Rough Ride: Denver, CO Chapter (Sons of Sin MC #1)

Chapter One

Denver University Hospital

Scarlet

I rush beneath the neon sign hanging over the ER department’s main entrance. It’s a relief to be out of the heat. On this particular midsummer night, sleeping would have been impossible in my small apartment with no air-con. I may as well be at work.

The chaos in the department might be routine but it is still visceral and as I duck toward the staff room my heart rate ramps up a notch. My body knows it is time for action, quick thinking, and life-and-death decisions. My adrenaline prepares itself.

“Hey.” Todd looks up from a carton of noodles. “Hot enough for you, Doctor Mesa?”

I blow out a breath. “Bit different from what I’m used to.” Todd is nice, he’s an experienced nurse and thinks and works fast. His smile is generously given to his colleagues and patients.

“Which is?” He pauses eating and studies me through his round glasses. “Where did you say you were from?”

“Oh ... East.” I flap my hand left even though I have no idea if that way is East. Why do people never give up asking probing questions? If I wanted to talk about my past, I would. “Looks crazy busy out there?”

“A scaffold collapse at a construction site, mostly sent to surgery, a ward, home, or the morgue now.”

“Nasty.” I open my locker, dump in my purse, and pull out my white coat. Once it’s on over my pale blue scrubs, I loop my stethoscope around my neck, check I have pens and torches in my pocket, and then steel myself, ready for action.

“Break a leg,” Todd calls after me as I enter the mayhem.

“Ah, Scarlet, can you just check this X-ray please?” The head nurse, Lynette, angles me toward a light box. “Pleural effusion, right?”

“Yes.” I nod. “He needs—”

“It removed, yes, aspiration or drain?”

“Aspiration, it’s not very big. Then get the medics down to find out why it’s there in the first place.”

“Will do.” She thrusts a form under my nose. “Can you sign this? Steroids for an asthma in bay two.”

I do as she asks. Lynette is very competent and if she says the patient needs steroids, I believe her.

“And there’s an abdo pain in four. Nothing obvious if you could—”

“I’m there.” I round the nurse’s station collecting a pager on the way and head to bay four.

The man is pale and sweating and holding a vomit bowl. It’s clear his abdomen is uncomfortably distended. I begin to examine him when he vomits profusely. Lynette arrives and changes his bowl, wipes his forehead.

“He needs a scan,” I say. “Stat.”

“What’s causing it?” she asks and looks at his huge belly. Poor guy appears pregnant.

“Omental torsion I think, which means we need a surgical team down here asap.”

“On it.” She nods and rushes off.

I smile at the man who looks at me with wide, scared eyes. “Your guts have gotten knotted but we can unknot them. Hang in there, I’ll get you some pain relief while we do our tests.”

“Thank you.”

The next few hours go by in a blur of examining patients, writing notes, checking results, and speaking to relatives. Just after 2:00 AM, I take myself outside for a breath of fresh air.

Denver has cooled slightly, but the air is hardly fresh. It smells of tarmac and restaurants and the stars look down on the city as it tries to rest in the heat.

Suddenly, to my right, there’s a screech of tires and the roar of a meaty engine. I push from the wall I’m leaning on as headlights dazzle me. “What the...?”

Four huge shiny Harleys slam to a halt, atop each a huge biker, black-clad, and steely-faced. I look around for more staff but I’m the only one outside.

And then, from the first bike, a thud. The rider has hit the ground, his limbs splayed and eyes closed. He’s out for the count.

“Fuck.” I rush to him and when I stoop at his side I see the pool of blood leaking through his cut. “What’s happened to him?” I demand of the tall biker now at my side.

“Shot. Guts.” His voice is gruff and he sneers. “Fucking assholes.”

“We’ve got to get him on a gurney. Inside.”

“You a doctor?” Another biker grunts at me.

“What do you think I am, a goddamn florist?” I turn to the doors. “I need help out here!” I yell.

