He shrugged, as he shifted his focus back to the apple in his hand and admitted, “I lied.”

Chapter 2

“Did you really tell a sixty-five year old woman to, and I’m quoting here, ‘Shut the fuck up?’” his captain asked as he looked up from the incident report in his hands to shoot Duncan a questioning glance.

“No, sir,” he said as he shifted on the stretcher, trying to get comfortable, which he already knew from experience was impossible. “I told her husband to shut the fuck up, sir.”

“I see,” the captain said, glancing back down at the incident report, but not before Duncan saw his lips twitch with amusement.

Well, he was pretty sure that his lips twitched, but then again he probably wasn’t the best person to ask at the moment, not with blood still running down his face, making if difficult to see anything out of his left eye.

“Let’s move on to the next complaint,” the captain said, looking down the long list of complaints that he’d received regarding Duncan’s last call.

“Let’s,” Duncan said, giving up on trying to get more comfortable and pressed the icepack back against his forehead, earning a glare from his boss.

“Duncan,” the captain said in a hard tone as he looked up from the incident report to shoot Duncan a warning glare.

“Timothy,” Duncan shot back in the same hard tone, laughing when his best friend shook his head good-naturedly with a chuckle and returned his attention back to the list of bullshit in his hands.

“It was a fucked up call,” Duncan pointed out, closing his eyes as he willed his headache to go away, but that probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon thanks to the lovely concussion that he’d received when he was forced to release the angry son and drag the guy’s mother off the little home wrecker, who’d announced that she was not only pregnant, but that she’d fucked every guy in their family.

That hadn’t gone over well.

At least not for him since for whatever reason the whole family had turned on him at that point and had decided that he was somehow to blame for this bullshit. They’d ganged up on him, hitting him with whatever they could get their hands on and when Duncan’s partner came in with the police, they’d decided to double their efforts before their punching bag was taken away from them.

The thing that had pissed him off the most was that even though he’d been getting his ass kicked, he hadn’t been able to make himself take a swing, terrified that he’d hit one of the women. So, he’d done his best on restraining the men, which again had only made them madder.

It had taken ten cops, five firemen, and three EMTs to pull them off him. It had definitely been a Thanksgiving for the books, he thought with a pathetic groan as sharp pain shot through his head.

“You know that I have to investigate their claims, right?” Timothy asked, not sounding particularly happy about it, but right now Duncan could honestly say that he didn’t give a flying fuck. His head was killing him, every fucking muscle in his body was screaming in pain, he was starving, had missed having Thanksgiving dinner with his family and now he had to get his fucking head stitched up thanks to the old woman who’d decided to slam an old baseball trophy into his head.

“Do what you have to do,” Duncan said, trying to breathe through the pain, but it was fucking difficult when every noise made his head feel like it was about to explode. The bright lights overhead weren’t helping either. All he wanted to do was get his head stitched up, go home and lock himself in his room for the next week.

“I’m going to have to put you on paid suspension for a month while we investigate,” Timothy said, adding a special note to his day.

“Not fucking happening,” Duncan said, refusing to take the hit to his personnel file and screw up any chances at promotions or raises in the future.

“It will disappear as soon as the month is over,” Timothy reassured him.

“They attacked me,” he reminded his boss and best friend.

“And they’ve all been arrested and charged with Federal assault on a Firefighter,” he said, sounding pissed and for good reason.

They risked their fucking lives for people, worked insane hours, survived on very little sleep and this was how some fucking people thanked them. Some days he felt like saying fuck it and going to work for his Uncle and then there were other days when he loved his job and couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

Today just wasn’t one of those days.

“Mr. Bradford, I see that you’re going to need a few stiches,” a very unhappy, uptight woman said as she pushed open the privacy curtain and entered the examination room.

“We want his ribs looked at as well,” Timothy said, using that hard tone of his that had helped him to rise so quickly through the ranks to Captain.

“I don’t see any reason to do that,” the Doctor said dismissively, obviously annoyed about the fact that she had to work on Thanksgiving Day.

“Well, I do,” Timothy said firmly, looking seriously pissed off as he glared at the Doctor.

“I do as well,” the familiar voice said, sounding just as pissed as Timothy as he strolled into the room and took the chart away from the woman that looked like she hadn’t been laid since the eighties just as Duncan finally gave in and closed his eyes.

“Hey, Dad,” Duncan said, keeping his eyes closed as he tried to focus on his breathing and not on the pain shooting through his entire body.

“I’ll be taking over here, Doctor,” his father said in a tone that let Duncan know that his father had already dismissed the Doctor without a second glance.

Duncan heard the sounds of hard heels clicking angrily away as he laid there, praying that his father gave him something to knock him the fuck out, but that would mean spending the night in the hospital and he didn’t want that. He wanted to go home, climb in his bed and get some fucking sleep for once.