Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 228(@300wpm)
That’s when I saw Val.
She came around the corner of the gurney, a syringe in her hands, and headed toward the bed with a determined look on her face.
I saw it happening as if in slow motion, but due to the perilous hold I had on the man, I could do nothing to stop it, or the reaction would be even worse.
She stepped forward, syringe extended in one hand, and stabbed it right into the man’s shoulder.
She’d gotten half the plunger on the syringe pushed when the man reacted as if he’d been given a burst of even more superhuman strength.
He reared back his head, turned, and launched himself at Val.
It took everything I had, and I do mean everything, to only let him head butt her directly in the face.
Val went down like a sack of bricks, and I used one last burst of strength to hold him down with my body, hooking my legs into the metal bars on the sides of the gurney, and plunged the rest of the damn syringe into his shoulder.
He calmed, but not by much.
“Sit. The fuck. Down!” I growled through gritted teeth, muscles screaming at the strain of trying to keep him in place.
People were all around us now—men who had strength to hold on and not get thrown off—holding the man down. But even their strength was barely enough.
Another woman, this one with a determined look on her face like Val who was now bleeding off to the side of the room, came forward and I stopped her. “You. Get the fuck out. You, too.”
I growled it at Val and the nurse, Hope.
Hope froze, her eyes wide.
“He’ll throw y’all around like fuckin’ dolls right now!” I snapped as the biggest dude in the ER—an orderly who was six-foot-five of muscle and sinew—all but laid himself on top of the dude. “Get the fuck out of this trauma room! All of you!”
They left, and I knew I hadn’t won any points.
I knew that women could do just as much as men could do, but this situation wasn’t one where they’d be proving it to me. If I could keep them out of harm’s way, I’d do it.
Val left with a glare in my direction, and I knew I’d have to kiss her ass later to get back into her good graces.
“Bad move, bro,” I heard Tyrese, the orderly, say. “But smart. Still gonna pay for that later.”
Probably.
But as long as I only had to sew up one woman tonight, I’d live with the consequences.
It took a solid fifteen minutes to get the guy under control enough for us all to trust he’d finally stopped fighting.
Whatever the guy had taken, it’d been enough to give him this insane amount of strength, but now that he was off that high, you could tell he’d just depleted every single reserve he had.
I walked out of the trauma room with a wary set of my shoulders, and looked at the first person who came into sight.
Hope.
She was studiously ignoring me.
“Where’s Val?” I asked. “Is she getting sewn up?”
None of them answered me, and I sighed.
Fuckin’ awesome.
But I had just indoctrinated Val into their ranks.
Not a single one of them would treat her poorly based solely on how badly I’d just treated her.
I nearly rolled my eyes as I walked out of the ER in search of her, picking up supplies as I did.
I didn’t find her in any of her usual hiding spots, and figured she’d gone up to the one place she thought I wouldn’t follow.
Crimson’s room.
And that’s exactly where I found her.
I made it up to the second floor and knew by the look of annoyance on some of the nurses’ faces that they’d already heard what had gone down a floor below.
“I’m sorry, okay?” I asked. “This motherfucker was strong. I didn’t want him hurting any of them.”
One nurse, a rather plump black lady, snickered. “We see by those bruises forming on your arm that you probably saved quite a few of them from getting hurt. That doesn’t mean they’ll forget being yelled at.”
No, no it wouldn’t.
“She here?” I asked.
The woman nodded. “In her sister’s room.”
Her sister who, as of tomorrow, would be going home according to my doctor buddy.
I looked in and found Val with her head resting on the side of Crimson’s bed.
Crimson’s man, Winston, was looking on in horror.
Mostly because there was blood fucking everywhere.
Head wounds bled.
That didn’t mean I liked seeing the blood all over Val.
“You ready to get that stitched up?” I asked, waving the kit in the room.
Crimson, Winston, and Val all looked at me.
The first two with relief, and the last with anger.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped, angry as hell and not hiding it.
“Fixing your head,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
Her eyes went wide.