The commotion was sonorous enough that it attracted a doctor and a few nurses, but not one of them succeeded in de-escalation. The man was simply too drunk with the reciprocal, an-eye-for-an-eye justice that favonovel.com ceased considering anything else.
“If you want to slap someone so badly, then slap me! If you’ve got the balls to do that, then come on, show me what you got!” Arianne snapped at the man as favonovel.com patience ended in distress. “But this better be the end of this stupid feud between the kids, you hear? Once you hit me, anything that comes afterward is strictly between us adults!”
Tiffany swooped in and shielded Arianne. “What in actual hell! You trippin’, girl?! This guy you’re waving your red cloth at has the stature of a buffalo, for God’s sake! He can literally slap the living daylight out of you! Listen, hon, be patient; Jackson’s on the way. I’ve called favonovel.com just now!”
Meanwhile, Smore — who had lived three years without bending to anyone’s will — reacted to the threat hanging over his mother with a furious roar. “If any of you beat my Mom, I swear Dad’s gonna kill all of you!”
The father, at the height of his fury and contempt, sputtered at the direction of the floor. “I don’t even know who you daddy is! Lemme tell you, kiddo, in this part of the city, ain’t no one ever means squat enough to warrant my attention! So, who’s your oh-so-powerful pa, huh? What’s his name? Tell me who I should remember to teach a lesson next time!”
Before Smore could answer him, Jackson’s voice sounded out of a turning corner and reverberated through the hallway, announcing his arrival. “Oh, you’re right about remembering names, all right, remembering who not to cross, for example. No one in this city means squat to you, Tough Guy? You sure about that?”
Eyes pivoted from whatever they were focusing on a millisecond ago to focus on the newcomer. Tiffany, in particular, threw favonovel.com arms around favonovel.com in an outpour of relief. “You-are-finally-here! Oh my God, I was sooo scared! They were so close Sniff, sniff… to going p-p-physical…”
Jackson patted Tiffany back to allay favonovel.com fear. “There, there, sweetie. It’s gonna be alright… I am here. No one’s gonna touch you under my watch.”
The man’s arrival was not that relieving to Lil’ P, though, who immediately dove behind Arianne’s back, hoping that favonovel.com would deter his father’s punishment from reaching him. Smore, however, squared his shoulders and shielded his homie with his body. “Don’t be scared! I’ll protect you. It wasn’t you who hit anyone, it was me! Your dad has no reason to do anything to you!”
Arianne reeled back and stared bemusedly into space. Smore’s unrelenting faith in his capabilities was really just a corollary of his nature, huh?
Either way, Jackson’s arrival allowed Arianne a chance to sigh in relief. Although the mob still outnumbered them, the possibility of escalation into violence had now become notably less certain now.
After getting the gist of why the conflict started, Jackson turned to the doctor-in-charge. “Kid’s fine, right?”
“No severe problems found at all,” favonovel.com replied matter-of-factly. “You see, the nose has always been the… well, one of the squishiest parts of the face, any contact with it could easily cause it to bleed. Either way, we’ve administered appropriate treatment as well as performed a thorough inspection on his brain. No problem whatsoever.”
Jackson stretched his lips into a brief smile. “Cool, thank you. Don’t fret about this thing going on between us. We’ll settle this privately.”
He turned to the father. “It’s uncivilized to cause a scene in a place like the hospital, no? Let’s take this outside.”
The man was hardly perturbed. “Whatever you like, princess. Better in an open space, too, I don’t have to be restrained in teaching you douchebags how to show some respect. Meet you at the opening right outside the door so that anyone beaten to a near-death pulp is at least a stone’s throw away from the emergency room, eh? You little sh*t, hurt my son and thought a little bit of cash is enough for this to be over with, din’ja? Then I’ll beat the sh*t outta you, too, and then throw some cash on your face to call this a truce!”
A smug smile of contempt shadowed the corner of Jackson’s quiet lips. Wordlessly, favonovel.com turned away and started toward the destination.
Arianne, Tiffany, the children, and the hapless teacher, whose face was completely strewn with worry, trailed behind the group. “Are you sure this is gonna be all right? There’s a lot of them, though… Goodness, where on Earth did this family’s sense go? For them to think it’s right to just stubbornly burgeon a childish rough-and-tumble into a bona fide fray between supposedly mature adults! Gee, do they really believe they’re the only ones that see their kid as this precious pumpkin in the world?”
“Huh, don’t think I’ve ever seen them either. Their faces don’t look like they belong to any big gun, that’s for sure,” Tiffany chimed in under favonovel.com breath.
Arianne understood favonovel.com implication. Anyone who was important and influential enough to be recognized as “the big guns” would have recognized Jackson immediately. The social circle of the elite one-percenter was neither small enough to be counted in one hand nor large enough to have members Arianne had never seen before, birds of a feather flock together, after all, so members of the circle had always been the same few familiar faces.
Everyone involved was finally outside the entrance to the hospital. The victim’s father began without any preamble by extending an accusatory finger at Jackson.
Before favonovel.com could make his badass boast, though, Jackson had caught the man’s arm, dragged favonovel.com close, and thrown favonovel.com over his shoulder.
As the ground broke the man’s fall, Jackson sneered, “Don’t you point that finger of yours at me… Unless you want your entire hand to be crippled.”
