by Amy Brent
I was the one who begged Luke to pop my cherry.
I was the one who wanted him to be my first.
At the time, I wanted him to be my first, last, and only.
Maybe I still wanted that.
Maybe that was the problem.
Maybe that was why I was so damned afraid of seeing him again.
Luke
“I still think you should wait a few more days,” the doctor said, giving a disapproving shake of his head as he read over my chart for hopefully the last time. “You pop those stitches again and – “
“I know, doc,” I said, holding up my hands. “I could bleed out and die.”
He shot me a hard look over the top of his reading glasses. “Yes, without immediate medical attention, you could bleed out and die.”
“I understand, doc,” I said. “Don’t you worry. I plan to outlive you by a good thirty years just so I can say I told you so.”
I offered up the best smile I could muster. My side still hurt like a sumbitch, despite the pain meds and antibiotics they’d been pumping into me for over a week. It felt like somebody was sticking a hot branding iron into my gut, but I wasn’t gonna let him know that. I held up my right hand and said, “I promise to be careful. Scouts honor.”
“I seriously doubt you were ever a Scout,” he mumbled. He held out his hands and sighed like a man who was giving up. “All right then, you have been warned and I bear no responsibility for anything that happens to you once you walk out that door.”
“Agreed,” I said. “I am on my own. Got it.”
He closed my chart and tucked it under his arm. He took off the glasses and tucked them into the front pocket of his white coat. He asked, “Do you want me to prescribe pain meds to go with the antibiotics?”
“Don’t need pain meds, doc,” I lied. “I just need some clothes and directions to the elevator.”
I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet dangling, still wearing a flimsy hospital gown and nothing else. I’d been told that my bloody clothes had been cut off me by the EMTs and thrown away. The only things that survived were my bloodstained National Rodeo Association Championship belt and silver buckle (they knew I’d skin them alive if they hurt that belt) and my scuffed boots, which were sitting on the floor next to the bed with the belt tucked inside one of them. Far as I knew my old truck, along with everything I owned like clothes and a wallet that didn’t have more than a few dollars in it, was still sitting in the parking lot at the rodeo arena.
Sweet Thing -- the cute little nurse that I’d banged in the bathroom a couple of days before -- came in carrying a pair of blue hospital scrubs for me to go home in. The doctor watched her like a hawk as she set the scrubs on the bed next to me and quickly left the room without ever looking me in the eye. Too bad. I would have loved to have tapped that sweet ass one more time before being released. Oh well. Maybe I’d look her up the next time the rodeo was in Houston.
I had convinced the old bat of a nurse not to report Sweet Thing for what we’d done. It was all my fault, I said. Don’t punish her because I can’t keep my pecker from getting hard. Don’t ask me how I convinced her because that is a tale I will not tell. Let’s just say that sometimes a man must do things he wouldn’t otherwise do sober and leave it at that.
“Do you need help with that?” the doc asked, watching me struggle with the scrub shirt. I got my head in okay, but when I raised my arms it felt like somebody was sticking a chainsaw in my guts. I grunted at him as I got the shirt over my arms. He stepped in to tug the shirt down carefully over my bandaged side. My face was washed with sweat and I felt like I was gonna puke, but I held up a hand to shoo him away.
“I’m okay,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply for a moment. Slowly, the nausea subsided. I picked up the scrub pants and slid them up my legs and cinched them at my waist. Without underwear to keep it in place, my junk kind of bulged out the front of the thin scrub pants. Oh well. Nothing I could do but let it hang.
I tossed the hospital gown on the bed and pulled the belt out of the boots to set it on the nightstand. I ignored the dried blood that coated the silver buckle and dark leather. I didn’t have any socks, so I just slid my bare feet into the boots.
It took all the energy I had just to get dressed. I leaned back on the pillows and closed my eyes. Cody would be here soon to take me home where I could rest without a bunch of doctors and nurses fussing over me. I swear, these people would wake you up to give you a sleeping pill.
