Hot Southern Nights

by Gen Griffin

  “What happened?” Addy jogged up to his grandmother with Trish and Nanette hot on his heels.

  Pearl stepped back so that the paramedics could reach Grover.

  “Don't touch me!” Grover yelled as one EMT tried to take his pulse.

  “He shot a Jehovah's Witness,” Pearl explained. “And then he fell off of his porch. I suspect he's broken some bone or another, because he's been trying to get up for the last ten minutes and he simply can't do it. I'm guessing it's either his leg or his hip.”

  “Oh my god.” Trish knelt down next to her grandfather. He was attempting to pull away from the paramedics.

  “I don't need your stinking help,” Grover snarled.

  “Yes, you do.” Trish looked up at her mother. She was not surprised to see Nanette hanging back and looking shell-shocked as the rain poured down on all of them.

  “Who did he shoot?” Addison was all business now that the shit had officially hit the fan.

  “That man over there. The one your Uncle Frank is talking to.” Pearl pointed to the sidewalk. “It was just bird-shot, thank the good lord. Frank's already taken the gun.”

  “I don't need no hospital!” Grover yelled.

  “Yes he does.” Addison looked at the paramedics. “Take him to Baker County Memorial Hospital. I don't care how much he argues with you.”

  “You sure?” One of the men asked.

  “Yeah.” Addison nodded.

  “Absolutely.” Trish took a deep breath and stood up. “I'm his granddaughter. He needs to go to the hospital. Especially if he has broken bones.”

  The paramedics nodded and began working on Grover, despite his howling protests.

  Trish turned her attention to her mother. “Are you okay?”

  “He shot that man,” Nanette whispered. “He actually shot a man. I never thought he would really shoot someone. I never thought he was dangerous.”

  “He's dangerous,” Trish confirmed with a sigh. “Come on Mom, let's get in your car. We need to follow the ambulance to the ER. Unless you need us for anything else?” Trish directed the last bit at Addison.

  He shook his head no. “Not much you can do here. No sense in taking your report on the incident. Y'all don't know what happened any better than I do.”

  “I cannot believe he actually shot that man,” Nanette said again.

  The paramedics loaded Grover onto a stretcher despite his nonstop argument against it.

  “Come on, Mom.” Trish took her mother by the arm. “We need to go.”

  Chapter 50

  “Let me go. Let me go. Let me the fuck out of this bed!” Grover thrashed against the restraints the ambulance crew had used to restrain his swinging fists.

  “Daddy, please.” Nanette hovered nervously by the foot of the stretcher. The heavy downpour had prevented Nanette from driving more than 30 miles per hour on the way to the hospital and the ambulance had beaten them to the ER by more than half an hour.

  Trish hadn't needed the nurse's directions to determine which back room Grover had been taken to. She could hear him yelling obscenities at the hospital staff from the moment she set foot inside the ER.

  “You have to let the doctors take a look at you,” Trish informed her grandfather.

  “Go to hell. I don't have to do nothing.” The old man's arms were straining hard as he fought against his restraints. “Let me loose.”

  “I don't suppose one of you two could help us hold him still?” A gray-haired nurse eyed Nanette and Trish somewhat skeptically. “We need to give him a mild sedative so we can take x-rays. The ambulance crew believes he has a broken hip.”

  “I don't think we can-.” Nanette frowned but stayed several feet away from her thrashing father. “I'm sorry,” she said to the nurse.

  “Ma'am, it would be better if the family could help.”

  “I know but I'm not strong enough and neither is my daughter,” Nanette said as she gestured at Trish.

  “I am,” a familiar voice said from the doorway.

  Trish turned to see David standing in the doorway behind them. Nanette looked over at him and abruptly did a double take. Shock was clearly visible in her blue eyes as she stepped backwards and allowed him to walk into the room.

  “David.” Trish couldn't hide the relief she felt at seeing him. His dark hair was plastered to his head from the rain and his t-shirt appeared to have been completely soaked through. It was clinging to his chest and showing every ripple of lean muscle underneath. He quirked one eyebrow at Trish and offered her a tired, half-hearted smile.

