by Kendall Duke
The Virgin
And
The Convict
The Virgin and the Convict
By
Kendall Duke
Published by JT Publishing
Copyright © 2019 by Kendall Duke
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright holder.
Printed in the USA by JT Publishing
All material is intended for adult purchase and purview.
Trinity
This had to be the worst of it.
I felt like maybe I’d broken a dozen mirrors without realizing it. Or perhaps a couple black cats had wandered back and forth in front of me earlier today without my noticing. At any rate, something was up, because I was having the absolute worst streak of luck in recent memory—I’m the queen of cheerfully smiling through absolute crappiness, but I hadn’t had so much to deal with in…Well… A year.
My water heater broke. The back window over the sink was cracked and I’d found mouse poop on the counter this morning. My cat still hadn’t come home—and yes, she was black, but also white and tawny and wonderful and certainly not the source of anyone’s bad luck—tonight I got called in to work the graveyard shift, the weird property manager still hadn’t returned my calls, and last, but not least, I’d just received an ecstatic voicemail from Mina, my room-mate, who was delighted to inform me that the guy she met on Tinder was her soul-mate, and they were moving to Spain. Right now.
I loved Mina; we’d worked together for about a year, and she was a great nurse. But the incredible sense of fun that made her such an easy person to get along with also made her difficult to count on. She was impulsive and occasionally even thoughtless. But as a room-mate, those were flaws that matched mine, in an odd way. I could use a little spontaneity because I’m shy and anxious sometimes, and occasionally, her thoughtlessness forced me into social situations that brought new and interesting people into my life. But this took the cake. She’d never done anything like this before. The worst was bringing along a stranger to a coffee date, never anything like this. Never.
And rent was due in a week.
And I still had those bills to pay… I swore under my breath as I pulled into a parking spot behind the hospital and checked my bag again. I’d forgotten my wallet, just as a bonus, so I was missing… Yup, my ID badge. Great. On the way through the rain I called my shift manager, Linsey, and she met me at the door.
“Hey, Trin!” She was grinning at me like it was Christmas. I smiled back at her as we walked down the hall; for better or worse, that was me. Always smiling, always ready with a joke. I think psychologists call that deflection. “Thanks for coming in. I hope the rest of your birthday was better—I just really didn’t know what else to do.”
I hid the sudden rush of embarrassment that filled me, from my unpolished toes to the top of my head. She was right; I’d forgotten to add that to the list of general crappiness. It was my birthday. That made it official.
Worst. Birthday. Ever.
~~~
Eric
I hadn’t meant to let him get to me.
Rico was waiting for the bus, like he always did, as if he hadn’t even moved in the past two years. I knew I should’ve just stayed hidden and waited for the next one, but it was almost midnight. There wasn’t going to be a next one. And it was a long walk home in the rain, if you’re the generous type and want to call the squat where I slept curled up under some busted up cardboard boxes ‘home.’
“Hey Rico,” I said, nodding to him as I took the opposite side of the lean-to, hoping the bus would be on time. I really wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Maybe Rico’d changed; I’d been inside for two years, after all, and a lot could happen in two years. I’d definitely changed.
“Hey Eric,” he said, and as soon as I heard his voice I hunched my shoulders and pointedly looked the other way; same old Rico. Great. An auntie was sitting on the bench between us, and I hoped her presence was another deterrent, but instead I heard Rico move closer to me and turned my head just enough to keep an eye on him. “Man, you looking for work? Got a good job lined up.”
I knew exactly what that meant. “No thanks, got a job already.” We’d never worked with Rico in the past; too low-rent. I guessed he thought we were on the same level now, and he wasn’t wrong. If anything, there was a chance he had a real bed to sleep in, and I was lower in the social pecking order than he was these days.
“No you ain’t.” Rico was way too close. I moved so that my back was pressed up against the plexiglass and watched him with my peripheral vision. This motherfucker… Rico was always trying to score, always hustling, always talking shit and always looking for a fight. I honestly didn’t know how he was still alive. He must be part cockroach. Rico sat down next to the auntie, who huffed and slid away from him. “I got a good job, and you ain’t got none. Ain’t doing nothing but getting ready to go back to jail.” Apparently, he thought this would be a persuasive pitch.
