Page 15 of Needing to Fall
I stared at her, finally finding words. “Happy? What is that?”
Nurse Hatchet straightened, her eyes widening at the first words I had spoken to her in several days.
“You see, Nurse Hatchet, women like me don’t get to be happy. Women like me don’t have hope or prayers, because that’s all a bunch of bullshit that people throw at you to make youfeelbetter. Women like me are nothing. We are vapor, a puff of smoke. We mean absolutely zero to this world. Women like me would have been better off never being born.”
I sucked in a breath as a tear fell from Nurse Hatchet’s eye, her lip trembling as another tear followed. Of all the shit I had said to her over the time I had been here, never once had I seen her cry. Ever. I banked on her never crying, counted on it, relied on it. She was fucking it up! She couldn’t have feelings for this. No!
“Stop it!” I barked loudly, ripping myself away from her and pasting myself to the wall farthest from her.
While she looked down at her feet, I could tell she was taking deep breaths from the rise and fall of her chest.
“You don’t get to feel sorry for me!” I screamed at her. She couldn’t. If she did, she needed to go behind that mask and not let me see it. She was strong, assertive, and for some strange reason, I needed that.
She swiped her face with her hands, took a few more moments, and then turned to me. “Get your ass moving. You’re gonna be late.”
At that, I felt my spine lose a bit of its starch. There was my nurse. That was what I needed.
***
A knock came to the door, and I jolted as it slowly opened looking from the doctor to it. A man, tall since he had to duck to come through the doorway, entered, and I stilled. He was lean yet fit if his muscular arms were anything to go by. He had tattoos up one of his arms, the hair on his head was cut super short on the sides, and the top was barely there, as well. He had a nasty scar down his chin to his throat that had to have gotten there with some serious pain involved. However, it was his chocolate brown eyes that stared at me coldly, unyielding, that seized the air from my lungs.
I gripped the arms on my chair so tightly I knew there would be imprints on my hands when I released, but something had to ground me as the floor beneath me began to spin.
What was this man doing here? Why was he here?
A nurse, who wasn’t Nurse Hatchet, stepped in behind the man, a bored look flitting across her face.
“What’s this now?” the man’s voice rumbled through the room. Something in it reverberated around the space, bouncing like a million of those balls that go a mile a minute. He was mad, angry … hell, pissed.
He kept opening and closing his hands, making them into tight fists then flexing his fingers. Each movement demonstrated the strength in his arms.
“Lynx,” the doctor greeted like he had known him for years.
What kind of name was Lynx, and why in the hell was he greeting him?
The man said nothing, merely stared at me sitting in the chair, his eyes cold and hostile.
My first instinct was to run and hide, get as far away from this man as physically possible, but I stayed rooted to the spot.
Movement to my side made me jump and turn. The doctor pulled one of the chairs from the far wall over to the side of his desk. It was a good distance from me, but way too close. And I just knew who would be sitting in that chair before he spoke.
Wrestler McMann gestured to the chair. “Please have a seat.”
“What’s going on here?” I demanded in a panic, thinking of all the ways I could get the hell out of this room fast. I didn’t know what this man was capable of, but from the coldness in his eyes, I was sure it was anything. I wasn’t afraid of dying; it was all the other shit that came before it that I didn’t want to endure.
“What she said,” Lynx said to the doctor, stepping forward and crossing his arms over his chest, making him look really wide and even more intimidating.
The nurse shut the door, and stood with her back pressed into it. Everything in this scenario was wrong, and I didn’t like it one bit.
The doctor touched the side of his mouth with a finger. “It seems you two have a lot in common.”
I looked to the man standing beside me, seeing absolutely nothing that we could have in common.
He didn’t look at me, simply focused on the doctor. It gave me a moment to see his profile.
The scar looked worse close up, and the angle of his nose told me he had been in a fight … or twelve. Since he was still alive, he must have won.
“And that would be?” Lynx asked the question that almost slipped from my lips, but I was thankful I held it in.
