I remember Wyatt tumbling across the gymnasium. I remember wishing so bad that Mom and Dad were there that day.
“Oh yeah, he used to wear those dorky leotards, didn’t he?”
“Ricky, I understand that your mind is empty, that you have no soul, that you are a depressing, sad little creature. But do you have to talk so much?”
As usual, he just smears that shit-eating grin one tooth wider. “Yeah, pretty much,” he says. “Ah, sweet, we’re here. I hope it’s something exciting. If I’ve gotta deal with one more lame-ass husband calling us because his whale of a wife is choking on a Cheeto, I’m quitting.”
“That happened once.” I roll my eyes as I kill the engine and climb down from Betty.
“And once was enough!”
“Anyway,” I tell him, getting the gear, “we know what it is, fish-brain. Another overdose.”
“Oh, yeah.” He flexes his fat-muscled arms. “Too much blood going to these anacondas. It’s messing with my memory.”
“Yeah, it has nothing to do with going to college parties every time you’ve got a night off,” I say, and then kind of regret it. Because maybe that was a little mean. Ricky’s a douche, but he’s not all bad. Heart in the right place and all; it just happens to be surrounded by two hundred-plus pounds of annoying.
We carry our gear toward the apartment building. The girl who called is standing outside, propping the door open, waving her arms to signal us inside. She’s probably only a few years younger than me—she looks like she’s maybe twenty—but ‘girl’ is the right word. She’s all wide-eyed, like a deer in the headlights, and I feel like shaking her by the shoulders just for being here.
It’s clearly a drug den. The apartment lobby reeks of pee and weed and the walls are covered in graffiti. She is too pretty and innocent-looking to belong in a shithole like this.
I push Wyatt from my mind as we make our way into the apartment.
The place is empty except for the kid dying on the dirty floor.
“Your boyfriend, sweetheart?” Ricky asks, using his professional voice now.
She nods, frantic. “Is he supposed to be breathing like that?”
I kneel down and glance at Ricky, holding my hand near his mouth. The kid’s breath is weak and there’s a horrible rattling sound coming from far back in his throat. We nod silently and shift him into the recovery position so that his airways aren’t blocked, and then I get the naloxone ready.
“What is that?” the girl whispers, shuddering as she eyes the needle. “Not more needles. Please. We’ve had enough needles—please.”
“Your boyfriend needs medicine,” I tell her as I work. “This is going to counteract the effects of the opioid. It will let him breathe properly again.”
“But he hates needles,” she whispers, rubbing anxiously at the track marks up and down her arms. She looks like a lost little lamb and, suddenly, I get an image of Wyatt in a place like this, shuddering on the floor.
I push it aside, just like the others.
She’s talking fast now: “… and if he has another needle it’s gonna kill him—gonna kill him and I love him and we shouldn’t even be here—”
“Ricky,” I say. I jerk my head towards the girl. Do something, my eyes add.
“Roger.” He moves between the girl and me just in case she tries to get involved. “Just calm down. Hey, what’s your middle name? Can you tell me that?”
She pauses. “Joan. My grandma was named Joan, so my parents named me after her.”
“And your favorite color, sweetheart. You got one of those?”
I administer the naloxone and then wait, and wait, and …
“Shit,” I curse. “Ricky, he’s not responding. We need to get him into Betty, stat.”
Ricky has done a good job at calming the girl down, so when we load him onto the stretcher and carry him through the apartment, she just trails behind us. We hook him up to oxygen because the naloxone hasn’t done its normal magic. His breathing is getting even worse. Ricky adjusts the levels, peering down at him, shaking his head. We meet eyes and we both know it doesn’t look good.
“Hold his hand, sweetheart,” Ricky says. “Keep talking to him.”
I drive like Wyatt is the one overdosing back there. When we get him into the hospital, we hand him over to the nurses and then our job is done. Side by side, we stand there and watch him receding down the hallway on the stretcher. Then he rounds a corner and he’s