even blink.

  “I refused to let your mother work with me because she can’t lift a cot,” he said, explaining why he’d denied Winnie a job.

  I hadn’t known that happened, and Winnie wasn’t sore about it. Conleigh, apparently, was.

  “You’re a shithead,” Conleigh retorted. “My mother doesn’t need to lift the cot. That’s what the EMT is there for if she needs help.”

  “Company protocol says she needs to be able to lift the cot. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them,” Sean shot back.

  Conleigh lifted her lip in a silent snarl. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. Ninety-nine percent of the time there’s a volunteer firefighter or paid firefighter on the scene. I’m not stupid. You can’t tell me that she’ll only ever be alone lifting that cot. If, say, the EMT couldn’t do it, there’s always a family member there you could possibly ask for help. Or, hell, even a bystander of whatever scene you’re on. It’d be a cold day in hell before there was no one there that could help. And my mom’s getting stronger every day. She’d been PRN—part time as needed—since she moved here ten years ago. Then she had her accident, and you declared her unfit for duty. That extra two hundred dollars a month paid for my baby brother’s clothes.”

  Sean’s jaw firmed.

  I’d bet my balls he hadn’t known anything about Winnie when he denied her working there.

  “He hadn’t had a new pair of pants in a while until your father bought him some for his birthday last week.” Conleigh rubbed salt into the wound.

  And it was a wound.

  I knew for a fact that Sean hadn’t wanted to cut Winnie. He literally hated when someone couldn’t pass, but he was right. There were rules set in place for everyone’s safety, not just the patient’s.

  But, Conleigh was correct, too.

  Ninety-nine percent of the time, a medic wasn’t alone on scene. There was always a volunteer firefighter, paid firefighter, and sometimes even a cop on scene along with other random people—such as family or friends of the patient.

  It was possible that she never would’ve been alone.

  Sean, however, being an administrator, couldn’t pass people because he wanted to pass them. There were rules. There always would be, and it sucked, but it was what it was.

  “Okay, who wants pizza?”

  Winnie’s ‘pizza’ was homemade.

  And, twenty minutes later, I found out that homemade pizza was better than ordering it.

  “Holy shit, Winnie,” I moaned as I took another bite of food. “This is amazing.”

  Winnie smiled.

  “My parents used to own an Italian restaurant before my mom died. Dad got too sick to run it by himself…then I got pregnant right when I would’ve been able to help. He was so embarrassed by me that he refused to let me be anywhere near his restaurant—his pride and joy.”

  I don’t think she’d meant to add that last part because she winced and looked at Conleigh.

  Conleigh didn’t look worried, though.

  Thankfully.

  The girl had a short trigger and lost it at the drop of a hat. Luckily this wasn’t one of those times.

  It was news to me, however, that Winnie still had a living parent.

  I hadn’t known anything about them, and Winnie
rarely, if ever, spoke about them.

  “Did you know that when a male honey bee mates with a female honey bee, the male ejaculates and then his penis explodes? Sometimes a queen can mate with up to fourteen other male honey bees. And she leaves a trail of broken wieners in her wake.”

  The table was silent until Sean said, “Interesting.”

  “Why would you want to mate when your penis exploded?” Cody asked the table in general.

  Naomi started to snicker.

  Winnie only shook her head.

  “That’s the million-dollar question, son,” I told Cody. “And one we’ll probably never know the answer to. Kind of like the praying mantis and the female ripping the head off when she’s finished.”

  Cody blinked at me with wide eyes. “What?”

  “Uhhh,” I hesitated.

  Was I not supposed to tell him stuff like this?

  “When male and female praying mantis’ mate, the female praying mantis rips the head off of the male’s body when she’s through,” Winnie said without missing a beat. “Now, do you want pizza?”

  Cody nodded. “Did you know that Americans consume over three billion pizzas a year?”

  I just shook my head and stuffed another bite of pizza into my mouth.

  Having my family all together like this was making my heart fucking happy.

  “Dad,” Sean said, interrupting my inner thoughts. “Did you ever think to share that you were the only freakin’ person in the department that didn’t have a ballistic vest?”

  I blinked, then turned knowing eyes toward Winnie’s direction. Winnie, who was avidly eating her pizza and looking anywhere but at me.

  “I didn’t think it was important,” I answered.

  “You just got my kid a freakin’ jungle gym for her birthday that cost over a grand. That could’ve easily gone to your vest,” he said, sounding annoyed.

  “Yeah,” I agreed, blowing a breath out in defeat. “But she wanted it.”

  “She also wants to have her fuckin’ grandfather around when she graduates, or goes to prom, or gets goddamned married.”

  I sighed. “Sean, I’m not allowed to buy my own things for the department. It’s company policy. Everything that I have has to come out of my allowance for uniforms, and seven hundred dollar vests aren’t in my allowance.”

  The new bylaw was some bullshit rule that the city had come up with regarding new police procedures, and how police officers needed to be held to a higher standard or some bullshit.