Somehow, I’m not all that surprised to be roughly shaken awake what seems a mere second later and it just seems a continuation of the pure shittiness of the last year of my life to groggily force my eyes open and discover the dogged Legaspi glaring down at me, hands planted on both hips.   

“Oh no,” I groan and try to roll over.  I’ve apparently gained four or five hundred pounds though, because I can’t.  I am so sleepy and the movie’s finally stopped.  I can’t even keep my eyes open.   

“No way,” she mutters and I’m rolled over onto my back in such a swift movement my head gets left behind and has to catch up with a long lazy nauseating swoop.  I make a sound which can only be described as a whimper.  

Someone is prying one of my eyes open and aiming a very bright light into it and the second that is thankfully over with the procedure is repeated with the other one.  It’s excruciating.   

“I need to know what you took and how many, Sgt.” 

It’s not Legaspi speaking.  The voice is quiet, but very firm.   I try briefly to focus on the person to my left, who is holding my wrist, but it’s too much trouble and sleep is crashing down on me.  I slide away and then I’m rudely dragged back with a slap.  

“Kim,” I hear the unknown person say and there’s such a wide range of emphatic warning and tempered irritation coupled with fondness that I’m intrigued enough to get my eyes open a slit.  At least one of them.  Who could put Legaspi in her place so effectively with such economy of syllables? 

A face looms over me; white framed in red, fair brows puckered in concentration over green eyes.  The CIA agent scoots a stethoscope beneath the loose neck of Jase’s shirt.  Her head is to one side as she listens, gaze unblinking off somewhere past me before she frowns slightly and focuses back in.  Apparently she is a Dr. CIA. 

“Sgt. Finn, I need to know what you took and how many.”   

Her voice and eyes inform me she will not tolerate any bullshit or nonsense.   Disobeying or ignoring that voice would be like attempting to evade Sarge.  I try to gather enough of my shredded consciousness to tell her, but I keep sliding down something treacherously slick.   For less than a second I feel slightly panicked that I can’t grab anything and stop the fall, but then I remember I don’t particularly want to be here anyway and stop trying. 

Someone has gripped my wrists and jerks me to a sitting position and not gently.  When I force my eyes open I find my nose is buried in Legaspi’s neck and the red head has a blood pressure cuff on the arm not draped over Legaspi’s shoulders.   

“Vicodin,” a completely different voice suddenly announces.  “Bottle was on the floor in the bathroom.”   

“Vicodin,” Dr. CIA repeats flatly and then she’s prying my eye open again and forcing me to deal with her.  “Was it Vicodin, Sgt. Finn?  How many?” 

 She’s got the bottle now, frowning as she reads the label and then shakes the remainder out into her palm.  I’m sinking under again and she grabs my upper arm and shakes me, demanding, “I need you to focus here.  How many?” and over my head she tells Legaspi,”300 mgs, 30 doses.  Only 2 left.”   

Oh shit.  I realize they think I’ve OD’ed. As in, on purpose.  I work my mouth around trying to get the words out and finally manage a raspy, slurred, “No.  Jus’ want to sleep.” 

“So you took 28 Vicodin?” Dr. CIA demands incredulously and when I swing my head in negation she grabs me by the hair and shakes my head until I focus back in on her.   

“How many?”  

“Six…”   

“With Vodka,” that other voice puts in. “Expensive vodka,” she adds.   

I can tell it’s Legaspi who speaks next because my head has slipped down onto her chest and it vibrates under my cheek.   

“Jin, dial 911.”   

I make a frantically valiant effort then to rouse myself and get my head half up.   

“No,” there’s not a lot of force behind it, but I plow on.  “No hospital.   I just wanted to sleep,”” I repeat and to my horror I realize I’m crying again.  I can feel tears sliding down the side of my nose.  Its three thousand miles and several hours before my hand manages to find my face and flail them off.   

“Mmhmm,” Dr. CIA is not very happy with me. There are reams of concentrated irritation in her voice.   “You have a little problem with insomnia so you took 1800 milligrams of Vicodin with Vodka.”   

“Kerry?” Legaspi’s chest rumbles again.  “Let’s get her in to UCSF.” 

I protest this decision immediately, but I can’t get my shit together enough to even pry my head up off Legaspi’s boobs.  I just keep sliding further over and down.  She grabs my right wrist and hauls me back up onto her shoulder seconds before we become much more familiar than I am comfortable with.  I hear Dr. CIA sigh and I don’t have to have my eyes open to know she’s agreeing with Legaspi.   

“…she’ll be fired.  Suspended at the very least.”  

Finally, the voice of reason.  I’m glad they brought this person along.   

“Kerry?” Legaspi asks again, the question in her voice very clear and I can feel cool fingers taking up my wrist again and then searching out the pulse in my throat.   

