AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I spoke quietly, but with the entire force of my will behind it. “Let me rephrase it: Go fuck yourself.” This was the closure that I’d been wanting and then some. “I’m not going to steal drugs for you or anyone else, and if you try to start a rumor that says I am, I will Fuck. You. Up.”
He drew back. Maybe he could see in my eyes that I had no fear of him in any way and that I meant every word. Hell, I was dead already. I ate brains, for god’s sake.
“You’re fucking crazy,” he mumbled, but there was no heat in his words.
I allowed myself a small smile. “No. It’s much worse than that. Now please, go fuck yourself. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
It was obvious he wanted to say something else—some sort of stinging retort that would make me reconsider, cause me to doubt myself. But he didn’t. Maybe he knew he’d be wasting his breath.
Slamming up from the table, he settled for storming out of the diner. I didn’t turn to watch him leave. I could hear his muttered cursing as he walked away. A couple of seconds later I heard the ringing of the bell over the front door.
I picked up my fork and continued to eat my pancakes as more and more pieces of memory fell into place. By the time I finished breakfast I knew where to start looking for the rest.
Chapter 32
After checking the styrofoam cooler to be sure everything was still pretty frozen, I headed to the hospital. The volunteer at the front desk was a hundred years old and gave the worst directions ever, but after a number of wrong turns and the interrogation of a cute orderly I finally found the medical records department. I had to pay a copying fee, but ten minutes later I had a stack of papers that comprised all of the records and charts and reports from my visit to the ER two months ago.
Returning to my car, I cranked it to get the AC going, pushed my seat back and started flipping through the papers. There weren’t too many surprises, which was a bit of a disappointment. I wanted to find some sort of confirmation that my memories weren’t completely off the deep end, or that the theory nagging at me was wrong, but the gist of the report was that I’d been brought in suffering from an apparent overdose. No injuries had been noted.
I leaned back in the seat, catching sight of myself in the rear view mirror. I barely recognized myself—but in a kinda good way. My usually frizzy hair was combed and fairly neat. I had no makeup on but instead of looking like death warmed over, I looked . . . fresh. I experimented with a smile and felt an odd pleasure at the resulting look. Sure, I was topped off with brains right now, but even beyond that I looked all right. Pretty good in fact. Cripes, when was the last time I looked in the mirror and was proud of what I saw?
Still smiling, I continued flipping through the papers, stopping when I came to the lab reports. Most of it was in terms I couldn’t understand, but the tox screen had drug names that I recognized. I sighed as I read through the list. It was a wonder I’d never overdosed before. Of course I hadn’t really given a shit about surviving back then. I wasn’t the sort to ever take the step of committing suicide, but I’d sure been trying to do it in a passive way. Story of my life. Or rather, it was the story of my life.
Flunitrazepam. That was a drug I didn’t recognize, but I vaguely remembered Dr. Leblanc muttering something about it when looking through tox reports on autopsies. I frowned. I’d smoked some pot—that was the cannabinoids—and I’d taken a Lortab. And then, of course, I’d been drinking. I’d scored a Percocet from the bartender, but I hadn’t taken anything else except for a Xanax the night before. I was sure of it.
Puzzled, I drove back to the morgue, parked my car in the shade, headed inside and went straight to the investigator’s office. Derrel wasn’t in, but Monica was, her fingers flying across the keyboard in absurd contrast to the painstaking hunt-and-peck technique that I utilized.
I tapped lightly on the doorframe. “Hey, Monica, ya gotta sec?”
She glanced up and gave me a brisk nod. “Sure. What brings you in on your day off?
I settled into the chair in front of her desk, suddenly unsure how to ask what I wanted to know. “Well, I’ve been doing some reading and stuff. Y’know, trying to learn more about this business and all.”
A smile lit her face. “That’s cool. You’re a smart chick. You don’t want to be a van driver forever, I’m sure. Heck, you’d do great as a paramedic or nurse.”
That shocked me out of my train of thought and it took me a second to respond. “Me?” I laughed and shook my head. “Monica, I don’t even have my GED.”
“Pffthh. So what? You could get that in nothing flat. Hell, you could probably pass it right now without even studying. And then you could go train to be an EMT Basic. You could get through that in just a few months.”
“Really? But you’re a paramedic, right?”
“Yep. That’s a two year program, though sometimes there are accelerated programs where you can get it in under a year.”
“Do death investigators have to have medical backgrounds?” I asked, suddenly intrigued at the thought of having an actual career.
She shook her head. “This particular office likes for us to have medical background since it makes it easier to understand stuff and work with the pathologist, but it’s not a requirement.”
I sat back, thoughts whirling. I didn’t want to be a van driver forever. I was tied to the morgue because of the access to brains, but what if I went to school for other stuff so that I could be an investigator? That would be more money, I’d still be where I could get to the brains, and—
“So, did you have a question for me?” Monica asked, yanking me back to reality.
“Oh, yeah, sorry.” With difficulty I wrenched my train of thought back onto its tracks, filing away the thought of becoming an investigator for another time. “How hard is it to overdose on alcohol and painkillers like, say, Percocet or Lortab?”
She spread her hands and grimaced. “Wow, that depends on a lot of factors. Weight, health, medical history, you name it.”
“But say someone healthy and normal had a couple of beers, and just had one Perc and one Lortab, that wouldn’t be dangerous, right?”
She pursed her lips. “Without repeating my earlier bit about all the other factors, I think it’s unlikely that someone in good health could OD on that alone.”
