Back to Trek. An alien badass had infiltrated one of the crew. Keller sipped her soda and flipped through accumulated mail. She made a two-inch thick mound of junk and flyers for recycling and set aside a couple of bills she’d get around to paying in a day or two. But the bad news was miraculously small. A single thick letter from her lawyer.
The doorbell rang and her heart rate spiked.
Fuck.
She had inherited the acreage from her grandfather. House, stable, and some outbuildings. Nothing special, but before this it had always felt like a peaceful and remote retreat between small-town Drumheller and big-city Calgary. A place where she could lock the doors and read for days and live off frozen pizza till the world demanded her attention again.
Now she felt a surge of fear. Now the isolation made her feel vulnerable.
Is there a big bad wolf knocking at the door?
Her lawyer, between expensive discussions with the Alberta College of Paramedics about her license and the Crown Prosecutor about her heroism/criminality/freedom, had mentioned the press might try to contact her when she got out of Summerview.
The doorbell rang again. She slid up to the edge of the window, peered through the half-closed blinds. A familiar black Dodge Ram truck was parked askew in the driveway.
Worse than a journalist. A friend.
Kate Lang stood on the doorstep with three huge dogs at her feet. The husky, the blond lab, and the shepherd mix—Drax, Rocket, and Groot—were jumping and bouncing off each other with an excitement normally reserved for promises of a walk or cookies. Their doggie brains must retain memories of their last visit to Keller’s place, when she’d barbecued cheeseburgers. The dogs had eaten well.
Last summer. About the time her doctor had stopped writing scripts and she’d started buying her own fentanyl. About the time she’d started shunning her friends, scared they would know somehow, scared of what they would say if they found out.
No more worrying about that.
There were tears in Keller’s eyes by the time she cracked the door. The dogs levered it fully open and energetic canine bodies, all clamouring to be the first to knock her down and lick her face, surrounded her. Then Lang was calling them off and they bounded past Keller as if they owned the place, the way they had owned the place, in her previous life.
“Hey, kiddo.” Lang smiled wide and took Keller into a hug. She smelled of soap and horses and dogs, the scents of Lang’s own acreage south of Calgary. “How’re you doing?”
Keller shrugged as she eased out of the embrace and gestured for Lang to come in. “Day at a time, you know.”
Lang did, Keller knew. An ACP herself, about five years prior, Lang had been riding nightshift in south Calgary and been dispatched to three—count ’em, three—suicides in a single day. The last one had been an abused sixteen-year-old who’d hanged himself in his closet. She’d nearly quit as a result and began six months of pretty serious drinking soon after, joking in the bar one night after several shooters and too many beers: “I don’t have a drinking problem. I have No problem with drinking.”
It’d been funny then, when Keller had been a pretty good drinker herself, before she began to focus all her energies on fentanyl. But not long after that joke, Lang began to drop hints about “not being around forever,” and Keller had managed to persuade her to begin therapy. She’d been doing better by the time Keller was on her way down her own rabbit hole and turned her back on their friendship.
They watched the dogs moving from room to room, reacquainting themselves with the place.
“Sorry about the boys,” Lang said.
“You kidding?” She reached out and squeezed Lang’s shoulder. “Thanks for coming by.”
“Thought you could use some canine decompression therapy.” Lang looked at Keller from under her brow. “Figured if I called you, you might say no or just not answer.”
“Probably right.” She gestured for Lang to sit.
The dogs were way ahead of her, already struggling among themselves for control of the couch. Lang elbowed them off and sat.
“Coffee?” Keller asked. “Have to be black, though.” If there was milk in the fridge, it would have ripened into swamp sludge by now.
“Coke or something, if you have it.”
“Pepsi, girl. Never Coke.”
Keller fetched them each a glass from the kitchen and dropped onto the opposite end of the couch. Lang took a long drink as Keller tossed some dog cookies she’d found in the pantry toward the pack, now settled in an indecipherable pile in front of the couch.
