He laughs. “You could say that. We both are. But Rev…he’s not justgoodat it—he’sfreakishlygood at it. Always has been. Even before we joined the Marines, we were…our lives were not safe or good or peaceful. We were in a gang, if you want the truth. It was a lifestyle that kept us alive, kept us fed, gave us somewhere to live, a group of people to be with. Came with a lot of shit I regret doing, but it was sorta the only choice we had at the time.”
I wait, and drive. The hospital is ahead—I see the bulk of it, the lights, the signs.
“You were an orphan, and homeless.”
“Rev and me, we were just kids. Little fuckin’ kids tryin’ to survive on the streets of New Orleans on our own. The guys in our gang, they took us in, adopted us, so to speak. We never fully accepted some of the shit the gang was into, I dunno why. Seems like we both just have a bit of a stronger moral compass, I guess. We had no problem scrappin’ for territory with other gangs. That shit was…equal, if you get what I mean: they wanted our patch, we wanted theirs. We all knew the score. We’d move drugs, sell ’em, lean on people who didn’t pay, shit like that. But Rev and I never felt comfortable knocking over stores or gettin’ in on drive-bys or any of that kinda shit. They also started to get into moving girls. Pimping, transporting, outright selling. That shit wasn’t cool with us, and it’s why we ended up in the Marines. We were forced to make a choice between letting shit go down that we were not in any way, shape, or form okay with, or do something about it and go against the gang that had taken us in and given us a life.”
“You chose door number two,” I state.
He nods. “Yeah. Sucked, hard. But we did it.”
“I can’t imagine.” I look at him. “And that’s not weak either.”
“I want it, Annika. Tweak. Right now, I want a bowl. Mentally, I fuckin’wantit. I don’t think I’ll nevernotwant it. In equal measure, I’m fuckin’ scared out of my goddamn mind of it. Because I know—I fuckin’knowthat shit will…”
“It’ll win,” I fill in for him, when he trails off. “It always wins. It demands all or nothing. There’s no once in a while, no just a little bit. We’ve got a choice: use and die or stay clean.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“I get it, Chance. And it’s not weak. Addiction like that is no fucking joke. And it’s not weakness.”
“If I had it in front of me right now, I can’t guarantee I wouldn’t use.” His voice is ragged.
“Same.”
“You drove a car full of it.”
“And the only thing stopping me was knowing I’d get caught, and if I get caught, I’ll get killed. And knowing the guys Alvin deals with, getting shot in the face will only happenaftera bunch of other horrible stuff. I guess for now, the fear of getting gang-raped and shot is stronger than the need for a hit. Also, I’m every bit as terrified as you are of what I’ll become if I go back to that shit.”
“I guess that’s fair,” he says, a note of bitter humor in his voice.
“You said you were born addicted…” I say, leading.
He points at the hospital, ahead of us. “We’re here. We can continue this later.”
“Will you, though?”
He just looks at me as I pull to a stop in a parking space in the ER lot. “Probably.”
“Let’s go get you some stitches,” I say, sliding out of the expensive SUV.
I close the driver’s door, shuffle to the back door, hold on to the car for balance, grab my bag and my cane, then blip the locks. Chance has waited for me, standing by the front right quarter panel. He’s still shirtless, the thick pad of paper towel duct taped around his shoulder and back—the wad is more red than white now. The cut on his arm is seeping as well, but not as badly as the one on his chest.
“You’re still bleeding, Chance.”
He nods. “Yeah, it’s a pretty bad cut. Let’s get in there and get this shit done.”
The ER is busy, some of the folks with worse injuries than Chance’s, others less so. He’s taken to triage in fairly short order when they see the amount of blood he’s still losing.
I sit in the visitor chair in the room with him—he looks comically huge on the paper-lined table, his feet flat on the floor. Only a slight crinkling hardness at the corners of his eyes and a tightening of his mouth shows that he’s feeling anything at all.
“You’re surprisingly calm,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “Been hurt worse. Doesn’t exactly tickle, but it’s better than gettin’ shot.”
I look at him, eyes wide. “You’ve been shot before?”
He snorts. “Hell yeah. More than once. Ran in a notoriously violent street gang, and then I was an infantry soldier in the Marines andthenI was a Special Forces operator. Rev and I fought in some of the worst battles in Iraq, and that wasbeforewe made Force Recon. You don’t see as much combat as I have and not get injured at fuckin’ all.”
