I tried to inspect the woman's front without pushing her onto her back. "Ice packs," I decided, seeing how swollen her face was, her eyes nothing but little slits above dark black eyes. "Maybe some braces or elastic bandages?" I said, shrugging. "I don't know if anything is broken," I clarified. "I don't want to touch her without cleaning her wounds first. Oh, and gloves. I'll need gloves."
"Alright. I will get all of that," he agreed, turning, making his way back toward the door, closing it with a loud snap, making me jump.
"I don't know if you are in your right mind right now," I said to the woman, feeling a sting of tears at the backs of my eyes as she screamed against her gag. "But I am going to try everything I can to get you out of pain and well again. Whoever did this to you is a monster," I added, sitting down on the very edge of the bed, at a loss for what to do until I had the supplies I needed, so starting to hum because it was the only comfort I could give her.
The door opened a couple of minutes later, making my heart leap up as I looked over my shoulder.
But it wasn't the man from before.
This one was tall as well, but a little rougher-around-the-edges looking with his dark hair, beard, jeans, boots, and a leather vest thing over a black t-shirt.
"Sorry, babe," he said, making his way toward the windows, and it was right then that I noticed the hammer and box of nails in his hand. "Ace said I gotta seal off your exits," he told me.
Ace.
The other man's name was Ace.
"Did you do this to her?" I asked him as he grabbed a nail, held it against the frame of the window.
"Fuck no."
That was it.
Fuck no.
But at least I knew that was two of the people in this house who wouldn't pull out my toenails. It was a small sort of comfort, but I was going to take all that I could get.
The sound of the hammer seemed to ricochet through my skull, making my body jolt with each strike, leaving me feeling jumpy even after he was done.
"Uhm, excuse me, Mr..."
"Drex," he corrected, looking horrified at me calling him mister. "Just Drex."
"Drex," I repeated, finding the name clumsy on my tongue. "Can I have some water?"
To that, he shrugged.
"Guess I can manage that," he agreed, moving off, closing the door behind him.
Maybe I should have been trying to see if I could grab the heads of the nails and rip them out of the window, get myself out of there.
But if I left, this woman was probably going to die. And I wasn't sure I was heartless enough to let that happen. Maybe I'd never taken the Hippocratic Oath, but I'd never been the kind of person who could watch someone hurting and not at least try to help.
I would get her cleaned up and stitched up as best as I could, then I would try to find a way out of this situation.
Because they weren't just going to let me go, right?
I mean, I'd seen their faces.
Sure, as a couple hours passed, the Lenore woman and Drex's faces started to blur in my memory. For some reason, though, Ace's face was tattooed on my mind.
But only because I'd seen him for longer, of course. That was the only rational explanation.
If they let me go, I could absolutely give a police sketch artist enough to go on for Ace.
"Here," Drex said, coming back with a wine glass full of water.
"Thank you," I said, trying to give him a smile even though it felt—and likely looked—fake. "That other guy was a, ah—"
"Dick?" Drex asked, smirking. "Go on, you can say it."
"Well, yeah," I agreed.
"Don't get it twisted, blondie," he said, shaking his head. "We're all motherfuckers here. Save the smiles for someone else. You aren't going to butter me up."
With that, he was gone again, leaving me feeling very foolish for thinking there was something good inside these men to appeal to. Good men brought horrifically injured women to the hospital. Even if all they did was drop them off at the emergency room and ran off out of fear of getting implicated.
Alone as the time dragged on, I found myself pacing the room, humming at first to try to comfort the woman. Then, as minutes turned to hours, to soothe myself.
"Here's your shit," Ace said, making me jump, a stifled scream escaping me as I turned, finding him already moving into the room when I hadn't even heard him open the door.
I decided not to concern myself with his bloody hands.
It wasn't my business how he got the supplies.
And whatever he had done to get them wasn't my fault just because I needed them.
At least that was what I was trying to convince myself of as I laid everything out on the dresser, rearranging it in the order I thought I would need.
"Ace, here," yet another voice said, making me turn to find two more men moving into the room.
Both were tall.
One was dark-skinned with loc'd hair and a more muscular, stockier build.
The other was a little thinner with inky black hair kept a little long and tanned skin that maybe spoke of Middle Eastern descent.
Both had brown eyes.
And both appeared to have those strange red flecks in theirs as well.
What the hell was that about?
"What is that?" I asked as the Black man handed Ace a bottle.
"Goodfellas," the other man supplied, looking me over.
Goodfellas.
You didn't work in hospital rooms without learning a few street names for drugs.
Goodfellas. China Girl. Dance fever. He-man.
They'd gotten fentanyl.
Which was fifty to a hundred times more potent than morphine.
"Ace told us to get something strong," the Middle Eastern looking man supplied. "Is that strong enough?"
"They use it after surgery," I supplied. "So, yes."
"Will it be enough to knock her out while you work on her?" he pressed.
God, I hoped so.
I couldn't imagine doing what I needed to do to the woman if she was conscious.
"But, um, I still might need all of you to help hold her down," I told them, even if the idea of all three of them in the room put me on-edge.
