Chapter 8 - The Relapse of Riley
Tommy’s face drained of color. "You called them."
"I didn't," I said, truly stunned.
Tommy didn't wait to find out. He turned, tore the back door open, and sprinted down the porch steps into the blackness of the yard, disappearing over the back fence just as a cruiser screeched to a halt at the front curb.
The front door burst open. It wasn't Detective Miller.
It was Ryan.
He was panting, his eyes wild, his knuckles raw and bleeding. Behind him, two uniform officers stood on the porch, their hands resting on their holsters.
"Laurie!" Ryan shouted, running into the kitchen. "The hospital called! You have to get back there right now!"
The skillet dropped from my hands, crashing onto the counter. "What happened? What’s wrong with Riley?"
"The Narcan wore off," Ryan cried, grabbing my shoulders, his hands shaking violently. "She crashed. She went into full respiratory arrest ten minutes ago. They had to intubate her. They're moving her to the pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s!"
The floor dropped out from under my feet.
The half-life. Dr. Chen had warned me. Fentanyl binds tightly to the lipid tissues, slowly leaching back into the blood long after the naloxone is metabolized by the liver. Riley’s tiny body had succumbed to the secondary wave of the poison.
I didn't speak. I shoved past the officers on the porch, leaped down the front steps into the torrential rain, and threw myself into the passenger seat of Ryan’s truck. Ryan slammed the driver’s door, threw the transmission into reverse, and tore away from the curb, leaving the patrol cruiser in a shower of gravel and water.
"Did you take them?" I screamed over the roar of the engine, tears blurring the windshield into a smear of red taillights. "Did you sign for stolen drugs from the station, Ryan? Did Tommy tell the truth?"
Ryan kept his eyes glued to the rain-slick highway, his hands gripping the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned. "I didn't steal anything for myself, Laurie. Tommy was stealing the department supplies and swapping them with pressed fakes so the lockbox audits would balance out. When I found out, he told me that if I blew the whistle, he’d tell the chief I was using. I was terrified. I signed the inspection logs to cover my own ass because I couldn't afford to be tested."
"You let him keep the fakes in the station!"
"I didn't know he was carrying them in his jacket today!" Ryan broke down, sobbing uncontrollably as we blew through a red light with his volunteer emergency flasher spinning on the dashboard. "I swear to God, I didn't know! I told him to stay away from the house! When he showed up at Pop’s, I told him to leave, and he said he just wanted to give Pop a birthday envelope! I didn't know he had the stash on him!"
"Riley is intubated, Ryan!" I screamed, pounding my fists against the dashboard. "If she dies, you killed her! You and your cowardice killed her!"
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Ryan didn't defend himself. He just pressed the gas pedal to the floor, weeping in silence as the speedometer climbed into the dark.
***
