Page 8 of Velvet Deception

Someone else will come by and help him.

Right?

My phone buzzed with an incoming text message, and I jolted. Tearing my gaze from the man, I looked at the screen and saw the text.

Selena:What’s taking you so long? You’re supposed to drop those meds off as soon as you get them.

I sighed, knowing my manager wouldn’t have any doubts or tugs to see through the Hippocratic Oath being obeyed in my place.

Wincing as I stared out the window at the man, I drove away.

No. This isn’t right. This can’t be right.Every mile that I drove to bring me back to the clinic worsened my guilt for walking away. It ate at me, so harshly that when I dropped off the meds to Selena, I hurried back into my car to return and check on the man.

He was still there. I parked and slowly scanned the area again before I opened my door and stepped out. A small canister of pepper spray waited in my hand. It was expired, but it was better than nothing.

“Mister?” I called out carefully as I approached. “Are you all right?”

No reply.

I lowered toward him, seeing that he was out. Blood trickled from the back of his head, but as I pressed my hand to his back and felt him breathing, I realized he lived.

Again, I checked for anyone lingering around here.

No one stepped out from the shadows. No noises sounded to startle me.

Under the distant pops of firecrackers and the explosions of light in the sky, it was just me and this doctor.

If he weren’t a doctor, I would’ve clung to a little more common sense as I rolled him over and checked him over for wounds.

A doctor, just like a nurse—like me—would only be wanting to do better for the world. I could so easily guess that this doctor had been doing something brave, trying his best to help and save, when the Cartel hurt him.

That was how they operated. So much of the rampant crime around here was because of them, no doubt about it.

“Mister?” I asked softly again, just in case he’d snap out of this unconsciousness. “I’ll help you.”

I had to. No part of my soul would remain whole if I walked away from someone in need.

And it wasmyjob to do. Only mine. If I turned around and took him into the hospital, I had no doubt that the Cartel would only insist on finishing the job this time.

I had no clue who this black-haired and tatted doctor was, but I felt a mutual understanding with him. I, too, had once been targeted and hurt by the Cartel, and it felt like Karma for me to have this chance to pay it back, to rescue another in the same dire situation of helplessness and pain from the Cartel’s mighty reach.

“I’ll help you,” I whispered as I began to drag him toward my car.

4

DIEGO

The darkness persisted. Time ceased to matter, insignificant to my dulled senses. It was no longer a quantifiable measurement I could track or follow.

No thoughts resided in this total abyss of nothing. Emptiness replaced all that I could know or feel, but deep down, in my soul, I was aware that I lived.

This wasn’t death.

I was still alive, somehow, but that was the extent of what I could determine as a reality in this fugue of nothingness. It spanned and stretched, consuming me as that abstract entity of time passed on. Captive and trapped, I shrank smaller and smaller, tinier and weaker under the oppressive weight of this void.

Blackness consumed me, never fading, but it ebbed and flowed, tricking me into a feeble anticipation that I would wake from this haze.

I didn’t.

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