by Bourne, Lena
“Shit happens, ” I say and I wish I was anywhere close to accepting that wisdom when it comes to Bear’s death. Instead I just keep dreaming about his rattling last breath.
“Damn straight. We all know you did what you could for him, like you always do, Doc. So don’t beat yourself up about it too much.”
He nods and I nod and then I head out the door. He follows me.
“We’re riding to Vegas tomorrow,” he says. “Another meeting with the Russians. I for one would feel better if you came with us.”
I halt and round on him.
“Cross says this job’s gonna be just talking.”
Tank shrugs. “I don’t trust those Russian fuckers. Cross thinks we’ll be able to negotiate our way forward from now on, but I ain’t so sure, on the whole.”
Tank likes a good fight, it’s been that way since I’ve met him. He goes looking for fights too, more often than not. Though he’s calmed down a lot since meeting Kim, I gotta admit that.
“I kinda hope Cross is right, don’t you?”
Tank shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. But keep your phone on in case we do need you.”
Tank is our Vice President so I’ll take that as an order, but I hope I won’t be needed. Cross says there’s gonna be mostly talking from here on out as far as club business is concerned. No more killing, no more getting hurt and killed. They’ll just be selling guns and hopefully not getting into too many senseless bar brawls that end in blood and death. I was so fucking grateful for that promise when I first heard it from Cross.
I’m sick and tired of losing brothers. It’s been constantly happening, since I joined the Army almost twenty-five years ago, and I don’t know how many more I can watch die on my table before I lose it for good.
That’s why I need my cabin in the woods. It’s as far removed from any human-made problem, as I can get on this earth. I go there to forget. Not that I’ve ever succeeded in forgetting yet, but I still hope that one day I will.
* * *
Anne
WELCOME TO CALIFORNIA, a huge sign says as I speed past it. I can only just barely read it despite its size, because my vision’s fuzzy and my head is pounding. The nausea is abating though. But Benji definitely gave me a concussion.
The nurse I used to be is telling me I need to stop for the night and get some rest before I hurt myself or worse, someone else that’s out driving tonight. But I have to get as far away from my old home as I can, and the voice telling me that is louder.
I got out of Washington and across Oregon on strength of will alone, the kind of strength I didn’t know I still had. The light is failing now, and my eyesight is too.
I can’t stop in California. That’s where he is. I have to keep going.
A loud, prolonged wail of a car horn startles me, sends my heart racing and makes my head pound even worse. I’ve just veered off my lane and almost crashed, and I have no idea when it happened, or even if it really did. I should at least get off the highway, before I cause a serious crash.
I bite down on my bottom lip hard, the jolt of pain only slightly waking me up, and slow down, breathe a sigh of relief when a sign for an exit not far ahead comes up. I’ll stop for a bit on the side of some long forgotten country road, maybe even find a motel in those woods lining the highway. Off the beaten track and somewhere where Benji would least expect me to be. The counselor who helped me plan my escape told me to stop only in small towns, since there’s less chance of the places there having CCTV surveillance and such. I hope she’s right.
The first place Benji’s going to look for me is at my mother’s house in Texas. That’s why my mother doesn’t know anything about me leaving him. She doesn’t know anything about the beatings or what a psychopath he actually is either. I never confided in her, because she doesn’t need to know her only surviving child went through hell after leaving home. Telling her would serve no purpose except make her feel bad. I’ll probably never tell her. I’ll just disappear forever.
I need rest. But after driving a few miles on a dark, empty country road, my headache loses the worst of its bite, and I’m no longer nauseous at all. So I just keep speeding down the empty, dark, peaceful road even after I get off the highway. The nurse in me is still nagging that I should stop and rest, but I haven’t been a nurse in years. What I am is a battered wife trying to escape a husband who has the power to view any CCTV camera in the country.
So I just keep driving, past a gas station, past a motel where I could’ve spend the night, and past an ornate sign for a Bed and Breakfast, which I think was inside a sprawling ranch at the end of a long driveway. They probably have a pool, and maybe even offer horseback riding. I haven’t ridden a horse in over a decade and I’d like to. But I can’t waste money on luxury. I need the little I have to start a new life.
Soon the woods around me grow thicker. Only my headlights are illuminating the world now, the rest is pitch black darkness. The GPS says I’m still going the right way though. South towards Mexico and freedom. That’s all I need to know. I want to get there as fast as I can.
I feel like I’m flying through the night, flying toward the morning light of true freedom and happiness, the kind I haven’t even dared imagine in years, but can now see clearly again, even though the world around me is completely dark.
There are no other cars on the road with me, and no houses lining it. Only nature, trees, pavement and darkness. Only the sound of the car’s engine as it transports me to a pain free life, a life full of hope. I’m completely hidden, flying towards my new life in secret, even my headache just a distant memory now.
Then a curve I thought was a gentle one turns out to be bad. I scream and break, try to keep the tires on the pavement, but it’s no use. My car is propelled forward into the thick redwood trees lining the road by the remnants of the speed that had me thinking I was flying free seconds before. So much for flying.
