Page 16 of The Session

His stepbrothers and stepsisters treated him warmly enough, more like a distant cousin than inner circle. The management of the ambulance company was kept separate from Mark. To his stepfather’s credit, Byron had encouraged Mark to get his EMT certification in high school and pursue paramedic certification while in college, explaining that guys with half Mark’s IQ managed to get through it, and it was always easy to find work.

While Mark had no great desire to sew up the foreheads of drunks and revive overdosed heroin addicts, it had been the path of least resistance. What Byron had failed to point out was that paramedic work paid well everywhere except in his family’s ambulance company.

The radio crackled, and the dispatcher’s voice called out:

Medic 12, respond priority one for an unconscious person.

Location: 214 West Franklin Street, rear parking lot behind the grocery store.

Adult patient, approximately forties.

Caller reports patient unconscious, breathing at this time.

No obvious trauma reported.

Time out 03:20.

Mark grabbed the microphone and answered, “Medic 12 copies, en route.”

“Daisy’s Den strikes again,” Devon said as he turned on the lights and siren before putting the ambulance into gear.

Daisy’s Den was a strip club just outside the city limits in an unincorporated area. Mark and Devon had responded to multiple calls there, usually for unconscious patrons who got a little too rowdy and ended up getting knocked out by the bouncers.

Six minutes later, their vehicle came to a screeching halt directly in front of the flashing neon sign of Daisy, a rather comically endowed line drawing that had been a local icon since the 1960s. Salvo, a short, stocky man dressed in black pants and a white button-down shirt, wearing wire-rim glasses, stood out front. He was the manager of the club.

“Where is he?” Mark asked as he grabbed his kit from the compartment where he kept the rapid-response medical supplies.

Salvo shook his head. “It’s one of the girls. She’s in the back. I’ll show you.”

Mark and Devon followed Salvo into the dark club. Three drunks sat around an empty stage, and nobody else was in the front. Salvo led them through a curtain into the dressing room, where two girls in robes were kneeling over an unconscious woman with short blue hair. Another girl sat in the corner, recording the entire scene with her phone.

“What happened?” Mark asked Salvo.

“She was onstage, went into the bathroom, came here, and just passed out like that. Her name’s Rebecca.”

“Drugs?” Devon asked.

Mark put a hand on the woman’s neck to check her pulse.

“Rebecca, can you hear me? Rebecca, you okay?” he asked. There was no response. He pinched her lightly and repeated her name much louder. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?” Still no response.

“We’ve got a slow pulse,” Mark said. He took out his penlight and checked her eyes. Dilated.

“Do you know what she might be on?” he asked Salvo, then looked to the other women in the room.

As he waited for a response, he checked the woman’s airway and listened for breathing.

“Fentanyl, probably,” Salvo said. “Isn’t that what you’re into?” he added to the other women in the room.

“I don’t do that cheap shit,” the woman holding the phone said.

“This would all go a lot quicker if you could tell us what she’s on,” Devon told them.

Mark reached down to pull the woman’s jean jacket open and felt a sharp prick on his fingertip.

He jerked his hand back and saw blood trickling out of a hole in the latex. When he looked down, a needle was sticking through the fabric of the pocket.

“Damn it,” Mark muttered.