Page 2 of Falkner
Doone couldn’t believe how much time she seemed to have now that she wasn’t working two jobs to keep her mother in food.Clocking out for the day, she made her way to her locker to see what else she had to take home that was no longer necessary for her to have in her locker.She’d been hoarding snack foods so she could make it through a shift for so long that she was taking some of it home to be at her apartment.
She’d been an emergency room nurse since she’d passed her boards six years ago.She loved the fast pace of the job and seeing different things daily that she’d not see working on a floor like all the other nurses she’d gone to college with.Closing her locker, she made her way out of the little room designated for the staff and headed out the door just as an ambulance was pulling up.
“Hey Doonie, got one here for you.”She said that she was off and was going home.“Ah, come on.He could use your special stitches that you put in.Besides, he’s all Army.”She heard a man say he was Navy.“Whatever, buddy.Doone here puts in the best stitches ever done.”
“Can you help me?”She turned to look at the man being taken out of the back of the ambulance.“I’ve been cut up pretty badly and could use someone like you to fix me up.”
“Sorry, I’m already off for the night.Perhaps you can ask for Molly.”She saw him nod and was just turning away when a man with a gun over his chest came toward her.“You can’t take that inside.You’ll have to wait out here.”
“You’re coming inside with us.”She said again how she was off shift.“Major Dixon wants you to stitch him up, and what he wants I’m to give him by order of the president of the United States.”
“Well, big deal for him.I can’t work on him with my being off shift.You’ll have to find someone else.”She started away again when he grabbed her arm.“Listen, buddy, this might work for your girlfriend, but I’m not a pushover.I can’t help him even if I wanted to.Which I don’t.I want to go home.My shift is over now.”
“Come with me.”She was dragged and guided back into the emergency department by the man with the gun.Before she could begin to tell him, once again that she was off her duties for the evening, she was brought before the head nurse and told she was going to do some sewing on Major Dixon.“She’ll have to clock in and do her duty for the government.By order of the president.”
Even as she was ordered, not asked to clock back in, her duty nurse was telling the man that she was cooperating and that he should back off.Security was called, but what could they do?The man was armed with some sort of rifle and had all sorts of other armament around his waist.Doone finally put her foot down and said that she’d do it, but she wasn’t going to be happy about it.As soon as she was in the room with the other man, she glared at him and told him he was a prick, but her duty was to stitch him up, and she would.
“I think you’re a bastard.”He didn’t say anything but just stared at her.“This is no way to treat someone who is off working, just so you know.”
“I didn’t mean for him to bring you back in.”She just rolled her eyes and told him that he saw the way that she’d been treated.“Yes, and I’m profoundly sorry you were treated that way.My mother would have my head if she knew that I was responsible for you being dragged around like a rag doll.”
“Well, I was.And I don’t appreciate it.”She helped him pull his shirt off and looked at the wound that was along his back.“I can’t stitch you up until you have x-rays.That way, we can rule out any kind of foreign objects that might be inside the wound.Do you have any more wounds that need to be stitched up?”
Once he pulled his t-shirt up and over his belly, she could see the gaping wound that was there.It looked like he’d been eviscerated, but the wound wasn’t quite that deep.Looking at the otherwounds he had on his person, she decided that it was going to take her at least several hours to put him back together and send him on his way.
The doctor told the Major that he was going to send him down for a whole body x-ray, and then they’d work on getting him put together again.She just stood back while the doctor told the man the same thing she’d said.While waiting for him to be taken down to the X-ray department, she helped the man into a gown and cleaned up his face from all the blood that didn’t seem to be his.Doone didn’t want to think about that.
An hour after he was brought in, she was sitting down to do the worst of the wounds on his body.The one along his back was bad, but it had stopped bleeding now and could wait.She was more concerned about the one in his belly than any of the other five wounds he had on himself.Just as she was starting on his belly wound, the military man from earlier came into the room.He held his gun like he was just waiting for her to make a bad move before he shot her in the head or something.