I can’t crash in California, is my last coherent thought as the seatbelt tightening across my chest doesn’t prevent my head from slamming into the steering wheel. Then my mind goes pitch black too, darker than the night.
2
Doc
Each mile my bike eats up on the way to the cabin takes me further from the world and back into the wild, into silence and peace. Lately I’ve been thinking that I should’ve just stayed up there when I returned from the last war like I planned to do when I purchased it. But back then, I wasn’t done with the world yet. I think I might be now.
I don’t regret joining the MC and using my skills to save over a hundred brothers in the last decade or so, but Cross restructuring the MC into just a weapons running operation will make me more or less obsolete. Since the brothers will no longer be mercenary killers, there’ll be no more devastating wounds for me to patch up, no more life and death struggles, no more blood and murder, no more fighting wars. It’s time for peace. I think I’m ready for it now.
I know every tree lining the road leading to my cabin, every bush and every boulder. I have it memorized, because I often replay this ride in my mind when I’m trying to calm my thoughts or my anger. So I instantly know that the huge black shape amid the redwoods up ahead isn’t supposed to be there. I know it long before I see it’s a crashed car. Just as I know my memories of this peaceful ride will be broken forever by what I’ll find in the car when I reach it. There’s nothing I can do to change that anymore.
The car’s lights are off and a faint waft of smoke is rising from under the smashed hood. I’m sure the smoke was thicker when the crash occurred, so the car’s been here awhile. The single person inside it is slumped over the steering wheel and they could be dead. A collision with one of these tall ancient trees is no joke.
All those things register in a flash as I approach the car, my thoughts calm as a placid mountain lake like they always are when an emergency presents itself. That’s the training and the experience. The nightmares come later.
The person in the car is a woman. Her wavy blonde hair shines
reddish in the headlight of my bike, and I bet her eyes would be blue when open, but I can’t know, because one of them is covered with dried blood from the cut above her eyebrow and the other is shut.
Maybe she’ll never open her eyes again. Maybe I’ll never know what color they are by daylight. She’s too young to die and she was too alone when she crashed on this empty road. No one should die alone. That thought fills me with more sadness than it should and very nearly triggers all my anger. But it doesn’t. It simply jolts me back into action, my training and experience kicking my body into motion, even though my mind is still filled with lingering thoughts about the color of her eyes and sadness.
She has a pulse and it’s even and strong, and her breathing appears normal enough. Her eyes might actually be green. Even when I open them to check her pupils, I can’t be sure, because one of them is black with the blood that spilled into in, and the pupil of the other is completely dilated. She’s out cold and might have broken bones, so I won’t move her. Although some weird voice in my head is telling me to pick her up and carry her to safety, to my cabin, because she’s the missing piece of the peace I’m trying to build there. Dumb.
I ignore the pointless thought and call the hospital, tell Cecilia, the nurse who answers, where to send the ambulance and why.
Then I try to revive the woman. She moans, muttering something I can’t decipher, and takes a few deeper breaths, but doesn’t open her eyes. I feel her forehead and scalp for broken bones, check her chest for broken ribs, and her knees for signs of damage as best I can. Everything appears whole though there is a bump the size of an egg on the back of her head, which makes no sense, since she hit her head at the front. They’ll figure it out at the hospital. Once the ambulance gets here, I’ll just ride on ahead to my cabin and forget all about this. She’ll be fine. I don’t need to get involved in this any more than I already am.
But the more I look at her, the more familiar she starts to look. I know her from somewhere, from a long time ago, but I can’t place her. It’s not from school, since she seems to be at least ten years younger than me. Maybe one of the wars? Did I patch her up? Did I fuck her? The more I think about it, the surer I am that I know her very well.
It won’t stop nagging me, I know it won’t, so I make the decision to stay with her long before the ambulance lights finally appear in the distance.
I’ll ride with her to the hospital and find out her name there. Somehow, it feels important to learn who she is, and it’s not only because I want the nagging curiosity to stop. That desire is also stemming from the fact that she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a long time, despite the fact that half her face is covered in dried blood.
* * *
Anne
“What’s going on? Where am I?” I stutter as the cold vice on my arm squeezes tighter and tighter.
The lights are so bright I can’t see a damn thing, and I’m sweating and breathing hard. My heart and my head are both pounding. If this is heaven, then it sure is painful up here.
“Do you remember what day it is?” a man asks me, as he shines an even brighter light directly into my eye.
The smooth southern drawl in his voice is something I haven’t heard in a long while, but it’s soothing, reminds me of my childhood, of the ranches and horses, and the shimmering air at the edge of the vast plains of my hometown.
I tell him today’s date, and the reality of my situation finally fully dawns on me as I do. I’m in an ambulance. But I don’t need medical attention. I’m fine. I just need some rest and then I can continue my drive to Mexico. And freedom.
“Good,” the man says, checking my other eye with the flash light. “Can you tell me your name?”