  “Addy called me. I was already in Baker County,” he said by way of explanation as he approached Grover's bedside.

  Grover snarled at him. “I swear to god. If you so much as try to help these criminals sedate me, I'll make your life hell, boy.”

  “I ain't scared of you.” David yawned as he put one hand on Grover's shoulder and forcibly pushed the old man back into the cot so that the nurse could reach his bicep.

  The nurse approached from the side and held up the needle. “If this dose doesn't work, we'll need go up to a stronger sedative.”

  Grover's teeth chomped his handful of remaining teeth into the meat of David's arm as the nurse administered the shot. David hissed but he didn't release Grover until after the nurse had finished injected the shot and stepped away. A semi-circle of tooth marks and blood was visible near his bicep.

  “If you bite me again, you'll be getting dentures for Christmas,” David promised Grover.

  “I need someone to grab his other arm,” a second nurse said.

  Trish stepped forward and mimicked David's grip on Grover. She wasn't nearly as strong as David was but the old man was losing strength with every passing minute. Grover snapped his teeth together next to Trish's earlobe. She shrieked.

  “If you bite her-,” David lowered his face directly down next to Grover's. Trish couldn't hear his threat but it must have been a nasty one because her grandfather went still. Trish took a step back as the nurse beside her began drawing blood.

  Nanette reached for Trish's arm. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” Trish said.

  “Did he bite you?”

  “No. David would kill him and he knows it.” Trish watched as the the nurses buzzed around her grandfather for the next several minutes while David held him still for them. Grover behaved up until the doctor arrived and informed them that Grover needed x-rays.

  Grover's response to the news was to spit in the doctor's face. He missed the doctor and hit David instead.

  David snarled as he wiped spit off his cheek. “You're testing my patience, old man.”

  “Go to hell,” Grover replied. “They're trying to put me a nursing home!”

  David leaned down over Grover. “Stay still and let the doctors take their x-rays or they are going to give you a nice big shot and you won't have any choice other than staying still.”

  “I know what they're trying to do,” Grover argued. “They want to lock me up in some antiseptic hellhole and throw away the key!”

  “Sir, we believe you have a broken hip. We need to provide you with treatment or-.”

  “I don't want your treatment. You're trying to kill me. All my friends come into this hospital and you know what they do here? They die. That is all this hospital ever does. Kill people.”

  “Sir?” The doctor, a middle-aged man with a harried expression on his broad, creased face, turned to Trish and Nanette. “We can't treat him without his permission.”

  “You have my permission,” Trish offered, unsure as to what exactly they expected her to do. Nanette was silent. She always shied away from conflict.

  “I'm afraid that isn't enough,” the doctor said. “He's sound of mind, correct?”

  “Legally speaking,” David replied.

  “Legal is all that matters, around here.” The doctor sighed. “If he says he doesn't want treatment, I have no choice but to let him sign the forms and let him go.”

  “What happens then
?” Trish asked.

  “You take him home with a broken hip and his condition will deteriorate from there.”

  Trish opened her mouth and then closed it again, stunned by the idea that Grover could actually elect to go back to his house with a broken hip and horrified by the idea that it would be her job to babysit him while he did it.

  “I think not.” David spoke up while Trish was still searching for the right words.

  “Sir, I'm sorry but-.”

  “They have to let me go! You heard him. Let me go!” Grover hollered at the top of his lungs.

  David shook his head at the doctor and held up his hand to silence him. He released his restraining grip on Grover and then began undoing the restraints. He gestured for the nurses to stand back out of hitting range.

  “Fine.” David stepped back away from Grover and crossed his arms over his chest. “Go.”

  “What?” Grover blinked at him in rheumy surprise.

  “Go. Get the hell out of here.” David made a shooing gesture.

  “Help me up,” Grover told him.

  “Not a chance,” David replied. “If you're healthy enough to refuse treatment, you're healthy enough to get up out of that bed and walk out of this hospital on your own two feet.”

