Chapter 5
Rage
“Hey! Psst, can you hear me?” I’ve been in and out of it for at least an hour, and even with this woman clicking her tongue with impatience, I’m so damn thirsty, I’m not sure I could talk.
“Can you open your eyes?” Forget impatience, she sounds borderline pissed.
Letting out a groan, I manage to open my eyelids and am even able to keep one of them that way. My entire body hurts. Christ, even my scalp. How is that possible?
“Oh, thank God! Look, I need to stop for gas and get a couple of things. Water included because I was more worried about getting away from there. I just need to know if you can hold off on using the bathroom?”
“Thirsty.” I mumble out some version of that word, before burrowing deeper into the cocoon surrounding me and closing my eye again.
“Christ, you’re burning up,” the woman says, as she lays an icy palm on my forehead. “Can you drink a little bit?”
It’s too hard to open my eyes, but at the feel of the bottle against my lips, I purse them and start swallowing as she slowly tilts the water.
“Here, now I want you to take this,” she instructs me, placing a capsule in my mouth and I instantly close my teeth around it before pushing it back out.
“I know you have no reason to trust me, especially after what you’ve been through, but that’s an extra strength ibuprofen that I take when I have cramps.
It’s all I have right now, but I do have medical training and I’m taking you some place I can get you checked out with no questions asked. ”
I keep my lips sealed shut, wondering why it’s so hard to think, let alone talk. I need more water, I think and that’s when an inkling of a sensible thought breaks through the fog in my head. If she had wanted to drug me, she would have put something in the water. She didn’t try to hide the pill.
“Okay.” Even to my ears, the word doesn’t sound right, so I just open my mouth to get my point across.
The pill is followed by more water, then silence, even as she stands there with the door still open.
“You’re probably going to hate me for this, but I can’t think of anything else right now.”
I don’t know what to make of what she says just before closing the door nearest my head. A few moments later, the door near my feet open and she slides the duffle bag that had been over my legs away, and then the blanket.
My bare feet are sensitive to the cold air, but that doesn’t seem to matter when I feel a hand undoing and then pulling down my jeans. This seems like a weird time for sex.
Suddenly my eyes have no problem popping open and while I’d been picturing the beauty from the bar the other night, my memories are a little fuzzy right now, so I’m relieved it is her.
Except I can’t figure out why she’s holding a hoodie over my midsection with her cheeks flaming red, I wonder if she has a fever.
Once she sort of half-wraps the hoodie over my boxers, and a little under my ass, her amber eyes lift up to meet mine.
“It’s a new truck and honestly, I’ve been terrified that you’d piss back here and I’d never get the smell out.”
The grunt that I let out seems to be a sufficient answer for her and the stress on her face eases when she smiles. “I knew you’d understand.”
*
The last few days have been a series of getting tortured, passing out, and waking up with a new part of my body screaming in pain, completely unaware of the day or the time.
The next time I fully wake up it’s because my bladder is aching for release.
I’m unbelievably relieved when I realize that nothing else hurts.
A light snore beside me has me slowly turning my head, since I’m somewhat expecting my whole body to start hurting again at any moment. It’s Trouble, I think, smiling at the woman I tagged as such when I saw her in Kent the other night.
We’re next to each other on a fold-out couch and from the dim light that’s on somewhere in the room, I can see a series of framed skeletal diagrams along the wall beyond her.
Where the fuck am I? Not that I haven’t woken up in unusual places before, but this is a new level of weird.
I move to sit up and that’s when a lower level of the pain I was expecting kicks in, and I realize there’s an IV in my arm. Not giving it a second’s thought, I yank that out and feel the woman beside me sitting up.
“No! Oh, it’s empty now anyway,” she stops her scolding as suddenly as she started and reaches her hand out to feel my forehead. “How are you feeling?”
“Good. Where are we?”
“In my clinic, about four and a half hours from Kent. I just wanted to get you somewhere they couldn’t find you and Dad wanted me away from there because of everything going on, so this made the most sense to me.”
“My head’s a little fuzzy and I’m not sure I got your name, but I need to pee.”
“Since my patients don’t use bedpans, the best I could come up with last night is that,” she says, pointing to a counter where there’s a plastic water bottle with the top cut off. “Let me help you sit up and I’ll give you some privacy.”
“You’re a vet,” I say, trying to cover for the groan I let out when she sits me up.