"Whatever Red needs," he agreed, sounding pained. "She's a good friend," he supplied, to what must have been a question in my eyes.
"Aram," Ace called to the man who was speaking to me. "Go get some water. You are going to need water, right?" he asked, looking at me.
"Yes. Right," I agreed, taking a steadying breath as I moved toward the woman. "I need to take the gag off to get the medicine in," I told them.
Ace brushed past me, none too ceremoniously ripping the gag off the woman. Who immediately started screaming at the top of her lungs—a raw, animalistic sound that made a chill wash over me, leaving me paralyzed as the sounds she made seemed to wipe all thoughts out of my head.
"The fuck are you doing?" Ace yelled. "Get your ass over here and give her the medicine."
Snapping out of it, I rushed forward, shaking a pill into my hand, then pressing it down the woman's throat, feeling like something was lodged in mine as I did so.
"What the hell was that?" he asked as he put the gag back in her mouth, shooting accusing eyes at me. "Is this your first week as a nurse? You've never heard someone in pain before?"
I had.
Of course, I had.
It was rare, though, that someone actually hit a ten on the pain scale. A ten was an unimaginable amount of pain, the kind that made you bedridden and delirious. Only a handful of people ever have to experience a ten.
This woman?
I'd swear this woman was experiencing a fifteen.
I'd never heard anything like it before.
Dread flooded my system at the idea of needing to cause her any more pain, even if it was going to help her in the long run.
"I think you got a stupid one," the other man in the room said, looking at me as I stood there, unable to remember what Ace had even said to me, let
alone know how to appropriately answer.
"If you don't have anything helpful to say, Seven, shut the fuck up," Ace demanded, gaze slipping to me. "I think she might have jiggled her brain around in her skull when she fell," he supplied, looking at my forehead.
I'd forgotten all about the cut, about the poultice that was probably giving me a raging infection as each moment passed.
"Concussion," I supplied.
"What?"
"When your brain hits your skull. It's called a concussion."
"See? Not stupid," Ace said, giving Seven a stern look. "You gonna start this shit or what?" he asked, looking back at me.
I wanted to wait until the pain medicine kicked in. But there wasn't much time to waste.
I had to get to work.
Chapter Five
Ace
She was impressive once she got out of her head and onto the task at hand.
I'd seen all sorts of healers in the human realm. From women in their huts in the woods, doling out garlic and honey salves for infections to battlefield doctors giving men bullets to bite down on while they hacked away at their infected limbs with old, filthy saws. I hadn't witnessed a lot of modern medicine up close, though.
The nurse's moves were practiced and precise. No shaking hands. No second-guessing what she was meant to do. There was a set order of things and she went through it until, a few hours later, she climbed back off the bed, scrubs, arms, and gloved hands covered in blood and sweat.
"Okay. That's it," she said, taking a deep breath, letting it out shakily. "You have antibiotics?" she asked, looking over at me.
Aram and Seven had made their way out when Red stopped fighting the ministrations, likely heading to their beds as the sun started to streak in through the windows.
"Yes," I said, moving over toward the bag I'd brought in, finding the three separate bottles, and bringing them over to her. "I had no idea which was strongest."
"This one," she said, taking the bottle. "Does she have any allergies?"
"Not that I've seen," I told her, shrugging, finding my mind sluggish with lack of rest and the stress that had slipped in under my skin and set up house.
"Okay," she said, going over toward Red, removing the gag, and shoving the pill down her throat. "She's quieter," she said, going to reach out toward her face, but seeming to remember at the last second that when anyone put a hand on Red, she started screaming and fighting again. "Can we leave the gag off?" she asked, looking over at me. "I will be able to hear her if something is wrong then," she added.
"Yeah, fine," I agreed, nodding.
"Would it be possible if I could, um, you know," she said, waving a hand down at her bloodstained body.
"Yeah," I agreed, sighing, leading her toward the door and out into the hall. "Through here," I said, opening the door to the bathroom. "No," I snapped when she moved in then reached up to close the door. "The door stays open."
"I need to shower," she insisted, those brown eyes of hers going round.
"Yeah, tough shit," I said. "Shower with the door open, or don't shower at all."
Her teeth gritted at that.
There was no fucking logical reason not to let her close the door. The bathroom didn't even have a window, just a fan in the ceiling to let the hot air out.
"You can't be serious," she insisted, eyes starting to get glassy. I hadn't seen a woman cry in fucking ages. I found it oddly fascinating, even if I knew that wasn't the appropriate reaction. By human standards.
"Yet somehow I am. I can take you back to the room like that if you want."
Her lower lip trembled at that as the first tear slipped down her cheek.
I had the most uncharacteristic, asinine urge to move closer and catch that tear with my finger.
"P...please," she said, head lowering, gaze moving to the floor.
"Halfway," I agreed. I was not, ever, known as someone who compromised, who changed his mind.
Yet one little plea from a complete stranger, and I was going back on my word.
I just needed rest.
I was running on empty.
That was the only explanation.
