Page 6 of Keeping Her Under (Deranged Highway, #1)

Six

When I step out of the changing room in dark-teal scrubs, my feet want to take me straight into the ICU so I can bury my cock in Summer’s pussy.

I spent a few hours last night milking out every last drop of my cum, hoping to exhaust myself so I wouldn’t get a hard-on at work, but just knowing she’s nearby is making my cock twitch.

Fuck.

With every step I take towards the operating rooms, my desire for her grows stronger. The ICU isn’t that far away from where I’ll be most of today, and she’s just lying there, waiting for me. Her legs bare. Her pussy ready to squeeze my cock as I moan into her neck and fondle her gorgeous tits.

Fuck.

I glance down, needing to know if it’s obvious. My cock pulses hard against the fabric.

Fuck!

Catching sight of a group of nurses heading in my direction, I dart into the first door on my right.

Thankfully, it’s a bathroom.

There’s a man at the urinals, but he has his head down, and I hurry into a stall. Latching it behind me, I debate whether I should wait for my erection to go down or to jerk it out.

Thoughts of Summer wrapping her sweet lips around my cock seal the deal, and I quickly undo the tie of my scrubs and slip a hand down between them.

I close my eyes, imagining her on her knees in front of me.

She’s sucking me off, her tongue swirling around my tip, her perfect breasts bouncing as she blows me.

I want to feel them in my palms again. I want to kiss my way down her neck and suck on both her tits at the same time.

I want to smother my face between them, then push them together around my cock before painting them with my load.

They’re big enough, her tits could reach her mouth. She could lick my cum right off them.

My hand getting faster, I shuffle to face the toilet.

I replay all that I did to her yesterday. I feel her curves under my palms, her nipple in my mouth. I taste her cum on my tongue. Smell it all over my chin. I remember the tightness of her pussy as she gripped my finger. Think about it gripping my cock.

With a soundless cry, I shoot load after load into the toilet. My heart racing, I open my eyes. I stroke my cock slowly, easing out every last drop.

At my age, I doubt I’ll be able to get hard again for another few hours. But as an image pops into my head, of Summer lying in her hospital bed, in the black lingerie I bought for her last night, my cock twitches once more.

My breath catches as I stare at it, still in the palm of my hand.

A moment passes, but it doesn’t rise again.

Breathing out, I release it, then push it back into my pants.

Tying up the drawstrings, I finally manage to concentrate on my work. After flushing the toilet and washing my hands, I head into operating room number four and start prepping my area for my first patient.

After the surgery’s finished, I sort the patient out in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit, then quickly head to the cafeteria for lunch.

Normally, I eat in my office given the food is better and there isn’t a long line eating into my break, but Ryan is on shift today, and he likes the hubbub of the place.

Says it gives him a bit of reprieve from the depressing mood of the ICU.

Hurrying down the stairs –too impatient for the elevator– I pull out my phone to check my messages.

Nothing from Asher yet.

The fucker is probably balls deep down some new woman’s throat.

Or maybe he’s scored a car with two occupants and is getting them to touch each other.

He likes testing what people will choose.

Get a speeding ticket or make out with your boyfriend’s brother, who’s riding in the passenger seat?

Get arrested for drunk driving or let your cousin suck on your tits?

Get charged with drug possession or jerk off your dad?

Have your car impounded for numerous violations or let your brother finger you until you come?

A frown pulls at my lips as I recall the state of Summer’s house.

I wonder what she would’ve chosen. Would she have seen jail as a temporary blessing, where she’d be fed and protected?

After all, it’s not like any cellmates would have been worse than the people in her neighborhood, and at least in jail, she would have been in sight of a police officer rather than in an area where their calls weren’t prioritized.

Or would she have been desperate to stay free?

Willing to trade one act of servitude for it?

Even a few days in jail could have cost her her job, and given how little money she has, that could be a death sentence.

A slow drag into Hell, tied to the back of a car as it drives her through the streets of homelessness, then into the dark suburbs of victimhood, through the back alleys where hope shoots up and overdoses, over the burning bridges of society, until it finally screeches to a halt at the last breath of life.

One bad choice leading to a life of misery.

What would she have chosen?

Slipping my phone back into my pocket, I exit the stairs and walk the final stretch into the cafeteria. I look around the wide open space for Ryan. It’s peppered with people but not overly crowded, and I spot him in a few seconds. I make a beeline for his round, four-seater table.

“Hey,” he says as I get close. “Risking the line today?” He nods at the queue for food. Our breaks are barely long enough to eat, which is why most of the staff doesn’t bother to come here, so I know he’s curious about why I have.

“I didn’t feel like eating in my office today,” I say, my voice carrying tense, unspoken words. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts. Or perhaps, It’s too close to the ICU, where my fuck-up is lying in a coma.

Whichever one he decides I’m suppressing works for me.

“Though now that I’m here, I don’t feel like eating at all,” I say, purposefully glancing down at his lunch – a chicken breast that somehow still looks as dry as hell despite being smothered in a questionable brown sauce and a side of stale looking fries.