His real name was Edward. Why people agreed to call him Rico, I’ll never know. Nothing rich about him—or Spanish, but whatever. I’d known him since sixth grade. It looked like he’d lost a couple more teeth, and maybe a couple dozen pounds; yeah, I thought, no thanks, because I could guess what job he was into now. “Actually, that’s exactly what I’m avoiding. Don’t need a job, Rico.”
“Too good, huh,” he said, and I readied myself. “Always too damn good. You still think you a artist, huh? After being inside? You ain’t nothing now, man.” He wasn’t necessarily wrong. I let it slide. But then he was standing right in front of me. I had about six inches and fifty pounds on him, but there he was, the chemicals crackling in his brain like fireworks on the fourth of July. He was dangerous, and he knew it. “You always was a bitch,” he said, and that’s when I ducked.
Rico hit the plexiglass but didn’t seem to notice. He swung at me again, and I managed to block most of it before dodging away. I didn’t want to fight him; even with all that speed in his veins, I could hurt him. We’d fought about a hundred times, growing up, and he’d never gotten the best of me; that’s probably why he had to do this now. I’d managed to hurt his pride once again by refusing his very generous offer, I guess. I held him off as long as I could, and then he pulled out a knife. “Rico—” I started to tell him to back off, but he swung it inches from my face, and on the arc back the blade caught my cheek.
So what was I supposed to do?
I cracked my knuckles and let him have it.
~~~
Trinity
“It’s mostly been quiet,” Linsey said, walking with me down towards the Emergency room fishbowl, also known in more polite circles as the nursing desk in the center of the medical module where we performed emergency intakes. “We had a few possible CVAs and then a couple of cons came in after cutting each other up in a knife fight—Sorry, Espinoza. That’s why I called you.”
“Okay,” I said, knowing she didn’t technically need a reason. She could have called me in because she was bored; worse managers had. Linsey tended to get overwhelmed if there were more than two beds taken, especially on night shift, and although this drove me a little crazy I liked her a lot. She was good with the patients, very smart, with lots of training I could only dream about. I got my degree and came here, back home to our rural town, and although we were now living with a population of over 60,000 people our ER rarely saw more than six or seven patients at a time, max. Four was the absolute most Linsey could handle, and I understood. She’d only graduated a year ag
o, and when I first started working I was easily intimidated too. These days, I sometimes felt like the only place I was brave was at my job. My anxiety did a good job of turning me into scenery, instead of the joke-cracking, comforting person Linsey knew.
She handed me the intake sheets and we got to work. Two of the folks in for possible CVAs were processed within the hour; one was an elderly woman that I was pretty sure needed further testing immediately, so I’d sent the doctor in to see her first, and the other was a frequent flyer that constantly thought he was having a heart attack. Being worried about something doesn’t mean you’re wrong, though, and if Linsey was concerned he’d had a stroke he deserved all of my attention. He was fine, and after the MD cleared him I started his discharge paperwork and notified the pharmacy that he needed updated meds; maybe his blood pressure was off. I left a message with his primary care physician and went in to see one of the guys from the knife fight.
The first thing I thought when I walked through the door was: wow. I almost stopped moving so I could stare at him, and caught myself just in time.
He was gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful.
He had a face like an Italian model, with black hair swept to one side. Almond eyes the color of honey blinked over at me. He had his shirt off, and was sitting patiently bleeding through a bandage he’d kept clapped on his bicep—a bicep covered in tattoos. There were more on his sculpted chest, swirls and ripples matched by the movement of his muscles under the skin. He was long and lithe, strong and dangerous looking, and every single fiber of my being sang to him instantly.
But he was also a criminal, fresh out of prison and here after pending assault charges. So there was that little gem of information to really cap my night.
“Hello sir, sorry to make you wait.” I really was; Linsey hadn’t told me he wasn’t stitched yet. “Let’s take a look at that.”
