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CHAPTER EIGHT
Kelsey parked her Prius on her parents’ driveway and got out. As she went back to the hatch and collected her medical bag, she took in the big Christmas tree in the front window, twinkling prettily. A lighted wicker family of deer grazed on the lawn. Spiral trees on either side of the front door twinkled with golden light, as did the swags of pine rope along the porch eaves.
It was a pretty, peaceful Christmas scene, but what was going on in her family right now made those twinkling lights a lie.
The lie was laid bare the second she walked through the front door. Her father sat on the sofa, holding a dish towel to his face. The dish towel was wrapped around a gallon-size Ziploc of ice. His bare chest was mottled with new bruising and streaked with dried blood.
Hannah sat at the other end of the sofa, coiled into her usual pretzel and facing their dad, eyeing him as if he were an exhibit at Ripley’s. Duncan sat on the hearth, scrolling on his phone. Their mom stood in the doorway to the dining room and kitchen, her arms crossed.
Mom had called Kelsey to come and provide medical assistance. She was a vet, but in the Bulls family, any kind of medical training was considered good enough. For most of the club’s medical needs, Willa and Felicia, registered nurses, did the work. But Kelsey was as competent as they, at least for the kind of medical attention the Bulls usually needed. It didn’t matter that she treated animals for a living. It was mainly stitching and icing, antibiotics and pain meds, and, very rarely, bullet removal. If a bullet was lodged in soft tissue and had missed bones and major organs—which was rare, but it happened occasionally—not much was different in treatment. They were all animals of one kind or another.
“Hey, pix,” her father said. No one else spoke.
“Hi, Daddy.” She took off her coat, laid it over the back of a chair, and went to stand before him. “Let me see.”
Her father lowered the ice pack.
Kelsey hissed in surprise.“Dex did that?”
A gash about two inches long across his forehead accounted for the impressive amount of blood covering her father’s face and chest. It had been closed with three butterflies, but continued to seep more than an hour, she guessed, after the fight. But that wasn’t the worst of the damage. His left eye—his bad eye—was severely swollen—his orbital bone certainly was fractured—and the eyebrow above it split all the way across. A single butterfly there tried valiantly, and failed utterly, to contain that wound. His nose was huge and purple, and a deep bruise flowered along his right jaw, a ruddy shadow under his greying stubble, just behind his chin.
Broken nose, obviously. Broken orbital bone, certainly. Broken jaw, possibly. Probably at least twenty sutures required for those wounds. Dex had beaten the entire shit out of her father.
Over her.
“He looks worse,” her father grumbled.
“Jesus Christ,” Mom muttered. “Fucking fools.” She spun and stalked to the kitchen.
Kelsey sighed. She was a churning mass of conflicting emotions inside, but outside, she had things to do. “Okay. Let’s go to your bathroom, and I’ll get you taken care of.”
“Can I watch?” Hannah asked.
“No!” literally every other member of the family shouted in unison. Even Mom, from the kitchen.
“This family sucks,” Hannah huffed. She uncoiled herself from the sofa and stalked from the room, headed, no doubt, for her own room.
Duncan stood, too. “You need anything from me?”
Dad looked up at Kelsey. She turned to her brother and shook her head. “I got it.”
“Cool. Zach and Jay wanna meet up, so I’m gonna head out.”
“Go tell your Mom,” Dad said. “Make sure she doesn’t want you home for dinner.”
Duncan went to the kitchen, and Kelsey and Dad were alone together.
“Do you need help up?” she asked.
“No, I don’t need help getting off the fucking sofa,” he snapped—and then proceeded to obviously struggle to stand up. Kelsey barely managed not to roll her eyes.
When he was standing, she turned and walked away, to the stairs and up, not looking back to see if he needed help getting up the stairs. Her anger and frustration overwhelmed her daughterly affection and her professional care.
She went to her parents’ bedroom and into their bathroom, where she began to set up their long, two-sink counter area with her supplies.
When her father came in, she said, “Sit,” and he closed the lid and sat down on the toilet.
First, she filled the nearest basin with warm water, soaked a soft washcloth, and simply washed his face.
