by Zahra Girard
It ain’t pretty, but I’ve had worse days.
I frown. My favorite tattoo really is a goner.
“If you need something for the pain, just tell me.”
“No opiates. None of that poison. Just aspirin or ibuprofen. Please.”
The nurse nods, pulls a bottle from the cupboard, and sets a few pills on the tray by my bedside and gets me a cup of water.
“Take these two. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit, and if you’re still feeling a lot of pain, I can give you two more.”
“Thank you.”
“I also heard about what you did for Jessica. Thank you.”
“I just did what anyone should do. I couldn’t let someone hurt a woman like that.”
She nods and gives me a smile. “We’re supposed to let the police know when you’re conscious. They’ve got questions for you. But I think we’ll wait a few hours to tell them. You get some rest, ok?”
“Thanks, nurse.”
I take the pills and lay back in bed, trying to think about anything other than the pain radiating from too-many wounds on my body.
I need to piece together the night before.
How did the Jackals know we were there? Our club hadn’t been in town for even six hours. We’d stored our things, changed out of our cuts, and stopped in at that bar because we knew it wasn’t affiliated with any MC. How did they find us that fast?
They’re more connected than we thought. That’s the only answer that makes ant sense. And if they can find us there, that fast, they can get to me here.
I’ve gotta get out of here. Now.
I’ve got to leave this bed, find the rest of my MC — they better be alive — and we need to regroup before the Jackals have a chance to finish us off.
But first, I gotta stand up.
That’s going to be to be the hardest part of all of this. With a couple knife wounds, a concussion, and only fucking Tylenol for the pain, I’m not in the best shape.
I grit my teeth and grab hold of the railing of my hospital bed and use it to force myself into a sitting position.
I wish I could have the fucking morphine.
The world swirls and surges around me.
It takes everything I have just to remain sitting upright, and even that has my head swimming with pain.
This is not a good idea.
I take a few deep breaths and steel myself for what I know is going to be a very shitty experience. I have to stand.
One leg swings over the side of the bed and I feel like the rest of my body is going to follow my leg and hit the floor.
“Word to the wise: what you’re about to try is a very dumb idea.”
I blink away the pain and look to the doorway.
There she is.
It wasn’t just the knock on the head playing with my memory — she really is that beautiful. She’s got blonde hair that falls in lazy curls, blue eyes, delicate features, and a body that, even under her nurse scrubs, I can tell is curvy enough that I could spend all night exploring.
And she owes me. I saved her life.
Lucky me.
“It’d be an even dumber idea to stay here,” I say.
She comes in and snatches the clipboard holding my chart from it’s place hanging at the foot of my bed.
“What you need is sleep. You need to give yourself time to heal. Your body has been through one hell of an experience.”
“I can rest later. I’m leaving. Where are my things? Where are my clothes? I’m tired of my ass hanging out of this fucking gown.”
“What, you don’t like your gown, Preacher? It looks good on you. And I’m sure a lot of the nurses here would love the show you’d give in that thing. Once you’ve rested and are actually able to get up and walk around. But for now, you need to rest,” she says, smiling. These cute dimples stand out on her cheeks.
I want to know if those dimples show when she comes.
I shake my head clear. Focus. Now is not the time to listen to your dick. You can’t spare the blood for an erection.
“I’m serious, Jessica. I need to leave. Those same guys that shot up the bar could just as easily come here. Do you care about the people you work with? Or your patients?”
She frowns. “Of course I do. But you need to be honest with me: what happened last night? What was that about?”
I shrug. The less she knows, the better. “Fuck if I know. My friends and I just got into town and wanted a few beers. Next thing I know, some prick is sticking a gun in my face. Real nice city, Reno.”
“It’s not normally like this,” she says.
“Oh yeah?”
“I grew up here. My dad was a detective in Reno PD. Reno has it’s problems like any city, but it’s not that bad.”
“Look, based on my experience last night, I don’t have a favorable opinion of this place. I need to get my things and get the hell out of here. Will you help me?”
“You need medical care, Preacher. I’m not getting you out of here.”
“How long have I been out?”
“Ten hours, give or take. And if you had any sense, you’d go back to sleep for another ten before you even try to move.”
Ten hours? They definitely know where I am after that amount of time.
I grit my teeth.
“I’m leaving. Now.”
“No.”
Why the hell is she being so difficult? Why can’t she see the obvious threat?
I’m lucky to be alive. I’m lucky that, for the ten hours I’ve been stuck in this bed, no one’s come in here to finish the job. But that doesn’t mean they’re not nearby. If the Jackals knew we were at that bar, odds are, they know what hospital I’m at.
Hell, they probably know my room number.
“Tell me: have you seen anything unusual here in the ER?”
“You mean, other than the flood of extra patients from some unexplained mass shooting at a bar?”
“Yes,” I say. “Go out there and take a careful look. See if there’s anyone in the lobby that looks like they don’t belong. Or if there’s anyone suspicious in the halls that shouldn’t be there.”
Her face gets this determined look to it.
What the hell did I just say to piss her off like this?
