by Zahra Girard
“Nana, I’m coming in. Are you all right?”
Nothing.
I turn the knob.
The door slides open.
I freeze. A pained shout breaks my lips.
On the cold tile floor in front of me, is my nana’s prone, naked body. Eyes shut, sprawled out with arms and legs jutting in irregular directions, her head rests awkwardly against the hard marble floor of the bathroom.
Blood trickles from the side of her head, forming a small pool beneath her.
My heart rises in my throat.
“Nana?”
I don’t hesitate. First reaching into the cupboard underneath her bathroom sink, I pull out a bathrobe and lay it over her. Then I run into the bedroom, find her purse and the keys to her car, and cradling my nana like a newborn, I lift her up and carry her out to her car. She’s so light and fragile.
“You’re going to be OK. You’re going to be OK.”
I say that as much for her as I do for myself and it’s as close as I’ve ever gotten to a prayer. I need her to live. This woman’s more than just a grandmother to me; she’s the closest — and only — family that I’ve got outside the MC. Everyone else related to me by blood, alive or otherwise, is dead to me.
Without her, I’d be so lost.
“Hang on, nana.”
The car squeals as I tear out of her driveway and race down the idyllic streets of Lone Mesa to St. Paul’s Hospital and the emergency room. When I hit an open stretch of road, I take a second to look into the back seat at my grandmother. The white bathrobe is already starting to turn crimson.
I slam the gas so hard the engine whinnies like a beaten horse. My knuckles grip the steering wheel so hard that every joint in my hand pops.
That bathrobe is so red.
And she’s so pale.
I’m running out of time.
She’s dying.
Chapter Eight
Samantha
Razor hits the emergency room like a hurricane; descending with the force of two-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, flash floods, and with lightning flashing in his eyes like the wrath of an angry god. Carried in his hands like some swaddling infant is his fierce grandmother, limp and bloody. It’s early, near the start of my shift, and the sight of him fills me with the certainty that today will be another one of those days that Jackie will reprimand me for.
But I can’t take my eyes off him; he’s got Ruby cradled in his arms like an infant and it’s both stunning and heart-wrenching how carefully this vicious man is carrying his grandmother. It’s so incongruous with who he is as a man that I couldn’t wrest my eyes away from him if I tried.
He zeroes in on me and I stand, entranced by the force of him.
When he speaks, his voice burns with compassion and fear.
“Samantha, I need your help. Please. She fell. In the bathroom. She hit her head. I don’t know how long she’s been out, but she’s bleeding and she won’t respond. Help her, please.”
My instincts kick in. I’m able to wrestle all the confusing feelings this compassionate and vicious man stirs up inside me and force myself to my purest instincts as a nurse and caregiver.
This is my element and I am in control.
“Donna, I need your help here and I need a gurney,” I call out and my friend is by my side in a moment to help me with the tumultuous situation. Seconds later, I’m calling for a doctor, and when that doctor arrives at my side, I’m briefing him of the situation. “Elderly woman, approximately seventy years old, with blunt head trauma from a bathroom fall. Some bleeding. Likely concussion and possible subdural hematoma.”
In moments, they whisk away Ruby in the whirlwind of the emergency room and I am right at her side as we take her back into an evaluation room. Out of the corner of my eye, I see a triage nurse pull Razor to the side and begin the process of paperwork so that Ruby can be admitted to St. Paul’s Hospital.
Minutes tick by as we put her through a battery of initial tests, checking her vitals and working to stabilize her. In that storm of activity, I can feel Razor waiting right outside the room, pacing like a lion, with his eyes and his focus locked on me and his grandmother like an unwavering laser.
When I’ve done everything I can, and it’s time for the doctor to take over, I pull myself away from the swirling current of action and step out into the hallway.
He’s waiting for me.
There’s so much emotion — raw, bleeding emotion — in his eyes it makes my breath cut short. I’ve seen this man be terrifyingly brutal, but in this moment right here, he’s just a man on the edge; A man full of concern and love for his grandmother. He has his own way of caring for the people he loves and it is so different from my own, but our intensity is the same; there’s nothing we wouldn’t do to protect the people we care about.
“How is she?” He says.
“It’s tough to know right now. The doctor will run a CT scan to check her head for the extent of the bleeding. Until we get that back, it’s hard to say. If there’s no bleeding in her brain, then that’ll be very positive news. Right now, the best we can do is hope.”
“Hope? That’s it?”
“That’s all we can do. I know this is hard, but you need to remain calm and get some rest yourself. After what you went through the other night — not to mention the day before your little trip out into the desert — you can’t keep exhausting yourself like this. It’s bad for your recovery.”
“Like fuck I’m going to rest. That woman in there is the only family I have. When my addict mom split because she couldn’t take my dad’s abuse anymore, she and my grandfather took me in. Ruby raised me from when I was fifteen until I was eighteen. She’s the family I’ve got. The only person who ever showed me love. With no conditions, without any threats. So just sitting around and hoping things work out isn’t good enough.”
