by Amy Faye
She let out a breath and forced herself to continue dressing, pretending as best she could that she wasn't pissed and that it wasn't a big deal anyways. That was how she had to think of it because there was nothing else she could do.
She was, however, pleasantly surprised by at least one thing. There was a plate on the table, the food on top of it still steaming. A big plate of scrambled eggs and three strips of bacon. Her coffee sat there, the steam starting to fade from that, just like she wanted. Even the little jar of sugar sat beside it with a tiny teaspoon laid over top.
He was a son of a bitch, but at least he could do one thing. There was an index card folded in front of it, and she picked it up as she sat down, and unfolded it as she reached for the salt.
It was short enough to read at a glance:
"Sorry – Eat up
"You need your strength"
She frowned at it and then started doing exactly what she had been told. She was going to need her strength, he was right.
Wherever he was going, whatever he was going to do, if it didn't kill him, she was going to, and that was going to take all the muscle that she could muster.
He was a surprisingly good cook, too. The coffee was good, the eggs were good, the bacon was good. There was only one thing that wasn't good, and it was the man who'd made them, who seemed to have no sense of self-preservation whatsoever and at every turn delighted in making sure that she would suffer for worrying about him.
She forced herself to think about something else. The hospital had been slowing down, it seemed. Well, that wasn't totally right, she knew. There was plenty more to it.
The number of people going in hadn't gone down. If anything, there were more of them now, as the winter drew closer and closer to the holiday season.
The hospital wasn't slowing down at all. It was her speeding up, and she wasn't sure how she was supposed to feel about that. Proud?
Why on earth would she feel proud? She'd been slowing everyone down since she got there, and now she was just starting to approach the point where she wasn't slow any more?
That was nothing to celebrate. After all, all it meant was that she was starting to approach the speeds everyone else was at. And for that matter, she couldn't even talk one unruly 'patient' into staying in bed for one solitary day.
But something in her stomach lit up like a fire as she sat and ate and watched the clock on the far wall. She shouldn't have been proud of herself because there was nothing to be proud of, but she couldn't help it.
She was starting to get better at all this, and if she wasn't careful, she might actually be good at it.
24
Somehow, she didn't feel the least bit slapped down by work. It should have been hard, because the day was as long as it always was and she was as tired by it as she had always been.
But the fact was, regardless of what she was supposed to be feeling about it, she simply wasn't feeling the least bit bad. She was right. She was managing.
The text that came as she approached the end of her shift, though, did what twelve hours of dealing with violently ill patients couldn't. It reminded her of how far she had to go.
Shannen didn't seem to find anything wrong with texting her, and she supposed he shouldn't have. Whatever they had together, she didn't have any reason that they should spend so much time together, but they did. He always gave her rides home, and it was an easy part of her life. He also always bought dinner, and she wasn't opposed to that.
So it was perfectly ordinary that he should text her near the end of her shift to tell her that he was headed over to the hospital. It was perfectly ordinary when Sarah, her supervisor, told her to go home and have a good night, too, only a few minutes later.
What had he done, though? He shouldn't have been moving at all, never mind training. What could he have been doing with his day if not his job, though? And if he was fighting, or training, or whatever it was that he did day-to-day, then he was going to get hurt.
That much, at least, made perfect sense. It was obvious. But she couldn't stand it. How could he be so fucking stupid?
She frowned and her eyebrows rubbed themselves together until it worked her up into a headache that she knew wasn't about to go away, and when she finally did make it down to the lobby, she was ready to pick a fight with anything and anyone that crossed her path.
She hoped to hell that it was going to be Shannen because he was the only one who deserved it. There was no luck in the world, though, and Caroline knew better than that. Someone stopped her on the way out.
A woman who had maybe four inches on Caroline and looked like she probably could have bench pressed the small nurse with one hand. It's best to choose your battles, and not to go too nuts. Sometimes, though, there's no real choice available to you, and the fight picks you. This was, she hoped, one of those times, because regardless of whether or not the woman deserved it she was going to get it.
Caroline tried to tell herself that the woman should have seen the expression on her face, like she was going to light the whole building on fire if someone tried to stop her on the way out.
"What do you want?"
The big woman, her hair dark and her eyes darker, seemed to suddenly realize her mistake. "I, uh. Where's the lavatory?"
Caroline sucked in a breath and counted to ten. At the end of it, she knew she should have calmed down, and further, knew that it was all futile anyways. "There's a sign right there," she said, pointing straight up. "If you follow the signs, they will tell you to go another twenty feet or so up that way, take the second right, and they'll be on your right. There will be a sign at the turn and there will be another sign on the wall when you get there."
The woman's face strained and Caroline's heart broke, but she shouldered past, the fury that burned in her heart only slightly dampened by the conversation.
Shannen stood out of his car like he always did, looking cocky like he always did. She snarled in his general direction as she walked up.
"How was work," he asked as he slid into the driver's seat and the car growled to life.
"Oh, it was fine. You?"