  Grover shot David a look of pure hatred from where he lay on the gurney. He tried to sit up, succeeding in lifting himself approximately two inches off the rolling bed before he let out a blood curdling scream and fell back down.

  He turned to David again, this time gasping in pain as he lay on the bed. “Help me up.”

  “Nope.” David stood coldly in front of him, refusing to move so much as an inch in his direction. “The nice doctor is the only person who is going to help you. You either get up, right now, and go out to the truck or you stay where you are and start behaving like the model patient I'm sure you can be.”

  “Fuck you, Breedlove.” Grover turned to glare at Trish. “Help me up.”

  Trish stepped slightly behind David, shaking her head no. “I can't take care of you like this. If you can't stand up, then I'll never get you up the porch steps or into the house. You won't be able to go to the bathroom. If your hip is broken and you don't let the doctors fix it, you'll never walk again. I came down here to help you, but I can't help you if you wont help yourself.”

  “Fuck both of you, then. You just want to see me locked away in some hellhole of a nursing home so the two of you can move on with your lives and won't have to deal with helping an old man.” Grover glared at them bitterly. “Everyone moves on with their lives and then they lock old men away to die so they don't have to be bothered with us. Euthanize us in nursing homes same as the animal shelter does with unwanted pets.”

  “We would never do that.” Trish bit her tongue and felt tears come to her eyes. She had come here to help her grandfather but instead he hated her. She wanted to deny his accusations but she couldn't do what he wanted her to do and take him home. “You'll die without medical treatment.”

  “I'm dying anyways,” Grover snapped.

  “Enough.” David stepped between Trish and Grover. “You don't get to make her feel bad because you were stupid and ran right off your own porch. Either get up or tell the doctor you'll consent to medical treatment. Those are your only two options. Pick one.”

  Grover spat at David.

  “Was that a yes or a no?” David scowled down at him, not without pity.

  “He has one more option.” A gruff voice spoke from behind them. Trish turned to see Sheriff Frank Chasson standing in the doorway.

  “Oh yeah?” David raised an eyebrow at Frank.

  Nanette looked at the Sheriff with a look in her eyes that could almost have been described as hope.

  “Yeah. I can officially arrest him and then the Sheriff's Department can order he undergo treatment for his injuries while he's in custody.”

  “Arrest me for what?” Grover turned his attention to Frank Chasson. “I ain't done nothing.”

  “You've done plenty. You discharged a lethal weapon on a busy street in the middle of town. There's a man right here in this here hospital who is getting bird-shot picked out of his leg one pellet at a time because of you. You discharged that weapon in the direction of living, breathing human beings, which makes it attempted murder and reckless endangerment. You shot the windows out of three different parked cars, that's property damage. Also, you killed Ida Young's dog with one of your shots. That was animal abuse and possible aggravated animal cruelty. Do I need to go on?”

  “Bitsy's dead?” Trish blinked at the Sheriff and frowned.

  “Bitsy's dead,” Sheriff Chasson confirmed, glaring at Grover. “We're lucky no human victims are dead. Five shotgun blasts discharged at close range. Its a miracle he missed the evangelists.”

  “Screw Ida's yappy little dog. She's annoying.” Grover eyed Frank with uncertainty. “That feller who I shot ain't really hurt and you won't arrest me for accidentally killing Ida's dog.”

  “I'm trying to avoid arresting you because I genuinely feel lousy about having to put a deranged old man with a broken hip in the county jail with all the meth heads and wanna-be gang bangers.” Frank turned to Nanette. “Darling, you and me need to sit down and have a talk.”

  “Frank, I'm sorry,” Nanette whispered. “I can't.”

  Frank Chasson sighed. “Still won't stand up to your Daddy, will you?”

  Nanette practically cowered behind Trish.

  Trish took a deep breath, tears brimming in her eyes. “I don't know what to do.”

  Frank Chasson saw her tears and obvious confusion and turned to David. “I'm trying to make this as easy and simple as I can, David.”

