Social Neighbor (The Social Series Book 1) by J.L. Mac Page A

room, theatrics in full swing and began barking orders at everyone, me included. I hadn’t been out of orthopedic surgery for more than two hours and she was already trying her best to make me swear to leave motorcycles behind, and in truth, my interest in riding on things with two wheels waned dramatically when something with four wheels nearly killed me.
    Instead of telling her that, I let her stew in her own indignation. I informed her that I’d already had Conrad, my assistant, order a replacement bike, which was a blatant lie but who was I to pass up a good jab at my little sister’s expense? Being stuck in a bed had seriously hindered my entertainment.
    Poor Conrad sat on the couch on the far wall in my room and gaped at me with wide eyes when I had thrown him under the bus. Halley glared at him before turning her fury back to me. She’d collected my things from the nurse and ordered poor Conrad (who was underpaid, I decided) to buy a new cell phone for me because mine had been crushed in the accident.
    All humor had left me when I realized that I couldn’t call or text Flor until I got a replacement phone and worse, I’d have to have Conrad dig through phone records in an effort to find her number. He definitely deserved a raise.
    I kicked myself and wished that I took notes and paid closer attention when Conrad had explained how to back up my cell. Halley stormed around as though she were a general in Hitler’s Third Reich. Conrad kept his head down and worked to keep up. I laid in bed feeling helpless.
    My mom was another story. She cried and cried some more and pleaded with me to stay away from anything dangerous. I knew well that she didn’t only mean motorcycles. It killed me to see her so upset. I’d absently wondered how many times she had cried because of me. She had suffered enough because of her three children, and I hated the sick feeling that knowledge had spawned in me. Since my father passed away, I’d kept a close eye on her. She had her own money and plenty of it. My father had made sure of that. She would go on living the lifestyle that she had grown accustomed to, but it seemed to be of no consequence when she worried so much about her adult children.
    The large external fixator on my leg made me look like a pin cushion with several steel rods imbedded into my flesh and down into my fragmented bones. They had said that they could remove it and fit me with a hard cast as soon as four weeks, but that depended on how quickly I healed. The doctor had made it clear that I could be stuck with the fixator for up to six months and to me, that sounded like just this side of hell. What in the fuck was I going to do with myself if I had to keep this thing on for longer than just a few weeks?
    Still, I was fortunate. There was no doubt about that. I always wore a helmet and it saved my life. I was bumped and bruised and I had a deep laceration at my hair line where the handle bar of my bike rammed upward into the mask of my helmet, successfully splitting my scalp. A few sutures later and my head was as good as new without so much as a concussion to show for it. I didn’t deserve the good luck, but good luck is what I had been given.
    My right leg was another story. Bones are meant to be inside your body, not out. The orthopedic surgeon fixed me up, though. I hated that I had to wear this cumbersome and heavy fixator for a while, but I had no right to complain, all things considered. Road rash here and there, a deep cut to my scalp and a busted up right leg didn’t seem so bad if I considered what could have happened.
    There was talk about having a nurse come to visit me daily to monitor my vitals and care for my wounds, but I couldn’t see why that was necessary. I couldn’t get around well, but I got around. I could clean my own wounds. How hard could it be? I watched the nurses do it multiple times at the hospital. Unwrap, clean, rewrap with fresh bandages. Done.
    In truth, my reasoning for