He looked over at her, apparently sensing her anger in the way that a rabbit senses a dog chasing it, and yet, if it affected him, he didn't show.
"I'm fine."
"Oh, good. You're fine. You're lucky you didn't get your stupid nose broken in, and your ribs broken."
"It's still early," he said mildly. "I could make an effort, if you would like."
She practically shrieked. "No, I wouldn't."
"Then cool down," he answered. "I'm fine. Like I said."
"You could have at least tried to make an effort to look like you didn't want to get yourself killed," Caroline murmured. "There's a reason that most people don't go fighting with a stab wound, you know."
"What's that?"
"Because you get hit in a stab wound and it opens up pretty much right away. Because in your case, it's tied up in a bunch of stabilizing muscles and you seriously risk rupturing the sutures just by moving vigorously." She snorted. "Fucking obviously."
"I can see you've put a lot of thought into this," he offered. "But I promise, I'm totally fine."
"Oh, you're fine. That's great. Maybe that doesn't make me feel better, did you think of that?"
He let out a long breath before he answered. "I'm not going to talk about it, though," he said finally. "And that's pretty much how it's going to be."
"What do you even need all this money for?"
He looked over at her. "I don't ask you why you work so much, why you need a roommate so bad you're willing to have some guy lying around."
"I need it because I have expenses. I need the money! And for that matter, I need to put in the hours to be able to get jobs in the future. This is just how it is, when you're new to nursing. Most fighters don't fight constantly, and they usually avoid stabbings."
"Well, you've got your reasons," he answered. "And I've got mine. That's all I'm saying."
&n
bsp; "Yeah? What are your reasons that are so good?"
The car's engine lulled for a minute and then growled louder still as he stepped on the gas. The car rabbited forwards, accelerating faster. She looked over and his hands were white on the wheel.
"I told you," he said finally. His voice strained to maintain whatever control that he had, even as he sounded nearly like he was under good control. "I don't want to talk about it."
She let him drop it, in spite of herself. She saw the weaknesses in him. She knew that it would have been easy to dig in, twist the knife, and she might actually come away with him understanding one tenth the frustration of having put in all that work to try to keep him from bleeding to death on her couch, only to go out and get into a god damned fist fight the next day.
Instead she laid her head back and closed her eyes. "Where are you taking me for dinner?"
He looked over, let out a long breath, and flexed his fingers, trying to ease the tension out of them. She knew that it wasn't likely to work, but it was nice to see him making the effort, at least.
"I was thinking a sandwich."
"Yeah?"
"Is that going to be a problem?"
"No," she said. The fire in her belly unlit itself entirely, and the only thing it left behind was a bone-deep tiredness that she knew wasn't going to go away with just a long night's sleep. "I'm game for whatever."
"Good enough for me," he answered. They pulled into a parking spot and he eased the car to a stop, pulled the hand brake and killed the engine. "After you."
She pulled her legs out of the low car and climbed out, standing and shaking her hair out again. It felt good down, but there was no way that she could keep it that way during work, and there was no way she was going to cut it short so that she could leave it down, either. She'd spent too long, too many years and too many hours, trying to get it to this point and she wasn't going to give it up now.
"You look good," he said. She realized suddenly that Shannen was watching her, leaning as he was against the car.
"Thanks," she answered, unsure how to take it. It wasn't the first compliment he'd paid her, and it wasn't the first time he'd suggested he was attracted to her.
But it was the first time that he'd complimented her like that, she thought. The first time that he'd just said it, simply and directly and without a hint of anything else on his mind. And for the first time in a while, she didn't know what she was supposed to say about it.
He didn't wait for her to decide what reaction was appropriate before he continued. "You know what? I want to hit a movie. You're coming, too. It'll be like a date," he said, winked, and started toward the door.
Her chest thumped in her ears, and for the first time Caroline was truly speechless.
25
Caroline sat in her chair and wondered how she was supposed to act. There were a thousand examples that she could point to, from movies and television shows. Ideals of how a woman was "supposed" to act when she was on a date.
She didn't know if any of them really fit the relationship she'd build with Shannen, if she could call it that. Then again, he made no effort to encourage her to act any closer to her than he ever had before. She liked that.
So, instead, she settled into the seat that was a little bit too close to be next to a man his size, or very nearly anyone of any size. She ate another handful of popcorn, and paid exactly as much attention to the movie as the loud pair of women beside them would allow her to.
She took a deep breath. There was a lot to be done, yet. A lot of things that needed worrying about. Tonight, though, would go a long way towards helping all that stress and strain and worry melt away. She had better be careful, or she might just find herself starting to feel a little bit better.
Caroline risked a smile and eased back. Upon walking in she'd discovered to her great pleasure that the seats reclined just a bit, and when she let her weight fall back all the way it became that much easier to relax and just focus all of her attention on the movie, her mind far away and her body thinking, for the first time in what felt like days, about something that had nothing to do with the man beside her and the things he might be able to do with his own body.
