Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (19 page)

Fucking hell.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

That was a bad idea.

A really, really fucking bad idea.

Honestly, I didn’t think anything was going to go wrong. After all, it was just atoms, right? Those things are fucking tiny. I figured they were just going to pass straight through us.

I wanted to look over to see if Keith and Sam were ok, but I couldn’t even open my eyes. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t see anything. There was just blackness, and my thoughts as it all came back to me.

The particle accelerator had been so fucking cool. And so obviously when that Anders dude took Professor Nelson aside after to chat with him outside as we were all leaving, I told Keith to hang back, and Samantha stayed too.

“What if we turned this thing on and then stood in the middle of it?” I asked them. “It would shoot atoms straight into us. How fucking cool would that be?”

What the fuck had I been thinking?

I didn’t remember anything else. I didn’t know how we managed it. Or if we managed it. We must have managed something, but I didn’t know what. All I knew was that now I was lying here on the ground, in more pain than I had ever experienced. Slowly, I forced my eyes open. That hot chick that bumped into me earlier was sitting over me.

“Don’t try and move,” I heard her say. “The ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be fine.”

I groaned and closed my eyes again, and everything went black.

* * *

When I woke up again, I was in the hospital. There were about a billion little electrodes attached to my body, and I looked up at the IV hooked up to my arm. There had to be some hardcore fucking painkillers linked up to it, since all the pain I’d felt before was gone.

“Oh, you’re awake. How are you feeling, Zander?” asked a nurse who walked in on me just then.

“How are Keith and Sam?” I asked, instead of answering her. I had to know.

“They’re going to be fine. The three of you are really lucky, I don’t know what you were thinking.”

“You’re right, you don’t know,” I growled at her. I didn’t need some nurse judging my bad life decisions, I could do that for myself.

“Are you in any pain?” she asked, and I shook my head no.

“Good. The doctor will be in soon to check on you,” she said before leaving. I leaned back against the pillows, but funnily enough, I didn’t feel tired or sore. In fact, I felt
good.
I felt like I’d just done a ten minute warm up spin at the gym and was ready to get into a hard workout. I wanted nothing more than to hop out of bed and move around a bit. Not at all what I was expecting after being in a major accident.

I ripped out the little electrode things that were attached to me and swung my legs over the side of the bed. This was so fucking weird. I felt completely fine. No, I felt more than fine.

My feet touched the ground and I took hold of the mobile IV holder next to the bed. I stood up, and it was amazing how good I felt. I felt weightless. Almost instinctively, I closed my eyes for a minute. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel the ground anymore.

Opening my eyes in a panic, I looked down. I was fucking
hovering above the ground
. What the fuck?? What the fuck was this?

I started waving my arms around, trying to get down. Suddenly I collapsed, dropping about a foot back onto the ground.

No way. There was no way that just happened. Absolutely not.

I had to be dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or something. I couldn’t fly. People don’t
fly
. That shit’s for birds only.

I had to try it again. Prove that there was no way it could happen.

Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on nothing. Which was pretty fucking hard, seeing as I’d just thought I’d like floated up about a foot into the air. That sort of thing kind of dominates the brain a little bit.

But still, a few seconds later, I felt myself floating off the ground again. I opened my eyes and looked down. Yeah, this was happening.

“Well fuck me,” I whispered under my breath as I looked down. Those were definitely my feet, and they were definitely no longer on the ground.

Ok, so my brain was going to have to deal with the fact that I could
fly
, apparently. I wondered if I could get to the bathroom without touching the ground. I took hold of the IV stand again and focused on the bathroom door. And against every instinct, every belief I ever had, I started floating towards it.

“I’m going insane,” I muttered to myself as I forced myself to drop to the floor. This time, I was ready for it, and I landed gracefully. It was almost enough to make me burst out laughing.

How was this actually happening?

I opened up the door to the bathroom. It was strange. Door levers aren’t exactly the heaviest things ever to begin with, but it felt... completely weightless. Everything about this was strange, and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it.

One thing I did know, however, was that I could fucking fly. And that was definitely way more fun than walking. Locking the door behind me, I practiced. I’d focus on nothing, focus on being light, almost like I was trying to meditate, and my feet would leave the floor.

I wonder if I can reach the ceiling.

It only took one attempt. If I focused on something, in any direction, my body would go straight there. I barely needed to think about it.

Before long I had disconnected my IV and was zooming around the tiny hospital bathroom, still asking myself how the fuck this was even possible, but unable to get rid of the huge grin that crawled across my face. After all, being able to fly was fucking awesome.

It wasn’t until there was a knock on the door and someone called out “Zander? Are you ok in there?” that I came back down to earth – both literally and figuratively.

“Shit,” I muttered; the surprise caused me to lose control of my flight powers and I came crashing to the ground.

“Are you alright? I’m coming in,” the doctor said, opening the door. I forgot that in hospitals the doctors can always unlock your door from the outside.

My first thought was “God damn, my doctor is
hot
.” She was smoking, with blonde hair and blue eyes as she rushed over to me, crumpled up in a heap on the floor.

