"Hey Bro." Nick entered the hospital room to find Warrick sitting in a wheelchair, staring out the window. Warrick looked over his shoulder, giving Nick a weak smile. Nick pulled up a chair beside him, putting his hand on the pale brown arm that was closest.
"You're looking better." Nick told him, but it was a lie. Warrick looked like hell. He looked haggard, big puffy bags were under his eyes, as if he wasn't sleeping well. Nick imagined he knew why that was.
"Doctor is releasing me tomorrow, well, at least to Vegas. I'm hitching a ride in a medical transport helicopter to the Desert Sands, from there they bussing me over to some heart and respiratory recovery clinic." Warrick informed him. "Still not home, but at least it's closer."
"That's good. You'll get more visitors there." Nick glanced around the empty room. "Sorry I haven't been here in a few days. I was seeing about your car."
"Oh? You get it?"
"Yeah, I flew to Texas, drove it back. It's a tiny little piece of crap. How'd you manage?" Nick twanged, is accent coming in stronger at the mention of Texas.
"I just did. It wasn't a pleasure ride."
"Yeah, I guess not." Something in Nick's voice caused Warrick to turn an look at him. "What?"
"I take it you heard…..about me and Gemma?" Warrick looked somewhere in between guilty, embarrassed and hurt.
"Yeah. Greg called me."
"No one's really talking to me about her. You all think I did wrong?" Warrick looked into Nick's brown eyes, silently pleading for him to be truthful.
Nick took a deep breath, weighing his words before he said them. "We all like Gemma. Hell, we love the girl. She is crazy about you. So…..yeah…..the majority thinks you're an Asshole."
"Wha?"
"That girl is in love with you. You've broken her heart." Nick admitted, seeing Warrick wince at his words.
"It's not really love. It's just the circumstances we lived under. She was grateful to me. She was……dependent of me and it became a habit, it just felt like love." Warrick explained. Nick shook his head in disbelief.
"You are so wrong. Sure looked like love to me. It didn't look like Gratitude when she sat at your side for two weeks. Two weeks man! Gratitude can only take you so far. Sitting at your beside for two weeks goes way above and beyond that in my book. The day you kicked her out was the first time she'd stepped outside this hospital, did you know that?"
"No." Warrick grunted, staring out at the Nevada sun.
"It didn't seem like much of a habit when she was hysterical because she couldn't ride with you in the ambulance or the transport. She didn't seem all that dependent on you when she saved your ass."
"What? Explain that?" Warrick turned his attention on Nick suddenly.
"So……no one has told you about that, huh?" Nick reached over and folded back the sleeve of his hospital robe to uncover the healing wound of the shoulder shot. "Have you looked closely at this? Notice the strange marks, here and here?"
"Yeah?" Warrick had looked at the wound. "That supposed to mean something?"
"It's burn marks man. You've got them on here too." Nick pointed to his heavily bandaged gut.
"Burn marks?" Warrick twisted so he could look at his shoulder better. "How'd that happen? What's with the strange shape? What's that have to do with Gemma?"
Nick reached into his pocket, pulling out his pocket knife. Opening the blade, he lined it up with the scarred tissue. Dawning registered on Warrick's face. "She stopped the bleeding. You would have been dead if she hadn't."
"Gemma?…but……she……gets sick at the sight of a nosebleed." Warrick said in disbelief. "She couldn't have done that!" Closing his eyes, he had a sudden distorted vision of Gemma, leaning over him with a tear soaked face, apologizing to him. He swallowed roughly. "She did."
"Yeah, bro, she did." Nick agreed with a nod. He let it sink in for a moment before adding. "Guess that means you're even on the grateful part, huh?"
"How is it, no one bothered to tell me this?" Warrick muttered.
"Gemma didn't want us to, she was afraid it would upset you. She didn't want to risk you having a setback." Nick grew cheery. "Wouldn't want anything to upset your recovery. I mean, the quicker your recovery, the sooner she gets kicked out of your life."
"It's not like that. My job was to protect her. I had no business getting personal with her. I didn't do that great of a job, but that's the job I was assigned."
