Watson - Kathi S. Barton Page 0,39
mad enough that I had to waste my time as it is.” She put out her fist and told Louis he’d better have not been a bad boy. “Come on then. I guess you’ll have to deal with it bleeding all the time. Get your ass in gear.”
Before she could get out of the emergency department, three cruisers pulled into the lot with their lights and sirens on. Brenda slapped Louis hard enough to have him falling backward, and she took off running.
“I don’t think she’s going to get too far. Not with her slippers falling off and her pants that tight. Do you suppose she went to a store called ‘I have no clue how to dress when I leave home, and I don’t care’?” The police caught up with Brenda just as she was heading down the street. “You did good, honey. One more abuser off the streets is just what this town needed.”
Louis was taken back to where he’d been before Brenda hit him. After examining him from head to toe, she found several more injuries that varied in the date given to him as well as types. Admitting him so that he could get some proper care, she was making sure he was in a room when the boy’s father showed up to be stitched up too. Apparently, he didn’t care for the police showing up and taking him away from his shows either.
“Mr. Sloan, it seems like you’ve had a busy morning.” He told her to fuck off. “Yes, that’s a good thing to say to someone that is going to put a needle in your arm.”
“You ain’t putting anything in my arm but sewing shit. I ain’t having you drug me all up so you can do shit to me.” She wondered what kind of “shit” he thought she was going to do to him when he growled at her. “You hear me? Just sew me up, and I’ll be on my way. With my kid.”
Rayne thought she was a little too excited about putting stitches in his arm and head without giving him anything for the pain first. Not giving him anything to numb the pain of her stitching him up was going to be quite painful, she thought. Taking several deep breaths, she let them out slowly before she opened her kit up and began to work. First, his arms, which needed four places stitched up, then his head. He’d already refused X-rays.
“Your little boy was pretty cut up.” The man jerked from her needle when she pushed it through the skin. “You have to sit still, or this is going to take a lot longer than necessary.”
“It hurts.” She asked him if he wanted her to numb it. “Sure. I guess so. Not a lot, though. I want to have all my facilities when I leave here.”
She thought that correcting him would be stupid. “As I was saying, your son, he was hurt pretty badly. He’ll need to take better care that he doesn’t climb trees in the future. Brenda might not be there to make sure he’s not hurt more seriously.” He laughed as the medication flowed through his veins. “Is that better?”
“Oh yeah.” He laid this head back on the chair he was in. “Brenda hates him. Me too, but since his mom ran off a few years ago, I had to take care of him. Don’t know what I’d have done if Brenda didn’t care for him while I nap. He’s a noisy little fuck.”
“Why do you keep him if you hate him? I mean, there are all kinds of services that will make sure he gets to a good place.” He told her how he got himself a check each month for him. “Oh. I guess I didn’t think about that.”
He opened one eye and looked at her. “You ain’t going to tell me to get a job? Most people think it’s easy being lazy. It ain’t. I have to be thinking up new ways all the time to get myself out of doing shit.” She asked him if he had ever worked. “Long time ago. But I got fired when I was caught napping on the job. Tell me this—how come they expect you to be at work at eight in the damned morning, and they don’t let you take a couple of little snoozes along the day? I just couldn’t do it.”
Saying nothing, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. Cooper had