Something didn’t feel right. His sedan was parked carefully in the driveway.
I set the soup down on the steps and went to the window to peer in.
The inside was dark. The place was a mess—papers everywhere, trash, several meals’ worth of old plates of food on the dining table. Suspicions about DeStasio’s quality of life confirmed: He was not doing well.
That’s when I spotted him at the far end of the living room, laying back in a recliner.
He wasn’t just ignoring me. He was unconscious. The skin around his lips was blue.
When you’ve seen it enough times, you just know.
He’d OD’d.
I ran to grab the trauma kit in my car, and then, before I broke out the window, I went ahead and tried the front door. It was unlocked.Something a firefighter would do—make it easy for the medics when they discovered the body.
I got to him in seconds, and he was bluer up close than he had seemed from the window. There was a note on the table next to him with two words on it:I’m sorry.
I started an IV push of Narcan, which is an antidote to opiates. It’s amazing stuff, really. Seconds after you give it, the patient wakes up—a little groggy, but completely fine. If you give it in time.
That’s what happened with DeStasio.
He opened his eyes. Blinked a second. Took a few deep breaths.
It was that easy.
Then he looked at me. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your life,” I said. “Apparently.”
I picked up his note and showed it to him. If I’d had my mother’s origami skills, I might have made it into a bird.
“That’s private,” DeStasio said.
Underneath the note was a sealed envelope addressed to Captain Jerry Murphy. I stared at it for a second as I took note of his handwriting: TheTin “Captain” looked like anX.
It was one thing to have guessed it, but quite another to know for sure. I felt a spark of anger burn through me. It had been him. All along.
I held it up. “Is this private, too?”
He studied my face. He could tell I knew. “Get out of my house,” DeStasio said.
“I just saved you. Do you have any idea how lucky you are that I showed up when I did? Another hour and there’d have been no bringing you back.”
“I didn’t want to be saved.”
“Too fucking bad.”
DeStasio looked over at the wall and kept his eyes there.
“You don’t want to be saved? You think you can just take a pass on all your consequences? You almost killed us all. The rookie’s still in the ICU—in a coma.”
“I’ve seen the texts.”
“And then you lied about it. You lied about me, and everybody believed you. The guys believed you. The rookie’s parents believed you, and now I can’t even get into the hospital to see how he’s doing. The captain believed you, and now I’m suspended, and my career’s probably over, and they’ve told me to get a lawyer. But we both know the truth, don’t we?”
“Get out of my house, or I’m calling the cops. You want an arrest on your record, too?”
“Call the cops! I’ve got nothing to lose! What’ll you tell them? ‘A mean lady just saved my useless life’?”
