Hero Rising (11 page)

Okay, maybe he was on his third large Ricardo’s beer mug. That statement was crude, even for Steve’s standards. “I’m not in the mood, brother. I had a bad day,” I said, giving Steve fair warning: no more career jokes.

“Sorry, man. I’m just giving you a hard time.” Steve looked at me, concerned. We had been best friends for years, and he knew if I was to make a statement like that, then I really had a bad day. He knew I could take a lot of shit. I came here tonight to forget my job, not to be reminded what a high failure rate I had in helping people.

“No worries, man. You didn’t know,” I said, steering the fun back into the night.

“Anything you want to talk about?” Steve asked with a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

“Not really. Let’s just watch some football.”

“Raider Nation, baby,” Steve snickered at me.

“Raider Nation, my ass. Peyton Manning is going to take the Faders to town tonight.” Now, this was the type of shit-talking I meant. Good, clean shit-talking about teams we had nothing to do with.

The waitress came up to our table, and she was a new girl. Steve and I came here all the time, and we both had had some luck in getting waitresses to come home with us and well, you know...play Trivial Pursuit. This was definitely fresh meat.

She walked up to me and said, “What can I get you?” She looked like a bikini model from one of the beer advertisement commercials. She had brown hair and was built like a supermodel. Damn, she was hot.

I quickly looked at Steve and gave him a look that said, ‘Are you fucking kidding me? The new waitress is this smoking and you didn’t let me know?’

“I’ll have an order of sweet and sour wings and a MGD,” I said, and gave the gorgeous waitress a confident smile.

“A glass or the large mug?” she asked, not even looking up at me.

I looked at her name tag. “Well, Wendy, I’ll have the large mug.” Wendy had beautiful green eyes. She had some meat on her bones, but it didn’t matter, because it looked as if it was in her boobs. I’m by no means a pig, but I love a beautiful woman. I’m a pretty handsome guy, or at least that’s what I’ve been told. I have that smoldering squint thing going on. Not because I was mysterious and James Dean-like. It was more I needed glasses, too vain to wear them, too scared to have laser surgery, and too weirded out about sticking contacts in my eyes.

There wasn’t a ring on Wendy’s finger, but I was sure she never made eye contact with me. I needed to see if at least there was some attraction on her part. I have light brown hair and green eyes. I was thin, but it was a muscular thin. At my age, I’m a catch and I knew it. I have a great job, and my only vice is betting. Plus, I’m one charming dude, so I have been told.

“All right, sweet and sour wings and a MGD in a large mug,” I said to Wendy. Okay, maybe my second vice was drinking, but I kept it under wraps. Wendy never looked me in the eye. She walked away and took the order to the kitchen. She never knew what she had missed. I looked at Steve, who had gotten back to work on his nachos as if he would never eat again. “What was that about? She never once looked at me.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah, she’s a hard ass. That’s why I didn’t say anything. She has zero flirt in her waitress arsenal.”

“Doesn’t she understand that the way she gets drunk thirty-year-olds like us to give her an obscene tip at the end of the evening is by flirting? Because we don’t know any better and we just might think we have a shot, so we throw down an insane tip?”

“I don’t think she cares,” Steve said. “She has been told she’s hot all her life and she only comes up for air if she’s really interested.”

“Well, that’s just dumb business practice,” I said. “I don’t care how thorough of a waitress she is; she would only be getting 15 percent. The bare minimum I give is 10 percent and that’s when I get shitty service. I give 15 percent for mediocre to minimal service. I give 20 percent if the person does their job.”

“Huh? I didn’t realize she was a franchise.”

“She’s a franchise in her own surroundings.”

“How so?” Steve asked.

“Can her job take her tips?”

“No, her tips are all hers,” Steve said.

“So if you look at it, inside the realm of her making tips, she has an infinite ceiling, correct? In all reality, her job could pay her eight bucks an hour, but technically, she could walk out of here with two grand each night.”

“That would be some waitress.” Steve laughed. “We’re talking the works. She would have to cut my hair, feed me, and massage my feet, shoulders, and neck. Maybe even pop a couple zits on my back.”

“I’m glad you kept your statement classy as always.”

“I aim to please,” Steve said.

There was a pause at the table. Steve was great at reading silence for what it was. In this case, I was still feeling uncomfortable with the decision I was basically forced to make today about a person I had recently grown very fond of.

“What happened today?” Steve asked. “It’s obviously eating away at you. Let’s talk about it and get it out of the way, and we can watch the Silver and Black beat up some Broncos.”

I shook my head. I really didn’t want to go into it with Steve, but I guess it was bothering me more than I thought. How could it not? I made a decision that ended a man’s life this afternoon. “I had to make a rough decision today. A guy wrote in his bereavement papers that I was to be the one to make the final decision on his life.”

“What does that mean? You were his power of attorney?” Steve asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Wow, that’s heavy. Don’t they need your signature for that?”

“He was an outpatient of mine, and I thought I was signing his weekly report that he turns into his parole officer.”

“Instead, he had you sign his power of attorney paper?”

“Yep.” I looked at Steve and his investigative mind was working on overdrive.

“Who was this guy? Don’t tell it was that Crenshaw character?”

“It was,” I said.

“I told you he was bad news.”

“He wasn’t bad news. He had nobody in this world who gave a shit if he lived or died. He did what he had to do to get me to sign those papers.”

“You really liked that guy?”

“I mean he was no Steve Moss, but he had great qualities, and his addiction was bigger than his will.”

“That’s the difference between you and me, Hunter. You give the average Joe a chance. Hell, you give pond scum a chance. Me? I don’t trust anybody.”

“You don’t trust me?” I asked.

