Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(30)

Willa had no idea what they thought she could do, but the man on the pool table was unconscious, and the man in the recliner was awake and holding a beer, so she shook her hand free of Rad’s and went to the pool table.

One of the older, in-charge-looking women gave her a hawkish look as she approached. She was wearing latex gloves and wiping the blood around the bandage. Without speaking to Willa, she turned those sharp eyes on Rad.

“This your nurse?” She had a hint of an accent. Willa tried to place it, but those three words hadn’t been enough.

“Yeah. Willa, this is Mo, our president’s old lady.”

Mo tipped her head in a regal nod. “Mo’s for family. You can call me Maureen, love.”

Irish. Her accent was Irish.

“Hi, Maureen. Rad asked me to help.”

“That’s good. I’m shit with a stitch, and I don’t like what this looks like.” She eased the bandage up and showed a long, deep, nasty gash that had opened the man’s side. It had gone almost clear through the muscle. No wonder he was ashen and unconscious. The wound hadn’t pierced any organs, but it was serious nevertheless.

The clubhouse was as dim as any dive bar, illuminated mostly by beer signs and novelty lights. “I need more light.”

“Slick!” Rad yelled. “Bring that shop light over here and set it up.”

A young blond guy in a much plainer kutte than the others carried over a strange floor lamp. When he set it up, it shone a bright beam on the pool table.

While Slick was doing that, Willa took her stethoscope—the one medical device she owned—from her purse and cleaned the chestpiece and eartips with alcohol.

Seeing a box of latex gloves on a rolling table—it looked like a microwave cart but was doing this job just fine—that held a tackle box full of medical supplies and a shelf full of bottles and jars, Willa let her training take over. She pulled a pair of gloves on. Then she uncovered the wound again and palpated it. Blood still seeped freely with pressure, but it wasn’t gushing. The evidence around her—piles of blood-soaked gauze, pools of blood on the tarp, the man’s clothes, his pale complexion—said that blood had been running at a stream, if not a gush, for a long while.

“You couldn’t have stitched this. It needs two layers of sutures.” She looked over her shoulder at Maureen. “You have suturing needles?”

Maureen turned and pulled a package of the needles she needed from the tackle box.

“How about Novocain?”

Maureen shook her head.

“Shit.” The man was unconscious, but unless he was deep under, Willa poking around in his muscle and tying it shut was going to bring him up. “He needs to stay still for me to get this done. If he wakes up…”

“I got him.” Rad went around to the head of the pool table, near his friend’s head.

“I gave him a couple of Percodan while he was still awake,” Maureen offered.

“He was awake? He lost consciousness here?”

The president’s ‘old lady’ nodded. Willa closed her eyes and thought. Maybe the pills had just put him to sleep. If he was truly unconscious, then he’d lost a lot of blood. Fuck! A pool table in a clubhouse was not where this guy needed to be.

But this was where he was. And she was all he had.

She put the stethoscope in her ears and listened to his heart—a little quick, but strong. Good enough.

Okay, then. She took a deep breath and started sewing. Maureen assisted, and she did a decent job of it, knowing what Willa asked for and getting it to her. Willa could feel the woman studying her work, trying to learn from it.

Which was how Willa had gained most of her own knowledge of this type. Doctors did the suturing. Nurses assisted. She’d been watching this work and providing its tools for her whole career, but she was not a doctor.

She hoped no one had noticed her shaking hands.

Five stitches into the first, deeper layer of sutures, about halfway through it, her patient stirred slightly and groaned. When the needle pierced his muscle again, he flinched and groaned more loudly, ending with a barely muttered “Fuck!”

Willa tied off the sixth suture and stopped. “He’s waking up. Hold him down.”

“Get his legs, Slick,” Rad commanded, and the kid climbed up on the table and did what he was told.

The man groaned and fought harder as she started the seventh stitch. She finished it as quickly as she could, then turned her attention to the man’s face. He was blinking and shaking his head, but not yet fully conscious.

“What’s his name?”

“Simon,” Maureen answered.

Willa moved toward his head and leaned close. Rad, holding down his upper arms, loomed above her. “Simon,” she said, at the man’s ear, making her voice as sweet and soothing as she could. “I’m Willa. I’m making you better, but what I have to do is going to hurt a little. I need you to stay as still as you can. Can you do that?”

It was something she’d learned in her job: the calming power of a kind word. Even the most horrific pain could be eased, if only just the tiniest bit, by the thought that somebody was trying to help. Sometimes people just needed to know there was someone there to care.

That was what nurses did, first and foremost: they were there, and they cared. For all the skills and knowledge she had, all the technical things she could do, the most important thing was to be someone who was there and would help.