The Nurse

Chapter 2 - Pearce-2

IF IT HADN’T BEEN FOR the flashing hazards, I probably would have blazed right past the car pulled over to the side of the road and Kato lying in a ditch. As it was, I spotted the lights for the car, and as I slowed, I noticed a young woman next to it—a sexy young woman with full breasts, curling brown hair that tumbled over her shoulders, and little more than a tank top over what looked like a pair of pajama pants.

I slowed until finally coming to a stop beside her.

“Oh, thank God,” she said to me, sounding genuinely relieved. It was ironic, definitely not the normal reaction I got from people. “Can you help me? Do you have a phone?”

I threw out the kickstand to my bike, then dismounted. “What’s going on? You having some car trouble?” I motioned towards her car, which looked to be running with the hazards flashing.

She quickly shook her head. “No, no, I’m fine. But there’s a man down there,” she pointed towards the ditch, “who’s been in an accident. He’s really banged up. I’ve done my best to patch him up, but he really needs a doctor.”

As soon as she mentioned a man and an accident, I quickly rushed past her. She followed after me, still talking as I slid down the bank into the ditch.

“I tried to call the police myself, but my phone died. I don’t think they got any of the information I gave to them before it went out.”

It was definitely Kato, and there was no question about it—he was in trouble.

From the looks of it, he’d been patched up pretty well with a neck brace, some raggedy bandages already bloodied up, and what looked like the woman’s coat hanging off to the side. My worry for Kato kept my eyes from wandering back to the modelesque beauty ambling down the side of the ditch after me.

“How long has he been like this?” I asked, kneeling down beside him. I reached for his hand to check his pulse. He looked beaten up pretty badly, and I didn’t like seeing all the blood. I worried that it was too much for him to recover from.

This was a motorcycle accident? I found myself wondering.

It looked more like someone had tried to gut him. The thought darkened my mood considerably, and it didn’t help any when the woman spoke again.

“Don’t touch him!” she scolded me, slapping at my hand like I was a child reaching for the cookie jar. “Moving him could exacerbate any injuries he’s sustained, especially the ones we can’t see.”

Jumping to my feet, I pressed into her personal space, using my height and size to intimidate her. It usually worked better with shorter women, but I still had a good five inches on her, and I used them to my advantage. “Who the f**k are you to be barking orders at me? Do you have any idea who I am?” I snarled at her angrily.

Her pretty green eyes widened in surprise, then quickly narrowed in anger. “From what I can see, you’re some pushy man on a bike with no medical experience and a short temper, whereas I am a damn nurse!”

Nurse?

A flash of headlights down the road distracted me enough to stop my tirade, just enough time to allow a little niggle of appreciation that she hadn’t backed down from my anger. But not enough to tell her that.

When the lights slowed as they got closer, I started to get nervous. This was Kato on the side of the road, no doubt. But I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there. Was it just an accident? Or was my sense that something more was going on correct?

Either way, I had to get Kato the hell out of here. Marco would give me the time I asked for and not a second more, the bastard, which meant the next headlights coming towards us could be cops.

Hell, with my luck, it could be another damn Good Samaritan like this f*****g woman.

I rounded on her again. “Look, lady—” I began, but she interrupted me.

“Jasmine.”

I blinked at her. “What?”

“My name. It’s Jasmine,” she elaborated coolly, like she dealt with angry bikers and half-dead ones on the side of the road in the middle of the night all the damn time.

“Okay, Nurse Jasmine,” I growled at her impatiently. “If you’re done with the f*****g introductions, we need to get him the hell out of here.”

Her features softened with worry, and I admitted to myself again that she was beautiful. I went ahead and let my eyes drop to her cleavage, though the rest of her wasn’t bad to look at either. She had hips that flared out and legs that were long. Yep, not bad to look at.

“You’re right,” she finally admitted grudgingly. “He needs to get to a hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood, and I don’t know if he’s sustained any other—”

“No,” I snapped at her, my eyes jerking back to her face.

Surprise took over her features again. “But he’s—”

“I said no,” I growled at her again. When I realized that I was being harsh with her—and that being a nurse meant she’d probably call someone once we were gone—I made a conscious effort to soften my tone. I didn’t think I did a very good job. “Look, he’s a friend of mine, okay? And he...doesn’t have insurance.”

She frowned deeply at me, suspicion mixing in with uncertainty. “This is serious. He needs medical attention.”

I glanced from her pretty face down to Kato’s bloody one. Yeah, he did need medical attention. And not just pain pills either. Too bad. Those I could get in a snap, I thought grimly. When my eyes wandered back to Jasmine, an idea began to form in my head—a bad one. Nurse Jasmine, I reminded myself. “You’re right, he does.”

“Great. Then let’s get an ambulance here—”

I cut her off. “You think he’ll last that long? Nearest hospital is about forty minutes away.”

She opened her mouth to answer, then snapped it shut. She glanced down at Kato. “I was worried about that myself,” she admitted. “He really shouldn’t be moved, though. If he has a neck or spine injury, moving him could cause paralysis or something equally bad.”

I c****d my head at her. “And if we wait for the hospital, he’ll die. That’s equally bad, isn’t it?”

She gave me a dirty look for using her own words. “This isn’t a game.”

“No, this is my friend’s life.”

Her full lips pulled into a frown. “Fine. I have a car. If you can help me lift him, I can drive him to the hospital.”

I shook my head quickly. “No. I said no hospital.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake. Saying he had no insurance was one thing. Arguing that he wouldn’t survive a trip to the hospital if we waited was one thing. Insisting that we couldn’t drive to the hospital ourselves was another.

She’ll be suspicious, I realized belatedly. What was worse, I didn’t have any idea how much she knew about what was going on.

Her eyebrows shot up again. Not so subtly, she took a step back, like she was a little wary of me all of a sudden. “What’s going on? Why don’t you want to go to the hospital?”

Clearing my throat, I tried to recover. “Look, if it wasn’t fifteen minutes shy of an hour, I’d say let’s go. But it is. And he doesn’t have that kind of time. But just up the road down Pike is a house that belonged to my parents. If we take him there, he might even survive the damn car ride.”

“Which won’t do us any good if he dies there instead!” she countered. She was still arguing, which was a pain in the ass, but at least she didn’t seem suspicious anymore. Forgotten was my adamant insistence to not go to the hospital.

Kicking up a corner of my mouth, I said, “It’s a good thing I’ve got Nurse Jasmine then, isn’t it?”

She frowned, and I worried that she wouldn’t come with me. I was afraid that she’d call the police and I would have some serious explaining to do. Kato could die because of it all. But then she said, “Fine. Let’s go. We’ve already wasted too much time standing around arguing.”

My mouth stretched into a full smile. “Yes, we f*****g have.”

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