Fries Before Guys

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Derek rolled his eyes and started to unbutton his shirt.

  There was a wolf whistle from the doorway, and I turned to see that there were four other SWAT team members standing there making raunchy comments and thrusting their hips against the air.

  Derek sighed.

  “I hate my life,” he mumbled darkly.

  My lips twitched as he stripped his shirt off and laid it neatly on the hood.

  The next thing to go was his Kevlar vest.

  Followed by the white t-shirt that he wore underneath it.

  “Why aren’t you in the SWAT pants and t-shirt like them?” I asked curiously.

  Derek looked at the four imbeciles on the steps who were still gyrating their hips, then back to me.

  “I have a court hearing today,” he said. “At court hearings, I have to wear my uniform.”

  I opened up his car door and then pointed for him to get inside.

  He did, leaving one foot to rest on the running board outside the door.

  He had his closest hand resting on the steering wheel, and his head leaned back against the headrest.

  “Switch your hands around so that this arm isn’t blocking the rest of your chest.” I tapped his wrist, right above his big ass watch. “And tilt your head toward me and lean it forward a bit.”

  He did as I asked, and I had to swallow hard to keep myself from drooling.

  “Good,” I said, raising my camera.

  I took more photos than I needed and then made him move and change positions in the seat once or twice even though I was fairly sure that I had the shot that I wanted.

  And oh my God. He was looking at me with those smoldering eyes and I was just about dead.

  “Okay,” I said, stepping back. “I think I got what I needed. Do you want to get your clothes back on?”

  Derek jackknifed out of the cruiser’s cab and jumped down, leaving us quite close because I hadn’t stepped back that far.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said, backing away.

  Only, I caught my foot on the lip of the curb that he was parked next to and nearly fell straight on my ass in my haste to get out of his space.

  He caught me before I could hit the ground and pulled me up until we were almost pressing against each other from chest to knee.

  “Steady,” he rumbled, making my belly flutter with butterflies.

  “Sorry,” I said again, this time taking a step up and back.

  He let me go once he knew I was on solid ground, and the moment he did, I felt like a piece of my soul had left with his hand.

  “Do you like hamburgers?” I blurted.

  Oh my God.

  Why had I just asked that?

  Derek frowned, then nodded. “Yeah, why?”

  “Do you want to eat some burgers with me tonight?” I exclaimed.

  Oh my God. What was wrong with me?

  Had I really just asked him out? On a date?

  Derek laughed, then continued. “I’m sorry, but no. You’re way too young for me.”

  Then he slammed his door closed, grabbed his clothes, and took off.

  Only, when he did, he closed the door behind him that we’d come through, and it was automatic locking after that.

  So when I finally scrounged up the courage to follow behind him, I found it locked.

  Then I had to walk around.

  Meaning that I had to walk past him. Again.

  I slammed into him when he came out the front, making me really fall on my ass this time.

  When he offered his hand, I slapped it away.

  Then got up on my own.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, walking around him and not looking back. I felt his eyes on me as I walked up to the front counter and said, “Hey, Nixie? Can you beep me back? I went out the back way and the door automatically closed. I got locked out.”

  Nixie smiled at me just as I heard a man curse.

  “There you go, dear. That was a long walk!”

  It was.

  It was a long walk, and now I was all sweaty.

  The jerk.

  “Yeah, it was. But I can handle it.” I shrugged. “Thanks, Nix.”

  When I chanced a look back over my shoulder, Derek was nowhere to be seen.

  Thank. God.

  Chapter 1

  Apparently, the library has a limit to how many books you can check out at one time.

  -Nerd girl problems

  Avery

  I wasn’t sure why I was going to this call in particular.

  There were normally places that I was fine with going to by myself. But going to Eleventh Street at dark? Not my best shining moment.

  But after the fourth call went out with no responders, I was forced to go.

  I got my go-bag, the one that I had made up after receiving my EMT basic, and started off.

  When I arrived at the call five minutes later, I looked at the house and knew that what I was about to do was stupid.

  But the guy was unconscious.

  The woman at the curb smiled at me.

  “Hello,” I said, reaching for my bag. “Are you the owner of this place?”

  She shrugged. “Somewhat. Me and Earl share.”

  I nodded. “Okay. Do you mind taking me to, errr, Earl?”

  She scrunched up her nose. “I just lit this up. I’ll be in when I’m done. In the meantime, he’s in the back bedroom.”

  I scratched my head and shrugged.

  I did, indeed, find him in the back bedroom.

  I also found him in a puddle of his own urine.

  Nice.

  After feeling for a pulse, I called in the medics.

  “This is 3443,” I said into the handheld radio I carried around with me on calls. “I have a forty-eight-year-old male who is unconscious. He’s gonna need an ambulance. His pulse is sluggish and I’m getting…”

  I continued to spout off what I knew and was just about to take my blood pressure cuff off when Dax Tremaine walked into the room.

  “Dax!” I said, smiling.

