Edge of Ashes (Sons of Ash Motorcycle Club) (5 page)

I sit here for a second trying to come up
with a scathing retort but nothing comes to mind. Just when I think I have this
guy pegged he does something that just totally throws me off the scent. I would
have figured him for an uneducated lout except that every now and then the way
he talks, his vocabulary and sentence structure makes his sound like an
educated…a college educated man. My ex was your typical biker with an 8
^th
grade education and a horribly abusive upbringing. He wouldn’t dare use a two
syllable word if a one syllable word would suffice. Even his choice of swear
words were one syllable even at the expense of proper grammar. He would say to
me, “You’re such a fuck.” Instead of saying, “You’re such a fucker.” One time
he actually called a guy a sob; instead of calling him an S.O.B.

Finally I can’t stand it. I either have to
get up and leave or give my ‘wanna be boyfriend’ a piece of my mind. I decide a
verbal lashing is in order.

“I don’t know where you get off calling me
your old lady, but I’m no one’s anything and certainly not an old lady. And
I’ll never be
your
anything. I dated a biker, played house with a biker,
been there done that and never wanna do it again. So unless you plan of getting
a lobotomy and burning your cut, you and me; we’ll never be you and me! You
don’t fit in my world and I sure as hell don’t fit in yours. I’m a UC Berkeley
educated trauma nurse and I make life and death decisions every day at work
while you tinker with bikes. Last week an ambulance pulled up to my ER with a 9
year old boy who’d just been hit by a car on his bike. The driver hadn’t even
touched his brakes when he struck the kid doing close to sixty. To make matters
worse his mom piles out of the ambulance with him. She takes one look at me,
tears streaming down her face and says to me.

“Please doctor, save my little boy. He’s
all I’ve got!”

“Do you even have the faintest idea what
kind of pressure that put on me? He was dying right before my eyes and both our
ER docs were working codes so it was up to me to save her boy. And I swear to
god Adam, in that moment I would have given my life to trade places with that
boy if it would have saved him. We did everything we could that day. Losing him
wasn’t the worse part though mister biker. I had to tell the boy’s mother that
her son just died. I had to do it. She placed her faith and trust in me so it
was my responsibility to be the person to tell her we…I failed.”

I pause in my story and look up at Adam. He
looks visibly shaken.

“The worst part is….was… when I brought her
into one of the nursing offices and she just started shaking. She was trembling
so badly I had to sit her down on the couch before I could even tell her. I
think maybe she thought it bad news like; her son was alive but would be
paralyzed from the waist down or something like that. But when I looked at her
through my own tears, the moment I said, ‘I’m sorry…’ she began screaming in
anguish. I have never in my life felt such intense pain. I swear I felt a
lightning bolt strike the top of my head, and it went through my body, and when
it hit my knees they buckled and I had to sit next to her to keep from
collapsing. Then I held her while she screamed and screamed. That’s
my
life Adam and you just don’t fit.”

I look up again and to my shock and
amazement, tears are streaming down his face and I wonder, have I completely
misread him? Embarrassed, I look down again to give him privacy. Once more I
think, there is more to this man than I realize. I look up again when I feel
him stirring next to me. His expression is a little hard to read now, but I
think he is actually a little angry. He stands up and looks down at me.

“We are far more alike then you imagine
Nurse Kari. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. We’ll chalk it up to you
having bad experiences with your ex, but if you ever treat me again like you
have the last couple days then you’ll never have the chance to see just how
right we are for each other. Some people believe that there is only one perfect
match for each person and if you blow it with that person you’ll never
experience true love. Other people believe that there is more than just one
person for each and you can find love in more than one person. I think that’s
horseshit! I’m your ONE Kari, and I hope you figure that out before it’s too
late, I really do; for both our sakes.”

Having said his piece he turns his broad
shoulders and muscular back on me and walks away. Despite myself I get this
distinct ache in my gut as I watch him go and I wonder if he is right. How can
an outlaw biker be my one person in the world who is my perfect love match? If
he is…what’s that say about me?

Despite what I told Adam about me making
life and death decisions on a daily basis, the last several days at work are
pretty uneventful which is okay but to tell the truth, I could have done with
the distraction that a real emergency creates. Turns out I don’t have to wait
too long for my distraction.

Thursday Evening…

I’ve got a couple days off so I decide to
do some shopping. We’re having this bizarre cold spell lately and my normal
Gore-Tex jacket is just not cutting it. I need to find something with a few
more layers on it. Cave Junction doesn’t have a lot of homeless people but on
days like today I can’t help but feel sorry for the ones we do have. According
to my Yahoo page the temp last night reached forty degrees. How someone can
sleep outside when it’s that cold I’ll never know.

