by Tahlia Gold
I shrug my shoulders, play dumb. I’m sure they don’t buy it but they finally give up.
After they leave, Webber barges in after them. She’s pissed—to put it mildly. I get up to leave but she screams at me to sit down. I do, at least for now, but I’m ready to bolt if she gets crazy.
This is what I was really hoping to avoid. The police I can handle: it’s simple, just don’t say anything. But Webber has me by the proverbial balls and it’s up to her if she’s going to crush them in her fist or let me go.
She’s actually smiling now. That cannot be good.
“You know,” she says, “you’re going to be kicked out for this.”
I don’t say anything. My heart falls down into my stomach. I’m numb.
Webber puts her hands on the table, leans in close to me. “I know you stole medical supplies. That’s a felony. I talked to security. They’re going to pull the tapes for me and I’m going to review them and if it shows you took so much as a piece of tape you’re going to be kicked out of residency and the hospital is going to press charges and prosecute you as much as we can.”
I completely forgot about the cameras. Of course there’s cameras. How could I be so stupid? My hands go up to my face, covering it. She has me. I don’t even bother trying to hide; it doesn’t matter now. Tears are welling up in my eyes.
“You’ll never be a doctor.” She’s spitting the words out at me. “You’re not fit for it.”
I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry but I can’t help it. The tears are streaming out of my eyes. I try to say I’m sorry but my voice cracks and I feel like I can’t breathe. Everything I’ve worked so hard for is being flushed down the toilet. I’m struggling to get air into my lungs. “Please.” I finally choke that single word out through the mess of salty tears and mucus coming out of me.
She holds a finger up at me. “Stop it. You made your bed now sleep in it.”
30
Dylan
It’s around 2am when Jess shows up again. I haven’t slept at all since she left. My mind is racing. Viking has been trying to keep me company while he guards the door with a twelve gauge sawed off. Every now and then he tries to make small talk but I haven’t been much of a conversation partner. There’s just too much to think about. Too many things to weigh.
Jess’ face is red. Her eyes are all puffy like she’s been crying non-stop for hours.
“What happened?” I ask. I try to get up to comfort her but my body says no way. That and I’m connected to the wall by a tube in my chest.
She comes to me, buries her face into my sternum, and starts bawling.
“What wrong?” I say.
She doesn’t answer. The only thing coming out are long, desperate sobs.
I look to Viking for help but he just turns away, embarrassed to be watching. I pat her back.
Finally, she calms down a bit and says something I don’t understand.
“What babe?” I try to put on my most understanding voice.
She raises up, away from my arms. Her eyes lock onto me; there’s venom in them. “It’s fucking ruined,” she says flatly. “Webber says she’s going to find video of me stealing supplies and that’s going to be the end of my career.”
Jess just folds her arms over her chest, tears and mascara streaking down her face.
Fuck.
I feel like a scumbag. This is one-hundred percent my fault. If I had gone to the hospital none of this would have happened. Maybe I would have ended up doing some time but what’s that compared to ruining this amazing girl’s life. Not to mention all the patients she won’t be able to treat if she does get kicked out.
This is exactly the thing I didn’t want to happen. This is exactly why I was avoiding getting into a relationship with her.
Damn it. I’m so fucking stupid.
And for what? So I could get laid? I could have done that with any girl. So I could play out some teenage fantasy? Pretend that I’m a normal guy with a normal life?
Fuck!
I pull her to me, hold her. I can’t believe she lets me, but it seems to be comforting her. What else can I do?
What else can I do?
My mind starts turning on this new problem immediately. This is even more important than the club, than Road Dawg, than my life. More important than anything.
“Hey,” I say. “Shhh. Don’t cry.”
She pulls away again, looking at me. She stops crying for a moment, wipes the tears away. I think she’s finished but then it all comes again. Worse than before. She lunges into my arms again and pain shoots through my chest but I ignore it. Hell, I deserve it. I deserve all the pain in the world for causing this.
“What did she say exactly?” I ask. “That she had the security footage already or that she was going to get it?”
“She said she was going to get it.”
She doesn’t have it yet. That means there’s a chance. I try to get up but the screaming pain coming from the hole in my chest reminds me once again that I’m tethered to the bed.
“What do you need?” she asks.
“I need my phone. I need to make a call.”
She gets up and gets me the phone.
I start to dial but I realize I don’t want her to hear what I’m going to say. I know she doesn’t want me to do what I’m thinking about doing. But it’s for her own good and she’s too much of a goody-two-shoes to realize it. That’s why I love her.
“I need to make a call,” I tell her.
She’s looking at me, frowning, not understanding. “So do it.”
“It’s private,” I say.
That was the wrong thing to say.
She screaming at me again. “It’s fucking private? Amazing! I gave up my entire career for you. I came here to take care of you, to make sure you aren’t dead and you have to make a private phone call? Fuck you!”
I sigh. It hurts like hell. She’s right. I’m not thinking straight.
