The Sharpest Edges

Chapter 1

Hope can bloom in the most desolate places.

The lavender flowers climbing up the chain link outside Ava’s infirmary window are proof of that. They grow through cracked concrete and weave through barbed wire, bringing beauty to the prison yard. They are the only beautiful thing she can see in this small white room where she spends most of her waking hours. They comfort her but must feel like a cruel tease of the real world to the inmates.

She turns away from the view to watch a caged clock on the wall, wishing the minutes would tick by faster so she can head home and wash off the prison scent.

The stench of antiseptic, bleach, plastic wrappers, and latex gloves permeates her clothes in a way she’s never quite gotten used to. Even after two years, she’s still sensitive to the chemicals used in this place. It’s an effort to scour away the germs with little consideration for the people breathing them in. She had to sign a waiver a mile long when she accepted this job. There’s got to be a line somewhere in the small print about hazardous fumes and potential lung cancer twenty years down the road.

This isn’t the place for sensitivities. She learned that the first day when an inmate complained of stomach pains and she’d found a stick of deodorant stuck up his ass. It was lesson one on how cruel people can be to each other, particularly in a place where they have nothing but time to contemplate how to diminish the human spirit.

She sighs as she checks over the medical charts for the day. No one left on her list, all meds have been given and scrapes tended to. Nothing serious enough to require paging a doctor; no attempted suicides or gang-related incidents, which were always the most violent of cases.

It was a slow day, all things considered, and she’s grateful for that. Has been feeling the hint of a cold coming on, maybe spring allergies, she isn’t sure yet but it tickles the back of her nose. One of the guards handed her a box of tissues earlier and told her to sneeze on the inmate that he hates the most.

She doesn’t like that guard. He has his moments of decency, but the snide remarks and blatant cruelty toward the inmates make Nick the one person she’d prefer to aim her germs at.

As if on cue, the object of her disdain blows through the double doors at the end of the hall, tugging along a man she hasn’t seen before.

His hands are shackled, which is common practice, but his feet are free and dragging slightly as Nick pulls him toward the infirmary. He’s practically limp by the time they reach her, collapsing onto the stretcher pushed up against the wall, blood clotting over his eyes that he reaches for with cuffed hands. Nick wrenches them back down, securing him to the railing of the bed and grunting out an agitated ‘don’t’ in his direction.

Don’t what, she isn’t sure.

Don’t touch your face. Don’t struggle. Don’t pull away from me. Don’t get on my last nerve.

All possibilities.

“Got jumped. He’s new, don’t know what the hell happened but probably started it himself. Gotta learn the rules around here. Learn your place, that’s how you’ll survive till ya get out.” Nick directs the last part of his statement toward the man on the stretcher.

He’s a complete mess, spitting blood from his mouth onto the chipped tile floor. The apparent head injury is only one of his most obvious problems. She frowns as her eyes rake along his body, taking in the ripped clothing and shivering frame, the cuffs clinking against the railing with each tremble. She worries about internal injuries from the way he’s curling in on himself, trying to tuck his knees up as best he can, the hint of fresh bruises evident beneath the rips and tears along his shirt.

He is barefoot, which is concerning enough all on its own. She knows what crawls around on these floors, has seen how easy it is to contract an infection or virus just from existing without shoes. The gallons of bleach they pour onto the tiles do little good in the long run. Not when some people behave like animals in their own living space and the sewers back up every few weeks. Being in the middle of Nowhere, Georgia with limited resources, means lackluster living conditions at best and few who care enough to do much about it.

One of his toes is bent at an odd angle, possibly broken. Definitely needs a splint.

“What’s your name?” Her tone is matter-of-fact but gentle, not wanting to upset him even more.

He doesn’t answer, only grips the bed railing tight and nuzzles ineffectively into the pillow to clear his vision, unable to bend enough to reach his face with his hands.

Nick speaks up instead. “Name’s Dean Dawson. Got here last week. Guard on the floor said there were three of ‘em that took him down. Brought him right up, left a trail of blood like fuckin’ breadcrumbs back to C Pod.”

She scowls at Nick’s helpful but booming voice from the corner of the room, giving him a short nod and turning her attention back to her patient. Lowering a towel to his face she reaches for his shoulder with the other hand, trying to give him some warning that she’s about to wipe all the gunk off his eyes but the moment she touches him he flinches hard enough to make the whole bed rattle, hissing out a scathing ‘don’t touch me’ and attempting to shove himself back into the corner.

Before the reprimand from Nick can come, she cuts him off with a raised hand. “Can you get me a coffee, please? From the break room.”