“Some things never change,” Lang said.
“And hopefully some do.”
Lang tilted her head to one side. “Anything you want to talk about, we can. You want to talk about. I didn’t come here for stories. Just to give you a hug and see if you need anything.”
Lang had been her first partner after Keller graduated as an Advanced Care Paramedic. Together they’d been puked on, run cardiac arrests, and, on one memorable night, had shit thrown at them by a psychotic patient gone off his meds. What Keller remembered the most, though, was the time they’d cried in each other’s arms after being called to a farm where a fourteen-year-old boy had shot himself in the head with a rifle.
The scene was ugly enough, but what had devastated Keller most was the family’s reaction. The father with chest pain, the mother screaming as though she would never stop, the two sisters alternately crying and cursing their dead brother. It was like watching a thresher tear the family apart.
Lang had said it so well later. “Suicide kills a lot more than one person. It’s like a poison. It can get into anyone that gets too close.” She’d tapped Keller on the chest. “Don’t let it get into you.”
Had that been the start of everything? It was hard to tell. Being in EMS was like being a boxer. No one knew precisely how many fights it took before the punches started tearing you up inside. One big hit might devastate you, or a thousand tiny strikes—barely noticed at the time—might wear away all your defences over decades till you couldn’t keep the nightmares and the ghosts out anymore. The only certainty was that no one—no one—was immune.
“Do I need anything?” She felt confused. Everything she needed was in her past. How was she supposed to reach back and get it? She looked around. “I think I want to curl up in the fetal position for a few weeks.” A laugh burbled out of her. “You think maybe I could just stay here, make a living selling shit on eBay, order my groceries on Amazon?”
“It’ll get better,” Lang said. “Give it time.”
“Yeah.” She looked away. “How’re you doing these days?”
“I’m okay.” The words shot out of her like a reflex, a pain response.
Lang had been on the job a decade longer than Keller. She’d seen more… much more. And seen it in an era that had little acquaintance with the notion of post-traumatic stress disorder. Worse, in an era that had dismissed it, had emphasized disregarding emotional trauma of any kind and had shaken it off, laughed it off, with black humour. Lang had told her about the time one of her partners had turned to her at a motor vehicle crash with two dead bodies on the road and joked about wiping the bits of skull and blood off her jacket.
“You sure?”
Lang smiled at her. “We’re talking about you, girl. Don’t worry about me. I’m A-okay.”
“Just asking.”
Groot rose from the pile of dogs, came up beside Keller, and plopped his head in her lap, looking up at her plaintively. He was an eight-year-old shepherd mix that Lang had adopted from a rescue society. His right ear was normal and stood straight up but his left was canted rightward, as if he were perpetually sending semaphore signals. He licked at Keller’s hand, a rumbling in his throat.
“I think he really does remember the cheeseburgers,” Keller said.
Lang chuckled, eyeing first the dog and then Keller. “You get any closure on all the— On what happened?”
Keller ran a hand over Groot’s h
ead. “The guy…” The guy I killed. “He had trouble with the cops when he was a teenager, they told me. ‘Sexual interference’ with a little girl. He was a juvenile, so records were sealed. He lived on the family farm, but after his parents died, he quit farming and started working as a security guard. Probably had a badge and everything.”
“Hell, you can buy those on eBay.”
“Girls thought he was a cop. He had a van, I guess.” Keller wondered about it as she said it. A van and a partner, the girls had said. “Once he got them inside…” She felt tears coming, imagining for the thousandth time the terror they must have felt. Last she’d read on Google, the RCMP had been back to the acreage twice with cadaver dogs and methane probes, but they’d made no announcements about bodies.
Her eyes flashed to Lang and she saw the other woman’s face crease as she absorbed whatever pain she saw in Keller’s expression.
“Do you know what happened to those girls you saved?”
Trust Lang to push the positive.
