The Nightlife San Antonio: (Urban Fantasy Romance) (The Nightlife Series) (2 page)

The hospital admins scrutinized every death, and they were not a forgiving sort. They paid him to save people, not transport corpses.
The last three stiffs he’d brought in were looking pretty sad on his tally.

“Not this one.”
Please
.

The
EMT courses taught him to assess the situation, to treat each body like a set of vital statistics, doing whatever it took to stabilize those statistics, keep them alive until they reached the ER. They said paramedics experience the absolute worst of everything in the medical field–the worst injuries, the worst working conditions, the longest, hardest hours. It was a given that most guys burn out after a few years. They told him over and over, “Faulkner, just do your best, try to stay emotionally detached from the situation.”

If only people knew just how emotionally detached he really was.
Be fired for sure
,
probably sent to another shrink.

On rare occasion
, there were situations where he did get caught up in the moment. This woman had been floating in the periphery of his mind since they handed her stretcher to the doctors at the start of his shift. The memory of her words, that creepy fatalistic sound of her voice, the intensity of her too dark eyes and pale skin, the delicate lines of her collar bone and chin. A woman like that should not die so young, so beautiful, at the height of her life. It felt wrong. What a waste.

Adrian hesitated at the door
to the ICU, a spike of anxiety stabbing in his chest. The thought of her death on his hands bothered him, more so than anyone before her. He had to know her fate before he went home. He wouldn’t be able to sleep off the day without knowing what had happened.

He sp
otted one of the nurses at the desk, a lady he’d rather not chat with, but she would certainly know the woman’s condition. “Julie, the woman we brought in earlier, multiple gunshot wounds, how’s she doing?”

Jul
ie stopped scribbling on a chart and looked up at him. “You really want to know this time?”

They had argu
ed before, when he’d enquired about another patient, on a night much like this a couple months ago. Julie had rattled off some medical jargon about a boy who had died, and then walked away. He had grabbed her arm and got in her face. He had accused her of things that were better left unsaid in an emergency room. They hadn’t spoken much since.

Adrian studied
Julie’s crystal blue eyes and wished he’d handled that situation differently. With his slick good looks, dark hair and eyes, often mistaken for Latino, he’d had success with plenty of women … but Julie wasn’t most women. He’d hoped to get her out of those scrubs, see what she had to offer. Looked like he’d blown that chance. As always, Adrian pretended to be like everyone else and smiled.

Julie’s
eyebrows softened. She smiled back. She wasn’t a natural blonde, but the color looked good with her swarthy skin and blue eyes.

He moved in closer and dropped his voice to a near whisper.
“How is she?”

Julie stepped aside and pointed. “Why don’
t you see for yourself?”

Instant, glorious relief flooded
him and a genuine grin split across his face. The woman had made it this far. He’d done everything right.

At least he wouldn’t get written up for this one.

He made so many split-second decisions in the field, and not always the right ones. Those were the memories that stayed with him for far too long. It seemed there were never quite enough of the good things to balance out the rest of the shit in his life.

Adrian blew
out the breath he’d been holding and strode into the room. The bright lights and beeping monitors did not diminish her effect on him. Even with her eyes darkened by purple-black bruises and her once glossy black hair matted down on her forehead, looking like shit, she still fascinated him. He guessed her age at around mid-to-late twenties. He really wanted to see her eyes one more time, but, the woman lay stone still, completely out of it.

Lucky to be alive.

He picked up her chart and dug through line after line of all the stuff they had done, all the drugs they pumped into her, the blood and plasma transfusions, the weird-as-hell toxicology report. He couldn’t find what he was looking for – her name. She had no ID cards, hadn’t spoken a word, and no one had shown up to identify her.

What a sad state
of affairs, blasted full of holes in a Mexican drug house, cockroaches and all, without even so much as a name. What the hell was she doing there? A wetback? A prostitute?

No, she was way too … just no. He could
never picture her that way.

He checked her arms. Apart from the IV’s inserted in each forearm, she had no tracks, no evidence of intravenous drug use. Why would a woman like this be found half-dead in a
ghetto ass drug house?

* * * *

Adrian wok
e in the afternoon to the sound of giggles filtering through his bedroom wall. Damn lesbians were always playing with each other. He couldn’t count the times he’d heard those two getting it on. The architect of his apartment complex had placed the neighboring bedrooms back to back, separated by only the thin sheetrock wall, and obviously lacking the necessary insulation.

He had stopped trying to imagine what they were up to months ago
. After Candice got back together with April, she made it clear she no longer appreciated Adrian slipping in through her sliding glass door in the middle of the night anymore.

He’d suggested there was enough to go around
,
share the love
, but Candice only shook her head. “April doesn’t do guys, and she doesn’t share. She’s good to me, and she pays half the rent, so keep that thing in your pants when she’s around.”

He told himself
once again,
find a decent woman and stop fantasizing about girls who would rather play with silicone than have a hairy, stinky man in their bed.

The angry red numbers on his alarm clock blinked
three in the afternoon. Rise and shine. He showered and shaved, hit the Keurig for a fast cup of mocha, and sat out on the balcony patio to survey the grounds below. Some kids got off the bus that stopped in front of the apartment complex. They headed straight for the playground swing set and the yellow spiral slide.

The sliding glass door opened on the left side
and the twanging noise of country music poured out onto the neighboring patio. Crenshaw strolled into the fading light of sunset in a muscle shirt, lighting up a cigarette. “Evening.”

