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They were looking for their drugs.
And I’d caught them by surprise.
I couldn’t have the cops asking questions or assuming shit when they got a look at my place.
That was the nice thing about Dr. Price, though. He was used to dealing with the bikers and the mafia and all of that, so he minded his business while he helped heal them up.
So while I felt bad that it was the middle of the night, I knew it was the only option for me since I was genuinely getting a little queasy at how much blood I was losing.
“Coming!” a voice called after I hit the doorbell a few times.
Footsteps rushed down the stairs and I could see in the side window as the man himself was pulling a shirt down over his bare chest.
I learned something new about Dr. Price right then. He was built nicely under his scrubs and doctor coat.
“Is there an emerg—“ he started as he slid the locks then pulled the door open to find me standing there in the porch light. “Oh,” he said, exhaling hard as his kind dark eyes fell on me.
I’d seen Dr. Price a few times over the years. When I was sick. Or that one time some idiot at work left a broken liquor bottle in the speed rail, slicing me to shit when I reached for it without looking.
“Nyx,” he said, exhaling hard as he moved out of the way of the door, inviting me in. “Come on in. I need to get a look at that head,” he added, following me into the darkened office, flicking on lights as he went.
He didn’t ask me what happened.
It was pretty obvious I’d been attacked.
But he knew who I worked for and likely who I associated with.
Which meant he also knew better than to ask questions.
“How are you feeling? Do you have any nausea? Double-vision?”
“No.”
“Are you lightheaded? Mentally foggy?”
“No. I’m okay. I have a wicked headache, but that’s it,” I told him.
“Okay. I don’t have the imaging here that I would need to use to check for a concussion, but you have to promise me that if you have any of the symptoms we’d just talked about that you head to the hospital to get checked out. Concussions are usually not something to worry about, but they can be serious in rare occasions.”
“I think I’m okay,” I told him as he gathered supplies on his little moving stainless steel table before coming back to me. “I’m only here because this seems like a lot of bleeding,” I said, waving toward my head.
“It is. I’m glad you came in. You are going to need stitches,” he told me, waving toward his tray where the suture kit was set up.
“How many?” I asked, stomach twisting a bit at the idea.
“Eight. Ten. Luckily, this is close enough to your hairline that you likely won’t see much scarring,” he told me as he reached for the needle. “I have to numb you,” he told me, waiting until I gave him a tentative nod before closing my eyes.
There was a slight prick that I barely noticed over the slamming inside my brain.
“Hey, Nyx?” he called, his voice soft, coaxing me to open my eyes again. “I just want you to know that this is a safe space. If you want me to call the police for you, I can. If someone close to you is—“
“I’m not battered,” I cut him off, but was touched by the concern in his voice, in his kind eyes.
He was nothing like the holier-than-thou doctor I dealt with for my aunt and her declining mental state, a man who seemed to think “doctor” and “god” were synonyms for each other.
Dr. Price was the kind of guy who went into healthcare because he genuinely gave a shit. With looks like his, he could have been a model. Or played a heartthrob doctor on some primetime medicine drama. But he chose to slog away in medical school, then residency, only to settle in some nowhere town where he didn’t get all the tail he would get in a big city somewhere.
Though, objectively, small towns were good for bachelors. All the older ladies brought him dinner and dessert, tried to set him up with their daughters or granddaughters. He was fawned over in a way that must have been nice.