By the time I leave The North Face store
it’s maybe 7:30 and it feels like forty degrees already. I start to head over
to my car when I notice some kind of commotion outside Zachary’s Pizza. There
are maybe a dozen people around and there’s a woman and a little boy sitting on
layers of cardboard. Next to them is a shopping cart piled with what’s left of
their belongings. I walk up in the middle of a conversation the woman is having
with a police officer who seems a bit skeptical.

“I just took my boy inside to get him
something to eat ‘cause he hasn’t had anything all day and when I come out
someone’s taken our only blanket. You have to get it back for me.” She pleads
with the police officer.

“You had a blanket? What kind of blanket?”
He asks.

“It was one of those thick heavy ones made
from alpaca so it kept us both warm at night. Now we’re gonna freeze.”

“Well, I can file a report but if no one
saw anyone take it…” He trails off, searching the faces gathered around. No one
either confirms or denies that this lady had a blanket before she went into the
store.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” She
asks, clearly angry. “Is that supposed to keep us warm tonight? You’re useless.
How can you be a police officer when you don’t help. If I had a Lexus and
someone just stole it you’d be all over it and you’d make sure you caught the
thief.”

“Well that’s quite a bit more serious than
some blanket that may or may not exist.”

“Hey, wrong is wrong whether it’s a car or
a blanket or a human life. You’re the most uncaring pig I have ever met.”

Oh shit. That’s not good. The few people
still standing out in the cold are moving off and pretty soon it’s just me, the
cop, and the homeless woman and child.

“You know,” the cop begins. “I’m a little
concerned about your ability to take care of this little boy.”

“Wait…wait a second I didn’t mean that.”
The woman is beginning to panic; and for good reason. “Where do you live?” He
asks her.

“What d-do you mean… I live h-here.”

“What did your son have for breakfast and
lunch today?” He asks.

“Well… he had pizza just now…”

“Breakfast and lunch ma’am.” The officer
repeats sternly.

“Well we didn’t have the money until just
now so he ate three meals worth just a bit ago.” She replies.

Her son who must be about 7 or 8 is hugging
his mom around her waist fiercely. It’s as if he senses something really bad is
about to happen.

“You can’t skip meals then make up for it
later. That’s not the way nutrition works in the body. Where are you going to
sleep tonight?”

“I-I don’t know… p-probably h-here I-I
guess.” She is so scared now she’s stammering as she speaks.

She knows that things are going sideways
very fast and she’s probably wondering how things got from an investigation
into who took her only blanket to her ability to care for her son being
questioned.

I look around but no one is paying
attention. Here in the middle of town a young woman has begun to fight to keep
her little boy and nobody cares. It’s like everyone is immune to the drama
unfolding.

“Well it’s clear to me that you’re not
capable of caring for your child so I’m going to have to take care of things my
way.” The police officer announces.

“There you are Melinda! I thought I’d lost
you.”

A tall leather clad biker has just trotted
across the street and is standing next to the woman. His back is to me but his
voice is very distinct; its Adam.

“You know this woman?” The cop asks. It’s
clear from the man’s voice that he does not like the biker or that he is
interfering with what he is about to do.

“Of course. I was supposed to have her
place ready hours ago but I just got buried in paperwork.” The biker replied.

“You got buried in paperwork? Really and
outlaw biker filing papers?”

“It’s my least favorite thing in the world
but it’s a necessary evil.”

Then to my amazement he holds out his hand
to the woman. She takes his hand and he hauls her up. Her son gets up to and by
the look on his face he is clearly confused.

“If I see her again out here with that
child,” the cop begins, “I will take him into Child Protective Services.”

The color drains from the woman’s face.
Clearly she thinks the biker guy is just helping her get away from the cop and
not that he’s really interested in helping her out beyond that. Funny but
that’s what I was thinking as well.

“Now why would she be out here when she’s
got a place of her own?” The biker replies.

“No one is that nice!” The officer says.
“She’ll be out here again and when she is its bye bye kiddo.”

Having got his last dig in the cop heads
back to his car. As I turn to leave I catch Adam’s parting shot.

“And they wonder why we hate cops!”

As I get back in my car I’m still stunned
and not sure I believe everything I just saw and heard. If it was any other
biker I for sure would have thought this was some kind of scam. But the fact
that it was Adam makes me think what I saw was genuine care for another human
being.

What kind of world has this become where
the cops are the bad guys and the bikers are the good ones. Kinda gives me hope
for the future.

Friday Night at St. Joseph’s Memorial
Hospital…

The last four hours has been a constant
reminder of why I chose to work in a hospital rather than a doctor’s office. We
have been flooded with people who would normally go to a doctor had they any
kind of insurance. Because they don’t have health coverage anything from the
sniffles and sneezing to achy bones, vomiting and diarrhea sends them crawling
to the emergency room where we treat them regardless of their ability to pay.
It’s enough to put me to sleep and I nearly am as I spend my lunch break
resting my head on a desk in the nursing office. My eyes close for the tenth
time when a sudden siren jars me awake like a cold cup of bad coffee. I run out
of the nurse’s office and am nearly bowl Michael over who seems to be shaking the
cobwebs from his mind as well.