He’s so raw with love and pain that it makes my heart swell and my head light. No matter what my common sense tells me — that this biker is a dangerous man — there’s something about him that keeps drawing me into his orbit.
He is raw, vicious emotion. Unrestrained, unfiltered, pure. When he loves someone, he gives everything.
I take his hand in mine. He’s hot to the touch like he’s running a fever. I worry he’s going to work himself to death.
“You won’t do any good for her getting angry like this. The best thing you can do is to be patient, stay out of the doctor’s way, and make sure you’re available to answer questions. You’re her closest family member, so it may fall on you to make some decisions.”
His voice is sharp. “What decisions?”
“About treatment. You need to be calm for that. You will also need to fill out more paperwork, make sure she’s properly checked in and that her insurance information is on file. All of that is vital so that we can give your grandmother the care that she deserves. Can you do that for me?”
“Uh-huh,” he says. I see the wheels spinning in his head, thoughts wandering down dark, self-destructive alleys.
I shake my head. I have to pull him back from that path. “Not good enough. I want to hear you say it: can you do that for me?”
He grins. It’s warm, and it makes me blush. Like he’s running his hands up and down my body. “You’re damn good at your job, you know that?”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling in return. “Are you going to go do those forms? Can you handle all that? Let me know if you need help.”
Razor is thoughtful for a moment and then he comes closer. He moves his hand to rest on my shoulder. I’m paralyzed beneath his touch.
“There is a favor that you can do for me.”
“What’s that?”
He pulls a breath and his tone changes. It’s quieter. Subdued. Conspiratorial. “We need to change some of the paperwork and whatever computer files your hospital has on my grandmother.”
My heady heart sinks into my stomach under the weight of the implication in his words.
“Excuse me?”
“My nana has a history.”
“All people have a history. Especially older ones.”
“Ruby has the kind of history that the police might be interested in. Police in more than a few states.” He sounds proud.
I arch an eyebrow. “What kind of history?”
“I don’t know all of it. But there’s some bank robbery, some con artist stuff, a few jewelry store robberies, maybe more. She never told me everything, but she and my grandfather made a living for a long time traveling through the whole Midwest working and staying ahead of the law.”
“I can’t do that, Razor.”
“She’s a seventy-year-old woman with a busted head and she may or may not die. The last thing she needs is some overzealous cop coming in here and turning what might be her last days into some legal circus. You know those assholes wouldn’t hesitate to arrest her. Hell, they’d celebrate taking in a woman with a record like hers. They’re just a bunch of violent pigs,” he says, then his voice softens. He leans in, earnest. I can’t resist the fire in his voice, the intensity in his eyes. “Listen, I’m begging you. That woman in there never hurt anyone. She’s kind, she’s caring, she’s supportive, and I’d be in prison a million times over if it wasn’t for her. I know you don’t have to do this, but I love her and she means the world to me. Can you please help?”
My resistance breaks. I tell myself it’s out of pity for Ruby, but Razor’s eyes and intensely attractive presence may play a part in it. Maybe just a little.
“Does she have an alias?”
Razor nods. “She’s got a whole set of fake IDs and everything back at her place. You take care of shredding the forms I gave that triage nurse and I will be back here in fifteen minutes with all her stuff. No one will know the difference.”
“And you’re sure she’s never hurt anyone?”
He smiles at me. “She’s a little old woman. She talks a lot, but the most violent thing she ever did was slapping me a few times when I was being a stupid teenager.”
I bite my lip. But I can already feel my last bit of caution melting beneath the warmth of his smile. Instead of searching for excuses, my brain is formulating plans as to how to get at Ruby’s files.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Thank you. I owe you.”
“You already owe me for saving your life. Now you owe me double.”
That smile grows a little more and heat suffuses more than just my cheeks. “Whatever you say, Florence.”
With that, he’s on his way out of the ER and I’m left standing in a flowing river of traffic — nurses, patients, doctors, and admin staff — trying to figure out just how I’m going to steal a patient’s files without getting caught.
After a moment, I join the flow of traffic towards the pharmacy that’s deeper in the bowels of the hospital. I stop on the way at the break room and fill up a mug of coffee. Then, in a supply room opposite the main pharmacy, I begin my search.
They keep everything important or useful in the treatment of patients in the pharmacy, but in this supply room they keep those little-needed medications that have fallen into disuse. After a short search, I find my target: ipecac. I add the smallest of doses to my coffee cup.
Then I leave the room and head back to the front of the ER to find the head admitting nurse, Colleen. She’s a veteran of the hospital and the nursing profession, with thirty-years of experience under her belt. Gray hair, perfectly straight posture, and energy that never seems to flag no matter how long the day goes on. Sometimes I think she might be a cyborg.
I tap her on the shoulder. “Colleen?”
She looks back at me, smiles, then turns right back to her work. “Yes, Samantha?
