Page 34 of Retaliation

She turned away, making her way back to the entrance, her mind already shifting gears.

“Jim, Bob,” she greeted the bouncers with a nod, their chuckles following her as she passed.

Outside, the night air hit her like a cold slap, but she welcomed it. She swung her leg over her bike, the familiar rumble of the engine beneath her.

With a roar, her bike burst forward, the sound cutting through the quiet of the night as she sped off toward the hospital.

The parking lot was mostly deserted as she parked near the ER’s doors. An ambulance’s siren drew closer. Its red lights flashed across the lot.

She entered the ER and almost got run over by Nick, storming out the door and yelling instructions to the rest of the medical staff on his heels. When he bumped into her, he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a once-over.

“Poison, sit,” he ordered. Thrusting her to the waiting area. “I’ll be with you in just a second.”

“I can go home, no worries!” she called out as he started running again to meet the ambulance.

“Sit!” he ordered, and she obeyed—sulking like a little girl.

A moment later, Nick and the ER staff came rushing back in, pushing a patient on a stretcher.

“What do we have?” Nick asked the paramedic.

“Male, mid-thirties, gunshot wound to the chest. Blunt force trauma to the chest and skull. Vital signs are unstable, BP eighty over fifty, pulse one twenty.”

She rose to her feet in a stupor—the tattoo on the man’s arm pulling her like a magnet. She knew that tattoo. Fuck, she had just received a punch from the fist at the end of that arm covered in tribal tattoos. How was this possible?

“Let’s get him inside, stat. Prep the trauma bay,” he ordered one of the nurses.

“He’s unresponsive, GCS three.” She watched as another paramedic, straddling the patient on the stretcher, held her ear near the patient’s mouth—her hands on his chest covered in blood.

“Start CPR; get the defibrillator ready. Let’s move people. We don’t have much time.”

And they disappeared into a trauma room. She tried to block out every sound, every sight, every smell—the voices inside getting louder.

Her challenger was bleeding to death on the other side of the door, and here she was, wasting Nick and the hospital’s time with a small cut on her lip.

Who the fuck shot him? And how did the ambulance get to him so quickly? He was just unconscious at the Quarry—the Don wouldn’t have called the ambulance. Gunshots were reported. The Don would much rather make the problem disappear than have authorities involved. A million questions swirled in her mind, making her dizzy, and she had to sit down again.

The clock on the wall above her ticked louder and louder, each tick like a jackhammer in her mind. The lights were suddenly too bright, casting harsh shadows on the sterile white walls. Her heart pounded in her chest, each beat echoing in her ears like a drum. The air felt thick, suffocating, as if she were trapped underneath an opponent, unable to breathe. Her hands trembled as she clutched the edge of her seat, her knuckles turning white from the pressure—pain stinging the bruised bone.

Every rustle of fabric, every creak of the floor, sent shivers down her spine, making her skin crawl. She felt like she was drowning in a sea of noise and chaos, struggling to stay afloat. Her thoughts raced, the voices a blaring roar threatening to engulf her.

The voices called her name, beckoning her to allow the darkness to overtake her.

Poison. Poison. Poison.

“Poison.”

It wasn’t the voices. It was Nick calling her name, and she snapped out of it.

His weary expression softened as her eyes focused on him, kneeling before her.

“You alright?” he asked, pushing a stray strand of hair away from her face.

She pushed the thoughts of her challenger out of her mind. The look on Nick’s face said he didn’t make it, and she knew better than to ask too many questions—Nick would already be feeling bad enough as it was.

“I’m sorry for wasting your time,” she said and tried to stand, forcing Nick to back up.

“Nonsense,” he took her hand and dragged her off to the other side of the room. “Let me take a look at you.”

---