Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(14)

Jesus Christ, it was like a cartoon grandmother pulling a knife on you, or a kitten pulling out a sword. Jose Harrison was one of the gentlest looking women in the world, but right now I wouldn’t turn my back on her if you paid me.

“Are you asking me if I intend to hurt Tabby?”

One side of her mouth kicked up in a smile. “No, I’m not asking you if you’re intending on doing that. I’m merely advising you and your balls not to.”

Looking down my body, I made a point of shifting so she that saw the badge on the waistband of my pants. “You know you’re threatening a police officer, right?”

Snickering, she started speaking to her daughter again. “Listen to the silly po-po man. If he makes our Tabby cry your mama’s hormones are gonna make him cry, badge or not. We might even shove it up his tushy with our feet, won’t that be fun?”

Seeing as how she wasn’t looking at me at that moment, I allowed the grin I was fighting to break out over my face. Typically, it wasn’t a good idea to disrespect and threaten a police officer, but there were moments where you could overlook it and find the amusement in it all. I had to respect the loyalty and love she had for Tabby, and I was fighting against asking for the full story why they didn’t know the other existed while Tabby wasn’t here.

Speaking of.

“Hey, where is Tabby?”

Grimacing, she looked back up at me and then pointed me back down to the area of the hospital I’d run out of only ten minutes ago – the ER.





Chapter Five





Tabby





Leaning on one elbow, I tried flexing my hand and groaned when it screamed at me.

I’d been staring at the white bed linen for hours. So long, in fact, that I could now tell you how many times the threads looped around each other to make the material in the ten inch squared section of it I was staring at. Ok, slight exaggeration, it hadn’t been hours and I couldn’t tell you that, but I could tell you that it felt like aluminum foil – hadn’t they ever heard of fabric softener? I could also tell you that the person in the next cubicle had food poisoning, badly.

Almost like I’d tempted fate for her, the poor woman got hit by the next wave. “Oh, move, move, I need to get up.” This was followed by quick footsteps past my cubicle toward the bathroom, leaving a faint aroma behind her that I was grateful hadn’t come from my body.

I’d just pulled the neck of my tank top up over my nose when I heard a woman say, “She’s just in here, Sheriff.”

Maybe I’d get lucky and it would turn out that the woman’s ass had done something illegal? Alas, my luck wasn’t that good, which I found out when he pulled the curtain aside and took a step into my little pod of hospital hell.

Scowling, he looked me over and stopped on the hand that was resting on a pillow with an ice pack on top of it. “What the hell did you do?”

“I sprained it giving people the bird.”

Not answering me back – at least not with words because that eye roll said it all – he stalked up to the bed, leaned over, and picked the ice pack up to look underneath it.

“Cool,” the young kid who was with food poisoning woman yelled. “Can you do that? I wanna do that? Do they bandage your finger straight?”

This is how the last fifty minutes in here had gone. Someone would say something, the kid would hear it, he’d then repeat it for everyone to hear (including stuff said by the doctors and nurses which shouldn’t be repeated), and then he’d do an internet search for it. This had included when he’d found out his mom had eaten ten-day-old pizza and the issues that could arise because of it, what it was currently doing to her guts, and then how much diarrhea an adult human could produce. Mental note to self, never search online for illnesses and food poisoning – it’ll change your life, and not in a good way.

“That looks sore,” Sheriff Obvious, commented.

“What gave it away? The swelling,” I wiggled my fingers that looked like fat sausages, “or the bruising?”

“Is it broken? Can you break your finger if you give someone the bird?” The kid asked to whoever he was in there with.

Frowning, the sheriff looked over my shoulder at the curtain where the kid was and then back down at me.

“He’s been doing that since I got here. His mom ate old pizza and has food poisoning. For some reason, whoever he’s in there with while his mom shits her guts out doesn’t feel that it’s necessary to shut him up, so everyone knows each other’s medical problems,” I told him, keeping my voice as quiet as I could.

Just then, he gave us the latest update on someone being treated.

“Whoa, that’s gnarly. That guy’s penis is harder than a bat the doctor just said, and if they don’t do this weird thing it could cause it a lot of problems. The man said he took a pill cause his girlfriend wanted to blow him and he wouldn’t be able to keep it up after it. Is it like a balloon? Like if Mindy Ray blew me, would it explode?”

Yet again there was nothing but silence from the person in there with him. A little further away from where I was, I could hear a deep voice talking quietly about soft tissue damage and began praying that it was my doctor with the x-ray results.

That’s when the kid pushed Sheriff Bell over the edge. He’d only just said, “Hey, Siri…” when the sheriff stalked past me and pulled the curtain back.