“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.”
HIPAA was great for patient privacy. But New Brunswick was a very small town.
“I’ll bring her over.” Danny put up a hand. “Again, you don’t have to go into the HIV thing right now, but at least you could see her and remember why you’re going to want to see her again.”
“There’s no future for us.”
“You keep saying that, but you don’t know if that’s true.”
“Why would anyone want to be with someone who’s infected.”
“Do you honestly think that every person who’s positive is living alone in a dark corner like a fucking leper in the Middle Ages? Really? Seriously?”
As they got quiet again, the monitor keeping track of Chavez’s heart rate measured a steady beat with steady beeping, and Danny supposed he should be reassured by how steady it was. But that was temporary. Undoubtedly, Chavez would reassure whoever needed the platitudes that it had been a garden-variety OD, and he would agree to go to a drug-awareness program. But that would just be to get out of here.
They sat there for what felt like an hour but was probably only ten minutes.
“I guess I should go.” Danny got up. “Your mom’s on the way.”
“She needs to stop worrying about me.”
“Then quit giving her reasons to.”
Chavez cursed. “Look, if Josefina were to come here, I don’t know what I’d say. I mean, it’s early for us. Or was. She has no reason to get involved with me.”
“Don’t make your mind up about that. Lemme bring her over. Come on, Chavez. She’s a good woman, that’s the reason you love her. You don’t have to talk it all out right now, but at least let her know you’re okay firsthand before she hears something from a customer at Timeout.”
“Okay.”
“You’re gonna be all right.”
When Chavez looked away, Danny wondered whether he was doing the right thing. But if you had to have something to live for, it might as well be love, right?
“I’ll be back in about twenty minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
Chavez rolled his eyes. “Like they’re letting me out of here anytime soon.”
Outside, anxious faces stared at him like they were trying to read the future in his expression. But he couldn’t give them that. Hell, even if he could, he doubted any of them would like the prognostication.
“I gotta have a smoke. I’ll be back.”
Leaving the crew behind, he went past the nursing station and out into the ambulance bay. There were a couple of guys he knew standing out of the rain with their rigs, so he went away from them but stayed under the overhang. As he took out his cigarettes and lit one, he was violating the hospital “No Smoke Zone” rule and told himself not to feel bad about it.
Didn’t work.
After three deep inhales, he stabbed the thing out just as a set of headlights flashed as an SUV pulled into the restricted area. He didn’t pay any attention to the who and what of it, but then a man with salt-and-pepper gray hair was heading over to him.
Anne Ashburn’s brother was the last person he wanted to see. That was the way shit was rolling down his hill lately, though.
“Chief,” he muttered. “Here to see Chavez?”
“Captain Baker called me. How’s he doing?”
Danny crossed his arms over his chest. It was unwritten policy that members of the crew didn’t comment on questions like that. At least not truthfully. The response that was expected and the one he knew he should give was: He’s fine. He’ll come through. He can’t wait to get back on a ladder.
The words refused to come out of his mouth. He just kept seeing Chavez in that bed.
There was no looking at the chief as he spoke. “He’s suicidal. He’s going to lie to get out of here, and in a matter of weeks, I’m fucking terrified that we’re going to be in dress blues next to his weeping mother.”
Tom’s recoil told him more than he needed to know about what he’d just done. But it was what it was. He was willing to keep Chavez’s secret about the HIV, but that was as far as it went for him.
“I’m not saying this because I’m under psych review myself.” He turned to the chief. “I’m tired. I’m fucking tired of getting eaten alive by shit I can’t get out of my head. And if Chavez kills himself because I didn’t say something? I don’t have room for that. I can’t carry that. My arms are full.”
Hell of a mic drop: He’d triggered a mandatory suspension and review of a man who was a terrific firefighter and an even better human being. It was the worst betrayal.
Danny had just put the poor bastard on the very path he himself was walking.
But he was done adding wrongs to his conscience.
* * *
Anne headed for the University of New Brunswick’s ER the second Moose texted her, grabbing her keys and going out into the rain so fast, she forgot to put Soot in his crate. Halfway across town, she’d realized her mistake, and if she came home to ruined sofa cushions and shredded running shoes, it was on her.
The UNB hospital campus was like a small city, the cluster of buildings ringed by a grass verge that had glowing signs with directions to all the different departments, clinics, and services. The emergency room was around to the side, and as a trained EMT who had served on the 499’s rescue squad, this was where she had been brought for treatment.
She had very spotty memories of the trip in the ambulance. The assessment of her arm. Her transfer to an inpatient room.
All she’d been focused was whether Danny had made it out alive.
As she pulled into the parking lot for visitors, her wipers slapped back and forth, offering clear glimpses of the lineups of cars that did not last long. When she parked and got out, she pulled the hood of her windbreaker up and shoved her hands into her pockets.