He laughs. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Mmm,” I say as he stabs at the chicken with his fork, yanking hard in an attempt to tear a piece off.

I glance away from him as he eats, letting a flood of emotions break out on my face. Flickers of guilt. A loss of confidence. Then worried contemplation as if I’m fighting within myself to breach a subject I don’t want to breach.

A woman would have taken pity on that display and simply offered up the information I want to know. Summer’s fine. She’s stable. Her vitals…

But most men need something a bit more direct. So I look him in the eye as he swallows. “You have a patient of mine, a woman with malignant hyperthermia,” I say. I hesitate. My voice lowers. “How is she?”

“Summer Wintry?” he asks.

“I don’t know her name,” I lie. “She was still a Jane Doe when I updated her chart.” After the surgery, I had to document the care I had given her and detail why I’d done what I’d done.

The police hadn’t brought in her personal belongings by then; otherwise, a nurse would’ve added her name to her file or attached her to any records we already had for her.

He nods as he hacks at his chicken again. Our lunch breaks are too short to waste any time on just talking. Already, I’m a third of the way through mine, and I haven’t even asked the real question I want to know. Or eaten.

“She’s stable,” he says, “and she’s not showing any side effects of the dantrolene.”

When her malignant hyperthermia kicked off as I administered the anesthetic for her surgery, it triggered a dramatic increase in the amount of calcium being released in her muscles. That caused them to severely contract, leading her to convulse on the table.

Dantrolene is the only drug to counter the effects, working by decreasing the calcium content and allowing the muscles to relax. Without it, her chance of survival would be around thirty percent.

It was risky, doing what I did – taking a few seconds to “work out” why her end-tidal carbon dioxide was spiking, then calling out she had MH when her heart rate increased as well; if I’d left it longer than that, someone could’ve questioned how I had missed it.

So I started mixing the dantrolene sodium with 60mL of sterile water in the vial, every inch the authoritative anesthesiologist, ready to play the hero.

But when I had to shake the small tube of glass in order to mix it, I let my fingers loosen just the slightest bit.

The vial dropped to the floor and shattered.

Setting off a ticking time bomb.

Dantrolene bolus needs to be administered within ten minutes of the patient being diagnosed with MH, and I knew we didn’t have another vial of it in the operating room.

By the time a nurse had run down to get some more from the pediatrics unit, my plan had succeeded.

Summer Wintry was in a medically induced coma.

The rest of her surgery went well, but we won’t know if we saved her ability to walk until she wakes.

Her spinal cord suffered a severe injury to her atlanto-axial segment, between vertebrae C1 and C2, severe enough to paralyze the left side of her body.

The surgeon had to use parts of her ribs to graft it back together.

“Has anyone come to see her?” I ask.

A dark cloud passes over his face. “Her boyfriend did this morning,” he says, his voice full of disgust, “but he didn’t stay more than five minutes. He didn’t even ask what her chances of recovery were.”

My lips tighten as fury hits me. That girl has nothing.

No love in the walls of her home – that safe space that should be hers.

Even if she rents it, there should be some warmth enclosed within it, some hanging pictures or treasured trinkets.

But it is as cold as the rest of the world.

So hearing that her so-called boyfriend doesn’t even care about her?

That she truly has nothing and no one to love her… It twists something inside me.

Pity perhaps. Like seeing a flea-infested dog starving on the streets.

Reminding me too much of a boy who had no one to look out for him, whose own mother –that person who should’ve protected him and loved him– sold him to any bidder with two dimes to rub together.

No one should be alone in this world.

Even as fucked up as I am, I have my cousin Asher. How can she have no one?

Ryan’s phone vibrates, and an undeniable glow washes over him before he even looks at it. He’s clearly expecting a call.

Slipping one hand under the table, he pulls it out of his pocket while his other grabs a napkin and wipes hurriedly at his mouth. He still has a good portion of his lunch left to eat, but he leans back in his chair now, his meal entirely forgotten.

Whoever’s called him, he’s giving them their full attention.

“Hey,” he says, a grin spreading across his face.

“Hi, honey, how’s your shift going?” A woman’s voice drifts across the line.

“Better now that you’ve called.” He glances at me, then stands. Lifting his hand in a casual farewell, he strides away. “A guy came in that was an absolute tool. He’s the boyfriend of one of my patients. I love this job, but shit like that…”

His voice merges with the hubbub of the cafeteria, the noise now hiding his secrets from me, but I never take my eyes off him.

He’s given me a lot to think about.

First, my girl has a boyfriend.

He won’t be a problem here – he can only visit the ICU during certain hours, and by the sounds of it, he doesn’t care enough to linger anyways. But he could prove trouble if he catches me at her house.

And second… Ryan has someone he loves.

Which means if I can’t find anything on him, then all I’ll need to do is threaten her.

A smile twitching at my lips, I stand and pull out my phone. As I take the elevator back up to the operating rooms, I do a bit of shopping for my girl.