“People that shouldn’t be here?” she says, with this snap in her voice that tells me I’ve definitely hit a nerve. “Who are you to judge who belongs here? Do you have any idea of the people that come to the ER? This is where desperate people come. Vulnerable people. People that don’t have anywhere else to turn for help. People that don’t need your fucking judgment.”
“I don’t need a fucking sermon. I’m trying to help. You have a choice: do what I ask, or run the risk of more people dying tonight. I just need you to go get my things and take a look around, ok?”
She gives me a considering look for a moment, indignation still boiling in her eyes — how does she manage to look hot even when she’s pissed off? — and then she nods.
“Fine.”
Jessica turns and leaves, closing the door hard behind her.
I take another deep breath and try again to stand. I can’t depend on her to be my only option. If worse comes to worst, I’m going to die on my feet like a man. Maybe I’ll take one or two of them with me.
I get both feet on the ground — an agonizing process that takes longer than I want to admit — when the door opens again.
She’s there, pushing a wheelchair and wearing a scowl on her face. She wheels it over to my side of the bed and slips an arm around my shoulders and starts to help me into the chair.
Her voice is urgent, upset, and her breath comes in short, adrenaline-fueled gasps.
“I couldn’t get your things — the cops want to look at them as evidence and check for gunshot residue, or something. But something is wrong. There are two men, big, tattoos, just like the guys from the bar, and they’re talking to Tracy right now. I talked to triage and they’re definitely not patients.”
I pus
h away the wheelchair. There’s no way I’m riding in that thing like an invalid. “If you want to live through today, you’ll do exactly as I say.”
Chapter Six
Preacher
“Home sweet home.”
Jessica plants her shoulder against the door of her apartment and, with a jiggle of the handle, a grunt and a shove, opens it up and wheels me inside.
“It ain’t much,” she says apologetically. “But, since beggars can’t be choosers, you’ll have to make do.”
I glance around the room. ‘Ain’t much’ is being generous. The living room has a run-down couch, a TV with a fair-sized crack in the corner of the screen, and a few pictures on the wall of flowers and the kind of sappy travel-inspiration stuff you find online, usually with stupid quotes written on them. There’s a small table to the side of the beat-up couch, with a framed photo of Jessica on it. In the photo, she’s smiling, covered in dirt, and in a group-hug with a bunch of kids in front of some kind of tent marked with a red medic symbol.
Nurses live like this? I thought they made decent cash.
“It’s better than the morgue. Thanks for taking me in,” I say.
Hands on her hips, she looks down at me. “I want you to understand a few things, Preacher. First, I’m doing this because you saved my life and I think you’re a better man than you let on. I hope you prove me right. Or, at least, don’t murder me in my sleep. Second, you aren’t out of the woods in any sense and you really should be in a hospital, but I know that convincing you to stay there is pointless, so, while you’re here, you’ll let me take care of you, ok?” she says. “I need to hear you say it, or else I will take you back to the hospital and let the police take care of you.”
I nod. It doesn’t sit easy with me, but I know it’s my best option for getting back on my feet and looking for my brothers. I am acutely aware of every second that passes where I’m stuck in this helpless situation and they’re out there, doing god knows what.
“Fine. Your house, your rules.”
At least until I get some rest and walk without worrying about falling flat on my ass.
“Let me give you the tour,” she says, taking hold of my hand and leading me.
She takes me to the kitchen first. There’s a chipped and scratched wooden table, with two rickety chairs, that looks like it was second-hand four or five owners ago. There’s a few cupboards with peeling paint on them, some dirty dishes in the sink, and a couple of kitchen knives hanging from a rack above the sink.
“Help yourself to anything in the fridge. But be careful with the sink — the faucet knob is tricky and the pipes underneath like to leak, so don’t leave the water running. I don’t have much food right now, but I’ll head to the grocery store after work and pick you up some steaks.”
I look up at her, surprised.
“Steaks? What for?”
Buying me steaks? Did I hear her right?
“You need to eat food with lots of iron, like red meat. I’ll get some bacon, too.”
“Are you hitting on me, nurse?”
“Not even in your dreams, Preacher,” she says without skipping a beat. “I’m also going to pick up some orange juice and some fruit. Ascorbic acid – vitamin C — will help your body to take in the iron. I’ll pick up some kale, too.”
“Kale? Don’t expect me to eat that fucking rabbit food.”
“If you want to stay here, you’ll eat everything I give you. Everything. I’m not screwing around here, Preacher. I care about making sure you get well. Nursing isn’t something I do just to pay the bills and live in the luxury that you see around you. I do it cause I give a damn about helping people get well.”
I can think of a hundred other ways she could take care of me, and none of them involve kale. But there’s a look on her face that makes it clear that if I don’t agree with her right now, she’ll take my invalid ass right back to the hospital.
“Fine, I’ll eat your fucking salad.”
“Wonderful. Thanks for not being too much of a baby about it.”