Adrian nodded, looking pointedly at the foul-smelling cigarette
in his tattooed neighbor’s hand.

Crenshaw artfully ignored Adrian’s unspoken irritation.
“Guess it’s morning for you, eh?”

Adrian nodded again. So much for catching
some fresh air.

A squealing noise filtered through the open sliding glas
s door to his right. Candice’s apartment. Adrian rubbed a hand down his face, envisioning all that could possibly happen with him and those two giggling women.

“Now that’s what I call a
ready-made sandwich. Them girls need some meat between their buns.” Crenshaw winked at him.

“As much as I agree with you
, I think the ladies have all their bases covered. I bet they know exactly what they want, and exactly how they want it, far better than we’ll ever know.”

“Yeah. I suppose th
e world needs a few more lesbians. Might slow down the population growth. This place is getting mighty crowded.” Crenshaw’s gaze swept across the hundred odd apartments splayed out in a rectangle around the central pool and swing set. A muscle-bound biker with prison tattoos, he was forever talking about ‘overpopulation’ and government conspiracy theories.

Adrian killed off the last of his coffee and squinted at the swarm of children climbing all over the playground.
“I don’t think women loving women is going to stop them from having kids. There’s always a willing donor around the corner.” Or right next door, on the other side of the two-by-fours and sheetrock.

“Damn straight. I’d donate
‘em so hard, they’d never need a vibrator again.” Crenshaw grabbed his crotch. “These batteries never run dry.”

Crenshaw the macdaddy. G
od’s gift to the women of San Antonio. The man hadn’t gone more than twenty-four hours without getting laid since his release from Dominguez State prison six months ago.

Adrian just
shook his head. He considered himself lucky enough to have the right equipment hanging between his legs, and once in a while he could convince a woman there might be something more to him, but not very often. The lesbians next door pretty much robbed Adrian of any notion of his usefulness to a woman.

He sympathized with the ladies on that one. Why does a woman need a man? To piss all over her toilet seat and leave her knocked up? Adrian had never really
felt the need for people, for a live-in girl, a wife and family. He never wanted the hassles. Mainly, he just wanted to look more normal, like everyone else. Normal guys have girlfriends … not just sex partners.

Crenshaw’
s eyebrows rose up and he looked back towards his apartment. The radio announcer spit out news of yet another Mexican Mafia shooting.
Not again
. Adrian had quit listening to radio news months ago. It all sounded too much like an ambulance call in the making.

Adrian shook his head, recalling too well t
hat woman’s blood on the tile floor, another nameless victim of the drug war. “Damn. Must be some rival gang moving in or something.”

Crensh
aw eyed him and puffed his cigarette. “Territory, man. We’re all just animals fighting over territory.”

“Speak for yourself.” Adrian chuckled.

“Can’t kill each other off fast enough.” Crenshaw smiled back at him. “Not fast enough for me anyway.”

Biker, ex-con, bigot, horn-dog, Crenshaw was a Jerry Springer episode waiting to happen. But he alwa
ys made Adrian laugh. Adrian needed more laughter in his life.

Adrian grinned at the joke that most people would find highly offensive.
“You guys ever get into it with the Mexican Mafia?” Crenshaw had done hard time for running drugs in a local Texas biker gang. His probation officer wouldn’t let him have a bike, but the tattoos exposed by his wife-beater tank top testified to his colorful history.

Crenshaw squinted at him as though trying to figure something. “I ain’t in
to that shit no more. I’m a good boy now, just ask my probation officer. But if I was in it, we’d be mopping those grease stains off the floor. Think they run the whole fucking state.”

Oh god
, not again, not the
when I was locked up
speech…

“When I was locked up in
the Fed joint, they gave the Texans our own tables, our own cells, even our own television. Mexican Mafia didn’t come near us. Not even the Aztecas and Latin Kings fucked with the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.”

“Okay, okay, let’s not go there again. You’
re a badass born from backwoods badassary. I get it.”

Crenshaw smirked
. “No, I don’t think you get it, but I’ll spare you the details.”

“Thank you. I’m pretty sure you
told me the details, repeatedly.”

Crenshaw sucked hard on his cigarette, and squished the butt out in the ashtray on his patio table. “Yeah,
it’s a real game changer. Prison. You’re never the same man afterwards.”

Adrian had no des
ire to think about the things Crenshaw might be alluding to. He simply nodded and raised his empty coffee cup. “Going for round two.”

Crenshaw nodded back. “I’l
l hang here and enjoy the musical sounds of feminine love.”

The
women’s giggling danced out onto the patio again, perfectly timed with Crenshaw’s grin and wink. Adrian snickered and headed back to the Kuerig for another shot of caffeine. These days he was drinking two to three cups a night, and that was before his work shift started.

* * * *

Fire lanced across her ribs as she shifted in her bed. Her tongue felt heavy as lead and stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her mind swam through a syrupy haze of pain and confusion, attempting to comprehend what was happening.
Bullet wounds
. The doctor said something about how many bullets they had removed from her.

She moved again and pain lashed her whole torso from hip
to shoulder. She whimpered.
Morphine
. The female nurse said something about giving her more morphine.

She shouldn’t have morphine. She shouldn’t be in this place, in this bed. This was all wrong. The nurse reached up to the IV bag a
nd clicked a button. “There you go. That’ll help.”