“Nope. He’s new. Can’t be alone with ‘em when they’re new, you know the rules.”

“This is a lot. All of this. I think he just needs a minute. He’s cuffed to the bed, Nick. He couldn’t hurt me even if he wanted to, and that’s not a real rule. It’s a suggestion you…suggested.”

She isn’t lying. It’s not a rule that she can’t be alone with the patients. In fact, she often is if something takes too long for a guard to want to put up with. They are always cuffed and shackled. She is usually safe and this situation would be no different. In a bigger facility, there would be rules and regulations a mile long and a hefty price to pay for breaking them, but regulations here are optional or non-existent. It’s one more side effect of being in the backwoods.

For all his bravado and snarky words, Nick is reluctant to leave her with someone new, has been since the one time it wasn’t okay. The one time a guard on duty needed to pee and didn’t lock the cuffs tight enough before he left.

Nick made up this rule for her protection and despite her feelings for him otherwise, she can’t deny that it’s a good idea. She embraced it after the incident that almost took her life and left her ready to quit this job. Knowing there was always a guard within feet of her allowed her to work without spiraling into a fit of anxiety, but it’s been years and she’s trying, trying to move on. There was never a reason to question the supervision until now. Until he’d dragged a new patient into her infirmary that was coming out of his skin, so tense with fear that it seeps into her bones. One less person for Dean to worry about can only be a good thing.

Nick rolls his eyes, double-checks the cuffs, and tells her she has one coffee with two sugars coming right up. Throwing over his shoulder that if this one is an escape artist and shivs her when she’s not looking it’ll be her own fault this time.

She pays him no mind, though. Dean could be an escape artist. He could be a murderer for all she knows, but in this moment, none of that matters much. Her main goal is to help where she can, and she can’t do her job if she can’t even touch him.

So she tries again, slower this time. “I’m Ava. I’ll get you all cleaned up, wipe the blood off your face, is that okay?”

He is wary but gives her the barest of nods, clearly desperate enough to see again that he’ll allow her to help.

She steadies his head with a soft hand against his stubbled cheek, prompting another hard flinch but he doesn’t move away this time, so she continues removing the blood from his eyes and forehead, revealing a deep gash into his hairline that needs stitches. It’s her job, but she doesn’t enjoy hurting someone who’s already in pain, even for their own good. This one is on edge already, far more agitated and untrusting than she often sees, and she’s seen a lot. Taking a needle to him isn’t something she’s looking forward to.

When he finally blinks up at her with clear eyes, they’re softer and less hostile than she expected. A pretty shade of blue through long lashes, partly obscured by dark hair. She gives him a reassuring smile, trying to be someone safe in a place that never is. She’s never had a Florence Nightingale complex, but it makes it easier on everyone involved if the inmates trust her. Much as they can at least, and the vast majority have been easy enough to get along with. In between the cat calls, lewd looks, and descriptive offers to fuck her, of course.

Those are the outliers though, the majority of her patients are polite and calm. They appreciate help with their injuries and are happy to be anywhere except in their respective cells.

“Can you tell me where it hurts?”

“Everywhere. Mostly my stomach, I think, and my head,” he replies with a frown, still shaking hard enough to clink the cuffs to the rail, shock catching up and taking over where fear left off.

She’s already pressing gauze to his head, clotting the flow of blood where it soaks through. “Bleeding has slowed, which is good, but that’ll need a few stitches to close up tight and not leave a scar. Can I see your stomach? Did someone kick you?”

He nods, turning with a wince, holding his hands together in a death grip when she abandons his head wound to reach for his shirt, his fingers clenching hard enough to whiten at the knuckles. He’s having a hard time, even more so now that she’s lifted the fabric to see the injuries below.

A firm shoe print is screen printed onto his skin from mid-rib to belly button, as if someone had caught him just right when his shirt flew up to receive that kick to the stomach. It’s a stark contrast to the old and faded scars that settled into his torso before anyone here got a chance to touch him. She wonders if part of his aversion to her attention is about exposing those lines etched across his skin like a spider’s web to a complete stranger.

If the roles were reversed, if she had to show her scars to someone brand new she isn’t so sure she’d be able to handle it either. She can barely look at them in the mirror and prefers to pretend they never happened. Seeing marks so familiar painted onto someone else could easily have ghosts of her past surging to the forefront if she’s not careful.

Dean’s muscles quiver but she doesn’t hesitate, pushing a little here and there, trying to zero in on where it hurts the most for an accurate diagnosis. “Tell me where.”

