Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Then I saw something that had definitely happened on the outside. A puckered, circular scar. The entry wound made by a bullet. Who is this guy?
“Is the other guy okay?” asked Gabriel.
That teasing, warm growl vibrated through my whole body. My gaze shot up to his face and then I was lost in those hazel eyes all over again and had to struggle to think. The other guy. The guy he’d been brought in with.
“Why do you care?” I asked. “Weren’t you trying to kill each other?” It came out angrier than I intended. It just frustrates me, when the inmates turn on each other. As a doctor, I want to get them all out of here alive.
Gabriel shrugged, his expression unreadable.
“I’ll check,” I told him, and pushed through the curtains and out of the exam area. As soon as they closed behind me, I stopped and closed my eyes for a second. It felt like I was waking from a dream. The air felt cool against my skin and I could think again. Did all of that really happen?
I opened my eyes and hurried over to where Alicia was tending to our other patient.
Alicia is my nurse and in the two months I’ve been at the prison, she’s become my best friend. She’s everything I’m not: she’s delicate and small, barely coming up to my shoulder. She’s all tight and toned from spin classes and boxercise and her skin has this flawless, golden tan. She has long blonde hair and when it isn’t pinned up for work, it falls in a silky river down her back. Most of all, she’s fun. When we go out for drinks, she’s like a human firework, drawing all the male attention with her hair flicks and giggles. Meanwhile, I sit there slowly tearing the label from my beer bottle, brooding on whether I’ve ordered enough bandages and if I should up the insulin dose for the old guy in C block.
It’s fair to say that I find it hard to switch off.
Alicia turned and grinned as I arrived. “All good here.” She’d given the guy an ice pack to hold against his split, swollen lip and closed up the laceration over his eye with a butterfly stitch. “I was just thinking that I should check him for a concussion. He says he hit the back of his head when he went down.”
I nodded. “Good call.” Alicia’s way too good to be working in a place like this. I’ve been helping her with applications to some of the big hospitals in Phoenix. Any day now, one of them’s going to snap her up and I’ll lose her.
Alicia moved me away from the patient. “Sooo…how was he?” she whispered.
I blinked at her.
“Gabriel Kain!” God, she was starry-eyed as a teenager glimpsing her favorite band. Did everyone know who this guy was but me? What the hell did he do?! I was dying to ask but I was embarrassed at the way I’d reacted to him. Now that I was away from him, the spell was broken and reality was setting in. He must have just been teasing, or maybe he just flirted with everyone like that. Besides, he was an inmate and a patient.
“Charming,” I said with a shrug, as if I hadn’t really thought about it. “His wound’s not bad, I need to stitch him up, then he’ll be out of here.”
Alicia stared longingly toward the curtain and gave a little sigh of regret. Now she really did look like a teenager. The band was leaving…and she didn’t even get an autograph.
I watched her for a second, biting my lip. This is a hellish place to work. If I could give her a few minutes of fun… “You know what? Why don’t you do the stitches on Mr. Kain?”
Alicia turned to me, eyes huge. “Really?” When I nodded, she threw her arms around me and squeezed me tight, then shot across the infirmary to Gabriel’s exam area.
I went back to the other patient. It felt like balance had been restored to the universe. Now they could both have some harmless fun and everyone was happy.
So why did I feel a kind of cold, gray ache in my stomach, like I’d just missed out on something important?
I shook it off, picked up a flashlight and started the concussion check on Alicia’s patient. I hadn’t realized until now how young he was: he couldn’t have been more than nineteen. And he wasn’t much bigger than Alicia. It bothered me that Gabriel had preyed on someone so much smaller than him. I knew I should stay out of it, but as I moved the flashlight back and forth, I mumbled, “What happened between you and Gabriel, anyway?”
He frowned. “Gabriel didn’t do this. This was Packard’s guys. Gabriel pulled ‘em off me and got knifed for it.”