Chapter 11
11
I t was worse than he'd imagined.
Carlisle had offered to drive, insisting he didn't want to get blood on his nice fancy sports car . Simon couldn't make heads or tails out of the tone of those four words— nice fancy sports car— as if she thought he was up to something or she was mad about the car.
On top of that, he was being a right ass.
He didn't mean to be, but he was backed into a corner and threatened, and he hated it. He hated that it was Carlisle blocking his emotional exit and insisting that he needed to go to the ER. He knew that the more he protested, the worse of a hole he dug for himself.
Any decent, normal man would just go to the ER and get the stupid stitches. Carlisle was a professional. Her friend that she was in business with—Jane—was also an ER nurse, licensed, certified and probably tattooed on them somewhere. So, if she said that’s what he needed, then she was right.
He’d managed to hold it together until she’d cleaned him up as best she could and bandaged him. Though he'd held the edges of his shirt the whole time she worked on him, once he stepped foot into the ER he wasn't sure he'd get away with it. They’d want to see.
At least there were medical privacy laws. He might have to explain but it shouldn't get back around to Carlisle. Except she walked him in and said hello to everyone. She knew everyone . Fuck this shit.
As soon as he lifted his shirt, the questions would come. While these nice medical folks might be nice enough not to actually share his details with Carlisle, they were obviously very good friends with her. They’d tell her to be on the lookout.
He was mad about all of it.
Just before he'd fallen, Simon had been watching her long, lean legs and slim sneakers swinging in the hammock. Watching the smile as she told him he needed to move the shutter one way or another.
He'd been a fool, moving it to the right instead of the left, thinking he was being playful and all he was being was a damn idiot.
“Hey Carlisle!” One of the nurses came up to her, hugging Carlisle, surprise and happiness on her face. “Are you back?”
For a moment, he remembered she didn’t work here anymore. That she’d told him she couldn’t. Couldn’t see the dying when she’d come so close herself. Couldn’t handle the pace and the bright lights. She’d needed a room to have a panic attack in. Though she’d withheld a lot of details, he was happy to watch her be happy.
Then he watched it fade as she shook her head. No, she wasn’t back . She was just bringing her friend in for stitches. He was just her friend, and that was probably all he’d ever be because, despite his best wishes, he was being an asshole.
Simon looked away. Carlisle’s conversation had seemed to veer a bit into the personal. He wouldn't have thought a little outpost ER in Breathless would be so busy but apparently the citizens had been up to no good. He should have insisted that he drive himself, then he could have gone into Atlanta where no one knew him. Or at least not like this.
Instead, no one really knew him here, but they all knew her .
She extricated herself and walked him through to the back even though, as she explained, they still had to get his insurance information and file paperwork and everything. Because God forbid something went wrong, “you would need a way to follow up and get the proper treatment.” Hence why she couldn't just do it herself.
She did get him whisked into a surgical bay then pulled the curtain shut around them. He knew he should be grateful, and he was, but he couldn’t dig it out from under all the other crap piling onto him. He tried to put on a bright face for everyone who came to check out his stupid puncture wound that he never should have gotten.
Irritated, jaw grinding, he held the edge of his shirt up to show each of them.
“Is there anything else?” the second nurse asked as she reached for the fabric as if to pull his shirt up.
“No. Just this.” Simon held tight. He was certain that, behind him, Carlisle shrugged, seeming to catch on that he was an uptight asshole.
This was all that they were going to see of his skin.
A shame , he thought. He'd blown his chances with the nice neighbor, but he would have blown it sooner or later. Right?
It took two hours to get the right people in and out. It took a stupid emergency room copay. But the urgent care wasn't open, and this couldn't wait until tomorrow, Carlisle insisted. Anything after six hours couldn't be stitched. Simon wished he'd known that so he could have taken his six hours to drive his ass into Atlanta.
His confidence that it wouldn't get infected didn't seem to mean anything to her. But she had been right. It took so long because one nurse cleaned it and another picked small rocks out of it and cleaned it again. Then a doctor came in with some kind of scope lenses and cleaned it again.
Each of them had managed to pick additional rocks or whatever out of the wound. Maybe even splinters. Simon had stopped listening hours ago. The red haze of being cornered like this was more than he could handle.
“You should go visit with your friends.” He’d tried to get her to leave. Tried to be pleasant about it, though pleasant was real damn hard to muster up.
But she’d said, “No, I'll stay here with you,” and Simon had to insist that she leave.
Still, she'd been right. It had taken one layer of dissolvable stitches down in the muscle and another layer at the surface. He was eventually discharged with a stack of papers on wound care that he figured Carlisle could probably write in her sleep and he’d been sent out to find her.
He wandered the ER bays and hallways like a fool, his shirt bloody in several places. His back was bandaged and feeling tight from the stitches and the local anesthesia was beginning to wear off.
On the one hand, maybe it was a good thing he wasn't the driver. And on the other hand, he was mad that he had to sit in the car with her. He found her quickly and headed out to the car, still trying and failing to get his head on straight.
No one had seen, or at least no one had said anything. His stomach grumbled and Carlisle found a grin. At least maybe she didn’t hate him.
Insisting she was hungry, too, she drove them through a burger joint. He lied and said he only wanted french fries and a soda even though she got a full meal. She apologized again, as though it were her fault. Even her apologies were grating. He knew it wasn’t her, it was him.
At least she pulled into her own driveway. Simon was grateful that she hadn't dropped him at his door, treating him like an invalid. In her garage, with the garage door cranking noisily down behind them, she turned to look at him. “I would apologize again but I don't think you appreciate my apologies. Let me make you dinner tomorrow night?”
He hadn’t been expecting that.
She continued. “You can come over here for once and we can check the dressing on the wound.”
Damn. That.
“I'll be fine,” he told her again.
To which she immediately replied, “You can't even see it. You have a trained professional offering you free medical help.”
“Sure, dinner.” He tried to change the subject, realizing that the more of an asshole he was, the less likely he could come back from this.
And he wanted to come back from it. Maybe tonight could be an anomaly.
After all, he was here . He was living in the home that he paid for with his own money. He was living by himself for the first time and picking out his own stupid furniture—not that he had managed to do any of that yet. Though his bank account, which had been very much lightened when his mother called, was now definitely drained from this ER visit so there wasn't going to be a couch.
But he could go to her place for dinner. And maybe, if he could go out with her, it would be something for him, something that he wanted , that had nothing to do with the rest of his family. So he said, “I would really like that.”
Then he wondered if he was even capable of doing anything like that.