When Amber was upset, she restricted her food. She had stopped eating entirely at the end of her freshman year in high school, which was what ultimately led to her heart attack and hospitalization seven months later. I remembered sitting with her at the Bryants’ dinner table, wanting to grab a spoon, force bites of buttery mashed potatoes between her lips, and then cover her mouth with my hand until she swallowed. At the time, I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t eat. I didn’t understand that anorexia wasn’t so much a matter of food as it was a desperate need to feel in control.
Now, I thought about texting or calling Amber daily. I felt sure if we could just talk, we’d find a way to resolve things and we could go back to how we used to be. Despite Mason’s suggestion, I didn’t talk with a lawyer, worried that, if I did, I might hear something about my circumstances that would ramp up my anxiety levels higher than they already were. There were times when my heart would race and I’d check my blood pressure in the back of the rig, shocked at the elevated numbers I saw. If it were anyone else, any one of the victims I helped treat in the field, I would tell them they needed immediate medical help—that sustaining a systolic pressure over 130 and a diastolic of 100 would eventually do irreparable damage to their heart.
This was the thought inside my head one sunny afternoon in August when Mason and I pulled up to the curb of a building where a teenage girl apparently had swallowed an unknown amount of her mother’s narcotics. I’d gone for my daily before-shift run, but still, I couldn’t ignore the ache in my chest or the way my pulse stuttered every time I took a breath. I’d promised Mason I’d get a handle on it, but the more I tried to do just that, the deeper it seemed to dig its sharp talons into my brain, more determined than ever to stay.
“Hey,” I said, as we bounded up the stairs to the third floor. “Want to grab a beer tomorrow? Or lunch?” In the past, it wouldn’t be uncommon for Mason and me to hang out together on our day off. But since the incident with Amber, my relationship with my partner had shifted. We still got our jobs done, but that was all. He no longer invited me over for dinner with Gia and the baby, we didn’t shoot the shit about other coworkers or our boss—all we talked about was work. I missed the easy camaraderie we’d always shared, and part of me regretted telling him anything about what had happened at the party. Outside of Amber, I didn’t have many close friends, so I was anxious to find a way to reconnect with Mason. I couldn’t lose them both.
“Can’t,” he said, not looking back at me as we approached the apartment door. “Sorry.” He didn’t give an explanation—he didn’t have to. A hot rush of shame washed over me. I knew that Mason, a man I looked up to and respected, believed that what Amber accused me of might be true.
“Any bets on whether the mother has a prescription for the meds?” Mason asked, changing the subject.
“I’d rather not think about it,” I said. Too many times we’d encountered parents who left medications—legitimately prescribed or not—in the easy reach of a child. And too many times this ended in a deadly overdose.
Ignoring the curious stares of the neighbors who peeked out of their doors and windows in response to the siren, Mason pounded on the door of the address we’d been given, and a woman opened it, standing before us clad only in a white T-shirt that barely reached the middle of her thighs. Her skinny body and pockmarked face fit the physical characteristics of someone who abused drugs, and in my experience, if people looked like addicts, that’s what they were.
What do rapists look like? I suddenly found myself thinking, struck by the memory of being inside Amber, the way her naked skin felt against mine still vivid enough that it could have happened just hours ago. I heard my father’s voice: I think you’d do just about anything to get into your sweet little Amber’s panties. Had he been right? Had I been willing to do anything in order to have her—including forcing myself on her after she told me to stop? A horrified shiver shot across my skin, and I began to shake. If someone looked at me, is a rapist what they’d see?
“Please, hurry!” the woman said, snapping me back to the present. She urged us inside her apartment. “You have to help her!”
“Where is she?” I asked. My eyes darted around the small living room, looking for the woman’s daughter, hoping we’d made it in time to save her. The air was stale with old cigarette smoke; I spotted an overflowing ashtray on the coffee table, along with two empty bottles of wine. The place was a mess with stacks of pizza boxes and Styrofoam take-out containers. Not a good sign.
“This way,” the woman said.
Mason and I followed her down a short hallway and into what felt like a hatbox-size room, littered with laundry and empty cans of diet soda. The walls were covered in posters of bands I’d never heard of. The girl lay splayed diagonally across her twin bed, arms askew over her head and legs spread-eagled. She was thin like her mother with the same black, but clean, hair, and wore green-striped, drawstring pajama bottoms with a tight, white T-shirt. For a moment, she reminded me of Amber the day I found her passed out on her bedroom floor, and I had to force myself to remember to breathe. Goddamn it, Hicks. Stay focused. The girl’s eyes were closed and her lips were tinged a very light blue, but I thought I saw a slight rise of her chest.
“What’s her name?” I asked as I dropped down next to the girl on the bed, immediately checking for a pulse on her neck. “How old is she?”
“Dakota,” the woman whimpered. “She’s fifteen. Is she okay? Is she breathing?”
“What kind of meds did she take?” Mason asked the woman.
She looked at him with wide eyes, and I knew she was afraid to tell us. Afraid that she’d be in legal trouble for possessing a narcotic without a prescription. Mason put his hand on the mother’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“We don’t care where the meds came from,” he said. He kept his voice low and calm, so she would believe him. “We just need to know so the doctors will know how to treat her. Okay?”
The woman waited another couple of breaths before slowly nodding. “Oxy,” she whispered. “And maybe some Valium. It was a mixed bag.”
Mason shot me a brief, knowing look. “She’s breathing, but barely,” I said. As I looked back to the girl and lifted her eyelids to check her pupillary response, Mason kept his attention on the mother.
“How many milligrams were the pills, do you know? How many did she take?”
“I don’t know,” the woman cried, clasping her hands to the sides of her head. “I don’t know, I don’t know!” A ragged sob shook her body. “Please, just help her!”
“Pulse is thready and BP is ninety over sixty-five,” I reported. I quickly inserted an IV into a vein on the back of the girl’s hand, hooking the tube up to a bag of saline, and then shot a dose of Narcan into the line. Even if we didn’t know how much the girl had taken, flushing her system with saline and a standard dose of an opioid antagonist could help reverse the effects of the pills. Maybe even prevent her from having a seizure or stroke.