Page 9 of Brutal for It
Crunch comes in with Jenni two minutes later like I knew he would. She’s a wreck but she needed to get a once over too. He’s pale under the lights in the room, still wearing the weight of being a Prospect on his shoulders, and still a killer desire in his eyes. Ending Ezra Rivera didn’t bring him the peace to the monster that lives inside him. He wants to do it again. He keeps a gentle hand at the small of Jenni’s back like he’s not sure she’s actually here.
“Jenni,” I snap, because the first thing that slams into me is logistics, “are y’all the same blood type?”
She blinks like I slapped her. “I— I don’t know. Does she need blood? What do I do? Tell me, just, tell me what to do.” Panic threads her voice like barbed wire.
“Both of you.” Crunch’s voice is a surprise low, even, fatherly, the way he used to talk to me at two a.m. when I couldn’t sleep. “We gotta breathe. Doc Kelly will tell us what is needed.”
That’s a thing, right there. When did he get to be the calm one over me? Oh, right. When the only woman I’ve ever cared about got shot in front of me.
How does my life make this kind of turn? Two hours ago I was in the cave, smell of smoke in my hair, thinking about patches and roads and what the Tail of the Dragon teaches a man. Now I’m praying to a God I only talk to when asphalt gleams wet and the night throws black ice under me.
The room fills up. Tank—my dad—is the first to come in from the lot, a big shadow that smells like leather, bleach, and cold air. Red’s behind him. Pretty Boy, too, face chalk white, eyes flashing with concern. A couple more brothers slide in, quietly. Tripp is already back and forth, in and out the door; half the club is peeling off to erase Ezra Rivera from the official version of the world. We got people we pay to make sure the pieces line up so even the local gossips can’t spin this into a logical tale.
By morning, the paper will run an obituary that says Ezra died at home from heart failure. Autopsy will show a guy whose heart just quit. And the coroner will go to lunch like nothing special happened. That’s the way of things in our world. I don’t apologize for it. We protect our own and we bury the rest.
Tank squeezes my shoulder in passing. It’s not comfort. It’s acknowledgment. I see you. I see her. I see blood on your cut that doesn’t belong to you. I breathe deep.
Waiting is a violence all its own. I’m not a patient man. Never have been. Engines and fists and miles—that’s how I work out a problem. Sitting still with fear gnawing at tendons is new and I hate it.
Jenni paces like a caged lion. Crunch shadows her, talking soft when she starts to spiral, shutting up when she needs silence. He’s out here earning back that cut without a patch on him, and I have to hand it to him—I’ve never seen him more solid than he is right now.
Time turns elastic. Minutes stretch into hours, collapse, stretch again. I count every noise behind the door like the room might speak English if I’m polite enough.
Eventually, the doors swing and Head Case steps out. He doesn’t do drama. That’s why the sight of him makes my lungs go tight.
“She’s stable,” he states, and I swear I could kiss him or break down on my knees or both. “Bullet missed her heart. Clavicle’s fractured, and we’re fishing out fragments. Kelly’s resetting the bone now.”
He turns to Jenni. “Before we put her all the way under, she came back enough to tell us no narcotics. Said she’s in recovery.”
Crunch is already nodding. “Yeah. We were in rehab together. She’s clean. Do what’s medically necessary, but we were taught to proceed with caution.”
Head Case’s mouth tightens in a way that reads as respect. “We are. She’s a tough one.” He tips his head at me. “She asked for… well, she said, ‘Tell Tommy I said to tell you again: no narcotics.’ Then she laughed. Then she went out. Girl was worried about you knowing she wants to stay clean, brother.”
That’s my girl. Even shot and hurting, she’s trying to manage the room.
This is my woman. The one who fought her own battle of the mind. The one who ripped her hand away from a life she could have stayed in forever. The one who, even when she’s broken, doesn’t give in.
“Is she going to be okay?” Jenni asks, voice a thin edge of glass.
Head Case softens. “We’re past the scary. But this shit is tough. She’ll be sore as hell. Sling for a while, at least while the clavicle heals. Doc’s got her. Your sister is a survivor.”
“Damn right she is,” I breathe.
People peel away then, as people do when the worst has been pronounced over. Tank claps Tripp on the back on his way out the door to follow up with the clean-up details. Red squeezes my neck. Pretty Boy gives me a look I can’t read and nods once. They’ll be back. We break up our grief in shifts. We always have.
Crunch hovers long enough to walk Jenni down the sidewalk to the next duplex. “I’m two doors down,” he tells me, quiet. “If you need… anything.” He holds my gaze a second. There’s an old fight still in him, and a new peace in the man. Then he tucks Jenni under his arm and they disappear into the dark.
It gets quiet.
I scrub my hands over my face, look down at the sunburst of brown dried on my forearm, and feel something like a vow settle into my bones. I used to think a vow was a loud, shouted thing. Turns out, it’s private, steady, made in a room where an old HVAC rattles and the only witness is a coffee machine with a mind of its own.
The door opens again. Kelly steps out, tired eyes, satisfied mouth. “She’s out and stable. We dosed with non-opioids plus local anesthesia at the surgical site. Pumping fluids and antibiotics in her through the IV. She’s been sedated but mildly so she’s going to be in and out of sleep. That one is a trooper. Sling’s on. No major vascular compromise. I’m keeping her here for a bit and I’ll be in the other room if anything changes. You can see the stats and the alarms will buzz if she has a problem. You can sit with her if you can keep your mouth down to a whisper and your body to a chair.”
“Deal,” I say, already moving.
The bedroom room is dim. The bed covered in white hospital sheets. Machines hum like faraway engines. Kelly doesn’t like hospital beds even though we do have one in another duplex should the need arise. She believes in rest you can actually get.
Jami looks small against the pillows. A sheet covers her bare skin and her bloody clothes are in a pile at the end of the bed. There is tape and gauze across her collarbone, a line of purple bruising already ghosting under the skin. An IV snakes into her hand. Her lashes cast shadows, her lips are chapped, her hair is a mess on the pillow. All I can think though is she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