“Okay, Mr. Daniels,” the doc said with a tone of finality, still shaking his head at me. “I’ve done all I can do. I’ll go sign your release forms and the nurse will be in shortly with a wheelchair to roll you downstairs.”
He put a hand on the pointed toe of my boot and gave it a little wiggle. “Behave yourself, Mr. Daniels. I don’t ever want to see you in here again.”
“Don’t worry, doc,” I said quietly. “Next time a bull gores me in the gut I’ll make sure they just let me die in the dirt.”
Shelby
I just about had a hissy fit when Daddy told me that I would have to drive four hours to Houston to pick up Luke from the hospital because he and Cody were going to be busy nutting young bulls all day.
Actually, I think the correct term is “de-nutting”.
If you don’t know what that means, look it up for yourself because it’s too disgusting for me to talk about.
Anyway, when Daddy told me that Luke would be released later in the day and I had to pick him up, I said no fucking way. Let him take a bus or a taxi. I wasn’t going to spend four hours getting there and four hours back, stuck in a truck with Luke Daniels.
No way.
Forget it.
Shit.
Needless to say, I was still fuming when I pulled into the Houston Memorial Hospital parking lot and went to the desk to ask what room Luke Daniels was in. I was directed to take the elevator to the fifth floor, room 518. I got in the elevator and when the doors slid shut, I checked my reflection in the mirrored surface.
I was wearing skin tight jeans with the legs tucked into a pair of old cowboy boots, and a denim shirt rolled up to the elbows and tied at the waist, over a white camisole that showed off a fair amount of my freckled cleavage.
I had my hair pulled back like always and had even put on a little makeup. Silly, I know, but I wanted Luke to look at me and see what he missed out on when he left all those years ago.
Look at what you could have been fucking all that time, I wanted to say.
Look at what you could have had riding you like a buckin’ bronco.
Then again, by now we probably would have been divorced and fighting over custody of a couple of rugrat kids.
I don’t want them, you take them.
No way, they’re yours…
By the time the elevator dinged and opened to the fifth floor, I had just about decided that maybe it was best that Luke had left me behind.
If he hadn’t left home to ride the rodeo circuit, we might have gotten married and I might never have gone off to college to get my degrees and create a life of my own.
I might have lived my whole life on a dusty Texas ranch popping out babies and washing dirty diapers and wiping snotty noses while wondering if their daddy was ever gonna come home.
Maybe he did me a favor by leaving me behind.
Maybe I’m the hard-headed, strong-willed woman that I am today because Luke Daniels took off one day and never came back.
Maybe I was better off.
I guessed I’d never know.
* * *
Luke was in room 518. I held my breath as I walked down the long hallway, counting room numbers as I went. 510… 511… 512…
When I reached room 518, I paused for a moment to peek through the open doorway. It had been six years since I’d seen Luke. I was eighteen and he was twenty. We’d had sex dozens of times. We’d kept our relationship (if you could call it that) secret because Luke didn�
��t think Daddy would approve and he was probably right.
We weren’t exclusive or anything. I dated other boys and lord knows he went with other girls. But we had a bond that kept bringing us back together. Or at least I thought we did.
Then one day Luke said he was hitting the rodeo circuit and didn’t know when he’d be back. I was stupid in love with him and he was stupid in love with the rodeo. He just drove away and left me standing there in the dust waving goodbye like the village idiot. I kept waiting for him to turn around, but he never did.
Peering through the door, I held my breath, wondering how much he had changed, if he had changed at all.
The last time I saw him he was a strapping young bull rider with broad shoulders and a thick chest, and arms that were roped with muscle from hanging on to the backs of thousand pound bulls.
He had shaggy blond hair that hung down in his blue eyes and a smile that made me melt in my panties. His skin was the color of tanned boot leather from a life spent in the Texas sun.
He looked like a young Brad Pitt and he knew it.