  Except I didn’t think he heard me. Mostly because the man at my side blinked his eyes open.

  And went freakin’ wild.

  I’m talking, bat shit crazy, ‘I’m going to kill everyone that’s in the room’ wild.

  The next few minutes happened fast. And honestly, by the end of it, I had a pounding headache from getting thrown against a wall. Twice. And Dax was slowly getting up to his feet for round eight or nine with this guy.

  The man’s wife sat in the corner of the room, watching the festivities, with a goddamn beer in her hand.

  Just as she was about to reply, none other than Derek Roberts walked through the door and joined the fray.

  ***

  An hour later, I was growling in frustration.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m fine. I just want to go home. I have to be at school tomorrow. It’s already eleven.”

  “You got thrown against a wall, Avery,” Derek said.

  I glared at him even harder.

  “I’ll take you home,” Dax said. “And Derek can follow with your car. But you really should consider getting checked out at the hospital.”

  For the fourth time, I shook my head.

  “Why not?” Derek threw his hands up in defeat.

  I turned to him and glared.

  “Because I don’t have insurance, Derek,” I snapped. “Those things end when your parents die.”

  There was silence at my outburst.

  Pure and utter silence.

  Because Derek and Dax weren’t the only men at the scene. There were other officers, too.

  I immediately regretted my outburst.

  “I’ll take the ride home, though. Thank you,” I said to Dax. “As long as my car does eventually make it back.”

  “I’ll bring it right behind you,” Derek supplied.

  I didn’t bother looking at him.

  I was emba
rrassed.

  Both for what I’d done months ago, and what I’d just said.

  I couldn’t afford health insurance.

  I couldn’t afford car insurance, either.

  Though, I kept that one even though it about killed me every month to pay it.

  My high school was just too far away from where I lived to not drive.

  The ride to my place was silent.

  Dax didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what I could say to make him not ask more questions. Questions that I could see floating around in his head.

  He’d look over at me every once in a while, his mouth open, only to close it when he got a good look at my face.

  “I hear your sister got married,” I said.

  That’d happened a long time ago. Way before my dad had died.

  But I was at a loss for what to say to get him to stop wanting to ask about my family or my situation.

  “Yeah,” he said. “May eighteenth.”

  That freakin’ day.

  I hated the memories that surged to the forefront of my mind.

  Hated even more that I couldn’t hold them at bay.

  They hit me like a flash motion picture, every single detail hitting me all at once.

  ***

  “She’s clinically braindead, Mr. Flynn,” the doctor, someone that had introduced herself but I couldn’t recall her name, said. “As of right now, these machines are keeping her alive. Doing the things for her that her brain would normally tell her body to do on its own.”

  My dad looked blankly at my mother, as if he wasn’t seeing her, but looking right through her.

  “What does that mean?” I found myself asking.

  Movement from behind my mother’s bedside had me glancing up to find a couple of officers standing there. I wasn’t sure who they were, or what department they were with, but they were there.

  The entire hospital was lined with officers at this point.

  One of their own had been hurt.

  So they were here.

  “It means that she wouldn’t be able to stay alive without help. She’s dead, and will not come back from this,” the doctor explained patiently.

  The nurse across the room was wearing a pin on her shirt. It was a pink heart with ‘yes’ printed in the middle of it.

  I’d seen quite a few of the nurses in the hospital wearing it today.

  I wondered why.

  I couldn’t stop myself. I had to find out why.

  That was the weird thing about me.

  I was always so fucking curious.

  Not to mention I had an eidetic memory, as well as what they called hyperthymesia.

  An eidetic memory is sometimes what people would call a photographic memory. After only seeing something once, maybe in an article or a book, I had perfect recall. Someone could show me the 485th page in an encyclopedia, and I could tell them exactly what was on that page, even eighteen years later.

  That’s kind of how the hyperthymesia worked, too.

  I could remember quite a bit of my life experiences in vivid detail.

  Kind of like if someone reminds me of a date, my birthday for example, I could tell you exactly what happened on each of my birthdays since I was about four years old. Down to what I had on my birthday cake, and who gave me what present.

  Which brought me around full circle to the details. The detail of that little heart with the word ‘yes’ in it.

  I’d seen it over a year ago when a boy had been picked up in the office for being sick. The same woman had been wearing it even then.

  “Do you have any more questions?” the doctor asked.

  I looked over at my father, seeing that he still wasn’t with the program.

  Then turned back to the nurse who was yet again looking at the floor, her face sad.

  But not because of my mother.

  Because of something else.

  “What does the pink heart mean?” I asked softly, unable to help myself.

  The woman’s head jerked up. Her eyes met mine, and she opened her mouth, then closed it when the doctor turned around and looked at her.

  “Please?” I pushed.

  I had a feeling that I’d want to know.

  That I needed to know.

  Something was urging me to find out… and I always followed my urges.

  Always.

  “Go ahead,” the doctor said, sounding annoyed.

