by A. J. Downey
“Ma’am! Ma’am, was that a collision? Ma’am, talk to me!”
“Yes!” I cried brokenly. “He hit me! The man in the pickup truck hit my back end!”
“Right, okay. Just hang on for me, I’m dispatching emergency services right now. What’s your name?”
“Serenity…”
I hurt almost immediately, from my neck, down between my shoulder blades into my lower back. My hands gone numb on the steering wheel, though from injury or from how hard I gripped it during the impact, I don’t know.
The dispatcher kept talking to me, but my vision was locked on Stoker, far ahead, pulling a U-turn across two lanes of freeway to ride back in my direction. He looped around once more, holding out his hand to cars trying to go around me and the pickup and pulled up in front of my broken car going the right direction.
I could hear sirens in the distance, coming in for the rescue, except I think I’d already provided that. Me. Of all people.
What did I do?
Stoker wrenched on the door handle and I turned my head carefully, wincing, staring up at him. He pointed at the door lock and I got my hands working and got it unlocked for him. He pulled my door open and dropped down into a crouch beside me.
“Serenity, Orchid, baby, where does it hurt?” he demanded, reaching up for me, wiping off my face with the palm of his hand and dragging it across the thigh of his jeans to get rid of the tears he’d collected.
“My head, my neck, and my back. My hands are numb,” I said.
“Okay, okay, just hang on for me. Help is on the way.”
“Serenity, it sounds like someone is with you,” came over my phone.
“Yes, there is!” I called back. “It’s my boyfriend, he’s here. He came back for me.”
Stoker pulled my phone out of the windshield-mounted clip and said, “Stay right here, baby. I’m going to check and see how far away they are.”
“Okay,” I said, moaning. I daren’t try to nod my head again. Oh, my God. It had to be bad if it hurt this swiftly, didn’t it?
“Yeah, hi, this crazy son of a bitch –”He’d turned my phone off speaker and was talking to the dispatcher, walking out a little ways from my car to check the emergency team’s progress. A big red fire engine lumbered into view, pulling past my car. The whine and hiss of the braking system was startling, but I didn’t want to move.
“Hey there, you alright?” One of the firemen came to my open door as Stoker ended the call with the dispatcher on my phone and pocketed it.
A state trooper strode up to him and Stoker kept his hands out to his sides and nodded politely to him.
“No,” I whimpered.
“What hurts?” he asked, and I told him what I’d told Stoker.
“Okay, okay, what’s your name?”
“Serenity.”
“That’s a pretty name, Serenity. My name’s Jake and I’m gonna be taking care of you. Here’s what we’re gonna do. First off, I don’t want you to move your head, okay? I’m gonna help you get this collar on, and you just don’t do anything, okay?”
“Okay.”
They put a C-collar on me and extracted me from my car on a backboard. I was terrified. I couldn’t turn my head at all, and when they set me on the stretcher, I called out for Stoker. Like a magician, he just suddenly appeared at my side, his warm calloused hand wrapping around mine.
“Hey, baby. They’re gonna take you to go get checked out. X-rays, imaging, that sort of thing, okay? I’m going to be right behind you, Orchid. I’m not going anywhere, okay?”
“Can you ride with me?” I asked, afraid, feeling like a child but I couldn’t help it.
“No, baby. I gotta ride. I’ll be right behind you, I promise. I swear it. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whimpered, even though I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit.
“Okay, you just hang tight. You guys look after her for me, okay?”
“You got it, boss,” Jake told him, and they loaded me into the back of the waiting ambulance.
“Any preference on where we take you?” one of the medics asked.
“No,” I said. “Wherever’s closest?”
“You’ve got it.” The back doors closed, but all I had a view of was the ceiling, my head and neck completely immobilized, the top of the collar digging uncomfortably into the back of my head.
“Woo buddy, that guy did a number on the back of your car. You’re lucky he didn’t go up and over you, monster-truck style,” the ambulance tech said, making notations on his clipboard.
“You good?” his partner called from the front.
“Yeah, we’re all good back here. Take us away!”
“He was going to kill him,” I said, dully.
“Who? Your boyfriend on the bike?”
“Yeah.”
“What’d you do? Brake-check him?”
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I said. “The police weren’t going to make it in time and Stoker was on the bike… I knew I had better chances in my car than he did on the motorcycle. I couldn’t watch him get hit. I didn’t know what else to do…”
“Wow. Sounds pretty brave to me,” the guy said, but he looked like by ‘brave’ he meant ‘stupid.’
I said as much, and he laughed.
“Brave, stupid, the only deciding factor is the outcome. If the guy really was trying to hit your boyfriend like you say, then yeah. Definitely chalk this one up on the winning side for brave. You probably saved his life. A Harley wouldn’t have stood a chance against that big ol’ pickup.”
I closed my eyes and felt hot tears leak down my temples, sucking in a slow breath, trying to breathe through the irritating searing pain of my overworked, whip-lashed muscles.
I could feel my hands again, so I had to take that as a good sign.