And he took advantage of it every chance he got.
Besides me, he probably screwed half the girls in Calloway County and would have screwed the other half if he’d had the time.
All he cared about was getting drunk, getting laid, and hanging on to a bull for eight seconds to get a silver buckle.
I knew it at the time and I knew it now, Luke wasn’t the kind of boy you expected to stick around. He was like an angry Brahma bull: you might get a rope around his horns, but there was no way you were gonna tie him down.
The man lying in the bed in room 518 vaguely reminded me of the boy I’d once known, but as we say here in Texas, he looked like he’d been rode hard and put up wet.
He was lying on his back with his eyes closed and his hands resting over his stomach. He looked a little ridiculous, wearing a pair of blue hospital scrubs tucked into a pair of dusty old cowboy boots.
His complexion was pale, sickly, like he’d been out of the sun for a while. His sandy blond hair was pushed back and plastered to his head, like it hadn’t been washed in days. His chin and cheeks were hollow and stubbly.
I hadn’t seen him in six years, but he looked like he’d aged a couple of decades.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then stepped forward and tapped on the door. When his blue eyes opened and he smiled, the past came rushing back like a tsunami crashing into the shore.
My old Luke was there within that shell of a man.
I knew it because I felt my body tingle the moment I saw him smile.
Luke
I was lying there with my eyes closed, breathing slowly in and out, trying to will away the burning pain in my side, when I felt like I was being watched.
I opened my eyes just enough to see someone standing in the hallway outside my door. I couldn’t tell who it was exactly or whether she was there to see me or someone else.
It wasn’t until she knocked on the door and stepped closer that I realized who it was. I felt my heart jump into my throat. It was Shelby, Lil Sis, come to take me home.
“I’ll be damned,” I said, smiling when her face came into focus. “What are you doing here?” I held out my arms to hug her, but she just reached for my hands and gave them a loose shake.
“Cody sent me to pick you up,” she said flatly, giving me a smile that I could tell was forced. I tried to remember if I’d done anything to make her mad, as was the case with most women in my past. Honestly, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her, or if we had parted in good company. Too many concussions will do that to you, I guess.
“He too busy to come get me himself?” I asked, grinning, hoping she would grin back. She did not. She just shrugged her pretty eyebrows at me and said she reckoned so.
Time had been extra good to Shelby. She looked amazing in her tight jeans and little white shirt with her cleavage bubbling out. Her face was flawless except for the freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. I used to count them with kisses after we made love in the barn loft. She was always the prettiest girl in Calloway County and that had not changed. She didn’t look like an awkward teenager anymore. She looked like a woman; so much so it made my mouth water. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to make love to her now.
“So, are you ready to go?” she asked, getting right to the point. Yep, I had done something to her and she was still stewing over it. I just wished that I could remember what that something was.
“The nurse will come with a wheelchair when I buzz her,” I said, wincing as I pushed myself up on the bed. My side bit at me when I tried to sit up. I put a hand over the bandage and pushed through the pain as I pressed the button to call the nurse with my other hand.
Shelby sat in the chair next to the bed, giving me the suspicious eye, like she thought getting gored by a damned old bull shouldn’t have put me in such a sorry state. She asked, “So what happened?”
I lifted my shirt so she could see the bandage and the wrapping going around my waist. “Oh, I just pissed off a bull is all,” I said, my fingers gently going over the tape holding the bandage in place. “He decided to show me some love by sticking his horn in my guts and tossing me around a little. Ain’t no big deal.”
“Do not listen to him,” a voice called from the doorway. It was Nurse Old Bat pushing a wheelchair into the room. She gave Shelby the once over for a moment. “You his wife? Girlfriend?”
Shelby frowned back at her like she’d been accused of farting in church. “No, I’m… family,” she said, though she didn’t sound too proud of the fact. “I’m here to take him home.”