“Yes. I’ve got a doctor friend nearby who owes me a favor, so I’m going to ask for some pain meds when it’s a decent hour.”
“But. But, there are pain meds in my system,” I confirm, not sure I like where this conversation is heading.
“Here,” she says, handing me the bottle. “Pee first, worry about suing me later.”
With that, she leaves me on my own and I shake my head, trying not to laugh at the thought of what Thunder will say when he hears I was treated by a vet. He’s going to get way too much pleasure out of that material.
After a few minutes there’s a light tap on the door and I let her know it’s safe to enter.
“I wasn’t sure what to do with this,” I say, shrugging awkwardly as I hold my bottle of piss.
She crosses to a paper towel dispenser and wraps some around the bottle before leaving to dispose of it.
“My dad mentioned knowing a King named Jessup,” she says when she reenters. “Is that your name?”
I nod, frowning and wondering how her dad knows me. “Everyone calls me Rage.”
“Sorry, I’m Everly Dindak. My dad is…”
“Rob. Yeah, Joanie introduced your dad to me,” I cut her off. “I’ve never heard that name before. Everly.”
“Dad was hoping for a son and Everett means ‘brave as a wild boar’,” she tells me, putting her hand on my shoulder as she light presses against my banged up shoulder blade. “Unfortunately, Everly just means wild boar, which doesn’t sound half as good.”
“I doubt he was disappointed by having a daughter,” I reply, nearly gasping as she peels a bandage off the wound on my arm.
“I’m almost done with the hard part.” And I imagine her smile has more to do with her dad than the state of my body.
“How bad am I?”
“The X-rays showed some new hairline fractures. You were remarkably lucky in that regard. Last night you said you weren’t allergic to anything or had any health issues, is that correct?”
“Damn, I don’t remember any of that,” I tell her. “What else did I fess up to?”
“Just excessive drinking and occasional drug use.”
“Sounds right.”
“You passed out before telling me what caused all this bruising,” she asks me, her voice filled with concern as she sits beside me and lightly touches my back.
“That fucking sheriff caned me,” I reply, fisted my hands at the thought of getting even.
She sits so silently beside me that it takes me a moment to realize she’s crying, and the moment I do I carefully wrap my arm around her to pull her against my side; hoping she never knows the effort this takes right now.
“I’m sorry,” she croaks out before she starts crying harder. “Can I ask, did you find out anything about Sheriff Mills?”
“No specifics, just enough to know he’s dead,” I tell her, feeling that cold, hard rage that I know so well rising up inside of me. “There’ll be a reckoning for that. Don’t you worry.”
“I’m going to go and hit the store before meeting my friend,” she says after taking a moment to digest that news and compose herself. “Can you tell me what sizes you wear and what you like to eat? I don’t have any human food here.”
“Or human drugs?” I ask, keeping a straight face as I look forward to seeing her flustered again.
“Lidocaine can be used on humans,” she retorts, sitting up ramrod straight.
“Isn’t that topical? Come on, you can tell me, you gave me something else too, didn’t you? Am I going to grow a tail?”
“That should be the least of your worries right now. Morphine works for both, also,” she says, standing up and motioning for me to lay down again and tucking me in before quizzing me on everything from my shoe size to my favorite food.
“Okay, I’ll be back in ninety minutes. I don’t trust you on your feet yet, so please just try to rest and drink more water. Do you need anything else right now?”
“Belly rubs?” I ask, wolfishly grinning at her and enjoying her blush.
“I think you’ll live,” she accentuates her words with a sigh as she turns to the door.
“Everly,” I call out to her when she’s almost through the door. “Thank you. For all you’ve done.”
“You’re welcome.” Her smile pulls at my heart and makes me hope I’ll be seeing it on a regular basis.
Everly
My God. This man. Stopping at a red light, I lean forward, placing my forehead on the steering wheel. How can he possibly get sexier every time he opens his mouth?
Now every time, he was feverish and in a shit ton of pain when I was working on him last night, but that doesn’t count.
A horn blares behind me and, yeah, the light might be green now, but it’s the crack of dawn so what’s the rush?
While I wouldn’t tell my friend what I needed when I texted him, the pause in Warner’s reply makes me think he understands why I wanted to see him at his office before it opened.
Somehow, I doubt I’m the only one in this area that’s ever asked him for painkillers on the downlow; I’m probably just the last one he expected to put him in that position.