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“Not so fast, Clint.”
I paused just beyond the front doors as I held them open. The nurse’s voice caught me off-guard, and I sighed as I closed my eyes. I turned around, watching as she beckoned for me to come inside. I snickered as I moved toward her, watching her point to the front office door.
“My office. Now.”
I rolled my eyes as she took my backpack off my arm. I sauntered through the door, puffing my chest out for the receptionist still at the desk. She shook her head at me, but all it did was make me grin. If these people thought they could put a damper on my parade, they had another thing coming. I had plans with Roy this weekend. There was a massive party I was going to, whether they liked it or not.
But when I rounded the corner into the nurse’s office, I groaned.
“Seriously?” I asked.
The nurse closed the door behind us. “Seriously. Sit.”
“I’m fine, Mrs. Abernathy.”
“Get up there, or I’m calling your father to come down here and deal with you his way.”
“Pretty sure he’s on a plane somewhere else.”
She snickered. “And I’m sure telling him his son has a possible concussion would get him to turn around in a heartbeat.”
I hopped up onto the paper-covered seat and the nurse began her evaluation. She shined lights in my eyes and made me open my mouth. She checked my knuckles before covering them in this goopy substance. She wrapped them up with gauze and poked around in places an overweight married woman shouldn't have been touching on a high school student. She felt along my ribcage and squeezed my shoulders. She shoved some sort of wooden implement down my throat, causing me to gag. I smacked her hand away, watching as she leveled her eyes with me.
Then she slid her fingertips around my neck. Causing me to wince.
“And there it is,” she said.
I paused. “What?”
She sighed. “Well, you don’t have a concussion. But you’ve given yourself whiplash.”
“How the fuck did I get—”
“Language.”
I rolled my eyes. “How does one get whiplash without a car accident?”
“Whiplash is just a term for when the neck snaps back and forth too quickly. I guess when you were pushed over your bike this morning, you tensed. Right?”
I shrugged. “So?”
“When you tense, it makes it worse. You have whiplash, which means you’ll have to take it easy. No riding fast. No more fights. Because if you injure your neck further, you’ll be in the hospital with an actual concussion.”
“Sounds better than this place.”
She sighed. “All you need to do is keep it in line this year. Then you can graduate and go fight other adults on your own time. But, so long as you’re fighting on this campus you’re my responsibility.”
I chuckled. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it sounds like you care, Mrs. Abernathy.”
“You make it hard to care, Clint. But I do.”
Her words disarmed me, and the only thing I could do was laugh. I brushed of
f her comment as I slipped off the paper-covered table or whatever the hell I was on. But her words stuck with me as I grabbed my backpack.
“Not too fast on that bike, Clarke!”
I grinned. “I’ll go as slow as possible. Promise!”