At the hospital, I was poked, prodded, and imaged to within an inch of my life and then left to rot, still stuck in the stupid collar, in one of their curtained bays. Stoker found me there. A lot of my clothing had been cut off, my knee had started to throb and ache, and other myriad little hurts had started to surface, though the shot of morphine they’d given me had taken the worst of the edge off of it all.
We were waiting for a doctor to review all of the imagery and to see if they needed to order more before they took the collar off. So, for now, I got to lay here, my hand in Stoker’s while we waited and he told me what happened.
“I was trying to catch up to you,” he said. “I don’t know that fucking guy’s deal but I split lanes and zipped past him and it just, I don’t know, it must have set him off. Next thing I know he’s trying to fucking kill me.”
I swallowed hard.
“I saw him try to run you off of the road,” I said, and before I could say anything else, a voice outside the curtain called out, “Serenity Bowman?”
“Yes?” I called.
A Florida Highway Patrolman batted the curtain aside and stepped into the little space. Stoker leaned back and the patrolman said, “Here’s your purse, recovered from your vehicle, and your citation for reckless driving.” He dropped my purse at my hip and set a sheaf of papers on my chest, covered by my hospital gown.
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” Stoker grated out coldly.
“Just doing my job, sir. Several witnesses said your girlfriend sped past the gentleman in the pickup and brake-checked him.”
“They also say how he was trying to fucking kill me?” Stoker demanded.
“Not to my recollection, no.” The patrolman gave Stoker one of the dirtiest looks I had ever seen and actually smirked. They absolutely had too told him that, but I was betting that it would be omitted from his report.
I swallowed hard and groped for Stoker’s hand. He stopped and looked down at me and I pled with my eyes for him to just let it go for now.
“This is bullshit,” Stoker growled.
“It’s also my only driving offense. We’ll go to court and sort it out there.”
“Good luck with that,�
�� the patrolman snarked, and he went out through the curtain, and from what I could see, left it gaping as his boots thudded against the linoleum and he left the way he’d come.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry. It’s because of my patch,” he said.
“Don’t be sorry,” I said. “I’m going to be okay – you’re okay, that’s the only thing that matters right now.”
“You hang tight,” he said with a sigh. “I’ma go make a phone call. Call the club, give them the heads-up.”
“Call Linny, too. Her number is in my phone. Access code is 4193.”
“Got it.” He stepped out the curtain and whisked it back into place, hiding me from view, returning to me the semblance of privacy the patrolman had stripped away.
I lay there, and despite my calm words, I was on fire inside with all of the panic. Just what was I going to do?
29
Stoker…
“No, I’m not fucking joking, does it sound like I’m joking, motherfucker?” I growled at Radar.
“Slow your fuckin’ roll there, Turbo. I get it, your lady’s hurt and you got the pigs adding insult to injury. The question was rhetorical. I’ma put out the message and contact the club lawyer. What hospital did you say you were at?”
I rattled it off.
“Okay, now hang up the fucking phone and go be with your ol’ lady. We got you,” he said.
“Thanks. Oh, and I got this asshole’s plate. Doesn’t sound like he’s going to suffer through the criminal justice system so it’s on us for some good ol’ fashioned street justice.”
“Noted, gimme that too, while you’re on the line.”
I rattled that off, too.
“Got it. I’ll be in touch.”
“Thanks, Radar.”
“Don’t mention it. We’re crew and it’s just what crew do,” he said, with all of his savvy. I could already hear his fingers doing the walking across his laptop’s keyboard over the line.
“Later,” I said.
“Oh, you have no idea,” he said with a malicious sort of glee. He already had the dude’s whole life in front of him on his screen. I could see it in my mind’s eye.
“Thanks, man.” I disconnected the call.
No sooner did I have Linny dialed up on Serenity’s phone, than my phone started blowing up with texts and ringing off the hook. I grimaced and rejected the call coming in from the captain, so I could fill in my girl’s best friend.
“I thought you went off with lover boy,” was how Linny answered the phone.
“She did,” I said. “You best be sitting down for this…”
Jesus fucking Christ, Serenity knew how to pick her friends.
Linny was on it like sonic, asking if my girl would need clothes or this, or that, asking about prescriptions, rides, you name it. She was a one-woman organizational army, holding her shit together and getting shit done. She kicked me off the phone so that she could go to work, getting my girl everything she would need, and telling her manager to shove it when she said she was leaving early and I heard him balk over the line.
I smiled to myself and called my captain back on my phone before Serenity’s phone’s screen had a chance to go blank.
“What happened?” he demanded, and I could hear the general chaos and discord of my crew getting ready to group ride on the other end of the line.
I told him and he muttered, “Fucking son of a bitch.”
“Nothing to do but hurry up and fuckin’ wait here at the hospital,” I told him.
“Radar’s already on it, doing his thing. I think he recruited Data up north to get to wiping out some of the financial shit.”
“Wow,” I said, suitably impressed.
“You look after your woman. We’ll be there in a couple of hours,” he said.
“Aye, aye, Captain… and thanks.”
“Psht! Don’t thank me, boy. Be there as soon as we can.”
“Copy that.”
“Hey,” he said, and his voice took on a different quality, one I rarely ever heard from him.