He didn’t say a word. The name on his file was Eric Marchado, and he was one year younger than me. The police brought him in when they broke up a fight at a bus stop with a man named Edward Toomis. I patiently slid my fingers down his arm, gauging his pain threshold, then began peeling the bandage off. Linsey must have wrapped it without really inspecting it. I glanced at the chart again to see what she’d done, but there weren’t any notes. Hiding my frustration, I studied the wound and then leaned back. Mr. Marchado hadn’t moved an inch.
“I’m going to get this cleaned up,” I said, and he nodded, his beautiful eyes watching me closely. “I’ll get a couple of things and be right back, okay?”
He said nothing, and didn’t nod this time; after his treatment so far, I didn’t blame him. He didn’t say a word or change his blank expression, instead impassively staring at me as if I were a one dimensional object that could speak. I pulled the curtain back and headed down to supplies.
Linsey’s voice reached me first. “Hey, Trin, Dr. Vendell wants to know if you’re recommending an MRI or a CAT—" Her voice broke off in a scream as her head disappeared back behind the curtain. Without thinking, I ran in after her.
This must be the other con—although this guy clearly had a lot more problems than time served. Obviously high on speed of some kind, he was skinny as a lost dog and missing several of his teeth. Edward Toomis held a scalpel in his hand, his clever yellow eyes studying the pair of us. He must have yanked Linsey back behind the curtain after snatching it from a drawer—why the hell wasn’t he handcuffed? She and I slowly backed away from him, spinning the curtain past us as we retreated into the hall. I could hear other people behind us whispering as they realized something was wrong, and then Dr. Vendell’s voice bellowed down the corridor. The man never knew how to read a room.
“Trinity? Where are you—” He stopped dead in his tracks, his glasses sliding down his nose. Now almost all of the curtains were opening. Mr. Toomis was standing in the middle of the hallway, creeping towards Linsey and I, his eyes following my every move. “Where are the police officers that were supposed to be with him?” Dr. Vendell spoke to everyone at once, apparently not noticing the scalpel. He pointed at Mr. Toomis and his eyes sharpened. “What—”
“Shut up,” the con said, and his voice sounded remarkably like a snake’s hiss. For some awful reason I will never understand—those black cats again, or maybe a couple dozen broken mirrors I forgot about—he gestured for me to come forward. I stayed where I was, shaking my head no, and that must’ve been my mistake; Edward Toomis began to creep towards me, scalpel raised. I’d offended him. “You. You girl, you gonna take me out and drive me somewhere till I say stop. You gonna give me a ride, pretty girl—”
And then he wasn’t saying anything else, because Eric Marchado bulldozed him to the ground and began rhythmically pounding his face with a pair of very bloody hands. That broke the spell, and everyone began running—some people grabbed their phones and called the police, someone else ran outside and started yelling for them, I heard a couple people say my name… I had a hard time seeing anything but the two men in front of me, though, as I stood stock still, slowly filling with a weird mix of horror and relief. Mr. Marchado evidently thought enough was enough and reared back to look at his handiwork; Mr. Toomis was out cold. The beautiful criminal stood up and turned towards me. His expression was almost shy. “Are you alright, Miss?”
Those eyes were hypnotic.
We stood there for a long moment, just staring at each other.
“Yes,” I finally heard myself say. “I’m alright.” He nodded at me once, then turned and walked back to the cubicle where he’d been waiting for me, as if nothing had happened at all. As if he hadn’t just added to the cuts already covering his arms and torso, marring those lovely tattoos… Not to mention that face.
I ran to get those supplies.
~~~
Eric
I hoped they put that piece of shit in detox for a while. He was back on it again, no doubt, and I almost felt bad—it’s not like he got a good swing in or anything. But the thought of him pointing that knife at the nurse…
She was… Exquisite. I wanted to paint her as soon as she brushed past that curtain, not in acrylic, but oil—I wanted to use my fingers to find the right blend to match the colors of her skin, to find the right match for her iris, her lips, to spend a couple days memorizing all of the shades twined together in her hair. Cream, frisee, sienna, burnish, ochre. Emerald, azure, with a spike of ice white. Gold, umbre, cocoa, Jesus I don’t even know. I guess I just wanted a couple days to look at her; either way, the effect was novel, because I hadn’t picked up a brush since I went inside, let alone looked at a woman and thought about what it would be like to see her, all of her. I’m not sure I’d ever even wanted to paint a girl before. She was complex, incredible… A puzzle of perfection. Maybe I could figure it all out, with enough time.