She leads me out of the kitchen, back through the living room, and down the hallway of her tiny one-bedroom apartment, stopping at a hall closet that holds her stacked washer-dryer unit and explains that the knobs have to be turned just right for it to work, but if I have problems with it, there’s also a laundry room in the basement. Jessica explains that she bought the washer-dryer herself because some of her clothes kept disappearing from the basement. Though she warns me to be careful, the dryer likes to eat clothes, too.
Then she shows me the bathroom — complete with a shower that’s surrounded by tiles barely held together with black-molded grout.
She shows me to the bedroom. It’s tiny, with plain walls, a small closet, and a secondhand dresser in the corner. The bed’s an old futon that looks lumpy and liable to break under my weight.
This whole apartment is a nightmare. Every little broken, busted, kind-of-working thing here makes my skin itch. At some point, I’m going to have to fix this place up for her.
“You can sleep here. I’ll put out new sheets,” she says.
I shake my head. She’s taking this ‘taking care of me’ thing too far. “Bullshit I’m sleeping in the bed. You took me in, you spend all day on your damn feet, I’m not taking your fucking bed.”
“My house, my rules. You agreed.”
There’s hospitality, and then there’s too much.
“Tonight only,” I say. “After that, I’m taking the couch. Trust me, your couch is better than what I have at home.”
“What, being in a gang doesn’t pay?” she says in a way that I can’t tell if she’s joking or not.
Either way, I’m not going to tell her I’m in an MC — the less she knows, the safer she is. She’s giving me a place to crash, and I’m protecting her in exchange.
“Jessica, I’m a mechanic in a small town in Washington State. Stony Shores. Before that, I was a welder and handyman on the oil fields in North Dakota and up in Alberta. A roughneck. Being a mechanic pays well enough for what I need, which isn’t much.”
“You don’t need a bed? Preacher, I live in this dump because student loans are evil, nursing school is expensive, and rent here is cheap. What’s your excuse for not taking care of yourself?”
I don’t answer.
She might think she’s joking, but that question hits too close to home for me, and the less she knows about me the better. She’s hot, and if things were different, I’d pull her into this wannabe bed and put her mouth to work doing something other than asking annoying questions.
But as it is, I’ve got to protect her. And that means only telling her what she needs to know.
“Thanks for the place to crash, Jessica. But this is not an interview.”
She looks at me for a moment, shakes her head, then sighs.
“I’ll put down the fresh sheets and I’ll bring you in some food from the kitchen – I’ve got a can of lentils that I’d like you to eat. You need the iron. Then, I’m going to crash. We both need to get some sleep and I’ve got work tomorrow, which I’m sure will be busy as hell.”
Jessica sets me up in her bedroom. I know she’s not happy with this arrangement and I don’t blame her; I’d be feeling the same if I was putting up a beat-up son of a bitch like myself, but still, she puts in a lot of effort to make sure that I’m comfortable. She sets me up with food, she checks my bandages and stitches, and tells me to yell for her if I need anything before heading out to the couch to get some sleep.
This is way more than I expected. She really is one of those rare few people that actually gives a damn about caring for others.
I lay there on the bed for a while, not able to sleep even though my body is begging me to shut my eyes and pass out for days. Though the sheets are fresh, the room still smells like her. It feels like her. Every time I shut my eyes, I see her face, I see her kind eyes looking back at me, I see the dimples on her cheeks when she smiles, I see the curves of her hips and her ass beneat
h her nurse’s scrubs.
I’m trapped in the sweetest damn prison. Everything here reminds me of her and I couldn’t get up and leave even if I wanted to.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a situation like this, spending a night at a woman’s place for a reason other than fucking, spending time around a woman who cares about me even though I’m a total fucking mess right now.
She’s giving me her bed to sleep in, she’s buying me steaks and bacon, and even though she’s smart enough to know I’m involved in the shit that happened last night, she wants me to get well.
She cares.
She’s a good woman.
Getting more involved with her was a mistake.
I’ve got to fight my impulses, even if it hurts.
I’m here to protect her. That’s it.
I shut my eyes. I need to sleep. I need to get well and get the hell out of here and back to my club so we can finish our mission. Otherwise, Jessica’s will learn the hard lesson that the last woman who cared for me learned — the only thing kindness gets you is an early grave.
Chapter Seven
Jessica
“It just doesn’t stop sometimes, does it?” I mutter to Cassie as we duck into the break room.
Our shift is over, which is a good thing, because as much as everyone out there might need me, I doubt I could stay standing much longer.
Today’s been a nightmare.
More patients than I can count, and we’re still dealing with the repercussions of the shooting the other night. Every nurse and every doctor out there is running on fumes and caffeine and everyone is working on a short temper.
“My feet feel like big balloons filled with cement and my ankles are swollen like I’m carrying fucking triplets,” she says, slumping onto the couch. “You’d hope that, even just for one day, people would stop doing stupid shit to get themselves hurt. I mean, that guy from an hour ago… Who the fuck lights a firecracker and just holds on to the damn thing?”
“It could be worse. There’ve been a few bright spots today. Did you see my new boyfriend in room 18?” I say, taking a seat at the small kitchen table in the break room. It’s closer to the coffee maker, and right now, I need to save my energy from things like unnecessary walking across the room to refill my cup.