Page 1 of Her Injured Biker
Chapter One
Whitley
THREE MINUTES FROMclock-out and I was already thinking about my car.
Twelve hours of trauma floor was sitting in my skin at end of shift: antiseptic in my hair, fluorescents behind my eyes, the particular tired that was too wired to sleep. I had my badge unclipped and my clipboard dropped on the nurses’ station counter when Faith appeared with a chart in her hand.
“Room 407’s been interesting,” she said.
I should have kept walking. “How interesting?”
“He’s been trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Her mouth curved. “The smiling kind.”
I picked up the chart.
THE NAME AT THE TOPwas Shannon Dodd, age 34. Emergency contact: Cyrus Marquette, listed as club president.Patient history: U.S. Army, 75th Ranger Regiment, honorable discharge. The intake paperwork noted the tattoo work: full sleeve left arm, additional coverage across chest and back. Injury: deep knife laceration, left flank. Surgical repair. Reason for the knife: patient intervened to protect his club president during an altercation on club property.
I stood at the threshold of 407 and read that last part twice.
He’d stepped in front of it. On purpose. Not a reflex, not a stumble. The injury was consistent with deliberate placement. I’d seen enough knife injuries to read that much without anyone spelling it out for me. I stood at the threshold of 407 longer than I needed to.
Something settled in my chest that was not clinical information.
The afternoon nurse had added one line to her notes: Patient remains unconvinced of the medical necessity of continued hospitalization.
I pushed the door open.
HE HAD ONE LEG OUTthe window.
Fourth floor. IV line pulled taut from his right hand to the bedrail, the hospital gown doing a poor job of the work it was there for. He was half-turned toward the glass, looking at something below, and he was big. The kind of big that a room quietly reorganized itself around, the bed frame and the window trim both doing their best and losing. Full left sleeve in dark ink, geometric at the shoulder going finer toward the wrist. Full neat beard. A small hoop at his left ear. Close-cropped hair, military holdover. Dark eyes over his shoulder, already on me.
He didn’t move his leg. His gaze did a fast inventory: tired, honey-blonde hair in a working knot, navy scrubs, hazel eyesthat weren’t giving him anything. He hadn’t decided what I was yet.
He had the stillness of someone who’d been in enough situations to know the first few seconds were when you gathered your information. He was gathering his right now, watching me from the window with the careful attention of someone who always knew where the exits were. What hit me before I could run it through any clinical filter was size, ink, beard, and the quality of stillness that only came from being tested regularly and having passed every time. The room smelled like antiseptic and bleach, and underneath that, leather from the cut hanging in the closet. I clocked it before I said anything.
He wasn’t scared of being caught, was the thing. Most patients caught mid-escape showed it. He just seemed like a man who’d been interrupted.
I planted myself in the doorway and crossed my arms.
“Mr. Dodd,” I said. Flat and even.
He froze.
Brief. Two seconds. Real. His whole frame went still and there was a quick flicker across his features, there and gone, that wasn’t surprise and wasn’t guilt but was the face of someone who’d heard something he hadn’t expected. Then it passed. He turned fully toward me and his mouth curved up.
“There she is,” he said. Texas drawl, slow and warm. “I was starting to think nobody cared.”
“The window is on the fourth floor.”
“I know where the window is.” He leaned back slightly, easy, like he hadn’t just been halfway out of it. “I’m getting some air. I’ve been in here since midnight. That’s what, sixteen hours? A man needs air.”
“A man with a freshly repaired flank needs to be in the bed.”
“My flank’s fine.”