“What happened, Zander? Don’t move yet, not until you tell me what happened.”

“It was nothing, my legs just felt weak and collapsed,” I told her. “I’m fine.”

“Alright, well you ripped your IV out. Let’s get you back to bed. The next time you need to use the bathroom, call a nurse and someone will come and help you.”

I smirked a little as the doctor helped me up. Like I was going to let a nurse come over and help me pee. Though if they were as hot as this doctor, well, maybe.

I pretended it was hard work to get up and wander back over to the bed. I collapsed back on the mattress, but all I could think about was getting to be alone again so I could practice flying. Because holy shit, flying!

“I’m Doctor Evans,” the woman told me. “You were in quite the accident. No one is quite sure what the long term effects of climbing into a particle accelerator while it’s working are. Honestly, I don’t know how you survived; the magnetic field in there was incredibly strong. Luckily for you and your classmates, one of the girls in your class is a medical student, and she revived the three of you.”

That must have been the chick I remembered kneeling over me, the one I’d run into earlier. She was pretty hot, too.

“How long do I have to stay here?” I asked.

“At least a few days. We want to make sure that you’re not going to collapse at any minute, and if you do, we want you to be close to the best medical equipment.”

At least a few days. Damn, that sucked. I was really hoping I’d get to go out and practice flying out in the real world sooner rather than later.

Flying. Ha. Who would have figured? That sure as shit wasn’t what I expected when I suggested we try and get hit by atoms.

Sitting in the hospital waiting room, I tapped my foot impatiently. I knew Annie was going to be ok, I was definitely far enough through medical school to know that getting a gash on your arm from a falling piece of drywall in the ceiling is not usually fatal, but I was still a bit worried about her. There had been a lot of blood.

Plus I felt a bit bad that I left her there to go help other people on the lower levels.

Those guys had been total and complete idiots.

I don’t know what they were thinking, but they somehow got the particle accelerator going, and climbed into it through an emergency entrance
while it was running
.

Of course, as soon as the atoms hit them, everything went nuts. There was an explosion, the particle accelerator took a huge amount of damage, as did the entire rest of the physics building.

By some sort of miracle, no one died. There were a few minor injuries though, and some major ones to the three people who had gone in. There was that Zander Keats guy – gee, I was shocked that he made a bad decision… NOT – and his friend, another football player named Keith Andrews, and that girl that had been hanging off Zander, Samantha Collins. Apparently she was his on-again off-again girlfriend, currently on-again.

While all three of them seemed like they should be contenders for the Darwin awards, I found them all on the ground amidst a whole bunch of smoke. When I first saw them, I thought they were all dead, but they had pulses.

Some quick CPR helped keep them alive until the EMTs showed up and whisked them to the hospital, and only then did I find Annie, holding her arm, blood pouring down the side.

“Oh God, Annie!” I cried. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”

I drove her as fast as I could, ignoring speed limits, stop signs and even one red light to get her there in record time.

Now I was waiting for her to come back out, all patched up.

I decided to kill some time by talking to Lisa, one of the nurses that worked at Olympus General Hospital that I knew from when we had to do in-hospital learning here for my medical degree.

“Hey Lisa, what’s happening?” I asked her, walking up to the nurses’ station.

“Not much,” she replied, motioning me to a chair next to her. “It’s actually kind of quiet today. Thank goodness for morons in physics classes, or I’d have to hope some gang members shoot each other again to make things a bit more interesting around here.”

I laughed, but knew that Lisa was only half kidding. Olympus was a major city, and as a result, there was crime. But the gang crime here was at an all-time high, and it was bad enough that the governor of the state was threatening bringing in people to fix things if the mayor couldn’t handle it all on his own.

“Are they going to make it?” I asked. Lisa shrugged.

“None of the tests have shown anything out of the ordinary. But who’s to say? I think it’s a pretty safe bet to assume we’re the first hospital to receive patients that went into a particle accelerator, it’s not like there’s a lot of case studies out there telling us what to expect. Zander Keats is awake and being a bit of a douchebag, but I don’t know if that’s normal for him or not.”

“Definitely normal,” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“He told me not to judge his bad life decisions.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well, I think he’s going to find that this decision in particular is going to be judged by a lot of people. Not the least the college’s insurance company.”

“But it looks like at least for now, all three of them should be fine. Doctor Evans is keeping them here for a few more days just to be safe, but it’s looking positive for all of them. Thanks to you; I heard you were the one who did CPR on them while waiting for the ambulance.”

I shrugged. “Well, it’s what I’m training to do.”

“You’re gonna be a sweet-ass doc one day, Val,” Lisa told me as Annie came out of the examination area.

I waved off the compliment as I told Lisa I’d see her later, and she waved goodbye as I went over to Annie. Her arm was completely bandaged and in a sling.

“Well this is definitely going to make for a good story at bars,” Annie joked as I fussed around her.

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” I told her, taking her into an awkward hug.

“Yeah, me too. It’d be a pretty embarrassing story to tell in heaven that I died because a piece of drywall landed on me.”