I take a sip of my coffee. I wince. Though I only added a small amount, I can feel the ipecac working its way into my system and my stomach churning in anticipation of the emptying to follow.
I move a half-step closer to her trash can.
“I need to see the file on a patient we admitted a bit ago. That old lady who hit her head.”
She doesn’t look up. “What for?”
My stomach tightens even more and I feel woozy. It makes coming up for a legitimate reason to get hold of the paperwork — paperwork which I really have no business seeing considering I’m a probationary nurse and don’t handle insurance or admitting — a lot more difficult.
“They need to contact her next of kin. That biker guy that came in earlier and pretty much just dumped his grandma on us. They’ve got some questions about her treatment. I need to get his phone number.”
Colleen hesitates. An eyebrow creeps up her forehead. “You mean that hot biker just dumped his grandma off like she was trash? And they expect he’ll answer the damn phone and know how to take care of his own grandmother? Who sent you here with that hare-brained idea? Was it Dr. Hemmerman?”
I don’t answer, but I give a slight nod that’s just suggestive enough.
Colleen sighs. “Figures. Here.”
She hands me the file. I open it. And not a moment too soon, as the contents of my stomach evacuate through my mouth and turn the file into a soggy, disgusting mess.
“I am so sorry,” I blurt out. While still puking.
I drop the file. It lands in the trash can and I continue evicting all of this morning’s — and yesterday’s — stomach contents into the trash can.
The file is now floating in an unspeakable sea of vomit.
And I am in the kind of excruciating agony that brings sweat to my forehead and wrests tears from my eyes.
Mission Accomplished.
Chapter Nine
Razor
I tear my nana’s place apart from top to bottom before I find her fake identity papers. She’s got a full package — social security card, driver’s license, insurance paperwork — and they’re all hidden under a stack of unmentionable magazines in a box buried deep in her back closet. Then, because it’s nana and she’d murder me if she saw the state I’d left her house in, I put most everything back in its place.
I down a shot of rum to burn away the memory of those magazines before hopping back in her car and driving back to the hospital. When I get there, it’s even more of a madhouse than when I left. There’s a circle of concerned nurses around Florence and there’s a pale tinge to her complexion.
She gives me a death glare when she sees me. I don’t know what the fuck it’s for, so I wave and mouth ‘thank you’.
She nods, but keeps glaring.
I’m hardly back in the ER before one nurse — a stern woman with gray hair, an intimidating scowl, and military posture — waves me over to sit down near where the nurses are circling around Samantha. She’s got a commanding presence that Stone would be proud of.
“Just the man we’re looking for,” she says. “Nurse Baker here says there are some questions regarding your grandmother’s treatment. And we will need you to fill out all the admittance paperwork again. It was… damaged.”
“Not a problem, ma’am,” I say, giving her my best smile. “Whatever I can do to help you ladies take care of my nana.”
The smile doesn’t work on her. She coldly hands me a stack of forms. “Fill these out and speak with nurse Baker.”
I take the forms and head further back into the lobby of the ER with Samantha trailing in my wake. The second I sit down, she’s on me.
“You owe me,” she says. “More than just a little. You really owe me.”
“I know. And I do. Whatever it costs. I’m telling you, that woman in there is worth it. Are you OK? You look sick.”
Samantha nods. “I’m fine. But I had to get drastic to take care of those forms. I took some ipecac — it’s an emetic, and it’s hardly used anymore, but we keep some stashed away in the supply room for the rare case it’s needed.”
“Emetic?”
“It makes you puke your guts out. Which I did. All over your grandmother’s forms. In front of everyone.”
I grin. “Damn. Good work, Florence.”
&nbs
p; Her eyes narrow. “I had to do a lot to convince them I wasn’t sick and for my boss to let me stay on. They’ve already warned me a few times about the stuff I’ve done for you, so don’t expect any more favors. The last thing I want is to lose my job.”
I nod and turn my attention to the paperwork. “Understood. Again, I owe you. Now, what were the questions you had about my nana?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I just wanted a reason to talk to you and remind you that you owe me. I feel like, if I don’t tell it to you to your face and get explicit agreement from you, you’ll act like it never really happened.”
“True,” I say, grinning at her. “I’ve heard that from more than a few people and on more than a few occasions. But, I get it: I owe you and I’m on thin ice. Can you take me back to see her?”
She shakes her head. “No. I can’t do anything because I’m on thin ice. But you can check with Colleen, who, by the way, likes you quite a bit.”
“You’re fucking with me. She likes me? Because I did not get that impression.”
“She does. Doesn’t like that you took off after you dropped your grandmother off, though. Thinks you’re handsome but irresponsible. I’d say she’s pretty perceptive.”
“Hold on. What did you just say?”
She smiles a little. “That Colleen likes you. That’s all.”
Before I can say anything more, she whirls and strides away. I want to follow her and find out if my ears really caught what I think I heard — even the idea has blood rushing to places that make it hard as hell for me to concentrate — but I’ve got more important things to do.