Then Steve gave me a look and said, “I don’t even trust myself.”

“That’s comforting to know: my best friend since freshman year in college doesn’t trust me.”

“Look, I trust you, Hunter. I trust you to show up when you say you’re going to show up. I trust that when you tell me something about your day, it’s the truth. You see, our world... the one you and I live in as friends…isn’t part of that world out there. The one filled with drugs, crime, and homicide. You see, Hunter, when I step into that world, I don’t trust anyone. I just do my job and hope the information I’m getting is correct.”

“What about Munson?”

“Munson is a great guy. But at the end of the day, do I completely trust him? No. You see, he will always have the Shield’s best interest, regardless if he steps outside the lines and gives me information that can help me on a complicated case or not.”

Munson was Steve’s immediate contact on the force. They were constantly doing each other favors. Whenever Steve needed police help, he called Munson. And whenever Munson needed to step out of protocol, if he needed something done that wasn’t necessarily by the book, he had Steve do it. I had met him a few times and he seemed like a genuine cop that cared for people and who wanted to see justice done at all costs.

“Didn’t realize you were such a glass-half-empty guy,” I said to Steve.

“You know exactly what I’m about. Have I ever been the optimistic type?” Steve looked at me as if to say, ‘Come on, we’re talking about me here.’

“Well, anyway,” I said. “Dave, the Crenshaw character, overdosed and was in a coma. Today, I made a decision that ended his life.”

Steve was quiet. This was about as deep and heavy as our relationship would go. “That doesn’t seem fair to you. You’re only a fucking crisis counselor.”

“Only a fucking crisis counselor?” I said, offended. I never felt Steve truly respected what I did for a living. Steve thought it was all about holding hands and singing Kumbaya all night.

“You know what I mean. Listen, Hunter. You know I’m on your side. I know you’re excellent at what you do.”

“Excellent? Really? I’ve had three outpatients die on me just this year. I think I’m pretty lousy at what I do.”

“Don’t be hard on yourself. Most of the time, you’re making beds in a burning house.”

“I know. I’m tired of it.” I paused. “This guy was different, though. I saw him making progress. He was clean for six weeks. It just makes zero sense to me that he would overdose in his apartment. He was starting to have a normal life. I had gotten him a job at the sewage company, and he was making substantial progress. We had him on the right medication, and I truly felt we had it under control.”

“Are you suspecting foul play?”

“Even the police suspect foul play, but they’re just writing it off as a drug deal gone bad. They don’t feel the beating and the overdose are conclusive. They think he got into a fight and went home and felt bad. Then he overdosed.”

“You know, that’s probably what happened.”

“You ever have a gut feeling about something?” I asked, staring Steve in the eye.

“All the time. It’s kinda what I do.” Steve laughed.

“I know there is more here. He was different. I could see it in his eyes. He was making amazing changes. He was clean and was thinking clearly.”

“I can look into it if you want.” Steve looked at me and nodded with confidence. I knew he meant what he said.

The waitress came over to the table and set down my beer and walked away in one continuous motion. She made zero contact with me. Now I was taking this personally. “Did you see that?” I said to Steve.

“Are you sure you haven’t slept with her and didn’t call her back? Because that was pretty blatant.” Steve laughed. He always enjoyed seeing me strike out. In this case, I hadn’t even stepped into the batter’s box.

“You think?” I said. I wasn’t a man-whore or anything. Just a guy who liked to have a good time. I always remembered a face. I took a drink of my beer and sighed. This girl officially thought she was out of my league; therefore she made zero attempt at flirtation. That, or she was in a committed relationship, and was loyal to her dude no matter what.

Steve looked at me and gave me a serious stare. “So, you told them to pull the plug?”

“Yep, I sure did. He had zero percent chance of coming out of it.”

“I’m sorry, man. Look, we don’t have to watch the game. Do you want to go somewhere to get your mind off it, like shoot pool or something?”

“Isn’t that the same thing we’re pretty much doing here?”

“No,” Steve said, “we would not only be watching the game, eating wings, and drinking beer. We would also be shooting pool.”

“Nah,” I said.

“What else will we do? I sure as hell don’t want to go to church and pray about it.”

“I’m just so tired that I’m not there in time. By the time these guys get to me, they are so far gone that it’s hopeless. I wish once I could get there before it happens. Stop someone from doing something awful to themselves and others. It’s not just him. It’s all my outpatients. I feel like I’m not even helping. I just wish that one time I could stop someone from ever getting addicted. Be there at the very beginning.”

As I said those words, something came over my body and the room started spinning. I thought I was about to throw up. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.

“You okay, man?” Steve asked me.

“Yeah,” I said, catching my breath. “I just got a little nauseous there.”

“You’re not having a seizure or anything?”

“You know I don’t have them while I am awake?” I said to my friend, who knew full well about my epileptic sleep paralysis diagnosis.

“Then we won’t shoot pool, but I don’t think you’ll mind me taking the rest of your wings and fries instead.”

“Go ahead,” I said. I pushed my plate in front of Steve and he began his second eating wind. “I’m going to make it a point to look into it first thing Monday morning.” Steve paused and swallowed his food. “You know, stopping someone before they hurt themselves or others is a common thing we all feel in our line of work. We give a shit about people,” Steve said. “It’s a curse. Even in my line of work. People come to me when it’s too late. I would love to be able to talk to families and tell the parents to love their kids better before they run away. Or speak to a man before he makes an impulsive decision to murder or hurt someone. It would be a great job to have that gift. To stop people before awful things happen, but that isn’t the way it works. You and I get called when it’s too late.”

“I know,” I said. “And it sucks. It makes me question why I got my degree in psychology, just to be a drug counselor.”