“Like you’re going to heaven,” I teased as we left the hospital. “Besides, it wouldn’t be nearly as embarrassing as the morons who climbed into a functioning particle accelerator. They’re not dead either though, by some kind of miracle.”

“Yeah, I heard. That’s crazy, I thought for sure they’d be gonners.”

“Well, either way, I’m going to buy you dinner because of your injury. Where do you want to go?”

“Obviously Casey’s Pizza,” Lisa replied, fist pumping with her good hand, and we headed back to my car.

* * *

Three days later I was back at the hospital as part of my medical degree, which essentially involved following doctors around as they explained to us what it was they did.

“Valerie, Joe, Karen and Steve, you’re going to be paired with Doctor Evans today,” the professor told us, and the four of us followed the doctor as she led us down the hall to start her rounds. I waved at Lisa as I saw her coming out of an X-ray room, and she smiled back at me.

“Alright, the four of you, come with me,” Doctor Evans told us as she walked down the hall. I wondered if we were going to see the three students that had been in the particle accelerator accident, and she answered my question almost immediately.

“Now, the first patients I’m going to see go to the same college as you do. They were the ones involved in that physics accident, and they’re being released today, so I’m going to check on them first thing before they go. Normally I’d tell people that they don’t need to come see them if they don’t want to, if they feel that they’re not up to seeing their classmates in hospital. Especially since one of you was in that same class and was there when it happened.” Doctor Evans’ eyes found mine and I blushed slightly, out of habit. Her eyes were definitely piercing.

“But,” she continued, “I’m not going to do that. You’re going to be doctors, and that means that no matter what, you help people. Even if you know them, and it’s hard for you to see them in a dangerous or painful situation, you’re still going to have to give them medical treatment. So, you’re all going to come with me to see these students.”

The four of us obediently filed in behind the doctor, following her down the hallway like little ducklings desperate to stay close to their mother.

We went down one hallway, then another, then stopped in front of one of the private room doors. Doctor Evans knocked, waited a second, and then opened the door.

Lying in the bed was Samantha Collins, Zander Keats’ girlfriend. She looked quite a bit paler than when I’d seen her last, which only made her bright red hair stand out even more clearly, like a fiery halo surrounding her head. She smiled when she saw Doctor Evans, then frowned when she saw us trailing in behind.

“How are you feeling this morning, Sam?” Doctor Evans asked her.

“Like I’m ready to go home,” Samantha answered, sighing dramatically.

“Well, you’re in luck. All your vitals are normal, the night nurse that checked in on you said everything seemed fine, so you should be good to go. I’ll send a nurse in a few hours to come and get you sorted out. But don’t forget, if you feel strange in any way whatsoever, come back here. We still don’t know what the longer term effects of what you did might be.”

“Ok, thanks doctor,” she replied, and a minute later we all filed out the door and went over to the next room.

“You all know how to check vital signs, and there isn’t much else to do with these three at this point,” Doctor Evans told us outside of Keith Andrews’ door, one hand on the handle. “At this point it’s just about checking to make sure there haven’t been any major problems overnight.”

With that, she opened the door and we went in to see Keith, the second Darwin award nominee from Loch College.

Keith was sitting up in bed, watching something on an iPad when we came in. He took out the headphones and dutifully sat still while Doctor Evans checked his pulse, his pupils, and his other vital signs.

“So I’m getting out of here today doc?” he asked her, and she nodded.

“Good,” he continued. “My parents are coming around noon, they’ve decided that at the very least I’m not allowed driving myself anywhere for a while. Thank God Olympus has a good metro system, hey?”

“Well, your parents are pretty smart,” Doctor Evans replied. “I don’t think that’s a bad idea at all.” Then she gave Keith the same speech she gave Sam about coming in if anything felt strange, and we all moved into Zander’s room, the last of the three.

We walked in and Zander was lying in his bed, playing with his phone. I had to admit, even lying there in the hospital bed, the guy was still hot. Too bad he was such an idiot.

“Hey doc,” he said as she walked in. “The best part of staying here is getting to watch you walk in here every day.”

I rolled my eyes at his blatant flirting, but Doctor Evans just ignored him.

“Yo,” he continued, looking at me. “You’re the one who saved me, right?”

“Yeah,” I replied as casually as I could. I mean, how do you answer when someone asks you if you saved their life?

“Cool. Thanks for doing that. This life is pretty awesome, I’m glad I get to keep living it.”

“Well, stop making terrible decisions like that one and you’ll increase your odds,” I heard myself saying without even realizing it. As soon as my brain realized what had just come out of my mouth I flushed red. I wasn’t the type of person who normally said things like that, I was a Gap-wearing, straight A getting, polite good girl. But instead of getting angry, Zander just grinned at me.

“Yeah, I guess I deserved that. I’ll make a concerted effort in the future.”

Doctor Evans finished her tests and we left. I looked back at Zander before we left; he was still grinning at me. It wasn’t like I was looking for a boyfriend, but if I was, he would be nothing like Zander Keats.