“Pulse is slow, but not erratic or weak. A little thready but that could be fatigue.   BP’s decent.  Not great, but decent.”  I can feel the green eyes picking over me and sense she’s on my side for some reason, but Legaspi is, of course, relentless. 

“But it could be a toxic dose.” She says, pronouncing each word separately and sounding as if she is beginning to think she’s the only one in this room in their right mind.  “We can’t take the chance that it’s not.” 

Dr. CIA sighs, heavily.   “Yes.” And to the third person, “Go make the call.” 

How the fuck did this happen?  I just wanted to sleep.  I didn’t ask them to barge in here and conduct a physical.  The only thing… the one thing… I have left is my job and Sarge will never forgive me for traipsing all the way out here to get this stupid.   

“Shit,” I slur and with tremendous effort I actually heave myself up off Legaspi.  I can tell the floor is down there somewhere, but my feet are nowhere near it due to Sylvie Chandler’s huge ass bed.  “I’ll puke them up.  That make you happy?”  

I glare at Legaspi and slap at the hand she’s got around my upper arm, steadying me.  I get my head swung in the general direction of Dr. CIA who I am surprised to find grinning at me.   

“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the words ‘puke’ and ‘happy’ used in the same sentence.” she says, amused.  “I’m not sure I can summon that much emotion for the event.”   

“Personally, it would make me utterly delighted,” Legaspi mutters, “Fucking ecstatic even.” She slides off the bed, managing to slide me with her until I feel carpet under my toes.   

When she swings my arm up around her shoulder again and bends her knees I suddenly realize she is intending to pick me up and carry me. I jerk my arm back and bat at her hands, hoping my frown is more ferocious than groggy.   Legaspi’s is certainly fierce and she shakes her head and crosses her arms under her breasts with an emphatic annoyed grunt.   

“Let her do it,” Dr. CIA says mildly, “If she falls on her head you can rush over and pick her up. Meanwhile, I could use some help dismounting this… thing.”   

I’m not sure I find it very comforting, Dr CIA and the inescapable Legaspi giggling together.   

It’s at least twenty miles to that bathroom.  My legs are at least that far from my head and seem to be bending at five joints I didn’t realize they possessed.  I actually begin to feel like I’m making some substantial progress towards it when I realize it’s because my face is hurtling in slow motion towards the carpet.  Or maybe it’s the floor is tilting up to greet it.  Either way I am about to get rug burns on my forehead and not in anyway I remember being fun,  when the laconic third person pushes off the wall ahead of me and stops my descent with a single hand splayed out across my chest.  I’m gently shoved back upright and the hand kindly stays there until the room stops tilting and my eyes focus on this mysterious benefactor. 

Jinny Exstead grunts and sinks back against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest.  She looks distinctly displeased.  Disgruntled.  Disgusted.  She is all things beginning with “dis” and she glares at me as if I am the source of it all.   

Oh shit.  Like I need some other weird coincidence dumped in to make this whole thing any hinkier than it is.  Now I have the person I’m supposed to think is stealing the evidence, the person I am being spoon fed to investigate, right here in Sylvie’s grand drama of a bedroom, witnessing me supposedly overdosing on Sylvie’s pain pills.  I can’t even begin to come up with anything remotely believable to explain it.  I can’t fathom how the three of them came to be here.  I really want to wake up now so I can beat the fuck out of Kim Legaspi.  Misguided and confused adrenaline jolts through my foggy brain and makes me feel, if possible, even more zonked.   

When I go to shut the bathroom door Exstead neatly stops it with one booted foot.   

“I don’t think so.”  She growls at me and then tucks her hands further up under her armpits and bumps her shoulders around on the wall behind her irritably, looking forward again.  

 “I can vomit just fine alone,” I get out, in almost recognizable English. 

 She laughs, this little rush of air that is very unpleasant.   

 “Oh, I’m sure you can,” she says with probably about as much sarcasm as I deserve right now, still looking straight ahead and bumping her shoulders on the wall, restless.   

Oh fuck.  My head plays it back for me.   

“…she’ll be fired.  Suspended at the very least.”  

She knows I’m a cop.   

Suddenly I feel very, very sick.  I barely get the lid thrown back and my head over the gleaming black toilet before I’m violently rid of all that nice Vicodin.   

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, when I can think past how much worse the Vodka was in reverse, I realize that only a very, very small part of me is sickened or upset that Exstead’s knowing I am a cop means my investigation of her is now toast and I have gone to great lengths to fuck this one up and it’s doubtful even Sarge will be able to get me out of it without the help of Legal and maybe not even then.  I’ll deal with that when I’m back in Texas.

 What I can’t stand, what I can barely tolerate skipping around even the outermost boundaries of, is that she thinks I am this kind of cop; an overdosing, puking, whiny fuck-up. 

 END OF SIX

{~> Crossroads  Next Story, Please <~}