"You kept her alive, that was the point. Kept her out of harm's way, so you could rip her heart out and hand it back to her." Nick got up, suddenly too irritated to sit next to the man.
"I like your new digs." Jim Brass looked around the room. "Sorry I didn't come up to visit you in Elko."
"You're a busy man. I understand." Warrick shrugged. The Las Vegas Heart and Respiratory Recovery Center wasn't much different from the hospital in Elko except that none of the nurses knew Gemma, so he wasn't getting any dirty looks from the staff. "I get to see the city lights from my window at night. I'd forgotten how beautiful they were. I missed them."
"You're the only one that sees them as beautiful. I see the lights, I see all the crimes and hatred happening under them." Brass informed him. "Life isn't all magic and poetry. There's a lot of evil out there."
"You mean, you're not here to tell me how screwed up I am by sending Gemma away. Everyone else has! Geez! You should have heard Hodges! He all but called me out to a duel!"
"Gemma's a lovely girl." Jim shrugged. "We all fell in love with your girl. She and Hodges are good friends. He was the one she called to come get her when you told her to get lost. She cried on his shoulder, so he feels pretty intense about it."
"Hodges?" Warrick looked at Jim as if he'd grown a new head. "She called David Hodges?"
"Yeah. She was a wreck when he brought her to Gil the next day. She-"
"The next day!" Warrick roared. "She spent the night with Hodges!"
"She must have." Jim shrugged, unconcerned. "What's it matter to you. You dumped her. She's not your woman anymore. You didn't want her."
"She never was my woman." Warrick growled fiercely. "I never said I didn't want her."
"So, you do,….want her?" Jim questioned, looking at Warrick, it was easy for the detective to see the answer. "Then why-"
"Because she deserves better than me. I'm a screw up, a gambler…….not the type of man she needs." Warrick admitted quietly.
"Seems to me, that you are the type of man she needs. A man that loves her. And you do, don't you?"
"Yeah." Warrick winced. "I do."
"Then, you have to decide if it's worth it."
"What?"
"Whatever you think is holding you back. Whatever it is that makes you think you don't deserve her." Jim went over to the beside table, picking up a crumpled paper with a picture scrawled on it. "She's pretty artistic, for a kid her age?"
"Yeah." Warrick looked at the drawing of a very tall treelike man holding the hand of what looked like a small potato with legs.
"Looks a lot like you." Jim nodded, "Except, when did you were glasses?"
"In Montana. It was one of my disguises. Gemma said I looked like an IRS auditor." Warrick took the drawing, carefully setting it back next to his bed. "That's us playing in the creek that was behind the B&B."
"Oh, yeah, I see the water now." Jim nodded. "Anyway. You need to decide if your pride is something worth losing them both over."
"You sound like you know something I don't." Warrick frowned.
"I just know, from experience, that it hurts like hell to lose someone. Gemma's a great gal, she won't be on her own forever. Some guy will come along, see what you saw and decide he wants it for his own."
"Like Hodges?" Warrick snarled.
"Yes, like Hodges, but he's not in the running anymore. Not unless he goes chasing after her. I don't see David being that type of guy."
"Chasing?" Warrick questioned worriedly.
"Yeah, she and Jessica left town, yesterday, I think."
"Oh." Warrick looked at the drawing, wondering how long it would be before Jessica forgot about him. "I hope she finds someone. Someone who isn't a gambler and screw-up."
"As far as you being a gambler, I think you've gotten control of that aspect of your life. It's called growing up." Jim put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "I don't see you as a screw up. Nobody does. You've made mistakes, it makes you human. You love her, She loves you. It shouldn't be this hard. Believe me, being without her hurts a hell of a lot more than any heartache you could create together."
"You…..let your woman get away?" Warrick looked up, pain in his eyes.
"Yeah, by the time I went after her, she was gone." Jim shrugged. "Just give it some thought, Okay Brown?" With a final pat on his shoulder, Jim turned to leave. At the door, he paused. "Think of this, Brown, in all those years of gambling, did it ever make you feel as good as you do when you Woman gives you 'that' smile, or when that little girl calls you Daddy?"