  “I know.” David sighed and turned to Grover. “Either tell the doctor you want treatment or Frank is going to arrest you and then the doctor will treat you. Your choice. Make it fast.”

  Grover stayed silent for another minute or two and then he glared at the doctor. “Fine. Go ahead. Treat me.”

  The doctor looked questioningly at David. David nodded. “He'll behave. He doesn't have much of a choice.”

  “Are you folks going to wait around until the x-rays are finished?” The doctor asked.

  David looked over at Trish and she nodded. He turned back to the doctor. “Yes sir,” David said. “We'll either be with Sheriff Chasson or in the waiting room.”

  “I'll come find you when I have news,” the doctor replied. He looked down at Grover and pasted an obviously fake smile on his face for the benefit of his surly patient. “Now lets get you x-rayed and see what we need to do to get you feeling better.”

  Frank looked from David to Trish and then back to David. He gestured for them to follow him down the hallway.

  Chapter 51

  “Y'all are going to have to get this sorted out on your own tonight, David. I've got four calls pending and no officers available to respond to them.” Frank Chasson adjusted his belt buckle and then tugged on the wrinkles that had formed in his polo shirt. “To be honest, I need you on the roads running the wrecker.”

  “Sorry, no can do.” David wrapped one arm around Trish's shoulders. “Trish needs me here.”

  “I can see that,” Frank replied with a sigh. “Where is the wrecker?”

  “In the parking lot downstairs,” David said. He held up a set of keys in one hand. “You don't think I'm driving the Harley around in this mess, do you?”

  “I reckon not,” Frank admitted with a huff. He focused his attention on Nanette. “You going to be able to pull yourself together, Nan?”

  “I'm sorry,” Nanette whispered. “You know I've never been able to handle my father when he starts yelling. It's like I'm a little girl cowering in the corner again and-.”

  “And you've left Trisha to handle a mess she has no business handling,” Frank snapped at Nanette. “Did you really think this gentle girl would be able to control Grover?”

  Nanette took a step back from Frank and sniffled. “I'm sorry. I thought maybe she could help
him until I found him a place in a nursing home. I didn't realize he had gotten so uncontrollable.”

  “Nanette, you are fully aware that your father-.”

  “That's enough Frank. Leave her alone.” David eyed the Sheriff warily. “I'll handle Grover.”

  Frank Chasson let out a loud huff and gestured at David's arm. “You really ought to get someone to clean up that bite wound for you.”

  David looked down at the blood that was trickling down his arm. “If he had bitten Trish, I would have broken his neck.”

  “You would have saved us all a lot of trouble if you had,” Frank commented tiredly. His radio began crackling and shrieking again. “I've got to go. Duty calls. And David, don't let Grover escape. We're going to have to charge him for shooting that feller.”

  “I figured as much,” David acknowledged. “He's not going anywhere.”

  “Good.” Frank turned to Trish and Nanette. “Ladies, try to have a good night. I'll do what I can to smooth this over, but I ain't making no promises.”

  “I understand,” Nanette said softly.

  Frank said his goodbyes and then headed out of the hospital. David, Trish and Nanette were left standing in the hallway of the emergency room.

  “David-.” Trish put one hand on the arm that hadn't been bitten. “Frank's right about that bite wound. You need to get it cleaned out. There's a lot of bacteria in the human mouth. Especially Grover's mouth. I don't think he brushes very often.”

  David snorted. “I'll be fine.”

  “You don't need an infected bite wound. We have enough problems already.” She flagged down a passing nurse and asked to borrow some antiseptic wipes. The nurse pulled some off a nearby cart and handed them to her.

  Trish pulled up his sleeve and opened one of the disinfectant wipes. She pressed it against the wound, trying to be gentle even though she knew the alcohol had to burn as it went into the cuts. David hissed through his teeth.

  “Sorry,” Trish told him. “Why is it that we never can have a quiet night together?”

  “Just the kind of relationship we have, I reckon.” David half-way smiled at her. “You okay?”