“What do we have?” I ask as we both hurry
to the triage desk.

By the time we reach the front desk by the
department’s entrance two ambulances have pulled up and are disembarking with
two leather clad patients. Thinking we have some sort of MC war on our hands I
intercept the lead gurney and look for the victim’s cut. His patches declare
him a member of the Sons of Ash. The same club that Adam is Vice President of.
This may mean they are at war with one of the other bigger clubs in the area,
probably Cycle Demons. I hurry over to Trauma Room 2 where they’re preparing to
transfer the other victim from the gurney to the table in the middle of the
room.

“Is he Cycle Demons?”  I ask as I
enter the room.

“Son’s of Ash,” one of the male nurses
replies over his shoulder.

Finally someone wised up. Last time there
was a conflict between two opposing clubs nobody thought to separate them and
we ended up with members from both warring MC’s. It was a nightmare.

They don’t seem too bad off and are being
well cared for so I decide to call over to Mercy Hospital and find out what the
other clubs name is just so I know what’s going on around here.

Ten minutes and three hospitals later and
all I get are reports of injured Sons and no one from any of the other half
dozen clubs in the area. I’m pretty sure something significant is going on here
but I just can’t quite place it.

Hanging up the phone I step out of the
nurse’s office and right into the path of a fast moving gurney. The resulting collision
puts me on my ass. One of the paramedics grabs my hand and pulls me to my feet
without even slowing down. I take a quick look at the biker on the gurney and
nearly faint; it’s Adam. What is going on around here? If my math is correct
that makes eight wounded Sons and no one else seems to be involved. That must
mean that the club is fighting among themselves, and while it’s not all that
uncommon, it is at this scale. If there are 8 bikers in various ER’s that means
there’s probably at least that many more that have either refused treatment or
are too far gone for treatment. I decide my energy is best spent with Adam so I
focus my efforts on him.

As soon as they have him transferred from
the gurney to the trauma table I go to work. The paramedics have already
removed his jacket and tee shirt so at least I won’t be blamed for slicing up
his coveted motorcycle jacket. If I’m right it’s lying in ribbons in that huge
bag on the floor. Paramedics are notorious for cutting off clothing or anything
else that gets in the way of doing their initial assessment. We on the other
hand usually take the time to remove clothing the normal way. I guess I
shouldn’t blame them. We have multiple people at our disposal to help out while
they’re often working with one partner or alone and time is rarely on their
side.

Adam has three dressings already in place
and I’m told he has been the recipient of a knife attack. The main one that
concerns me is the slashing wound across his left rib cage. If that one has
penetrated his lungs there’s going to be a problem. He has several other
puncture wounds but at the moment it’s impossible to tell if they’re deep
enough to have affected any vital organs.

Just as I’m thinking my lucky stars that he
is unconscious and therefore cooperative, he actually wakes up. Of course with
him he can’t just slowly open his eyes and take a deep breath. Instead he
suddenly grabs my right hand with his left and his other one seizes me by the
throat. For a second I can tell he is seeing but not seeing; well, not seeing
me at least. I try to free my arm but he has me in this vice-like grip. With my
air supply so thoroughly cut off my vision is rapidly growing dim. With my free
hand I grab for the tray of instruments beside the table hoping to find something
sharp.

I try to call for help and I try to scream
Adam’s name but with the chokehold firmly in place nothing comes out but a soft
squeak. Finally my right hand settles on a scalpel. This is probably a bad
idea, but I’m fresh out of good ones. Using the side of the table I manage to
dislodge the cap and brandish the razor sharp blade hoping he’ll see it and
come to his senses. He doesn’t.

I have one chance to make this work before
I completely lose consciousness. I hate to add another hole to the man whose
just been used as a pin cushion but what choice do I have? I plunge it into the
meaty part of his upper arm and shoulder. In my defense I was planning on just
sticking him one time and dropping the scalpel to the floor. Can I really help
that my arm just kinda went into jackhammer mode and stuck him…well, a half a
dozen times? It did the trick though.

He let go of my throat. He also backhanded
me across my right cheek. He didn’t use his full force, but it was enough to
bring tears to my eyes.

“What the hell?” I shout.

“What ever happened to
do no harm
?”
He asks, looking over at his bleeding, pin cushioned shoulder.

“Do you knot see your hand print on my
throat?” I complain as I massage my windpipe. I can’t believe I can still move air
through it the way he was squeezing.