"Thank you," she said, but refused to look at me as she turned and made her way toward the garbage, shucking off her gloves, then reaching inside the glass shower stall to turn on the water.
I watched for a minute longer than I had a right to as she pulled her scrub top upward to discard it on the floor, showing me a gently sloped back with a deep red bra band and what looked like some sort of tattoo at the back of her neck.
But I managed to shake myself out of it, closing the door halfway like I'd told her I would, then making my way back toward my room, going into the dresser to grab one of my long-sleeve tees. It was pointless to get her any pants. Anything I had would fall right off of her.
I would ask Lenore for something in the morning, but I was too tired to wake anyone else up and start demanding shit right then. She could make do with the shirt that would be more like a dress on her small frame.
With that, I grabbed a towel from the hall closet, and went into the bathroom.
I caught one glorious second of her completely bare self from her perky breasts with dusty pink nipples to the slope of her stomach, the gentle flare of her hips, her shapely if not overly long legs, and even the space between that made my cock stir in my pants, despite my pure exhaustion. But a shriek escaped her as her arms shot down, one draping across her breasts, the other covering the juncture of her thighs.
"Relax. Nothing I haven't seen a million times," I told her, going for dry and unimpressed, but finding my words came out tight, a little airless.
"Don't," she demanded, voice quivering.
"Don't what?" I asked, brows furrowing as I watched the water cascade over her shoulder, pooling where her arm was holding her breasts.
"Don't rape me," she demanded, voice choked.
"I don't fucking rape women," I snapped, more offended than I likely had a right to be. I had been eye-fucking her naked body after barging in on her shower. I'd been around the humans for long enough to know that wasn't acceptable behavior.
Their customs changed a lot over the years, but a woman's modesty usually was something considered sacred, even if some human men always refused to respect it. We had a fun way to make rapists suffer back home. It involved a very slim hot poker that would be driven ever so slowly up their dick holes.
It was a fitting punishment for what they'd done.
And the screams.
Fuck.
Those screams were music to our ears.
"Then why are you in here?" she asked, voice sharp.
"Towel," I said, showing it to her before hanging it on the hook. "Shirt," I told her, waving it before putting it on the sink counter. "You have five more minutes," I added, moving back into the hall, leaning back against the wall, feeling the pressure of my hard cock against my pants, trying to deep-breathe past it.
I wasn't a man controlled by his sex drive.
Did I fuck the women who came to our parties, who showed up at rallies? Sure I did. When someone was throwing pussy at you, it was stupid to turn it down.
But I didn't crave it when they weren't around.
The human concept of blue balls had always meant very little to me.
I was starting to have a personal understanding of what they were talking about.
The water cut off, and I had to actively force my thoughts to other things than her pert tits, her smooth skin, the soft, feminine folds of her pussy.
My hard-on was still raging when the door opened all the way, and there she was in my tee that swallowed up her body like I'd thought it would.
"Do you have a blanket?" she asked as I led her back to my room, motioning toward the couch.
"No. Go to sleep," I demanded, walking out of the room, closing the door, and moving into the living room.
I thought I would pass out as soon as my ass hit the cushion of the sofa. But I found my mind racing, ping
-ponging between possibilities until I eventually felt wide awake, revved up even.
So I made coffee, feeling the heat chase away the chill of this world, the kind of cold that got amplified when you went without sleep. I tried to read, but found the words swimming on the page.
Finally, more worried about Red than I cared to admit to the others, knowing I needed to put on a calm and collected face for them, I snuck back into my bedroom, making my way toward the bed where she was writhing a bit again, though seemingly while asleep this time.
"You need to shake this shit off, Red," I demanded, sitting off the edge of the bed. "I need answers. The crew needs you back. Aram looks like a lost puppy," I added, sighing out my breath. "You should be healed by now. I don't understand what's happening. Shake this shit off, Red. You come back, and I will skin whoever did this to you."
We'd all hurt at the hands of humans in the past. Rival MCs got territorial or someone fucked the wrong guy's old lady or whatever stupid shit humans worried about. And it led to some sort of altercation. One where we needed to pretend to be weaker than we were, so no one caught on. Which meant we took a lot of blows.
But I had a sneaking suspicion that whatever was going on with Red had nothing to do with humans.
Even though I'd never heard of our own kind attacking one another.
If that was what happened though, I didn't care if it took another couple of generations, I would find my way back to hell and make good on my promise to Red. Then I would take it one step further. And I could bring the case before Lucifer himself. Because this shit should not be happening amongst his followers. We used our bloodlust on the humans as punishment for the ugly shit they'd done on Earth. We didn't turn on one another.
A low, mewling noise dragged me out of my swirling thoughts, making me turn to find the nurse passed out on the couch, shifting what seemed uncomfortably in her sleep.
Curious, I rose, making my way across the floor to stand near the end of the couch, looking down at her with her arm slung over the top of her head as her heavy breathing made her breasts press against the material of her tee, making her semi-hardened nipples poke out further.
I needed to walk away.
I knew it even before I felt my cock stirring again.
The Healer (Seven Sins MC Book 2) Page 4