The nurse narrowed her eyes at Shelby like she was trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or not. I would have loved to tell you that Nurse Old Bat looked much nicer when she was at the peak of orgasm at the end of my fingers, but that would have been a lie. That was her face, for better or worse. After a moment, her harsh features softened a little and she nodded at me.
“You sure you want to leave?” she asked, sounding a little like she didn’t want me to go. “The doc’s not happy about this.”
“The doc just wants to pad his bill,” I said, giving her a smile. I nodded at Shelby. “I’ll be in good hands.”
“I’m not going to be your nurse,” Shelby shot back. Her words slapped my face like a horse’s tail swatting a fly. She frowned at Nurse Old Bat. “Tell me the extent of his injuries and what needs to be done. I’m sure my Daddy will hire a nurse to look after him.”
Nurse Old Bat leaned on the wheelchair and let her eyes go between us. It was easy to tell that one of us was pissed at the other, and the other had no idea why.
She said, “When he was gored by the bull there was extensive damage done to his stomach and spleen, which had to be removed. The doctors were able to repair the damage and stitch him up, however…” She shook her head at me. “Mr. Daniels managed to rip his stitches open a few days ago and that had to be repaired, so he’s still healing.”
“How did he rip his stitches open?” Shelby asked. When Nurse Old Bat looked at me, so did Shelby. “How did you rip the stitches open?”
“He tried to go to the bathroom by himself,” the nurse answered for me. “He got dizzy and fell and busted the stitches.”
Shelby’s pretty face took on a mask of concern that had not been there before. “Is that still a possibility? Him passing out when he tries to go to the bathroom?”
Nurse Old Bat shook her head. “It wasn’t that he was using the bathroom, dear,” she said, glancing at me again. “It was the fact that he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing. He wasn’t supposed to get out of bed without help. He has a hard head, this one.”
Shelby nodded slowly. I could tell by her face that she knew she wasn’t getting the full story. She said, “I’ll make sure he has someone to help him until he’s strong enough to get around by himself.”
“I don’t need a goddamn babysitter
,” I said, feeling a little bit like a fly on the wall with them talking about me like I wasn’t even there. “I just got dizzy is all. I’m fine now.”
“Are there any medications that he needs?” Shelby asked, ignoring me. “Prescriptions to be filled?”
“He’ll be on antibiotics for another week,” Nurse Old Bat said. “He has refused painkillers.”
Shelby frowned at me. I could almost detect a hint of giving a shit in her pretty eyes. “Why don’t you want pain killers?” she asked.
I set my jaw and shook my head. “I’ve seen a lot of cowboys get hooked on pain killers,” I said. “I won’t go down that road.” I tried smiling at her again, still with no effect. “Besides, they’d interfere with my whiskey drinking.”
“You’re hopeless,” Nurse Old Bat said, a rare smile on her face. She nodded at Shelby. “He just needs lots of bed rest. And don’t let him do anything strenuous that puts pressure on his stitches.”
“I understand,” Shelby said.
I couldn’t resist giving the nurse a wink. “Can you define strenuous?”
“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” she said, smiling at me. She wasn’t half bad looking when she smiled. She was probably a looker twenty or thirty years ago. She nodded down at the wheelchair.
“Okay, cowboy, come on, I have real patients to tend to. Climb on and let’s get you out of here before you get somebody else in trouble.”
Shelby
I got the strange feeling that there was something going on between Luke and the nurse that they didn’t want me to know about. And there was more to the story than she was willing to tell about him busting his stitches.
I stared at her while she was talking to him. Her eyes kind of went dreamy when she looked at him and Luke blushed like a boy who’d been boning his teacher after class. I would not have been surprised in the least if you had told me Luke had laid pipe to half the nurses in the place, but to this one? No freakin’ way.
Her name tag just read: Dottie. She was thick and dumpy, probably in her mid to late forties, with chopped off reddish hair and a face that I doubted put too many patients at ease. Surely Luke had not done anything with this one. I mean, no offense, but… ewe.
