Page 3 of Ruthless Son

Rex shuffled back, silently backing out of my personal space, slowly followed by the others, giving me and my womanly discomfort-causing tears a wide berth. Glances at the leather-clad men showed sheepish grins and pink-stained cheeks. “Happy now?”

I nodded in gratitude, rubbing my wet cheeks on the sleeve of my jacket, clearing away the evidence of my weakness. Sniffing, I wheeled my case toward the man they had called Sly earlier. The squeaking of the wheels loud in the now silent room until the unhelpful nurse piped up, “Uh, Rex.” She cleared her throat when he spun toward her, piercing her with his gaze and causing a flush of red to run under the neck of her nurses scrubs. “It’s uh, I mean times up, babe, she has to leave… hospital policy.” She tagged on the end as Rex narrowed his eyes on her.

“She’s with us, we’ll escort her out when we’re finished.”

Nurse Ratched was now as meek as a mouse, merely nodding at Rex’s claim and sitting back down to make herself look busy with paperwork, though she kept watch on us from the corner of her eye, a sharp censorious look that left nothing to the imagination… she was angry at their attentiveness.

The hard red plastic dug into my back, with Sly and another man sitting either side of me. Rex took center stage, kneeling before me and digging a tissue from his inside pocket—unused hopefully—and even with one knee on the hard floor, we were now evenly matched in height, yet he seemed to take over the entire room.

Rex pointed to the unnamed man beside me, one arm resting on his raised knee. “That’s Gauge.” The man in question lifted a hand, a little salute to go along with his small smile had the tension that was riding my shoulders—a tension I didn’t know I was holding onto—lifting. My body deflated and sunk lower into the hard plastic, a pent up gust of breath releasing from my burning lungs.

The other men dotted around us, leaning against walls and trying to fit large frames into tight chairs, their hips barely fitting between the arm rests.

“What’s got such a pretty thing like you all caught up?” Sly leaned forward, a shock of white hair amidst the black mass falling over his forehead. His scarred hand raked the hair back in place, the white mark looking like it had been painted on in a neat strip.

“Poliosis,” I muttered to myself, watching the contrasting colors of this strange man’s hair was almost hypnotic. I’d seen it before dozens of times, but having something so familiar to focus on was keeping me sane in an otherwise unfamiliar territory.

“You know your doctor shit.” Sly chuckled, before mirroring Rex’s position and resting his elbows on his knees, his hands dangling between his spread thighs.

With Rex’s tissue clutched in my fist, I dabbed at the corners of my eyes, trying not to rub the delicate skin. “I’m a nurse, so I know some doctor shit,” I replied.

“Ooh, a nurse.” He smiled. “Are the uniforms sexier across the pond?”

His abysmal flirting had a smile finally creeping across my lips. “Sexy? God no, they’re like blue hammocks, but they are comfortable.”

Rex cleared his throat, interrupting the banter that had risen up between me and Sly.

“Why don’t you tell us why you’re so upset and giving the nurse here drama?” Rex stated, but this time, his eyes radiated kindness, and not the cold glimmer from before.

His electric gaze drew me in, bright blue and fixed on me. Lines at the corner of his eyes denoted a love of laughing, and completely contradicted the gruff persona that he had going on mere minutes before. It should weird me out how he could switch from stone-cold to kindness with just a thought, but then, isn’t that what I did? Wasn’t I normally the immovable abrupt nurse one minute and then the sympathetic caregiver the next?

I’d always thought it showed a level of emotional maturity that I—and people like Rex—could alternate for different people and in different situations, though some people had called me strange for it.

“My sister moved here six months ago to live with her boyfriend. I haven’t seen her in all that time,” I started telling them about my worry for Millie, and they listened intently. “I’ve barely spoken to her, actually. She hardly returns my calls or texts.”

“Honeymoon phases will do that,” Gauge chimed in beside me.

“No, it’s more than that, she’s not like that either.” Millie was the kid who used to spend all of her free time with her parents, so her not returning their calls was worrying. “I was already making plans to book a long holiday, I had some time accumulated, so I could come out here and check on her when Dad called. He was listed as her next of kin and he got a call from someone here at the hospital notifying him that she’d been in an accident. I immediately got the first flight out and here I am.” My lips turned up in what was supposed to be a smile but I’m sure was more like a grimace. My fingers picked at the tissue, twisting it into shapes to occupy my hands.

“So you don’t know anything about your sister?” Rex’s knees cracked as he rose to his full height before me.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Nurse Ratched?—”

Guffaws of laughter burst out from the men surrounding me. Sly’s hand clutched at his stomach as he leaned over in hysterics. “Nurse Ratched. Oh brother, she’s got Missy all figured out after five minutes.” He leaned back looking upwards at Rex’s now scowling face. “I told you bro, that woman has a hard-on for ya.”

“Shut it, Sylvester.”

I watched their back and forth, amused at the bickering.

“Brother, I’m telling you, Nurse Ratched saw you eyeballing queenie here and didn’t like it,” Gauge jumped in with the ribbing, but he had me confused. Was he talking about me?

“We told you not to stick—” “Mpf.” Rex’s shitkicker collided with Sly’s shin, a hard thud of rubber meeting bone had the man leaning over to rub his leg, a mad grin across his face.

“Don’t get mad at me because you have shit taste in pus—” Another thud, harder than the first one had Sly wincing.

“Watch your fucking mouth in front of the lady,” Rex warned. “She doesn't need to hear that filth. Princess has her own problems without listening to you spit obscenities.”

Gauge and Sly’s eyes widened as they looked at each other from either side of me, I felt like piggy-in-the-middle as they mouthed obscenities at each other. Their lips framing the word and giggling like school girls.

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