“Need to see your identification card, sweetheart.”
My brow rises, and I pull my wrist out of his grasp. Rolling my shoulders back, I meet his steely gaze with my own cool one. “You need to move so I can see my patient.”
The man scoffs and folds his arms across his chest. “Look here, bit?—”
“Let her in!” a stern voice calls from inside the room, and the man in front of me visibly pales. His arms instantly drop, and the macho, smug look on his face melts away instantly.
“My apologies,” he mutters before moving out of the way.
With my head held high, I wipe my face of any emotion and enter the room. The door clicks quietly behind me, but the sound echoes like a gunshot in the quiet space. Mr. Bianchi is awake, sitting up in his hospital bed. There are no longer tubes protruding from his mouth and nose, but his head is still wrapped in bandages and gauze. Yesterday I wasn’t able to see his eyes, and today, I’m glad I didn’t. Once those golden-brown irises land on me, my lungs feel void of air. I can see why grown men fear him. Respect him. With just one look, I can tell he has no compassion and no soul inside of him. He’s a mafia boss to his core. Is he handsome with his onyx black hair and tanned complexion? Yes, but deadly. Like an angel of death.
His all-knowing gaze stays on me as I inch farther into the room and toward his bed, before I reach for the clipboard at the foot. My eyes only leave his to scan the paper and notice it’s practically blank.
“No one came to check your vitals?”
“Mr. Bianchi will only be seen by you,” the same man I dealt with before, his second in command, from my best guess, answers.
“I’ve been out of the hospital for twelve hours. He should have been seen at least once every hour,” I snap, my eyes angrily moving from one man to the other.
“Were you the nurse who suggested I wait the full forty-eight hours of being here until going home?” Mr. Bianchi asks, his voice hoarse and slightly scratchy.
Gritting my teeth, I nod my head. “Yes, but?—”
“Then you’re the one who will take care of him,” his second replies before letting me finish.
My head snaps in his direction, my eyes narrowing, “Those care directions are the same I would give to any patient dealing with the same type of head injury. Being cared for for forty-eight hours or more in the hospital means being checked every hour. So your boss could receive pain medication, have his wound cleaned, and be checked for any clots in his brain after the surgery.” I swing my gaze to Mr. Bianchi next, trying to breathe out my frustration and calm my voice. “Are you experiencing any pain, Mr. Bianchi?”
The man has the audacity to chuckle. “Now I see what you mean, Nico.”
Nico groans and runs his hand over his head. There’s a flush on his neck, and his face isn’t exactly nice while he looks at me, but speaks rapid Italian to his boss. They have an entire conversation in front of me, and I wish I had spent more time learning key phrases at the clubhouse when I had the chance. The Rebels were always doing business either with the Italian mafia or helping to funnel work for them. I do hear Nico refer to his boss as Marco, so they must be related by blood. There’s a sense of family between them as they converse. Except that I have no idea what they’re discussing, and I’m starting to find it rude.
“If you’re going to continue speaking around me, I’ll move on. Mr. Bianchi, I’ll put in orders for a blood draw and a CATscan. Someone will be here in an hour to check your vitals and see if you need any pain meds,” I tell them and turn on my heels to leave.
“Ms. Carmichael, your supervisor has already approved you to be the sole care provider for Mr. Bianchi while he is here. At your insistence that it’s his best course for treatment to stay here, the hospital has already made great concessions in order to make sure it's safe,” Nico announces, and I can hear the hint of smugness in his voice.
I did notice the extra security. I also noticed that Mr. Bianchi has additional men in stations that would normally be prohibited for any other patient. My guess is that this is costing a pretty penny, and our board of directors at the hospital are never ones to turn down money. Glancing over my shoulder, I meet the cold, calculating gaze of my patient.
“I’ll put the orders in for your tests. I’ll be back in one hour to check on you.”
Holding my breath and keeping my head held high, I manage to escape the hospital room. Only once I’ve done my job and have a spare minute, do I slip into one of the on-call rooms. After checking that it’s empty, I pick the pillow up off the bed, shove it to my face, and scream. How do men who think their word is law continuously find me? It would serve Marco Bianchi right if I took this pillow into his room and held it down over his face. I wouldn’t because then I’d have to bring him to life again, but the thought is appealing. My morning now officially ruined, I sink down onto the bed and hold the pillow to my chest, doing the breathing exercises my therapist taught me. Well, she isn’t exactly my therapist, but since Doc, or Lyric, is an actual licensed counselor, I sometimes call our late-night chats and her advice my therapy.
I’ve come too far to have a slip-up now. Everything about that altercation just brought back the helplessness I felt the lastyear I spent withFinn—Dodger in Braham. I can’t go back to feeling like I have no control or power. I won’t just accept what’s happening to my life anymore. I get to decide. I make the calls.
“Yes, exactly,” I murmur to myself before standing up from the bed. Fixing my hair in the mirror, I splash some cold water on my face and adjust my scrubs. “I’m a kick ass nurse. A bad ass bitch.” My eyes spark with intensity in the mirror.
Once I feel better, I decide I can’t hide all day. Instead, I buckle down, do my job, and when needed, I check on Mr. Bianchi. Mostly, I ignore Nico and only deal directly with my patient. Thankfully, his CT scan is normal, and his wound is healing as it should without infection. His blood and labs look good as well, with no fever to show for over a couple of hours.
“Just checking on you one last time, Mr. Bianchi. Your discharge papers are ready. Once the doctor signs off on them in about three hours, you’ll be free to go,” I tell him, waltzing into his room and hanging the papers on his clipboard.
The men exchange a glance, but I ignore them. Instead, I round the bed and check his pulse before listening to his heart and lungs. His gaze never leaves my face, and every time I look up, we make eye contact. It’s awkward at best, and each time I raise my brow, giving him a pointed look. It happens again when I’m changing the dressing on his head wound, and this time I use my fingers to turn his jaw away from me, breaking contact. He chuckles at this, the sound dark and dangerous.
“Have you been a nurse at the hospital for a long time, Ms. Carmichael?”
Inspecting his wound gives me something to do, so I don’t snap at him. “I’m sure you already know the answer to that, Mr. Bianchi.”
He chuckles again, his eyes following the movements of my gloved hand in front of his face. “Ah, yes. You started herealmost five years ago, fresh out of school. You earned merit and time in the emergency room.”
He rattles off my work history with alarming accuracy. I was right in guessing that a background check had already been run on me. A pit starts to form in my stomach, hoping there is nothing he found that would trace my relationship back to the Rebels. Finn often talked about different mafia families; they either had alliances with or were trying to prevent going to war with them. Back then, my job was to be seen and not heard, so I rarely talked with him about it. I never wanted him to get in trouble for sharing club secrets with me, as I wasn’t his old lady.
