The call came in from the owner of the paintball park ten minutes up the road. When she pulls in there’s a cluster of men milling around in the parking lot and the owner has the entrance gate pulled shut. His huddled form emerges in front of her, a skinny guy with a hooded sweatshirt draped over his body, and it takes him a minute to get the padlock on the gate undone with his trembling hands.
“She’s in bad shape. It… I don’t know, man.”
Callie clenches a fist around one of the vials of Narcan in her pocket. “Paramedics will be here soon. Take me to her. Now.”
The owner—guy called Kirby Lewes—is wiry, quick, with a slink that makes her think of a ferret. Callie has him slide in the passenger seat of her cruiser and they bump over paint-splattered fields, more dirt than grass.
“She’s on the bus. Nobody’s supposed to actually be on the bus, you know? It’s just like, a feature. It’s locked. But these kids, man, they’re always forcing the door open, climbing in there to smoke up or touch each other.”
“What bus?”
“It was my uncle’s but the transmission went, so he had it towed here. Cool part of the park, adds some detail and something different, you know? Up here. Just past the barracks.”
They pass through a row of huts supposedly made to look like an Afghan village. On the side of one of the buildings someone has scrawledOPERATION ENDURING FREEDOMin red spray paint. She speeds up at the sight of the bus up ahead, squatting on flat tires. All of the window glass has been removed and there’s a little bit of the original yellow paint showing through Kirby’s attempt to blot it out with a sickly green she guesses is meant to be camouflage.
“Do I have to go back in there?” Kirby asks, shivering.
“Please don’t,” Callie says, her body feeling heavier as she closes the distance to the bus. “Just make sure the EMTs know where to find us.”
She mounts the steps and the frame creaks a little under her weight. In the second to last row she sees the girl’s legs draped into the aisle, gangly in denim cutoffs, a pair of red Chuck Taylor high-tops on her feet. The left shoe is missing its laces, used to tie off her upper arm. Her lips are pale and her face has a gray cast to it. Callie doesn’t need the needle for confirmation but she spots it on the floor, just past the red Converse. She’s not breathing and her eyes are closed. Maybe already gone.
Callie whips the Narcan from her pocket, administers a dose in each nostril, moves the girl onto her side to keep her from choking when—if—she regains consciousness. Feels for her pulse, catches a light, sporadic beat.
“Come on,” Callie says, softly as she can. “Come on, come on, come on.” If three minutes pass and she doesn’t wake, Callie can administer another dose. She feels every second. It’s the closest she ever gets to praying, standing over people like this, waiting to see if they’ll rejoin the living. Feeling death in every one of those long intervals between each breath, each heartbeat.
One minute ticks by, then two. She finds herself holding her breath, and just as she starts to count the seconds until she can give the second dose, the girl’s narrow shoulders jerk and she lets out a long, low groan.
“There we go,” Callie says, letting herself exhale. “There we go. You’re okay.”
The girl rubs the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Fuck you,” she says, her voice thick, her teeth clenched. She backs away from Callie’s touch. “Get your filthy cop hands off of me!” Callie raises her hands gently, tries to show she means peace. Sometimes they come back this way. Angry after losing their high, ripped out of a sweet delirium and called back into gritty, dank reality, withdrawal symptoms already setting in.
“You overdosed. I just administered Narcan. The EMTs will be here in a moment and they’ll take you to the hospital for monitoring.”
“No way.”
“You need to be supervised. This dose I just gave you could wear off and you’d be right back to the way I found you. Almost dead, in case that’s not clear.”
“I said I’m not fucking going.”
“You’re not in trouble. You have my word.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
Callie sighs, drops her eyes to the girl’s red sneakers. Kid probably still lives at home, doesn’t want her parents to know. “How about this? I’ll give you a ride to the hospital. Help arrange a ride home when you’re released. But I need to know you’re going to be okay.”
The girl shoots her a furious look, dark eyed, mouth tight with contempt.
“I’ll let you think about it for a few minutes. I’m going to go talk to my friend out there and then I’m going to check on you, see what you’ve decided. Me, or the EMTs.”
She steps off the bus and finds Kirby, who is pacing in a twitchy way that makes her wonder if he doesn’t have a habit himself. “Who was she here with?”
“They all left, the dudes. Three of them.” Of course. Shot up with her or hooked her up then peeled off when shit hit the fan.
“How’d you know to check the bus?”
“One of the kids she was with. He turned in all of their gear, left, then came back in and told me I probably wanted to look at a problem on the bus. He didn’t say anything else; I didn’t think it was urgent or else I woulda ran over there. Instead I took a phone call, checked in a few dudes for a bachelor party. Fuck. She’s dead, right? Fuck fucking me.”
“Not dead. But close. Minutes away, if I had to guess. If you feel bad about that, why don’t you help me out. You hear anything about who is dealing heroin around here?”
