Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(16)
“So, your x-rays show no breakages, but it’s very bruised and swollen, so it looks like a sprain. The nurse is going to come in and put a brace on it, and I want you to follow the instructions on this sheet for a couple of days,” he placed a printout of directions on the bed in front of me. “Ice it like it says and make sure you do the exercises there. Do you need a prescription for these painkillers or do you have them?”
Looking at the Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen instructions, I leaned down and picked up my purse, pulling bottles of both out of it. I was a female and my periods were not my friends. “Got ‘em.”
“Excellent. I’ll get you an appointment for a checkup in three weeks because of the amount of swelling and bruising you’ve got…”
“How did you actually hurt yourself?” the sheriff who’d been quiet until that moment interrupted.
“The baby’s head,” I replied distractedly as I tried to put the bottles back in my purse without upending the whole bag. Why was it so easy to get them out one handed, but not back in again?
A hand plucked the bag away from me, followed by both bottles, as he asked, “The baby’s head? How?”
Watching as he easily plonked the bottles inside – not even fumbling once, the smug bastard – I mumbled, “It was big and Jose squeezed my hand,” I trailed off as he pulled out a pair of panties (clean ones) that I kept in there for emergencies. Seriously, my period wasn’t my friend, it was my worst enemy, and I hated it. Some months I didn’t even have any warning, it just turned up screaming obscenities at me, so it paid to be prepared. Not that I could say that to this guy, or the doctor. I don’t care that men knew women got it, they didn’t have to know the finer details of mine.
I only just stopped myself from saying something to the sheriff about overstepping the boundaries, and honestly, the only thing stopping me was the kid next to us and the doctor who was laughing quietly beside me. Otherwise I totally would have let him have it, officer of the law or not.
Wanting to get back to Jose, I asked, “Am I done? Can I get back upstairs now?”
Still snickering, he nodded and waved toward the gap in the curtain. “You may once the nurse puts your new accessory on your hand. But don’t forget you have to follow the instructions. See you in a couple of weeks, Ms. Newton.”
Thanking the man, I turned back to see that the Sheriff had put my bag down and was now frowning down at my injured hand. “You right handed?”
“Yeah, it’s gonna make finishing the unpacking a bitch. And when school goes back in two weeks and if it’s not better by then, that’ll also be a bitch. Eating will be a bitch…”
“Wiping your butt will too,” the annoying kid piped up.
Shit it all, he was right!
Ignoring that comment completely, and acting like my face wasn’t thirty shades of scarlet red, I continued, “I can sometimes paint and draw with my left hand though, so that should be ok for class.” I really should’ve stopped there, but for some reason I continued on and divulged something very personal to me. “Just before Mom died of cancer, she woke up one morning feeling like she wanted to draw. She thought of a peacock feather and drew the most beautiful picture of it. The detail in it is absolutely perfect, and it almost looks real. Sometimes I get like that with my left hand, it can do pieces of work my right one can’t.”
His eyes moved down to my right arm, looking straight at the peacock feather on it. “Is that why you’ve got that tattoo?”
Looking down at his bare forearms, I realized that he didn’t have any tattoos. That was mildly disappointing… ok, no, it was a lot disappointing. I’d only agreed to one date with him fine, but in a woman’s mind we play the game of who our perfect man would be a lot. Mine ended up always having tattoos up his arms for some reason, like he wasn’t afraid to express himself in that way. That’s what most tattoos were to me, people expressing themselves by picking a picture or design that they wanted to wear on their skin. Sure there were the ones that people decided to just get done and you wondered what they were thinking, but it was like choosing clothes – you got them to suit you.
Seeing his bare arms, we never would have been compatible, even without the jail cell extortion.
Focusing back on my tattoo, I nodded. “Yeah, it’s the one she painted.”
At that moment, the curtain swept back again, and in walked a nurse with a black lump in her hand.
“Let’s get you set up shall we, Tabitha,” she beamed. The use of my first name was a relief, I hated being called Ms. Newton like the doctor insisted on doing. I heard it so often through the school year that I began to feel like a school employee instead of a human being.
As she strapped me up, chattering away to the Sheriff about everything she could think of, I had a second to watch the emotions and responses playing across his face. Mom had always said that to know a person, you had to learn their genuine reactions to things. Some they could hide, some they couldn’t. In his case, he didn’t show much, but his eyes and the slight flaring of his nostrils gave it away. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say at this moment he was irritated with the woman. I wasn’t sure why, but with every new topic she flicked onto, the skin around his eyes would tighten that bit more. Interesting.
“There we go, Tabitha,” she said, patting the Velcro she’d just stuck down and picking up a small piece of paper. “And this is your checkup appointment. If you’ve got any issues between now and then, just call the number on the top of the letter and we’ll fit you in.”