Page 98 of Them Bones

Can you please describe what you saw when you entered the room?

[Ruta]

[unintelligible]

[Marr]

Look, this isn’t a witch hunt, I’m not after your badge. I’m not trying to sandbag you into taking any heat for this. But nobody seems to be able to give me any straightanswers on what happened in there. Half the people involved aren’t giving me any answers at all. I can’t help you if I don’t know what went down.

[Ruta]

It was a tiny room, Shailene, with a lot of people in it. And a dead body.

[Marr]

Let’s start there, then. The dead body.

[Ruta]

When I first saw it, I couldn’t have told you whether it was male or female. Too much blood, head was bashed in like… [throat clearing]

[Marr]

It’s okay, Jay. I saw the photos.

[Ruta]

Right. So. Yeah. Blood everywhere. All over the bed, up the walls. Everyone was covered in it…

[Marr]

Who did you notice first? That was covered in blood?

[Ruta]

I need a smoke break.

[Marr]

You know what, Jay, I think I might join you.

[Ruta]

I thought you quit.

[Marr]

Not tonight, I didn’t.

KIM

Kim hated overdoses. She really did. By this point in her career, she’d begun to resent the patients, feel like it was their own damn fault and they shouldn’t be taking up her time and the public’s resources.

Christmas was mostly drunk driving accidents, minor burns, and heart attacks. But this year her last call of the night on Christmas Eve had been an OD.

The girl had only been sixteen, and it broke her heart. She’d been concerned that the mother might be having some kind of drug-induced psychotic episode herself with how she’d been acting, but the boy, that little boy, had taken control of the room and spoken for everybody.

He’d said the mother was always like that and to just ignore her. Then he confirmed that the patient, the young girl, had taken cocaine. He said that the batch wasn’t tainted, in fact it was quite pure – more pure than the girl was used to, apparently – and she’d taken too much, started having heart palpitations, and then passed out in the shower.

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