“Yeah?”
“Are you doin’ alright?” he asked.
I sighed. “No, Cap. I’m really not. She could have died. She could be in there paralyzed for all I know. I don’t know what the hell she was fucking thinking,” I said. An anger born of fear coursed through me. and he was silent on the other end of the line for what felt like a full minute.
“She was thinkin’ she loves you and she’d rather die than see you die.”
I knew he was right. It was still a fucking bitter-ass pill to swallow, though.
“Yeah, well, I’m, um, not okay,” I said lamely, not one hundred percent sure what else I should say. I mean, granted the captain was being Captain Obvious but, damn.
“Point of all of this is, she will be okay, alright?”
I nodded and said, “Yeah,” clearing my throat, which suddenly had a Gordian knot of emotion in it.
“You keep us posted on the prognosis, yeah?”
“As soon as I know y’all‘ll know.”
“See you soon,” he said, and that was it.
I bucked the fuck up and went back to my woman, the picture of positivity and a good outlook, even though I was fuckin’ terrified with what was taking so fucking long to read her fucking scans.
We hadn’t gotten any answers by the time Linny got there an hour later and we still didn’t have anything by the time the captain and the rest of my crew got there, more than an hour after that.
Nine fucking hours, we waited in that goddamned hospital. Serenity was uncomfortable and miserable the whole time. Nine fucking hours of waiting, only to be told time after time, hour after hour, any time we inquired, to wait, to be patient, and that ‘No news was good news.’
Finally, the doc breezed in like we ain’t shit and told us everything was fine, here was a script for some painkillers for the next few days, and to take some fucking Tylenol after that.
I would have been livid if I wasn’t so fuckin’ drained, mentally and emotionally.
I let Linny help Serenity get dressed in the clothes she’d brought from her place, and made a mental note to get Linny a key to my place once we had my little orchid all moved in. I wanted to add to my girl’s life; I wasn’t about disrupting it. Little things like that went a long way.
The captain and crew and I had held church, leaving a couple of the ol’ ladies with Serenity while we used the hospital’s small chapel to do it. They’d all left hours ago to stake out homeboy in the truck’s place, and to do some homework.
First order of business would be to find out what the fuck his deal had been.
Dude’s airbags had gone off in his face and he’d been knocked the fuck out at the scene, so there was no telling what was up. It’d been a blessing. If he’d gone after Serenity for having my six, I would have had to kill him right out there on the highway, in front of all those witnesses.
I wasn’t about that. I liked my freedom.
Now, it was just me, Linny, and my woman, and she was hurting. She’d stiffened up something awful and was moving around slower and worse than Mrs. Sedgwick, stooped and carefully shuffling her way out the Emergency Department on my arm, while Linny pulled up at the ER’s main entrance. She would drive her back to Orchid’s and I would follow, hopefully without incident this time.
I’d already called in to work around eleven o’clock at night – much to my foreman’s irritation, waking him up like I did. He’d pretty much lost all his irritation when I told him what happened and told me to take Monday too, if I needed it. I told him I’d keep him in the loop. I had to see what happened.
She looked so frail going up the steps to her apartment, and I rushed to catch up. Linny had to go and felt awful about it, and to be honest, even though I’d deny it, and would never in a million years would I say it out loud, I wanted her gone. I know it was selfish as hell, but I needed to be a little selfish right now. I didn’t know how much longer I could hold my shit together.
Fuck.
I felt like I’d nearly lost her. Way too close, far too close for comfort. It’d be a millennia before my butthole unpuckered from this one.
When I shut the door behind Linny and turned around, Serenity was sitting on the edge of her bed, her hands folded in her lap. She looked exhausted, in pain, and she looked up at me with a mixture of fear and anguish in her eyes that clashed like oil and water. I sank down onto the bed beside her and searched her face.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry.” Her voice warbled and her eyes crested with tears, and all I could do was shake my head.
“It’s alright. You saved my ass back there, dude was tenacious.”
“I couldn’t let him hurt you. Not when I could stop him. I didn’t know what else to do. He was going to hurt you and the police never would have gotten there in time. I knew I had better chances in a cage than you did on a bike.”
I smiled at her natural use of MC terminology, and her face filled with a gentle confused wonder that was likely a byproduct of the good drugs she was on.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“You, talking like one of us. It’s nice. You’re assimilating nicely.”
She went to nod and stopped. I brushed some of the stray wetness off her cheek.
“Come on, into a hot shower, let’s relax those muscles, get you into bed and you can sleep.”
“Okay,” she murmured.
I stood up and held my hands down to her.
“Wish you had a bathtub,” I said, as she took them and I helped her to stand. She toed off her simple black ballet flats and I led her into the bathroom, letting her go ahead of me so I could stand in the doorway. It was far too small for the both of us to be in there at the same time.
I couldn’t wait to get her home, to my – to our place – and into a bathroom with some size to it. I wanted to back her into the corner, like I had our first time. I wanted to taste her, hold her up against my shower wall and make her come against my mouth over and over again. I helped her undress and went back out into the main room to put her clothes away while she showered.