He sucks in a hard breath when she gets to the third rib and an even harder one near his lower belly, pulling away again, guilt flashing in his eyes the moment it happens, but she shakes her head. “It’s okay, I’ve seen all I need to. You’d need x-rays to know for sure, but I suspect a fractured rib at the least, broken at the worst, soft tissue bruising in your lower abdomen. You could have internal bleeding, it’s impossible to know yet. We don’t have that equipment here, so I’ll have to consult the doctor to make that call. He’ll also want to look at your toe and set the bone, either here or at the hospital when you’re x-rayed.”

“You ain’t the doctor?” His southern accent is more pronounced with disappointment, like the idea of having to accept yet another person poking and prodding him is too much.

“No, just the nurse. I handle most of the cases, but yours might need the real deal. If you have internal injuries that’s nothing to play around with.”

His eyes flutter closed, and he leans back, nodding in agreement because he has no other choice. They both know it. All the times she’s asked his permission for anything they’ve done here has been as a courtesy only. His consent is not required, never has been. If he needs a doctor he’ll get one whether he likes it or not.

She makes quick work of taking his vitals which come back surprisingly normal. A good sign. Takes the coffee from Nick when he walks in a moment later and conveys her request for the doctor, sending him out of the room again with a huff.

She can stitch Dean up in the meantime, which is what she does next, threading the needle and swabbing the gash, meticulously pulling his skin back together. She’s numbed the area as much as she’s allowed, with extra amounts of cream, but the wince on his face confirms he feels every stitch.

She tries to distract him with poorly planned conversation. “So, what prompted all this?”

Well, that was a bad choice. He probably doesn’t want to talk about why he got into a fight. She could have asked him anything else, but it’s been the question on the tip of her tongue the whole time. The most obvious thing.

“Took somethin’ someone offered me from the commissary. Package of donuts. Them little chocolate ones that come in a pack. Didn’t wanna be rude and refuse. Didn’t know that meant I owed him and had to pay ‘em back. He never said, but then he came collecting and I didn’t have anything.”

He’s completely dejected about the entire thing. Embarrassed and sad and a little incredulous about the cause of his injuries, like he can’t believe all this happened because of some donuts.

“That doesn’t seem very fair to me. I’ve seen far worse happen for far less, though.” She finishes up her work and offers him a few tablets of extra-strength Tylenol.

“How it is in here. Ain’t nothing fair. First time in, but I shoulda known. I wasn’t thinking.”

He has to sit up to take the pills, straining with the effort and doubling over against the rail, and she only barely resists the urge to help prop him up. To let him lean on her as much as he needs to. The cold metal rail isn’t tall enough to offer any support, but she keeps her distance. There’s a line and she can’t cross it. Not even for this one, who seems harmless enough and has an innocent face.

They are rarely harmless though, and an innocent face means nothing. Not in here. She knows that all too well. She isn’t about to make a stupid mistake that’ll prove Nick right. Regardless of how much Dean sparks her instincts to soothe and make it better, and he does seem to do that. He looks entirely out of his element and that makes her want to reach out and flick the hair from his eyes and offer him some respite from the dangers she knows he faces back in the pod. Even so, his story could be a lie. It wouldn’t be the first time, and there are other, more imposing things about him that overshadow the innocence she finds in his eyes. Large, broad shoulders and twitching muscles, arms that could crush her without a second thought.

There is a reason it took three of them back in the cell block to take him down. He doesn’t look the type to be an easy target, but he lacks the overflow of fake confidence the others possess. Everyone here is all bluster, even when hurting, especially when hurting. To be otherwise is considered a weakness and the pack will sniff it out on sight. He hasn’t gotten that memo though, and his far-away gaze tells her that his reaction to all this might have more than a single layer.

She rechecks his stitches one last time before covering them with gauze and a few butterfly bandages. The doctor breezes in not long after, taking over where she left off, and ordering an x-ray that would require transport to an outside facility.

“Can’t have an inmate dying on our watch. Wouldn’t be good for press,” he says under his breath to one of the guards.

Dean watches her like she’s the only person he can trust in a sea full of sharks. Even as they usher him painfully into a wheelchair, his eyes rarely leave hers and she offers him a consoling smile. He’ll be fine, the hospital staff are good at their jobs and they won’t treat him differently due to his…situation.

She can only imagine how difficult it must be, especially for someone so alone, new to all of this, and injured as badly as he is.

“They’ll take good care of you there,” she says as they wheel him out, cuffed to the armrests of the chair.

He’ll be fine, she tells herself again. She grabs her cold coffee off the counter and turns away, cleaning up the area and getting her supplies in order so she can finally go home and not think about Dean one second longer.

She only succeeds at one of those goals.