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“Damn it, Rayanne,” she muttered, ripping open the packaging for the second dose of Narcan. “Come on, come on.”
In the distance the faint sound of a siren heralded the approach of the paramedics.
Annie felt again for a pulse that came and went, seemingly ducking out from under her trembling fingertips as death beckoned Rayanne Tillis. She tried to spit the taste of vomit from her mouth, then started in again on resuscitation. Another minute and help would arrive. Twelve more breaths.
And then came the organized chaos of the paramedics rushing in with their equipment and taking over with the speed and efficiency of an Indy 500 pit crew. Annie stepped back out of their way as they swarmed on Rayanne.
“What have we got here, Detective?”
“Rayanne Tillis. She’s twenty-three with a history of drug abuse. I found her unconscious about ten minutes ago.”
“What’d she take?”
“I don’t know yet. She’s got a history with opioids. Everything points to that.”
“She looks like a meth head.”
“That, too. Something for every mood.”
“Did you give her Narcan?”
“Two doses. She’s not responding.”
“How long ago?”
“Maybe three minutes since the second dose.”
“Shit, she’s barely got a pulse.”
“Hey, Rayanne, we need you to wake up for us!” one of them said, tapping the side of her face. He repeated Annie’s actions, scrubbing his knuckles on the unconscious woman’s breastbone. Rayanne didn’t respond. “Come on. Come on back to us, girl!”
“She’s going into cardiac arrest. Starting CPR!”
Annie stood and watched, leaning back against a wall, feeling drained and sick and useless as the paramedics worked to save the life of Rayanne Tillis—at least long enough to get her into the ambulance.
She followed them out of the house and watched them load her and go, siren screaming. As the ambulance drove out of sight, the adrenaline crash hit her. Feeling suddenly weak and lightheaded, she leaned over the rickety porch railing and threw up, her stomach trying hard to turn itself inside out as everything that had happened replayed through her mind at a dizzying speed.
She needed to sit down, but she needed to get the taste out of her mouth more as her stomach rolled again and again. She walked to her car on wobbly legs and fell backward into the driver’s seat, bent over with her forearms on her thighs, breathing through her mouth, trying to slow her respiration as another wave of nausea crashed over her. She was both sweating and cold, and her pulse throbbed in her head like a drumbeat.
She had to go back inside to search for the drugs Rayanne had taken, but she needed a minute to gather herself. She grabbed her water bottle from the passenger seat, rinsed her mouth, and spat intothe grass again and again, trying unsuccessfully not to think about her resuscitation efforts and the taste of Rayanne Tillis’s mouth.
“You better live, Rayanne,” she muttered, digging through the little travel kit she kept in the car for the tiny toothbrush and miniature tube of toothpaste. “I don’t want to think I did that for nothing.”
She was in the middle of brushing her teeth when Danny Perry arrived. She watched him walk up like some character in a TV cop show in his tailored uniform and mirrored sunglasses, wondering if he practiced that walk in a full-length mirror when he went home at night.
“Detective Broussard,” he said, posing like an action figure a few feet in front of her. Backlit by the sun, the frosted tips of his spiky hair looked like little white flames atop his head. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Annie rinsed her mouth and spat a few inches away from the toes of his boots. “Help what? What are you doing here?”
“I heard the call on the radio.”
“Really? Where were you? Baton Rouge? The ambulance has been and gone.”
“How’s Rayanne? Is she all right?”
“No, she’s not all right, you numbskull,” Annie barked. “She OD’d. She died on the floor and had to be revived. I don’t know that she’ll make it.”
“Oh, man, that’s terrible.”