I finally get a good look at him once he stops shining the flashlight in my eyes. He doesn’t look like any paramedic I’ve ever met before. He looks more like a cop, with his rugged face and bright, but lined blue eyes that I’m sure have seen their share of sadness and pain. A cop is the last person I should be speaking to, and the last thing I should do is tell one my name. On top of that, this one looks very familiar, like I’ve seen him before, and realizing this makes my heart race and skip beats. What if he’s a friend of Benji’s? What if that’s why he looks familiar?
“I need to get out of here,” I say, trying to sit up, but I don’t really have enough strength to do that, and my vision blurs again as I try. I’m very close to losing consciousness again.
“Easy now,” he says and smiles, which brightens up his face and makes him look even more like something out of my happier past than he already did before. “That was quite a bump to the head you got back there.”
A bump to the head on top of an existing concussion. Yeah, I’m screwed. I’m conscious enough to know it, and that alone tells me I’m just fine.
“Settle back down, we’re almost at the hospital,” he says in that same serene and peaceful tone I would’ve used on an agitated patient back when I was still a nurse, back when I was still myself.
There’s no use fighting. I’m in the back of an ambulance heading to the ER. They’re not going to just pull over on the side of the road and let me walk away, no matter how many times I tell them I’m fine.
Besides, where would I go if they did? I have no idea where I am, or where my car is, or if it’s even still drivable. Judging by the state of my headache and my inability to sit up, I’d say it’s probably not. Besides, if I can’t even sit up, then I can’t walk either.
I’ll figure all those things out once I feel better.
For some reason, this man with the smiling eyes is already making me feel better. I think I’m perfectly safe while he’s around. And that’s all I really want to know. That I’m safe. I can close my eyes and rest for just a little bit.
* * *
Doc
Doc Hardy’s on call tonight, and he lets me accompany the woman to the exam room. He was my colleague when I got my first post-military job at this hospital, before I joined the Devils, back when I thought I wanted peace and quiet, but as it quickly turned out, I couldn’t take it. Now he’s almost a friend. The doctors here still seek me out for consults from time to time, mostly for gunshot related injuries, and in turn they take in my injured brothers without asking too many questions, when I can’t help them on my own.
The car crash lady barely rouses again while they check her over. I’m not allowed inside the exam room, so I’m just watching them work through the glass doors. Whenever they’re working on one of the brothers, they usually let me in to help. At least Doc Hardy always does, but I didn’t insist on it today, because I know they can handle her injuries on their own.
They shined a light in her eyes, asked her some questions, checked her vitals and examined her skull, face, torso, arms and legs for broken bones—all the shit I already did in the back of the ambulance. She’ll be fine. She just needs some rest. That much was clear from her deadened face and the lack of light in her eyes, neither of which was caused by the accident, I’m sure.
The fear when she tried to sit up and leave the ambulance was weak, but it was there. I don’t need much more than that to know she’s running from something bad, because only something real bad gives someone that weak the desire to run. I’ve seen it before, in wars, in the faces of our enemies stuck between us and a hard place. Back in my arrogant youth, I never had much time for weaklings, but I learned to respect them since. Strength in weakness is bravery at its purest, and I’m not sure if I’ve ever shown it.
But it’s about more than just respecting the weak when it comes to this woman. I want to know her story. I want to know everything about her, and that urge isn’t coming from any logical place in my mind. Sure, she’s gorgeous, but it’s not like I was thinking of sex while staring at her dried blood-covered face. So it’s not just because she’s attractive. There’s something more.
They’re wheeling her out of the exam room now, Hardy taking the rear. She’s asleep again, and there’s a plaster covering the cut
above her eye. A dark purple bruise is already starting to extend from under it. It’ll cover more than half of her face by the time it stops growing and the lilac edges of it will get much darker before it gets better.
Doc Hardy clears his throat. “We’re going to keep her overnight for observation, but I don’t think there’s anything seriously wrong with her this time. She has a concussion and a couple of bruised—”
“What do you mean, ‘this time’?” I interrupt.
Hardy flashes me an annoyed look, which is identical to the one all doctors get when you won’t let them finish speaking. But all I need to know about her injuries is that they aren’t life threatening.
He motions me to follow him back into the exam room and leads me to the computer screen where the images of her skull are still on the screen. I see the evidence of past trauma before he points it out.
“Classic domestic violence injuries. Some of these beatings were very serious,” Hornby says, pointing at a couple of spots on the image. “Whoever did this to her meant business.”
“I’ve seen less damage in combat survivors,” I mutter, but it’s more a thought I had, than something I want to discuss with Hardy right now.
“I think we should call the cops,” he says.
“I don’t know her, but I’d bet good money that she’s running from whoever did this to her,” I say. “The least we can do is let her decide if she wants to call the cops, so I’d suggest you wait until she’s awake and thinking clearly again. Not like she broke any laws, she just got into an accident.”
My brothers and me can give her all the protection she’ll ever need. And much better protection than the cops can give her. If she’ll accept.
I have no idea why I’m thinking this. I don’t know this woman from Eve. But the urge to help her is very strong despite that.