No one appears.

“Help please!”

Still no one.

“We’ll help,” the first biker says.

“Okay, grab that gurney. Get him on it.”

Within seconds the bikers have their buddy on the gurney. His hair is dark, a few strands are stuck to his damp brow, and he has a thick layer of stubble that melts down to an intricate neck tat.

His steely blue eyes harness mine. “Fix me up, Doc, I’ve got revenge to dole out.”

“Where does it hurt?” I ask. His blood pressure is low if his pale lips are anything to go by.

“My fucking belly.” He clutches his side with bloodied hands and groans.

“Anywhere else?”

He shakes his head.

I try to move the gurney but it’s too heavy. “Help me,” I snap at the two bikers at my side.

Together we push him into the department at speed, and luckily the first bay is empty. I hook him up to oxygen and snap on latex gloves.

The two tall bikers yank the curtains closed, sealing us into privacy, and then shove their hands on their hips. A wall of muscle and attitude.

I don’t have time to order them out, or the inclination, so quickly undo my patient’s leather patch-strewn cut and then yank up his t-shirt.

He has a gunshot wound to his right side.

It’s bleeding profusely but it appears to be a deep graze that’s nicked a vein or maybe a small artery, rather than something that’s blown half his torso off.

I slap on several wads of gauze and apply pressure.

“He gonna live, Doc?” one of the bikers asks.

“Yes, he’s bleeding but from what I can see there’s no internal damage. I’ll stem the flow then stitch him up.”

“Good job.”

I look at my patient. His full lips are a better color with oxygen.

“Doctor Mesa.” Todd appears. “What can I do to help?” He gives the bikers a once-over, seemingly not surprised to see them watching over their buddy.

“Can you get a line in? We’ll give him some fluids. A liter of saline. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Sure thing.” Todd rushes off.

“What’s your name?” I ask the biker on the gurney.

He removes the oxygen mask. “What’s yours, honey?” His eyes flick to my name badge.

“Don’t be a dick.” I frown. “What’s your name? I need to record your visit and report a gunshot wound to the police.”

He huffs. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s the law.”

He lifts his right hand and taps his worn leather cut, indicating a diamond-shaped patch. “I don’t play by the rules of the law.”

“That may be the case, sir,” I say. “But I do, and I have to report this, otherwise I will be in breach. Now what’s your name and where do you live?”

“You gonna stitch me up now?”

“Not yet, I need to apply pressure for a bit longer.”

“Gives me time to look at your pretty face.”

“Have you always been a cheesy talker or is it just since you got shot?”

He laughs then groans and drops his head back to the pillow.

I replace the oxygen mask.

The two bikers behind me also chuckle. “Not the first time he’s been shot and won’t be the last,” one of them tells me.

“Even more reason to call the cops,” I say and glare at my patient.

Despite his battered state, he really is quite handsome—if I were into the rugged-hard-bastard-neck-tats look, that was.

Which I’m not.

No way.

He lifts his head and once more removes the oxygen mask.

“Keep still and keep that oxygen on.”

He ignores me. “No fucking cops, you hear me? I don’t want them anywhere near me as much as they don’t want to mess with my shit. No good will ever come from any of that.”

“Yeah, this is our business, Doc.” One of the bikers steps forward, I notice the ink on his right cheek is the image of an AK47. “All you got to do is stop him bleeding out. Nothing else.”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“And I’m grateful,” my patient says in a low dark rumble. “Just like I’m grateful you’re going to keep your pretty mouth shut about this ... aren’t you?”

He speaks like someone who is used to being obeyed. That pisses me off. But when I look into his eyes again, it’s as if he is seeing right into me. As though my past is on show to him, even though I’ve been so careful to hide it from everyone for so long.

“No notes, no deets on a computer, just fix me up and I’ll go, be out of your hair.” Still, he studies me.

“You know that’s not how hospitals work?”

“It is tonight.” His left eyebrow twitches. “Got it?”

