Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(31)

His brow furrowed. “Hmmm?”

“Shhhh,” she soothed. “Be still, and it’ll be over soon. Be still for me.” He nodded, and she brushed the back of her wrist gently over his forehead. “Thank you, Simon.”

When she stepped back, Rad was staring at her with dark, surprised eyes. She didn’t have time to wonder what he was thinking.

Simon groaned with every pierce of his muscle, and then his skin, as Willa finished two layers of ten sutures each. By the time she was finished, he’d woken fully, and each groan had been punctuated by a curse, but he’d never moved again beyond the involuntary twitches of muscles trying to flee pain.

He’d have a nasty scar—the sutures weren’t even, and they probably weren’t close enough—but she didn’t think scars were much of a concern among these men.

She washed her work with antiseptic and covered the wound in clean gauze. She yanked the gloves off with a snap and dropped them onto a pile of used gauze. “He needs antibiotics, and he’ll probably need enough Percocet for a day or two. Iron pills, too, until his color is better.”

Maureen nodded and pulled off her own gloves. She rooted in the tackle box and came up with a bottle of five-hundred milligram caplets of penicillin.

“I think one of those three times a day for a week should do it.” That was an educated guess, based on years of administering doctors’ orders. Most of this had been educated guesses.

Simon flailed out his arm and grabbed her hand. “Thanks, Doc,” he rasped.

She patted his hand and set it back on the pool table. “You’re welcome, but I’m not a doctor. Just a nurse.”

He grinned weakly. “No ‘just’ about it. You’re an angel.”

She smiled. “Take your pills and get some rest.”

Rad continued to regard her with that odd, dark light in his eyes.

“He shouldn’t move from here tonight, but it’d be good to make him more comfortable.”

At her side, Maureen said, “I’m on that. Pillows, blankets, we’ll get the tarp out from under him. Slick, help me out. Tyra! Get over here!”

A blonde in lace-up leggings tottered over on stiletto heels. “Yeah, Mo?”

Willa got out of the way and let Maureen take over Simon’s care. She had another patient.

Rad pushed the cart of supplies as he walked with her to the man in the recliner.

“This mess of a human is Gunner. Gunner, this is Willa. She’s gonna check you out.”

“Hey, blondie,” Gunner slurred, trying to curve his ruined mouth up in a grin. He smoothed a hand over his chest. “You like what you see?”

“Can’t say I do,” she answered as she snapped on a fresh pair of gloves. To Rad she asked, “There a penlight in that box?”

He handed her a small light, and she flicked it on. “Okay, Gunner. Open your eyes up for me as much as you can.”

One eye went fairly wide. The other was too swollen. She used her fingers to push the swelling out of her way enough to see that his pupils were responsive.

“Ow!” Gunner groaned. “Easy now.”

“Sorry. Rad said you passed out, so I’m guessing you have a mild concussion, but I don’t think it’s a bad one. Guess you got a hard head.”

Rad chuckled.

Gunner pushed his split bottom lip out in a caricature of a pout. “You’re not gonna whisper sweeties in my ear like you did Si?”

She wasn’t; her read on this guy was that he was full of shit. Banter was better for him. “Don’t think I am. If I ask you to tell me where it hurts, are you gonna get dirty?”

“You want me to get dirty?”

“No, I do not. I want to know if you have pain.”

“Blondie, you got no idea.”

That answer seemed more serious than his playful delivery of it suggested.

“Gun. Answer straight.” Rad cuffed him on his shoulder.

“Fuck, Rad.” He rubbed his shoulder and came back to Willa. “Chest is f*cked. I know that pain. Broke a couple ribs. Face hurts like a f*cker. I took a beating, blondie. Take ‘em all the time. I don’t need your fuss.”

“Let her look, Gunner.”

Willa didn’t recognize that voice. She turned to see an older man, in about his late fifties, with disheveled, shoulder-length dark hair and a goatee, coming their way. On his kutte was a flash that read President. Brian Delaney, then.

“Hey, sweetheart. I’m Delaney.” He held out his hand, but she was wearing gloves, so she lifted her hand to point that out. He dropped his with a courtly nod. “Gun, shut up and get care. I’m close to puttin’ your goddamn kutte on the table as it is, after all this shit, so do what I f*ckin’ say.”

Gunner scowled like a chastised teen, but he moved his hands out of the way so she could feel his chest.

“Fuck!” he barked, almost like a laugh, when she pushed on the right side of his chest. It was hard to determine rib fractures without an X-ray, but there wasn’t much to be done about them in any case. If there wasn’t a full break or a lung puncture, he’d just have to ride out the pain.

She put the stethoscope in her ears and listened to his chest. “Take the deepest breath you can for me.”

His attempt cut off midway with a grunt, but she didn’t hear anything untoward except that grunt. No fluid in his lungs. She listened to the left side and then helped him sit forward so she could listen at the back, too. Clear. Strong heartbeat.