She doesn’t say anything else. It seems like she’s calmed down a little. She checks the bucket my tube is emptying this nasty red fluid that’s a mix of blood and who-knows-what into. She tells me I’m doing a lot better. Something’s changed in her tone of voice. Now it’s like a doctor talking to a patient, cold and distant.
“You,” she says, “should be able to get off the tube by the morning and go onto a wet seal. You won’t have to be here to do that but you’ll still be immobile for a couple days.”
Then she grabs her purse and starts to walk out the back door.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
She turns to me. “I’m going home Dylan.” Her voice is slow, plodding. “And I’m going to sleep. Hopefully, I wake up in the morning and find out this was all a bad dream. A nightmare. I want to wake up in a world where I haven’t messed up my life by getting involved with a criminal.”
It feels like a shotgun blast to the face, but she’s completely right.
I let her go without saying anything.
After I hear her car pull away, I call Darkside. I know he’ll be on my side. He hates Road Dawg. He’s probably plotting his own move against him as we speak. He was best friends with Prez.
“Hey,” I say. “I have a favor to ask.”
31
Jess
I wake to the worst headache I can ever remember having. My eyes feel like they’re going to explode out of my head every time my heart beats. There’s an empty box of white wine lying next to me on the floor surrounded by an ocean of used tissues. On the floor... I didn’t even make it to the bed. I’m trying but I can’t remember going to sleep. I must have just passed out in a drunken, depressed stupor. My mouth feels like it’s full of cotton that’s been soaked in rubbing alcohol. I need hydration, stat. Maybe when I get to the hospital I can get somebody to hook up a saline IV for me.
If they even let me in the door, that is.
Everything that happened with Dylan last night comes back to me. What I said to him… I shouldn’
t have left angry like that. But it’s the way I felt. It’s the way I still feel. Being involved with him was such a bad idea. It still is a bad idea. What the fuck was I thinking? My life has spiraled out of control to the point where I’m drinking boxed wine and crying and feeling sorry for myself and waking up with the imprint of my crappy apartment carpet on my face.
I have to break it off with him; and the thought sends me into another round of crying. Break it off… if he even lives long enough for me to do that. He could still get some infection or have a complication from the chest tube or the gaping bullet hole in his chest. Or Road Dawg… Road Dawg could decide to come after him. Jesus. It’s too much to think about.
Should I even go to work? The worst possible scenarios start to bombard me. I’m going to get to work, pull into the parking lot, and a SWAT team is going to swarm around me—helmets, bullet-proof vests, rifles, all aimed at me, and even a can of tear gas for good measure—and they’re going to have an orange jumpsuit with ankle shackles all ready for me and we’ll just go straight to prison. I guess we’ll have a trial first but it will be a formality. The judge will look at the facts and just frown, shake his head. “So much potential, wasted,” he’ll say. My parents will come of course—because they support me always—but they’ll be crying and disappointed. “How could you have thrown your life away like this,” they’ll say. And I won’t have a good answer—it just happened.
That’s not true though. It didn’t just happen; I made concrete choices and those choices had consequences which I now have to face. Maybe prison won’t be so bad. I could probably get a job as a nurse in the infirmary. Give people diarrhea medicine and do minor surgery on ingrown toenails. Jesus.
After entertaining the thought of not going to work—just getting in my car, and going on the run—I manage to drag myself into the shower. Of course I’m going to go. It’s what I do. I always, always show up. I never missed a day of school in my entire life. It didn’t matter how sick I was, how tired I was, how sad I was when my brother died; I always showed up when I was supposed to.
And today is no different. I’m going to keep showing up until they tell me I can’t show up anymore.
But the chances, I think, are quite good that today is the day they tell me to stop showing up. Webber will have her evidence; the residency will have no choice but to kick me out.
And then what? I’ll be a biker girlfriend to Dylan? An old lady? Then the only things I’ll have to worry about are what tattoos I’ll get next. I look at my naked body in the mirror. Maybe a nice, fat neck tattoo—a big, green four-leaf clover to signify how goddamned lucky I am. Something gaudy and in your face that screams out to the world, ‘Hey! I’m unemployable. Don’t even think about trusting me.’
Jesus Christ. I can’t live like this.
On the way to the hospital I stop in to check on Dylan. The vet isn’t there, and there’s a closed sign out front. Viking says they convinced him to stay closed for one more day but that after that he has to open back up.
Dylan doesn’t say much while I’m examining him. That’s fine with me. I’m still extremely hungover despite a double-dose of Ibuprofen and I’m in no mood to talk. He’s healing remarkably fast. It must be his good genes. I’ve never known him to be sick in his life and he has the body of an underwear model.
I change out his tube for a wet seal. It means he doesn’t have to be hooked up to the suction anymore and he seems happy that he’ll have a bit more mobility. I explain to him he’s not out of the woods yet, though. He just nods to everything I tell him; I’m not sure if he’s even listening because he’s so deep into thinking about something. Sometimes I wish I knew what was going on in that head of his.
Viking says they’re going to move to a safe house later today. I don’t ask where it is and they don’t offer any info. He says he can take over from here on the medical side. It doesn’t seem like I have a choice in the matter so I tell him what he needs to do and what he needs to watch out for. I explain the warning signs of infection and that if they develop he needs to go to the hospital immediately. But who knows if he actually will.