“Does he have to be in here?”Major said that he did as he was there to protect him while he was down.“I’m not going to hurt you or him.I should, but I’m not.”
“I’m sorry.”Nodding, she pretended like this was an everyday occurrence and started to work.It was that or be freaked out because someone was carrying a gun while in the room with her.“What do you know about shifters?”
“Is this your attempt at small talk?All right then, I know very little other than they seem to heal a good deal faster than their counterparts.Why do you ask?”The Major told her that he was a shifter, a gorilla.She looked up at him.“Shouldn’t you be able to heal yourself by shifting or something?Why am I bothering with this if you’re just going to go home and turn into your other half?”
“I have to make it look good for the press.”She wanted to knock him on his ass is what she wanted to do.“There isn’t any point in numbing me.It won’t do a bit of good since I’m a shifter.”
“You want me to stitch you up without using anything to numb you?”He told her that was right.“It’s going to hurt.”He just looked at her.“All right.You’re the boss.But I don’t want to hear you whining about how much pain you’re in while I’m working either.I was going home to watch television with my mom while she made popcorn.”
Almost as if on cue, her cell phone rang.It was her mom.Pulling out her phone to talk to her, she glared at the man who held the gun.She decided that she was going to call him Cowboy.Her mom wasn’t amused that she was going to be late coming to her house.
“I thought you were finished with working overtime.”She explained why she was still here.“I didn’t know that they could do that to someone.He just dragged you along like you were nothing at all?That doesn’t seem right, honey.Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I am.I’m just going to go home after I’m finished here.Are you all right?Don’t forget to take your medications.”She assured her that she’d not and then told her that she loved her.“I love you too, Mom.I have to get started here or I might be shot or something.”
The wrong thing to say to her mother, and she spent another twenty minutes assuring her that she was joking.After getting assurances that she was going to be just fine, she hung up and began her work on the big man.She made sure to count his stitches so that they could tell the press how many he’d gotten in the fight—whatever that had been about and look good for them.She just wanted to go home.
After a few minutes, she just tuned out the other sounds around her and got to work.Being in a zone about stitching the man up, she knew that she was being rude and not talking to him.But her way would mean that she didn’t have to think about what had caused the wounds, nor about the man with the gun that was in the room, too.As she finished up the belly wound, having the doctor look it over for her work, she looked around the room and saw that someone else had joined them, and she knew immediately that he was related to the Major.They looked so much alike.
Not bothering with pleasantries, she began to stitch up the smaller wounds that were on his forearm.As soon as she was finished with those, she began working on the long cut along his back.It required over a hundred stitches alone, and that was with putting in small stitches so the scar wouldn’tbe so bad.Again, she didn’t know why she was bothering since he was a shifter, but it wasn’t her job to judge someone on what they were going to do once she was finished working on them.It was nearly midnight when she finished with his back.
Having gotten off at three-thirty, she was dismayed that part of her evening off was now gone.She was off tomorrow, so getting her laundry done tonight was a lost opportunity, not to mention spending time with her mom.As she was gathering up the mess she’d made working with the man, she was asked to wait for a while before leaving.She just glared at the man.
“You’ve already messed up my evening.What else could you want me to do when I’m supposed to be off for the next two days?”He said that he wanted to thank her.“Oh.Well, you’re welcome.I’m going home.”
She noticed that the man who was with the Major was resting with his head against the wall.She knew for some reason that he wasn’t asleep and that at a moment’s notice, he could be awake and doing harm to anyone who came into the room.More so than the man with the gun.Doone didn’t know why she thought that the man looked about as relaxed as she did when she was home, but she was stressed and tired and needed something to eat.
Going to her locker, she was told to clock out again, and her pay would be adjusted.Glad that she hadn’t worked an extra shift, practically she was clocking out when the man who had been in the room with the Major asked to speak to her.