  The nurse pursed her lips, then opened her mouth and explained.

  “The ‘yes’ means say yes to organ donation,” she said softly. “I had some pins made to help raise some money for my son, who’s dying of a disease that affects his small bowel.”

  I swallowed hard, then looked down at my mother.

  I looked at the doctor then.

  “Is she a candidate for organ donation?” I asked.

  “No.” My father finally decided to come back online.

  “Yes, she is,” the doctor answered my question. “Other than the damage to her brain, her body is overall in perfect health. She’s the most perfect candidate there ever was.”

  His words hit my heart like a sledgehammer.

  God, so hard that it hurt.

  “No,” my dad said again. “No, no, no.”

  I smiled then, looking at my mother’s hand.

  She was wearing the bracelet I’d made her in sixth grade.

  The one with the thin blue line sewn into it that I swore would keep her safe just because I’d made it. I remembered the date I’d made it, too. I’d watched a video how to do it online, then read an article. January 27, 2012.

  When I gave her my homemade gift, she’d just gotten ready for her shift. She had her gun in her holster, and her hair was brushed in an updo that made me want to pull it out and mess it up. Always so prim and proper. She had eagerly added the bracelet to her arm and happily admired it.

  “Do you think everyone can give us a minute to talk privately?” I asked, looking the doctor in the eye. “We need some time to think.”

  The moment they all filed out, my father looked at me with a ferocious glare.

  “No,” he repeated again.

  I pulled up an article online, then skimmed through it.

  I did that over and over again until I knew as much as I could on such short notice.

  Then I decided to out-stubborn my dad.

  “With us donating her organs, she can save up to eight lives,” I said. “She could also help fifty people by donating her tissues.” I paused. “You know that burn case that you worked a few weeks ago? That man could’ve been saved if he’d had a skin donor.” I tilted my head. “Over 123,000 people are currently waiting for an organ transplant.”

  My father covered his face with his hands.

  “Mom told me, two years ago, when I asked why she had become a police officer and she said that she liked to save lives. Dad, she could save lives now. Just like she always wanted,” I whispered.

  My dad didn’t cave easily.

  In fact, it took almost all of the next twenty-four hours to convince him, but eventually he did.

  Which led us to where we were right then.

  “Ready?” the nurse who’d been wearing the pink heart pin asked.

  She was wearing it today, too.

  And she had one in her hand, holding it out to me.

  I took it, looked once at my mom, then pinned it to her gown.

  “I know you’re going to have to take that off here in a minute,” I said. “When you get there, save it for me.”

  She nodded her head. “I will.”

  I smoothed my mom’s hair off of her face.

  She would’ve hated looking so disheveled.

  I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her forehead.

  It was battered and bruised.

  The man that hit her? His bumper had hit her on the head.

  She had an imprint of his license plate on her f
ace.

  I smoothed my fingers over her closed eyelids, then swallowed hard.

  “I can’t do this,” I said, shaking my head.

  My father’s head jerked up in surprise.

  “Someone help me,” I ordered. “She can’t be seen like this.”

  There was confusion for a few seconds, then two large hands were there, helping me sit her up.

  The breathing tube in her throat made it almost impossible to do, but eventually I had her hair braided and tied off with a rubber band that’d come from someone.

  We laid her back down, and I smiled.

  “There,” I said softly, my voice thick. “Now you’re beautiful and perfect.”

  I felt a tear slip down my cheek, and it landed on her face, sliding down her neck.

  I closed my eyes, then took a step back.

  “I love you, Momma,” I whispered. “The first time that you told me that, was a day I can’t remember. But I’ll never forget today. I’ll never forget the last time that I told you.”

  I stepped back even farther, then gestured for the two women, both in scrub hats, standing there ready to push the gurney to the operating room. “We’re ready now.”

  So that was how we ended our day. May Nineteenth.

  The day that I would remember forever.

  My dad and I walked, hand in hand, down the length of the hallway behind my mother’s stretcher that was being pushed by the two women.

  A woman that I’d requested to take care of my mom, even though she wasn’t usually one that worked in surgery.

  The woman with a pink heart that said ‘yes.’

  The length of the hallway was lined with officers.

  Old and new. Women and men. TX DPS. Gregg County Sheriff. Harrison County Sheriff. Texas Rangers. Longview Police Department. Kilgore Police Department. Bear Bottom Police Department. Uncertain Police Department. Shreveport Police Department. K-9 officers.

  There was a black Malinois. A tan and brown German Shepherd. An English Cream Retriever. A hulking Rottweiler. A Bloodhound. A Beagle. And then there was the last one. My mom’s dog. The dog that, thank God, wasn’t with her when the accident happened.

  A Boxer named Joe.

  Joe went from sitting next to his other K-9 handler, Sean, to alert.

  “Stop,” I whispered as I stepped forward and lightly touched the woman ahead of me on my side of the stretcher. “Stop for a second.”