Portland Noir - Kevin Sampsell [38]
“Esteban sent you, right?” she asks.
The EMT just nods. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five, but immediately takes charge of the situation.
“How is he?”
“I … I tried to bandage him, but—” the blond bitch stutters.
The EMT shoves past her and comes straight over to me, putting his box of supplies down on the carpet next to where he kneels. He snaps on the latex gloves, and I tense up figuring he’s going to lift my hoodie and inspect the wound, but instead he starts checking the veins on my arms and hands.
“These are fucked. Where are you shooting now?” he asks.
“My legs.”
“I think the best bet is the jugular.” He examines my neck for a moment, then pulls an IV bag out of the box of supplies. “This is saline. You’re losing blood and need fluids to keep you from going into shock.”
“You’re not going to bandage it?” the blond bitch asks.
“There’s no point. He needs surgery.”
The guy is good and hits the jugular no problem. I can feel the cold of the saline rushing down my neck. Somehow the fluid triggers another wave of pain, and I start screaming again.
“Oh for Christ sake, shut up!” the bitch yells at me.
“He needs morphine.” The EMT turns to look at her.
“Well, give him fucking morphine then!”
“I can’t. They keep track of our supply.”
“So what the hell do you want me to do?”
The EMT just looks at her.
I keep screaming.
“No way. Esteban would kill me.” She shakes her head.
“We don’t have a choice. He wants him alive, doesn’t he?”
“No.” She keeps shaking her head.
“Yes.” The EMT nods.
“AHHHHHHH!!!” I scream.
“All right, this is all on you.” The blond bitch throws up her hands and disappears down the hall.
“Where the fuck’s the trolley?” I manage to stop screaming long enough to ask the EMT.
“Sorry,” he says.
“What the fuck do you mean, Sorry?”
I’m about to start screaming again when the bitch comes back with what looks like a blob of beige packing tape.
“I’m telling you, this is all on you.” She hesitates in front of the EMT. “I want no part of it.”
“Fine.”
He holds out his hand until she finally gives him the blob, and then uses a pair of medical shears to cut the tape away from one corner. Despite ten years of being a junkie I’ve never actually seen a whole kilo outside of TV news reports, so it takes me a second to comprehend what it is.
“Is that … Is that a fucking kilo?” I ask.
“Do you have your works on you?”
“What the fuck are you doing with a kilo?” I ask the blond bitch, but she’s back to the deep breathing exercises.
“Do you have your works on you?” the EMT calmly repeats the question.
I point to my right sock.
“I’m not going to get stuck, am I?” He hesitates.
“No. It’s capped.”
He pulls out the works and then heads back to the kitchen with the spoon to get some water—just leaving the kilo there on the freakin’ coffee table like it’s nothing.
“What the hell is going on here?” I ask the bitch.
“I need you to promise me something,” she leans in and whispers so the EMT can’t hear in the other room. “When Esteban gets here, tell him this was all the paramedic’s idea, okay?”
“Why the fuck do you have a fucking kilo of chiva in your house?”
The EMT comes back before she can answer and starts loading up the spoon straight from the kilo.
“What are you? A gram a day?”
“Gram and a half.”
He taps a tiny bit more in.
“Hey, you’re going a bit light there,” I point out.
“Trust me, this shit is pure.”
“It’s black tar. How pure can it be?”
“Pure.”
He cooks it over my lighter, then barely lets it cool before skipping the cotton ball and loading it straight into one of the horse syringes from his box.
“Jesus Christ, this is a fucking stash house, isn’t it?” I ask them both.
Instead of answering, the EMT sticks the needle into a little side branch of my IV line and pushes the heroin directly into my jugular.
The shit hits me like a fucking Amtrak.
I’m not sure how long I nod, but when I come back, the pain is just a dull ache.
The EMT is gone and the blond bitch is on the phone with her back to me talking to someone in Spanish again. I spot the EMT’s horse syringe on the carpet