“Not sure. Two went back into foster care.”
Lang nodded and stroked Groot’s head, and was rewarded with a satisfied groan from the mutt.
Keller swallowed hard and looked away. That’s interesting. Why did you lie to her?
The truth was, Nolan’s sophomoric I just can’t deal with all this, it’s not you it’s me, I need some distance text was not the only one waiting on her phone when she’d powered it back up. There was another message, a message that could only have come from Robin, who’d obviously remembered Keller’s number.
Hey smoke eater hope you’re well and no one’s giving you too much shit. I’m okay. Living with u of c friends/working starbucks. Text if u can/want to
The message had been sent two weeks before Keller got out of Summerview but she still hadn’t replied. She hadn’t yet figured out what she wanted to say, or even if she should say anything. And now she didn’t know why she wasn’t telling Lang about it either. Maybe she felt protective of the girl, or maybe she just didn’t want to introduce another complication to the afternoon.
Keller had both hands wrapped around Groot’s ears now, rubbing. His black eyes were hooded, absorbed in the sensation. “Good boy, aren’t you?”
Lang smiled. “He had a lot of bad years. I think he knows enough to appreciate the good moments in life.”
“Yeah… I wish I could be like that again.” Keller raised a hand and circled it over her chest. “I feel like there’s something wrong inside me now. Like a piece of machinery is broken… You know how many messages I had on my phone from real people when I plugged it in?”
Lang shook her head.
“Three emails from my lawyer, two from the registrar of the College of Paramedics—haven’t opened those yet—and nothing else. There were a half-dozen others the first week, from people on my shift, mostly. Nothing in the last two though.”
Lang sighed. “People are stupid. They don’t know what to—”
“It’s not them. It’s me. I cut myself off. You know it’s true.” Groot nudged at her hands—Don’t forget what your primary function is—and she went back to scratching his ears. “I have no—” She smiled, eyeing Lang. “I have very few friends left.”
“Still one or two out there, though.” Lang grinned. “Not me, of course.” She motioned to Groot. “I only came because the dogs wanted a visit.”
Keller laughed. “Best kind of friends for me. Ones that can’t talk back.”
“You’d be surprised.” Lang paused. “Give it time, dickhead. Things will get better. Just maybe not today. Tomorrow’s always a possibility though.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“Yeah, well, I am pretty smart.” Lang looked around the room, taking in the dust and the dead plants. “Looks like you’ve got a few things to keep you busy, but any word on coming back to work?”
“Not if Grainger has anything to say about it.”
Lang winced.
Keller had been quietly suspended from Alberta Health Services EMS two days after what her platoon supervisor, Drew Grainger, had called “the incident.”
Grainger had pretended regret at suspending her, but there’d been a smile lurking around his lips as revealing as a flipped T wave on an ECG.
Eight years prior when she’d still been pretty green, he’d subbed in for Lang one night. She’d heard about his reputation with women, that he made remarks and was “a little touchy.” But she’d tried to be nice, get along. The result, as they were coming off shift the next morning, was him cornering her in an equipment room and pushing her up against the wall, one hand on her ass and the other cupping her breast as he tried to kiss her. She’d struggled out of his grip and charged out of the building.
It’d taken her time to realize she ought to have reported it. But back then she’d been too new, too embarrassed, even wondered if she was somehow to blame.
Eight years later, Grainger was a paramedic bucked up to management because no one wanted to partner with him—Drew Grainger the Lone Ranger. That he was incompetent was the least of it. He was an asshole too. Any good paramedic could cope with one or the other in a partner, but both?
“So,” Keller said, “not quite sure about going back to EMS.” How would it be, working as a medic again? She’d already ridden through several nightmares in which Jonas had starred, brains leaking out of his head. Would working again make it worse? “Kind of doubt they’d want me back, anyway. That whole ‘murdering someone on a call’ thing, you know?”
