Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(49)

“Why are you being such a baby? Triage has slowed way down. Just come over and let somebody take a look.”

With a grudging snort, Rad let Willa drag him into the triage area.

She sat him down on a cot and gave him a f*cking green tag, and there he was. Statistic.

There were only a few people getting attention in the triage area now. All the surviving victims who needed off-site care, those who’d been rescued and those who’d made their own way out, must have been transported already. Those that remained were like him—a little dented but otherwise okay. He felt ridiculous sitting there like his stupid cut mattered in this scope of all this.

Then Willa washed his face with gauze and cool water, cleaning the blood and grime away. Her touch with those lovely, soft hands was light, and he closed his eyes. Each brush over his face seemed to erase a layer of shock from his psyche.

Rad had seen and done violent things in his life. He’d done bad things. He’d caused pain, and he’d felt pain. Blood and gore didn’t bother him. Death was nothing more than the end of a road, and in his world, violence was the fare for the ride. He didn’t relish being the agent of anybody’s end, but everybody had an end coming.

What had happened here, though—he couldn’t get his head around it. He’d never known anything like it. Delaney and Dane, veterans of Vietnam, had proceeded through the day with a grim focus on their mission. The rest of the Bulls who’d made this trip had followed their lead, but Rad had seen on the others’ faces the incomprehension he’d felt. His brain had kept trying to detach, over and over, gears grinding in his head. But there was no way to stop seeing, to stop feeling. It was everywhere.

The worst of it, for Rad, hadn’t been finding a body, or a body part. The worst of it had been finding the destroyed pieces of a normal life: A woman’s handbag. Somebody’s lunch sack. A child’s toy, completely intact and pristine, atop a mound of bloody rubble. Those were the symbols through which Rad saw the enormity of the devastation here.

A rumpled young doctor came over and checked Rad’s tag. “Let’s take a look. You weren’t wearing a hard hat?” He pressed his fingers into his sore head, and Rad fought the urge to flinch away—and to follow the flinch with a punch.

He didn’t answer the doctor’s question. Willa, who hadn’t left his side, said, “He said it fell off.”

Not strictly true, but good enough.

The doctor shined a light in his eyes. “Follow the light for me.”

Rad did what he was told. He followed the light. He said when he could see the doctor’s finger in his peripheral vision. He squeezed the doctor’s fingers in his fists—that one, he enjoyed. The doc’s flush as Rad showed him his strength almost made all this nonsense worth it.

The doctor cleared his throat and shook out his hands. “Okay. No signs of concussion. The wound needs a few sutures. We’ll flush it out and get you sewn up right away.”

“I want her to do it.”

“Rad, shut up.”

The doctor turned to Willa. Rad didn’t like the look he gave her—in that look, the doctor said loud and clear that he thought nurses were nothing but secretaries who did bedpans. “Are you a practitioner?”

Rad didn’t understand what that meant, but Willa shook her head. “RN.”

“Then no. I’ll do your sutures. She can flush your wound and get you prepped. I’ll be back when you’re ready.” He walked away, pulling his latex gloves off as he went.

“That motherf*cker is not touching me.” Rad began to stand up, but Willa set her hands on his shoulders. She didn’t push, but he stayed seated anyway.

“Please. I’m too tired to deal with a scene. You’re still bleeding. You need sutures. Please, just do it now, and not…I don’t know, in the bathroom of a gas station or something later, after you’ve lost more blood and had more time for infection to set in.”

“He’s an *. Did you see the way he looked at you? Fucker needs a punch.”

She smiled and bent down to kiss him on the mouth. “I love you getting riled up for me. But I am used to doctors thinking I don’t rate. It’s okay. I don’t need his opinion of my worth to form my own. Plus, he’s been here since ten o’clock this morning, working nonstop, taking care of horribly hurt people. Cut him a break.”

Rad answered only with a nod. He was too distracted by the way his body had gone taut when she’d said the words I love you to continue the argument. Those words hadn’t been her whole sentence, or her meaning, but he’d barely heard what had come after.

That clench hadn’t been revulsion—it hadn’t been like the morning he’d woken in Kay Ann’s bed, with her drawing circles over his chest with her hot-pink fingernail and purring about how that was so great, baby. His body had withdrawn from that woman’s touch with dread and regret.

What he’d just felt had been the sensation that came with an electric charge. It had been exhilaration. The thought that Willa was telling him she loved him had excited him.

But she hadn’t been saying that.

So he kept his mouth shut and let her have her way. He had some things to think about. In the meantime, he’d let the arrogant prick of a doctor sew up his head, because it would make things easier for Willa if he did.