My current project was a 1963 GTO that was going to take a lot more work than I originally expected.
“You out?”
I looked over to my buddy, Mini.
Mini was a six-foot-four beast of a man that trumped me by three inches and a hundred pounds.
The irony of his name was not lost on me.
“I’m out,” I said. “I won’t be here next week. My sister wants to go to the beach.”
“I heard,” Mini said. “Your sister loves the shit out of you. I wouldn’t want to spend a week with you.”
After a few back-and-forth jabs at each other, I was out the door and heading back to my shop.
Once informing everyone I’d be out for the week, and to do their jobs, I then headed to see my brother at his work.
He’d asked me to bring him a set of my spare clothes because someone had ruined his other set.
Which was how I ended up heading to the ER in dirty clothes myself, to bring him clean clothes.
“What’s with that fuckin’ look on your face?”
I turned at the sound of Tide’s voice.
“It stinks in here,” I told him.
Tide refused to take the clothes from my hands. “Follow me to the staff bathrooms. I don’t want to touch the clean clothes. That smell is the reason I need the clothes.”
I followed behind him through the maze of hallways, coming to a staff door that was marked Doctors’ Lounge.
Once inside, Tide immediately started to strip out of his clothes.
I rolled my eyes at his nudity and sat down at the table with my feet stretched out in front of me as Tide showered in the other room.
He came out with a towel around his hips and, unsurprisingly, smelling a lot better.
“Gonna have to throw those clothes away,” he grumbled as he glared at the offending pile.
“Yep,” I confirmed. “What happened?”
“Guy projectile shat everywhere,” he cursed under his breath. “Luckily, it mostly got the nurse.”
I snorted out a laugh. “That’s probably not luckily in the nurse’s book.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t me who thought it would be a good idea to turn him over.”
My brother was rather rude.
Most doctors his age were nice and personable. Tide was not.
He was a straight-up asshole who had no bedside manner whatsoever.
Not that I cared. I was much the same way.
To be truthful, all of the Crow brothers weren’t what you would call friendly or outgoing. The only outgoing and nice one out of us all was Cannel. And even she came back changed, and not quite so outgoing or nice.
But I also didn’t work in a profession where I was forced to work with people day in and day out.
“Ahh, it’s so nice to have a brother that’s the same size as me that’ll bring me clothes.” He sat down and shoved his feet into Crocs.
My brow rose. “Where did you get those flashy things?”
“I found them in the lost and found,” he said. “They’re pretty cool, right?”
Actually, they were.
One shoe had blue and white stars, while the other had red and white stripes. Anything patriotic was badass in my book.
“Actually,” I repeated my thoughts. “Yeah. They are. You can give them to me when you’re done.”
“No,” he denied almost before I could finish my sentence. “I like them.”
“Yeah, but what if someone says those are theirs after seeing you wearing them?” I challenged. “Then you’ll have to give them back.”
“Go buy your own. These are mine. I worked hard for them.” He shook his head, not buying my brand of bullshit. “I dove all the way to the bottom of the box for them. If someone was truly missing them, they would’ve looked.”
“I hope they have herpes on them,” I joked.
My brother rolled his eyes. “You know that’s not how you get herpes, loser. You have to have…”
I held up my hand to stop him from getting too technical.
“You totally missed the joke, dill weed,” I said as I waited for him to finish getting dressed.
After he was fully clothed in my spare clothes and his Crocs, he headed back out the door with me.
We came to a stop at the nurses’ station in the main ER.
“You’re looking much better,” an older doctor mused without once looking up from his computer.
“Sure, ol’ man,” Tide grunted. “Since you looked and all.”
The man smiled and finally glanced up. “You know that I’m descended from witches. I have a third eye. Right here.” He tapped the middle of his forehead.
My lips were twitching, because if there was anyone in this entire world that didn’t believe in anything extraterrestrial… or paranormal, it was Tide. From a young age, Tide had been extremely hard to scare. Ghosts or zombies… they didn’t affect him. Hell, scary movies only amused him.
I was convinced it was because Tide didn’t have an imagination.
“Or maybe you’re just full of shit,” he grunted. “You want to work for me next week?”
“I’m a gynecologist, Crow. Not a surgeon or an on-call ER doc.” He paused. “Where are you going next week that you need someone to cover for you?”
“Vacation,” he grumbled. “Naples, Florida to be specific.”
The old man, whose name tag read D. Proctor, OB/GYN-MD on it, frowned.
“My daughter is going up there with her friend this weekend, too.” Something odd crossed the older man’s eyes. Something that looked a whole lot like despair. For a few seconds, I wondered idly if he was hurting or dying. The man looked green. “Supposed to possibly hurricane, though.”
“Of fucking course it is,” I grumbled.
The older doc’s eyes came to meet mine.
They narrowed, and he looked from Tide to me and back. “This your brother? Y’all look nothing alike.”
Tide and I grinned. “None of us do,” I said. “He has to look respectable for his job and all. I don’t.”
Doc Proctor eyed the two of us. “Y’all look like you could be brothers if you were both to act like one. But with the outfits, it definitely has y’all looking more alike. If he was in his scrubs, or his doc wear, he definitely wouldn’t look anything like you.”
I didn’t take offense to that.
I’d spent the majority of my teens trying to make myself distinguishable from my brother.
“Is it the face tat?” I wondered.
“Probably,” Dr. P said. “But I’m not quite sure if that would be defined as a face tat. It looks more like a neck one.”
I shrugged. Mostly, it was a neck one. But it did curl up over my neck and around my ear slightly, going to just the left side of my lower jaw. Which was covered in a scruffy beard today.
“Why’re you letting your kid go to Florida if there’s supposed to be a hurricane?” Tide wondered.
I pulled my phone out and completely ignored their conversation, wondering if I would have time to make it home before I needed to be at my jiu-jitsu class in an hour.
Most likely I wouldn’t.
I was glad to have a backup gi in my saddle bags for such an occasion.
“I’m heading out,” I said, interrupting the two of them. “Talk to y’all later.”