Nash (Marked Men #4)(5)

Cora moved to the side as Saint walked up to my side and put her hand on the crook of my elbow in a silent gesture to follow her.

“I got you, Nash.” Her eyes were a thundercloud I wanted to stare at forever. That was a storm I would never complain about getting caught in.

“Do you?” I hoped against hope she was the only one who could hear my voice crack and that Cora really did lay my lying, conniving mother out on the ER waiting room floor.

“I do.” She almost whispered it and I wanted to ask how long she had me for. Was she going to be there while I coped with putting my role model, the only person who’d given me their time, their love, who turned me into a man I was proud to be, in the ground? How about while I dealt with the fact that same man had lied to me my entire f**king life? I had no clue who Phil Donovan was, and as a result I was starting to wonder if I had a clue who Nash Donovan was. I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t know her. Barely remembered her from before, and really had no clue what kind of person she was beyond her personable and professional bedside manner, but I wanted her to be there, felt like I needed her to be there … it was too bad she f**king hated me.

It may have been Thanksgiving, but I was having a really hard time finding one single thing to be thankful for.

CHAPTER 2

Saint

One week later …

I argued with myself the entire way on the short trip from the hospital to his apartment. I knew better. I hadn’t been a practicing nurse for very long, only three years, but I had been immersed in the medical field long enough to know that it was stupid to get involved, to make patients and what they were dealing with a personal matter. There should be no forming personal attachments, no taking one case more seriously than another, no treating any one person affected by a family member’s illness or accident any differently than the next … but none of that logic or professional training mattered against the need to find out why Nash hadn’t stopped by the hospital once since Thanksgiving to see his dad.

Phil Donovan had been moved almost immediately from the ER to the upper levels of the hospital where the oncology unit was located, so he wasn’t even my patient anymore. That hadn’t stopped me from stopping by at the end of my shift to check on him and see how he was doing. The older man that was the spitting image of his son was taking his prognosis surprisingly well, and I always enjoyed his easy demeanor. It didn’t look good, he didn’t look good. But I had noticed that he was never alone. There was always someone in the room with him when I stuck my head in. He seemed to have an endless parade of tattooed and pierced men and women who pushed aside the discomfort of visiting and spending time with someone so sick in order to keep him company and offer him support. Only it was glaringly obvious that his own flesh and blood hadn’t been among them. It wasn’t my place to question why his own kid hadn’t made an appearance any of those times, and I wouldn’t have been driven to do something so out of character had Phil not sounded so disappointed when he mentioned Nash’s disappearing act.

It wasn’t like I was overly anxious for another run-in with the brooding, tattooed hottie anyway, but tonight, when I popped my head in, Cora had been arguing with the older man. I knew her to be loud and up front from the time her boyfriend had been shot and nearly died in my ER. She was currently being very vocal in her opinion about Nash’s current behavior. Phil was telling her to leave Nash alone, that he would work through things in his own time and that he didn’t blame his son for not being by once since the holiday. She was all kinds of worked up, shouting that it wasn’t right, that Nash was acting like a big baby and that he was going to regret wasting any of this time they had together considering Phil’s prognosis wasn’t good. She might look a little crazy and sound kind of abrasive, but I had to agree that she had a point.

I felt bad for eavesdropping and was going to duck out of the room and head home when her next statement sent a rebellious chill down my spine.

“He won’t even talk to Rule. He won’t answer the phone. He’s missed work all week. Rome went to the apartment and knocked on the door until a neighbor came out and threatened to call the cops. I told him he should’ve just broken it down. I think he was tempted because he never got any kind of response. The idea of Nash sitting alone in that apartment hurting, trying to process this all on his own, is breaking my heart, Phil. I don’t know what else to do.”

Phil murmured an answer that was too soft for me to hear and I jumped as another nurse came around the corner. I saw her give me an odd look because this was totally not my floor, I rarely went anywhere in the hospital outside of the ER. Before I could talk myself out of it, I went back to my own floor, snuck a quick peek at the file we had on Phil Donovan that listed Nash’s info as his emergency contact after some woman named Ruby Loften, and headed out on a mission to do I don’t know what. I wasn’t sure why I was so worked up, so invested in either of the Donovan men, especially considering the bitter taste my history with Nash left in my mouth.

I loved my job. I’d wanted to be a nurse since forever. Fixing all my dolls’ “owies” and making my big sister let me cover her in bandages and gauze when I was little had always been my favorite game, and I had worked hard and busted my tail off to be the best nurse and caregiver I could be. At twenty-five I was a certified ER nurse and I was thinking about going back to school and studying to get my master’s in nursing so I could look at being a nurse practitioner. I graduated at the top of my class from California State University in L.A. and I chose emergency nursing for the challenge, the fast pace, and because I knew I wanted to help people when they needed me most. It was a different environment, different set of patients and problems every single day. I was extremely skilled at it, completely invested in giving it my all each and every day. So I knew that whatever weird pull this case and these people involved had on me wasn’t something I had ever experienced with a patient or their loved ones before.