Page 74 of Longest Ride

The nurse was gone a couple of minutes, then she came back and took Bobby’s vital signs and wrote everything down for the doctor.

Five minutes later a young doctor entered the treatment room. “I’m Doctor Michaels.”

“Hey, Doc. Bobby Prescott, and this is my friend, Ray Robichau.”

“First glance at your vital signs, Bobby, tells me your body is in a lot of distress. Can I take a look at the source of your pain?”

“Have at it, Doc. Gut shot, and I’ve been in two IC units since. My girlfriend went off the track and she kidnapped me out of both hospitals.”

“That sounds like a series on Netflix, Bobby.” The doctor cautiously pulled Bobby’s jeans down and took a look at the mess of the wound.

“Uh huh. This wound is badly infected. I’m going to have my nurse clean it up and redress it and then I’m going to give you a shot to slow down the infection. “

“Thanks, Doc.”

“I’ll write you two prescriptions—one is for pain, as needed, and the other is for an antibiotic to kill the infection. Do not skip any doses of the antibiotic.”

“I won’t. I want my gut to heal.”

“I’m sure you do.”

When the clinic finished with Bobby, he paid cash out of his truck stash and Ray helped him back to the Freightliner.

“Which way we going from here, Bobby?”

“Let’s get on up to Nashville and see if you can sell a song.”

Ray laughed. “They would never buy one of my songs.”

“Have you tried?”

“Nope.”

“You’re gonna try when we get there and we’ll have us a time in Music City.”

Ray grinned. “Can’t believe I’m going to Nashville to sell a song.”

Bonaventure Boat Rentals. Louisiana Bayou.

After driving for close to two hours, the GPS took us to the boat rental place Pierre Bonaventure owned and operated.

A wooden shack on the side of the river was where he did business. Two boats with shiny motors were tied to his dock.

Pierre was on the dock cleaning one of his boats when Annie, Mick, me and Virge bailed out of the truck and went to talk to him.

“Hey, Pierre,” said Annie. “A couple of hours ago we were talking to Mrs. Levron up in Calumet. She said you drove up there to tell her Carl, her son, was dead.”

“Yeah, I drove up and told her. She was always good to me, and she’d be waiting for Carl to come home. I had to tell her.”

“So, Carl brought Tammy down here to rent one of your boats?” asked Annie.

“She followed Carl down in that fuckin monster truck,” said Pierre.

“Can you tell me what happened after she got here?” asked Annie.

“Sure. They’d only been here a couple of minutes when the girl jumps out of the truck screaming and says her guy hit her with something. Turns out she was trying to make him go to ground, but he wanted to go to a hospital. He was hurt or something. That girl was fairly unhinged…what I saw of her. Her guy is way better off without her. I can tell you that much.”

Pierre was pissing me off, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted him to finish his story.

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