When the movie ended, when the hero had finally gotten the girl and the last guns had finally been shot, she was surprised at how much she'd enjoyed it. Surprised how much she'd missed movies. It had never exactly been an overriding priority before. Yet, now she felt almost as if she were looking forward to another.
Given that the title of the movie was something like "Shoot-Bang 5," it hadn't been something that she was expecting to like. Sometimes, though, things catch you by surprise, and Caroline was more than ready to admit that this was one of the more pleasant surprises she'd dealt with in the past year.
She let him take the lead on the way out. He moved confidently, waiting when he thought he should wait; when he decided to move, he moved quickly, and as far as Caroline could tell he didn't look back or wait for her. She was presumed to keep up, and as far as she could tell she was doing a damn fine job of it, thank you very much.
The problem that arose, when it finally did arise, wasn't that she was too slow, or that the crowd closed up behind him before she could move in. Those things were easy to deal with, and by the time they were out in the lobby she was only a step behind him. He slowed his pace and held out a hand.
She took the offered hand in her own. It was strange, holding Shannen's hand. It felt too… mild. Almost surreal. As if he held fewer hands than he'd laid down with women. All completely backwards, and yet the more that she thought of it that way the more it seemed to fit him, contradictions and all.
His hands were big, compared to hers, and rough. A fighter didn't need to do a whole lot of manual labor as far as Caroline knew, but he had thick, meaty hands with callouses thick on his skin, so it felt more like leather than flesh.
His grip wasn't tight, but it wasn't loose, either. Firm enough that she knew he was there, but relaxed enough that she could pull free if she wanted to. It made her feel good. Better than she'd expected. When he stopped, she didn't really notice, as lost in her thoughts as she was, until he jerked her back by her arm.
She looked back at him, rather than forward, and missed what she might have seen for herself. His jaw worked itself loose, but she could see it tightening itself back up before more than a moment had passed.
"You ought to get out of here," he said, his voice low, his eyes not on her. "There's about to be trouble."
"Trouble?"
He let out a long breath before he nodded. "Trouble, yeah."
"What kind of trouble?"
He nodded at something behind her, though his eyes never moved from whatever it was that he was looking at. She suddenly realized that he wasn't just being his usual shades of distant. He really was looking at something, something specific.
She turned rather than asking again, and got her answer. A trio of men stood, wearing army-style jackets with slouched shoulders and a dangerous glint in their eye that they seemed to have all practiced as a group.
"You should get out of here, girlie," one said. He had a voice like sludge and a face to match. "This doesn't concern you."
"Like hell it doesn't." Her voice was hard. She didn't know where this was coming from, and she wasn't sure how she liked it. "Come on, let's get out of here."
She pulled on Shannen's arm. He didn't move from the spot. If he felt her pulling, he didn't make any sign of it.
"You go on ahead," he said. "I'm just going to have a little talk with our friends here."
"You men work for that gangster, don't you? Coogan."
One of them raised his eyebrows in something that might have approximated surprise. "Interesting. So you know the name."
"I know plenty of things," she answered. She hoped it made her sound more confident than she felt. "And I know that if I get hurt, it won't be long before the cops show up and start asking questions. Questions, I might add, that you and your boss won't wa
nt to answer."
One of them eyed her for a moment, weighing what she was saying against the odds that it was the truth or not.
"You think she's telling the truth?" If the three men were concerned about Shannen, or about her, they weren't showing it. She didn't like it. It gave the distinct air that whatever was going to happen, they were pretty sure that they'd come out better than she and Shannen would.
"Does it matter?"
The first one that had spoke shrugged. "Guess not," he said flatly. The expression that the men held in their eyes wasn't one that was worried about fighting three-on-two. They all had their eyes on Shannen.
Something in Caroline suddenly wished that she'd taken some sort of self-defense classes, studied Krav Maga or something, and she could whip out her moves to show them that they shouldn't be underestimating her.
The problem was, of course, that they weren't underestimating her, but if she ran, she knew Shannen wouldn't run with her. Her only hope was to defuse the situation before it got to that, and she knew with the sort of confidence that only situations turning bad could give that there was no way in hell she was going to do that.
They moved before she had the chance to give it a shot. The biggest man moved last; the two little guys moved and Shannen moved to meet them in the same instant. He slipped a punch and caught the guy hard with a big, blocky fist. His neck twisted until it popped back in the opposite direction like a twisted-up rubber band, and his knees buckled. He fell backwards onto his butt like he'd tripped on something.
The second guy sent a kick his way. Shannen dropped his elbow and caught the kick on his arm, then tried to twist and take a hold of the leg. The third guy finally moved as he reached, though the thug's leg was already out of Shannen's grasp.
It wasn't until the blow connected with a strange, dull sound that she realized what had happened, Shannen caught the blow on the ear and he made a decent imitation of a puppet's strings being cut.
She stared down at the ground, looking at his body. What were they going to do to him? Was he going to be alright?
The big guy transferred a paper roll of coins from his right hand to his left and shook out pained knuckles. Caroline only barely registered the movement at the edge of her vision.
