Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 115186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115186 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
What? Shouldn’t it be the coroner?
“You ain’t Wick.” Even saying those three words was a damn struggle.
“Who am I?”
“The fuckin’ devil.”
“Been called that before.”
When he lifted his eyelids again, a sharp, shooting pain caused his brain to throb. “You’re tryin’ to trick me with that light.”
“It’s my fuckin’ phone, you dumbass.”
“Why do you need a—” He tried to block the blinding light with this hand, but his arms weighed too much for him to lift. “Am I dead?”
“Sure don’t sound like it. Checked your pulse and you still got one. And since you’re bein’ a dick, my uneducated guess is no, you ain’t dead.”
That would explain the unbearable agony in every inch of his body. Or at least in the parts he still could feel.
He’d been in plenty of fights, including bar fights and prison brawls. Never had it hurt this fucking bad.
“Should get you to the hospital, anyway.”
“Should but won’t.”
“Not sure you got a choice, prez.”
“Always got a choice.”
“Sure, a choice of life or fuckin’ death. Could have internal injuries. Brain could be bleedin’. Lungs punctured. Who the fuck knows?”
“When the fuck did you turn into an EMT?” Every damn word uttered was a chore.
Wick huffed and threw up his hands. “Whatever, brother. Just so you know, you look like week-old roadkill right now. Musta done somethin’ stupid to spark this. Got every fuckin’ right to continue to be a dumbass.”
Romeo could agree with that. He was a dumbass, but not because he didn’t want to get medical attention. “Call Sparky.”
Sparky, a fellow Knight, was also a volunteer firefighter. He sometimes could pull off some medical shit in a pinch. Stitches, cleaning up wounds from fights, pulling debris out of road rash… That kind of shit.
Romeo wouldn’t trust him to do brain surgery. Or a vasectomy.
Wick huffed, “Sparky ain’t a miracle worker.”
With that remark, Romeo was damn sure it had to be ugly. “Don’t give a fuck. Tell him to meet me at my place. He can patch me up.”
“How the fuck are you gettin’ to your place?”
The only thing he could move right now was his eyeballs, so he glanced in the direction of his crib and judged the distance. It was close as fuck but he doubted he could even crawl those few feet. “You’re gonna help me. After you call Sparky.”
Wick shook his head. “Ain’t callin’ Sparky. Takin’ you to the hospital, Rome. And we’re wastin’ time by you bein’ so goddamn stubborn. Your fuckin’ arm’s at angles I ain’t never seen before and never want to see again. Got a bone stickin’ out of your thigh and your boot’s backward. Got blood everywhere. A goddamn butterfly bandage and a kiss on your boo-boo ain’t gonna fix what you got broken.”
“Gonna be pissed if you take me anywhere other than my place.”
“What the fuck you gonna do, hit me?” Wick snorted. He took a step back and challenged, “Get up and try it.”
The second Romeo tried to push past the pain to do just that…
He lost the fucking fight.
Again.
The annoying sounds. The unnatural smells. The eye-searing lights.
It might not be hell, but it was damn close.
He forced open his eyes again and shifted them enough to take a better look at his surroundings.
Of fuckin’ course. He kind of remembered now, even though his memory was a bit spotty. More like it had gaping holes.
He glanced down to see needles with attached tubes stuck in his cast-free arm. One of his legs was also in a plaster cast and hanging in the air using some contraption. What he currently wore was as far from his cut as it can get, except for being naked.
They better not have cut off his goddamn cut. It was one of his prize possessions.
For fuck’s sake. Did he pull out in front of a tractor trailer that was traveling seventy-five miles an hour or something? Did he misjudge the distance and speed of the truck?
A noise to his left had him turning his head. And regretting it.
Bishop slouched in a chair by the bed, scrolling through his cell phone.
Now Romeo wondered where his was. Was it destroyed? If it was, he was screwed. His whole life was stored in that damn phone.
His VP looked up, then put his phone down. “‘Bout time you woke up. You’ve been out so fuckin’ long, thought I might need to take over the gavel.”
He thought what?
“H—” His throat felt like it was full of dust and gravel. Despite trying to clear it, his voice remained rough, and speaking was a chore. “How long have I been here?” Here obviously being a hospital.
“This is day four.”
What the fuck? Four days? “Why don’t I remember that?”
Bishop shrugged. “Could be the fact you’ve been in and out of it. When you were in, you babbled some shit that didn’t make much fuckin’ sense. They really scrambled your brain.”