Before I go, I say, “Take care of yourself, Dylan.” It feels so final and I’m holding back the tears.
“You too Jess,” he says.
Once I leave, I’m crying my eyes out in the parking lot before I can even get into my car.
When I get to the hospital, Webber is there waiting for me with the most smug look on her face. Of course she is. She’s about to get what she wants most: to see me fail.
“Why,” she says, “did you even bother showing up?”
“I still work here, don’t I?” I’m not in any mood to put up with her shit.
“Not for long,” she says. “Your career is over. I hope being a biker girlfriend pays well because otherwise you’ll never in your life be able to pay off your student loans.”
I don’t give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry but I want to so bad. My whole body wants to break down and sob. I’m so fucking tired. Tired of everything. I don’t do it though. Will power and stubbornness alone are keeping me going at this point.
She can take my job, my career, but she’ll never take my dignity. She’s a bitter old woman with no friends, no love in her life. Her career is everything. At least I took a chance on love. That love destroyed my life but at least I can say I took the risk. I won’t be old and look back and say I didn’t try it. But was it worth the risk? I don’t know. Somehow, despite everything, I think it might have been.
Webber says, “This is perfect timing, actually. I’m going to meet with security right now. You might as well come with me.”
Fuck it. Why not? I can meet my problems head on. “Let’s go,” I say.
Security is on the seventh floor. We get into the elevator—me on one side her all the way on the other. I feel surprisingly okay with this. Maybe this is how prisoners feel on their way to be executed. You know there’s nothing you can do about it so you just get right with yourself and accept what’s happening. It’s kind of freeing in a way. She can’t really hurt me after all. A job doesn’t define your happiness.
When the elevator stops and the doors open there are two bikers standing there waiting to get on the elevator. They let us come out first. I don’t recognize them but I recognize their jackets. Rebel Storm MC. One of them smiles at me and winks. What the hell is this?
“Excuse us,” Webber says. She’s trying to hold it together but she knows something’s up. But what? Could it really be?
She brushes by them; she’s almost running toward the security office. I’m chasing after her. Could it really be?
When I get into the office, Webber is yelling at the guy behind the desk. He’s leaning back in his chair, just taking it in. He’s a nerdy computer guy with long, straight hair. And Webber is really tearing into him. “What do you mean there was a malfunction?” She’s yelling. “You told me you had them yesterday.”
He looks at me, then back at her, taking his time. He shrugs. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. I was wrong. I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Holy shit.
Holy fucking shit.
Dylan did this?
Webber’s face is blood red. There’s fire in her eyes. I think she’s going to kill the guy. But then she turns to me. “Wipe that fucking grin off your face.”
I didn’t even realize I was smiling. I try to stop but I can’t so I have to turn my head away. How did he manage this? I don’t even want to know what he had to give this guy to get the tapes from him. I don’t care. If he were here, I would kiss him and hug him and say thank you a million times.
“Don’t think this means anything,” Webber says. “I’m the director. And if I say you’re done, you’re done. And guess what, honey… You are so done.”
My elation is short-lived. She’s right of course. The tapes don’t mean much. Maybe I won’t be talking to the police now, but if she wants me gone then she can easily figure out a wa
y to make it happen. She doesn’t even need a reason. She hates my guts and this is the final straw.
It’s only a matter of time.
32
Dylan
It’s been a week since the shootout, since Prez died. His death is still burning a hole in my heart. The actual hole in my chest is getting better. Jess did a good job of patching me up with what she had. I’ve been wondering about Jess at all hours of the day and night, wondering what she’s doing, how she’s getting on at work. My guys said they got the tapes from the IT nerd. I just hope it was enough to save her job. God, I wish I could see her. She probably wants nothing to do with me—and that’s probably what’s best. I just wish I could see her. Even if it’s just to say hi. I’ve been busy though.
The pain is dying down now but it still hurts like hell every time I move. I can’t ride a bike yet, but I’ll be back on it soon… if I don’t die today that is.
I’m in the backseat of a cab with the meth head from Vegas on the way to the clubhouse. Some guys got word to me that Road Dawg is holding a meeting today and I intend to confront him, for better or worse, and I don’t have a fucking clue how it’s going to go down but the scrawny fucker sitting next to me, who can’t keep his legs still, is the lynchpin in the entire operation. He didn’t want to come. He really didn’t want to come. I don’t blame him. But I made it clear to him that either he was coming with me or I’d put a bullet in him. Lucky for me he didn’t have the balls to call my bluff. I’m still not sure if it was a bluff or not.
When we get to the clubhouse, I take the meth head—Skinny Pete is his name and for good reason—and sit him down at the bar. Jimmy Mac is behind the bar and surprised to see me there; I can only imagine what kind of rumors Road Dawg has been spreading about me.
“Don’t move a fucking muscle,” I tell Skinny Pete. Then to Jimmy Mac, “If he moves off that stool, for any reason, shoot him.”