“Don’t you goddamn say that. You were assaulted and you fought back.” Lang’s angry tone startled not just Keller but also Drax and Rocket, who rose to their feet and ran to the window, looking for some unseen adversary. Groot whined and trotted over to join them, barking tentatively.
“I—”
“That’s it, that’s all, Ash. That shit heap was going to kill you. Worse. And those girls. You’re a goddamn hero. And I’m not the only one who thinks that, dickhead. You haven’t read the news much, have you?”
Keller shook her head. “I don’t want to.”
“No one is crucifying you. Quite the opposite.” She caught Keller’s skeptical look and shrugged. “Well, mostly. Nothing’s a hundred percent in life, is it? Most people think you’re a pretty stand-up gal. Anyone on the street who matters does.”
Keller arched an eyebrow and reached for the mail. “Want to see what the law and the College say about us heroes?”
Lang kept quiet, beckoning the dogs away from the window as Keller tore open the envelope from her lawyer and read through it.
The words swam in her mind.
This can’t be right.
A heaviness formed in her chest and pressure swelled in her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks and she leaned forward with her head in her hands, the letter falling to the floor.
“What?” Lang grabbed for the letter as the dogs crowded around Keller, who watched as Lang scanned it.
How can they?
But it was an age of forgiveness, wasn’t it? An age for rehabilitation. Keller was only one of a wave of people caught in the grinder of addiction and PTSD. She’d never wanted to be an addict. Never wanted to hurt anyone.
Or kill anyone.
“Ash, this is great fucking news.” Lang clutched the letter with both hands, reading it aloud. “This is to confirm this office’s receipt of notification from the Crown Prosecutor that no charges are currently contemplated against Ashleen Keller with regard to the incident on… yada-yada-yada.” Lang knelt before Keller, pushing the dogs aside and laughing. “This is good news, shithead. You are a hero.” She slapped at the letter. “And they know it.”
Keller laughed, tears rolling down her face as Drax head-butted her and tried to lick them away. “Cost me ten grand to find that out. Bet you that letter was two hundred alone.”
Lang shrugged. “So you’ll work some overtime shifts.”
Keller’s laughter evaporated. “I don’t even know if I can go
back. Bad dreams, you know? And it’s Alberta Health Services, after all. AHS doesn’t particularly encourage medics to run around overdosing people with illegal—”
“Hey.” Lang leaned forward and placed a hand over Keller’s. “That’s a different thing. If the job hurts you, you have to make a choice. No one could blame you.”
Keller said nothing and Lang’s gaze moved to her laptop. “Might as well check those emails, kiddo.”
“Oh my god, I think I’m remembering why I cut myself off from my friends.”
Lang pursed her lips, then mouthed, Asshole.
Keller shook her head. “Okay, okay.” She booted up the laptop and reset the Wi-Fi router—Netflix later, yay—then navigated to her mail program and read through the emails from the College of Paramedics, her face blank.
Lang waited, watching until Keller met her gaze.
“They’re… I let Summerview send them reports,” Keller said. “They want me to continue with a psychologist, and I’ll be piss tested for years if I do go back… But damn it, they’re being supportive. Very supportive.”
“See. You’re not alone, kid.”
Keller was still reading. “They’re going to give me my license back.” She said it with the wonderment of someone discovering they’d won the lottery.
“Screws with your mind when the world turns out nicer than you expect, huh?”
Twenty-One
September 20
Keller woke suddenly, the damp sheen of perspiration on her skin gleaming in the moonlight shining through her bedroom window.
The bedside clock blazed in the half-light. 0312… Welcome to tonight’s episode of insomnia.
In Summerview, for the first few days at least, they’d given her sleeping pills. But they hadn’t written her any scripts to go home with. Addict after all. She had her own sleeping pills, of course—legitimate prescriptions that she’d hoarded over the years. But she’d decided to forego any tonight to see if she couldn’t start some good habits, a sound sleep in her own bed being the first.
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