Frowning, he accepted the call from Captain Baker. “Chip. What’s up.”
“Emilio Chavez OD’d a half hour ago. He was found by Remy LaSalle and taken by ambulance to University. I thought you’d want to know.”
Tom closed his eyes. “Shit.”
chapter
24
As Danny ran through the rain to the entrance of the University Hospital ER, he knew where he was going before the receptionist and the triage nurses pointed him toward the “Staff Only” door next to the check-in area. A buzzing noise sounded out as he got in range, and when he punched the bar, the heavy steel panel swung free.
On the other side, he strode around to the patient bays. He didn’t need to ask where Chavez was. Moose and the others were standing in a cluster about halfway down, and as he came up to them, the grim faces were too familiar.
“How we doing?” he asked Moose.
The big man nodded off to the side, and Danny went with him, stepping away from the crew.
“They Narcan’d him.” Moose lowered his voice. “LaSalle found a needle with heroin residue in it and disappeared the evidence. They’re telling everyone it was a reaction to prescription meds, but that’s a lie.”
Remy LaSalle was a police officer and a good guy. Looked like the department was going to owe him. “Any other paraphernalia?”
“They didn’t look very hard, if you know what I mean.”
“How’d LaSalle know to go there?” Danny patted around for his cigarettes, but then stopped himself because lighting up was a no-go. “Did someone call him?”
“They were going to play some pickup ball.”
“If that was the plan, why’d Chavez be doing H?”
“I don’t know. LaSalle said Chavez called him like an hour before and told him to come by, the door would be open. LaSalle didn’t think much of it until he got there, and . . . yeah, he was just off duty, so he had the Narcan with him because he came in a squad car that had a dose in the trunk. If it hadn’t been for that coincidence, we’d be making funeral arrangements right now.”
“Where’s his mom? She on her way?”
“Yeah. I called her.”
Danny looked at the closed door of the bay. There was a break in the interior curtains that had been pulled, and he could see a sliver of Chavez’s face, so pale, the eyes closed. His body was so big and muscular, it made the hospital bed seem like something a child would put in a dollhouse.
“Did you call the chief?” he asked.
“Captain Baker did.”
“Is he coming?”
“Yeah, so you might want to leave, right now.”
“I’m allowed to be here.”
“Suit yourself.”
Danny put his hands on his hips and debated the odds of an argument between him and Tom. Timing and place were bad, yet the alchemy for ugly was ripe. On that note: “Are we allowed to go in and see him?”
“They said it was okay. But nobody’s . . . well, you know. We’ve stayed out here. What do we say?”
Danny waded his way through the familiar bodies, then he knocked on the glass but didn’t wait for an invite. He went into the room and made sure the door shut behind him.
Chavez didn’t open his eyes. “Danny.”
That voice was nothing but a croak, and Danny did a quick scan of the monitors. Blood pressure was low, pulse low, oxygen sats down.
“How’d you know?” Danny crossed to the bed. “Mind reading again?”
“You smell like a pack of Marlboros.”
“Stop with the compliments. Mind if I pull up a chair?”
“Whatever you like.” The man turned his head, lifted his lids and seemed to struggle to focus. “And I could do with a cigarette.”
“I’d give you one if it wouldn’t get us both kicked out of here.”
“I should have told LaSalle three hours.”
Danny parked it close to the bedside and rubbed his face. He’d been debating how real to get and Chavez had answered that one. “So you’d plan this?”
“Maybe. And don’t pretend you haven’t considered it every now and again.”
“I won’t deny it.” Especially after John Thomas had been killed. “I mean, who hasn’t.”
Chavez exhaled. “This is why I can talk to you. Everyone else would preach at me and then call the psych ward.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I am preparing a very stirring rendition of the you’ve-got-so-much-to-live-for speech.”
“Spare me.”
Danny linked his hands and stared down at them. “How many times have you tried before now. And don’t lie.”
“Never.” Chavez put a heavy hand to his heart. “I swear.”
“So what did it? Seeing Anne?”
That dark head moved side to side on the pillow. “No. I was glad she was doing good, you know? I mean, I didn’t want her to get hurt, but you saved her-”
“So why you try to off yourself?”
“You no want to talk about your woman, huh.”
“She’s not mine.”
As they fell silent, the soft beeping of the machines filled the void.
“I got the HIV, Danny.”
Danny tried to catch his reaction before his expression changed. But the shock must have showed because the other man looked away.
“You can’t tell anyone. No one else knows.”
Danny cleared his throat. “It’s not a death sentence anymore. You have to know that-”
“I went to my annual physical for the department and they took a blood sample. I forgot all about it.” Chavez’s stare drifted to the far corner of the treatment bay. “But they called three days ago.”
“This doesn’t mean you can’t do your job.”
“It’s not just about work. It’s about . . . someone. I can’t tell her that I can’t be with her now. It’s losing her that I can’t deal with. I figured a good dose of H would do the trick, and I was right, or I would have been if I’d just told LaSalle to come a little later. Fucker is always on time.”
“Jesus, Chavez.”
“I worried that someone else would find me. You know . . . someone who might be upset.”
Danny thought back to Timeout’s best waitress. “How’d you get it, Emilio? Do you even know.”
The guy put both hands up to his face. “I shared steroid needles at my neighborhood gym. I shouldn’t have. It was fucking stupid. I mean, I’m a goddamn EMT. But it’s all guys I’ve known since high school, and compared to doing IV drugs, the risk was so low. Until it wasn’t.”
Everyone on the fire service needed to be in shape, and yeah, sure, some of the guys juiced to get bigger. It was what it was; Danny had never judged. And now, in a quick rush of paranoia, he thought about what he had done in the gym. No ’roids or hormone shots, for sure. And thank God he’d been religious about condoms, especially during the last ten months when he’d been making some questionable choices.
But he’d be a fool not to recognize that there but for the grace of God went he.
Chavez shut his eyes so tight, his lips curled off his teeth as if he were in pain. “And now, I don’t know who else I might have infected, you know? I’d have to tell them, and I can’t—I don’t want this, Danny. I can’t handle this.”
“Yeah, you can.” Except even as he said the words, he was worried he was lying. “You can. You just need to . . . figure out a plan.”
“I’ll be fine,” Chavez said bleakly.
“How about I go get Josefina-”
“No fucking way, Danny.” Chavez looked over. “She can’t . . . no, she can’t ever know.”
“She’s going to find out what happened—I mean, about all this ER shit. She’s going to hear you were admitted from someone else. You don’t have to talk about the HIV now, but you could at least . . . I don’t know, tell her that you made a mistake. With the overdose.”
It was the only thing Danny could think of to suggest. Sometimes, the woman you loved was the sole reason you stayed on the planet.
He knew that firsthand.
Maybe just seeing Josefina would calm the guy out.
“If you love her,” Danny said, “and I know you do—’cuz I’ve seen the way you look at her—you don’t want her hearing you tried to kill yourself from someone else. People know you guys were getting close. Even if Remy is leading with the reaction-to-prescription-drug line, you never know what else could be said.”