Chapter 18
Eighteen
Or, what if, hear me out: No.
—Text from Birdee to Shade
Birdee
“Why do you think they like getting started so early in the morning?” Charleigh asked.
I wondered the same thing.
When I’d interviewed, one of the interview questions I’d been asked was if I was an early riser.
I’d answered honestly, letting them know that I wasn’t necessarily a morning person, but that didn’t mean that it would stop me from doing my job.
They’d told me after asking that they generally tried to get started working by six-thirty in the morning.
At the time, I’d been so desperate to get a job that I hadn’t thought to question why the time was so early.
Now that I had it, I kind of wanted to know the answer.
“I actually meant to ask Nicole yesterday, but forgot,” I admitted.
“I did, too,” she said as she opened a can of beans and started to eat straight out of the can.
“What are you doing?” I wondered.
“Eating beans?” She shrugged as she scooped up some beans.
“You’re not even going to warm them up?” I asked as the jagged edges of the can lid she left attached came perilously close to her neck as she leaned forward and took a bite.
Who the heck ate beans like that?
“Nah.” She took another healthy bite. “I like them lukewarm.”
I didn’t ask her anything else, but I did eye her for a bit as she continued to chow down.
“What does ‘chicharron’ mean?” I wondered after a few minutes as the sound of her slurping started to get to me.
“Pork?” She shrugged. “I think.”
“Oh,” I said. “What do they taste like?”
Because seriously, how could someone as cute and sweet as Charleigh do something so…disgusting?
She held out a forkful and said, “Want a taste?”
I looked down at the fork and said, “Is that a nipple?”
We both paused.
Charleigh leaned forward to get a closer look. “No?”
We both leaned closer until our eyes were only a few inches away from the nipple.
“That’s definitely a nipple,” I promised her.
She held it away from her like it had leprosy. “Surely not.”
“Surely so,” I squeaked. “Look, it even has a hole in the tip. Look.”
Her face turned a little green. “That’s…I don’t think it’s a nipple.”
“You can tell yourself it’s not a nipple, but it’s definitely a nipple,” I said as I Googled the beans. “Pork and beans. That’s a pig nipple.”
She gagged and thrust the can of beans at me, jagged edge of the can toward me.
I leaned forward to take the can just as the breakroom opened and Hershel called out, “Hey, y’all. What are y’all doing?”
It would’ve been fine had he come in the door normally.
But not Hershel.
I’d only worked with him a single day, but the man was a walking freakin’ disaster.
In only a few hours, he’d not only injured an employee, but he’d hung up the assembly line twice just by “observing.”
When he came into the breakroom, he barreled into the door that was at my back.
The force of the door hitting the back of my chair forced me forward, and like a B-horror movie, my arm went toward the jagged can lid. It took only a small slice, and then blood was practically spurting out of my arm in rhythmic pulses.
Each squirt of blood had me blinking in surprise.
What was worse was, each squirt of blood hit Charleigh in the face like Carrie, and soon she was dripping with it.
“Oh my god!” Charleigh cried out.
That was the last thing I heard before I all but melted out of the chair.
Creed
I all but ran into the hospital, my mind a meld of freaked out and detached that was slightly alarming.
I stopped the first person I saw and said, “Where’s the ER?”
“You’re in it,” she said impatiently.
“I’m looking for my fiancée,” I lied. “She just came into the hospital. Blood loss or something.”
“Ah, the girl that got her brachial artery cut open from a can of beans?”
“Creed?”
I looked over to find Charleigh standing there and blanched.
Because somehow, I knew that the blood that was staining her blonde hair red was Birdee’s.
“What happened?” I croaked.
“A fluke!”
I looked over to find a large, balding man with his hair fisted in his hands sitting on a hospital chair staring at me with pain in his eyes.
“I came into the breakroom and they were eating beans. The door hit her chair, and she jerked into the can. It was like a scene straight out of Final Destination!”
I gritted my teeth to try to stay calm.
It didn’t work.
“I was just updating these three, but since you’re here, I’ll tell you, too,” the nurse said.
“Ms. Calvert was taken into surgery to repair the tear in her brachial artery. You can all go up to the first-floor surgery center, and when the team has news on Birdee, they’ll update you via the phone there. ”
Surgery.
Torn artery.
I was going to be fucking sick.
“Charleigh,” I said tightly. “Can you come over here and speak with me for a minute?”
Charleigh nodded, her eyes hollow.
“What happened?” I asked. “I need all the details.”
“Exactly as Hershel said it.” She grimaced.
“I was eating beans from a can. We found a pig nipple in my beans, and I was trying to get rid of the can. I’d just forced it in Birdee’s direction when the breakroom door came swinging open.
The can lid that I left attached to the can cut into her arm right here.
” She pointed at her own arm in example.
“Then it just started spurting. Everywhere.” She gestured toward her face.
“Hershel is some combat medic or something. Retired. I don’t know.
He went into this survivor mode and put a tourniquet on her arm and called 9-1-1. ”
“Fuck,” I said. “Fucking, fuck.”
“The nurse that came out,” she said. “She was optimistic.”
“Why’d they call me?” I rasped, my mind a whirlwind. “Not that I’m complaining at all. But why me?”
“We were in the room filling out our paperwork. I was doing mine on a sheet, but Birdee was filling hers out directly with HR. That’s who called you. Nicole asked Birdee who she wanted to put down as an emergency contact and she just blurted your name out without thinking.”
“Okay,” I said. “Did anyone call her father?”
Charleigh scrunched her nose up at that. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
I tilted my head, but I semi-agreed with her. I mean, how many times had I seen him with Cody and Mable, but not Birdee?
Reading the look on my face incorrectly, she started to explain.
“She texts him all the time. Trying to engage. And he never engages. We saw them all the time when we were out having lunch before we came to work with Great Dane’s.
I don’t think there’s anything worse in the world than seeing her face fall when she realizes that she’s not important enough to invite out to lunch with them.
Or breakfast for that matter. Something they have a standing appointment for, which Birdee very well knows.
I don’t think they do it maliciously, per se.
But I don’t think they can see anything past their own hands, so to speak. ”
“Shit.”
That had been what I was afraid of.
Why I’d said something to Vito in the first place.
“I just don’t think he needs to know right now.
Then he’ll be here on some misguided attempt to show he actually cares when he really doesn’t.
” She gritted her teeth. “In the months that I’ve been working with Birdee, he’s texted her exactly two times.
Once to say that he couldn’t come fix her door.
And once to ask if she knew someone that Birdee had recommended to her dad’s gym. ”
My teeth could literally get no closer together as I clenched my jaw.
“Let’s be honest here, Creed. She’s going to be dealing with a lot as it is.
We don’t need to add him. If she wants him here, she’ll say so.
But until then, if it’s up to me, we don’t involve any of them.
” She looked at the door where we’d stepped off to the side.
“She’s going to be wrecked. She just had something go her way for once with this job. Now this.”
I squeezed Charleigh’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”
Charleigh turned her aquamarine-colored eyes to me and said, “I hope you’re right.”
“Sir?”
I looked over to find the man that’d apparently been the cause of this all and said, “Yeah?”
“I just want you to know the company will pay for all of this for your fiancée,” he promised. “I’m so sorry this happened.”
I held my hand out for his and only when he took it did I say, “It’s okay, man. I know that this was an accident. Birdee will, too.”
Hershel didn’t look convinced.
Hershel started talking to Charleigh again, and I stepped away to pull out my phone to see which of the club was the closest.
Courtland was only a few minutes away, so I gave him a call as I headed in the direction of the waiting room.
“Navarro.”
“I need your help,” I said. “Something happened.”