Todd rushes in and begins to set up an intravenous drip. My patient doesn’t flinch when Todd accesses a vein in his arm. I check the wound again and am able to identify the main bleeding point.

With practiced movements I open a suture pack and put three stitches into the culprit. Immediately the flow is stemmed. It was a big vessel, not likely to have sealed up on its own anytime soon.

“You’re a lucky man,” I say, slapping on a dressing. “Another fraction of an inch to your right and you’d be in surgery having a bullet dug out of your intestines.”

“Not often I get luck these days.” He removes his oxygen completely and sits with a grimace. He pulls down his t-shirt.

“What are you doing?” I ask and slam my hands onto my hips.

“We’re out of here.”

“No, you need to let that drip go through. You lost a lot of volume.”

“Nothing a few beers won’t cure.” He chuckles and swings his feet off the gurney.

“Hey, stop that.” I try to prevent him from pulling out his IV line and fail. It falls to the floor and leaks saline onto the stark white linoleum. A drip of his blood lands next to it.

He grabs an Elastoplast from a trolley and tears it open with his teeth.

He secures it over the small wound on his arm.

“There, all fixed.” He steps up to me. He’s at least six feet tall, perhaps six-two, and his wide shoulders fill my vision.

“Thanks again, and remember.” He places his index finger on my lips and leans his face close to mine.

“Not a word, honey, not a damn word. I was never here.”

I inhale his dark scent: oil and heat and danger, and stare into his eyes. My heart is clattering and a tingle runs from where he touches my lips to my chest, my pelvis, and my knees.

“But you are here.” I speak against his finger and my voice holds a small tremble I hope he doesn’t notice.

“And so are you.” He tips his head, his eyes narrow.

“What does that mean?”

“We’re all running from something, including you.”

I catch my breath. How the hell does he know that?

He smiles as though my reaction is confirmation.

“Hiding takes effort, sacrifice too. Keep doing what you’re doing and fate will do the rest.”

He steps away and turns, leaving me a little dizzy. “Take some dressings, change that every day. Sutures will dissolve in a week.”

His buddy grabs some adhesive gauze and shoves it into his cut pocket.

Then as quickly as the bikers appeared into my life, they are gone. All that is left is the debris of their visit cluttering bay one.

“Scarlet.” Todd appears again. “I thought your patient would need ... oh ... where is he? Where are they all?”

“Gone.” I turn off the IV. “Upped and left.”

“But he...”

“I know. He was hypovolemic. Said he’d cure that with beer.”

Todd snorts. “Honestly, the Sons of Sin are an entirely different species.”

“The who?”

“Sons of Sin. They’re an MC group based on the outskirts of the city, near Bear Lake, some old auto repair place, or at least that’s where the Denver chapter is.”

“How do you know this?”

“I’ve lived here all my life and been working in this department for nearly twenty years. I know stuff.” He shrugs.

I’ve only been in Denver a year and I’m still learning about my new home. “He was most insistent about no cops.”

“They would be, wouldn’t they?”

“Why?” I frown and pull off my gloves, wash my hands.

“One percenters. They make their own laws that have nothing to do with the glorious land of the USA. They do what they want to do. Where they want to go, they go, and whoever they want to kill, they kill.”

“Kill.” I shudder. I’d seen the steeliness of his blue eyes, and experienced the unblinking, unwavering way he’d looked into my soul.

This was a man who wasn’t afraid of death and murder, likely he invited it in.

My curiosity was dangerous, I knew that, but even so more questions formed in my mind. “Todd, what do they–?”

“Can we get some help in here?” Lynette’s shrill voice rang around the department and Todd and I raced from bay one.

A child was collapsed in his mother’s arms, floppy and pale and unnervingly quiet, never a good sign.

Thoughts of nameless bikers, one-percenters, and steely blue eyes left my mind as I set to work. My job was to preserve life. My vow had been to do no harm and I intended to stick to that promise.