I couldn’t do her justice, though; some people are beautiful for reasons that go beyond what you can capture, and she was one. I could immediately tell something was bothering her, probably a lot of things, but the first thing she did was give me a big smile and ask about me. I know that’s supposed to be her job, but most people don’t treat me that way. Most people would never look at a guy who got out of prison two days before and smile, walk over, and gently touch their arm, light as a butterfly, while they looked in my eyes. Most people would never turn their back on you. They’d put you last on the list, like the first nurse did. Even Rico got better treatment, probably—he hadn’t ever been locked up for any real time. Unless that auntie at the bus stop came forward, I was probably going back. Maybe tonight.
She hadn’t thought about any of that, even though she must’ve read it all on the papers the cops filled out. My parole officer still wasn’t here. Maybe he wouldn’t come; we’d only spoken on the phone. We weren’t supposed to meet until the day after tomorrow, and he’d been completely worthless so far. No half-way house, no set-up with a shelter; nope, just back on the streets. I wasn’t sure I wanted her getting too close. I probably didn’t smell that great, and I
was covered in blood.
Still, there was no fucking way I was going to let Rico hurt her. Or anybody else, but the truth was he picked the wrong girl. That was that. I was sure he’d be fine once they washed him up; I hadn’t given him too many pops, and I didn’t really have a choice because that knife was way sharper than the one he pulled on me earlier. I could tell. So fuck that guy. It was worth it.
I settled in to wait for the cops. I hoped they’d let me get this thing stitched up before they found a way to take me back; the med tech in prison wasn’t exactly attentive. And if they sent me to jail to wait for sentencing, there wasn’t any medical there at all. I looked around the room, wondering if I could just do it myself.
That probably wouldn’t be a good look when the police came in, though.
And then she came back.
She was just as flawless now, but she had a harder look on her face; I wondered if she was mad that I’d hit Rico. She was a nurse, and from the way she’d treated me I guessed she was way too empathetic and soft-hearted. He was pretty pathetic, I can understand that reaction, but… He was also dangerous. Very, when it came to a room full of unarmed civilians that dedicated their lives to helping people, not hurting them. She turned towards me and glanced down at my arm. “Can I get you cleaned up, Mr. Marchado?”
I didn’t say anything, but I nodded. I sat as quietly as I could while she gathered a wash basin with disinfectant and a stack of washcloths, then motioned me over to this elevated recliner, mostly made of metal. It wasn’t quite a hospital bed but it definitely wasn’t a lazy boy. I sat down in it, still leaning forward until she gently pressed me down, smiling at me as she did. I felt my heartrate increase when her palm flattened on my chest. I hadn’t reacted to a woman in ages, but then again… I hadn’t exactly been near many of them recently, either. Something told me I would’ve felt the same way about her under any circumstances, though. “I’m sorry, I know this feels strange, but I really need you to try and relax enough for me to focus on your arms… And your face. Didn’t see that one before.” She frowned for a second, studying my cheek, then got to work with the betadine and the washcloths. I held my breath; she was only inches away from me. I concentrated on counting the colors in her eyes while she got to work. The wounds looked even worse at first, because the color seeped into everything—this rusty orange that frankly, I found offensive—but then she got clear water and methodically went over both of my arms and my face, protecting what was left of my shirt with a fibrous cover. She worked steadily on me for over half an hour, just cleaning me up, and then pulled out some more disinfectants and focused on the little web of slices Rico left on my right arm, and the deeper one on my bicep. When she got to my face she paused. “I’m not going to stitch this,” she said softly, examining me. I held my breath again; I couldn’t help it, we were only six inches apart, and I had to slow my heart down somehow. “We’re going to use a couple of these special bandages—” she showed them to me—“to pull the skin together and try to make sure it heals nicely. Sound good?” I nodded again. I was still waiting for the cops to show up. While she worked on my cheek, I could hear them in the hall outside; somebody was getting reamed.