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The nurse nodded. “Come with me. I’ll go see if one of the orderlies can take them with you.”
“I imagine that I’ll need one for that one, too.” I gestured toward the next room. “Can I keep him for about an hour?”
The nurse laughed. “No. But if you call us, I can send the next patient up with you.”
I sighed. “We’re so short-staffed it’s not even funny.”
The nurse agreed right along with me. “We had two nurses call in sick due to the flu, one for ‘flu-like’ symptoms that were coming on, and two technicians. Needless to say, I’m wiped.”
I imagined. “That’s what took our staff out, too.”
She just shook her head and stopped at the nurses’ station.
I did as well but looked down at the chart that was in my hand. Something on the patient’s paperwork caught me off guard, and I began backing up, thinking I might need to double check that before I went.
With my back turned toward the main part of the room, I was keeping an eye on my chart and not where I was going. My back hit something solid, and I turned to apologize almost immediately.
“I’m sorry, sir!” I paused when I saw the man continue walking as if I hadn’t just hit him with everything I had.
Sure, it’d been unintentional, and my bulk was that of a prepubescent boy, but I’d done it.
Then I saw where he was going and hurried to catch up to him.
“You can’t go in there. She’s in police custody…”
Slap.
I hit the floor and began to roll.
There was no other way to stop it.
My face had exploded in pain, and all because the man that I’d been trying to stop had backhanded me. He’d backhanded me.
I was busy saying ‘what the fuck’ in my head for what felt like an eon.
It was only as I was scrambling to move backward that I finally realized that one hit might not have been enough, when I heard a deafening crack.
My eyes peeled open just in time to see Slate’s massive bulk standing over the man that had fallen to the floor. Fallen to the floor with one punch from his fisted hand.
Then the almost comical show of the man popping back up began to happen.
He’d get up, run at Slate with murder in his eyes, and Slate would slam him back down.
Over and over again, this happened.
I managed to stand up at some point. I wasn’t sure how or why, but I found myself with my back against the nurses’ station.
I’d just thought about moving to the other side of the nurses’ station when the man that Slate had been playing as a fool paused, pulled a gun out, and aimed it directly at me.
I did as any daughter of Max Tremaine would do in that second.
I dove for cover and made sure that my ass wasn’t exposed.
I would’ve accomplished it, too, had the man that had a gun aimed at my head not kicked a cart full of medical supplies at me, knocking me off my trajectory, and practically throwing me against Slate’s legs.
“Drop it!” an angry voice boomed.
I looked up to see a cop with a gun aimed at the gunman.
The gunman’s eyes went electric as he practically vibrated with rage. His eyes on the cop and no longer me.
I took my chance because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that Slate would protect me with his life if it came down to it.
And I didn’t want it to come down to it.
Not at all.
Once I was securely behind the cart, I poked my head out around the side and watched.
“No.” The gunman shook his head, fingers tightening on the butt of the gun. “I will not.”
“You’ve already committed a felony for assaulting a healthcare worker,” the cop gestured with his chin to me, or where I would have been had I still been in my earlier spot. Slate, however, was guarding the goddamn cart with his body now, making my heart feel funny. He had an IV stand in his hands, and he was holding it as if he would swing it at anything that ever aimed to cause me harm. “And resisting arrest as well as whatever else we can pin on you. Don’t make this worse than it has to be.”
The man swung his gun in a different direction. This time at the psych patient who was no longer smiling, but still looked way too serene to be in a gunman’s crosshairs.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” he hissed at her. “That you should’ve stayed home and left well enough alone.”
“She’s alive,” the woman said in a near monotone voice, no inflection whatsoever. “And she has Linnie.”
The gunman scoffed. “Who fucking cares? What is your obsession? If you’d just left well enough alone, I wouldn’t be here on Dad’s request.”
