Mason tried again for more information. “How many do you normally get in a baggie?” he asked the mother. “Are they small, like a Tic Tac, or big, like a vitamin?”
“Wait!” she said, as though she’d just thought of something, and then ran out of the room. She returned quickly with another clear plastic bag, full of pills. “It was like this, but most of it was already gone.”
“That’s good,” I said, taking the bag from her. “That helps.” Mason set the yellow backboard he had carried up the stairs on the bed next to the girl, and both he and I did a three-count and lifted her limp body onto it.
“All right then,” I said, looking at the mother as Mason and I finished strapping the girl to the backboard. “We’ll need you to come with us to the ER.”
“Am I going to get that back?” the woman said, staring at the bag in my hand.
“No,” I said, firmly, and she moved out of the room so we could carry her unconscious daughter down the hallway, through the living room, and out the front door. She watched us, pressing a fist against her mouth. I suspected she wouldn’t show up at the hospital. In all likelihood, when the police came to follow up with her at the apartment, she wouldn’t be there. She wouldn’t care what happened to her daughter. And if she did take off, and it turned out that Dakota couldn’t be saved, the woman wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that her child’s death was no one’s fault but her own. The lengths some people would go to in order to avoid having to take responsibility for their actions never ceased to amaze me.
HYPOCRITE! a voice shouted inside my head. After what you did to Amber . . .
“Tyler!” Mason said. He gave me an irritated look. It wasn’t the first time since the tanker truck accident that I’d been distracted on the job. “Help me lift her in.”
I did as he asked, and then climbed in next to the girl while Mason jogged around front and got into the driver’s seat. I checked her vitals again, secured the oxygen mask over her mouth, and then radioed in to the ER, letting them know what was coming. I glanced down at the bag of pills, which I had set on the gurney next to her. The smaller ones were a light yellow, and had the letter “V” stamped on them—Valium, for sure. There had to be at least a hundred of them.
I thought about my blood pressure, that no matter how many miles I ran each day, the undercurrent of anxiety coursing through me still put my health—and my sanity—at risk. I thought about how it was perfectly normal for a doctor to write a prescription to address a temporary bout of severe anxiety, which I told myself I was experiencing. Situational anxiety, incited by a stressful event. But I didn’t need a doctor to tell me that the medication would help; I administered it on a regular basis to the victims I helped treat, then watched as their angst magically melted away. If I knew when they needed it, surely I could decide the same thing for myself.
With a quick look at Mason, who was hunched over the wheel, focused on maneuvering through traffic, waiting for the cars surrounding us to get out of the way, I quietly opened the baggie and reached inside, rooted around, and then pulled out a small handful of the smaller, V-marked pills—maybe twenty of them—leaving enough that Mason wouldn’t notice the difference when we handed the bag over at the hospital. I turned to face the back doors, so my partner couldn’t see what I was doing, hesitating only a moment before popping a chalky, yellow-hued bit of relief into my mouth. Just for when things get really bad, I thought as I slipped the remainder of the pills I’d taken into my pocket. When I really need relief. And not every day. Only until the memories of what happened that night fade away and I find a way to never think about them again.
Amber
Heather was in town for two weeks, and despite my parents’ protests, I went out with her almost every night after I got off work, visiting different bars and trying out clubs I’d never been to. I did it for the distraction, for a sense of normalcy. See? I’d think. Everything’s fine. I’m out with a girlfriend. I’m laughing and talking and dancing like any other almost-twenty-four-year-old girl. Going out kept me out of my head; it restricted the amount of time I spent replaying what had happened with Tyler, who seemed to creep in around the edges of my thoughts no matter how hard I tried to push him out. I woke up every morning in a cold sweat, breathing hard, remembering the weight of him on top of me, feeling the stabbing pain as he pushed inside. You asked for it, I told myself. If you hadn’t acted like such a slut, it never would have happened. It didn’t matter that my parents kept telling me that I should report him to the police, because I felt certain that anyone who listened to all the details of what went down would assume that I had wanted to have sex. They’d judge me. They’d tell me to be more careful next time, and that would be that.
When Heather and I went out, I kept myself to a strict one-drink limit, never accepting the ones sent over to us by strange men, and rejecting the invitations to dance with anyone other than my friend.
“Come on,” Heather said the night before she would head back to Berkeley. We were sitting at a table at the Wild Buffalo, where a live band was playing some kind of bluegrass-rock blend, and I’d just refused a stocky, cute guy with bright blue eyes and a well-trimmed, brown beard who had asked me to dance. “You’re killing me, Amber! It’s just a dance!”
I gave her a tight-lipped smile and shook my head, knowing full well that that wasn’t always true.
“Are you still pining for Daniel? Is that it?” Heather asked, but she didn’t wait for me to answer. “Because you know what the best way to get over a guy is, right? Get under a new one!”
I laughed, but my heart skipped a beat at the mention of Daniel’s name. I hated knowing that I’d hurt him, hated thinking that he would spend the rest of his life thinking the worst of me. But I also knew that someone as kind and good as him deserved better than what I was, now. Breaking up with him, giving him his freedom, had been the right thing to do.
I glanced over at the guy with a beard, who, after asking me to dance, had rejoined his group of friends. And then, without warning, a tidal wave of rebellion rose up inside me. “You think I should go for it?” I asked Heather.