Page 147 of Poison (Bad Boys of Redwood Academy 2)

JOÃO

If I called the ambulance, then I would be waiting for fucking hours.

They didn’t come as quickly as when someone from the rich side of town called.

So, I dumped Mom’s body in the back of my car and stepped on the fucking accelerator to head toward the hospital. While glancing back at Mom every now and then, I whizzed by cars and vowed to get there before Mom died in my backseat.

She couldn’t fucking die. She couldn’t. She fucking couldn’t.

My chest tightened, my breathing heavy.

What would I tell Ana if Mom died? How could I explain that to her? That Mom had sold her body to the rich to support us and one of those fucking idiots had force-fed her drugs and made her overdose again?

Once I sped into the hospital, I slammed my foot on the brakes and parked the car right out front. Imani’s mother walked toward her car and glanced over at me. I wanted to curse that fucking bitch out, but Mom was more important than a rich chick like her. So, I scooped Mom up into my arms and kicked the door closed.

“Stay with me, Mom,” I said desperately, clutching her tightly. “Please.”

“Can I help you?” Imani’s mother said, suddenly at my side.

“Get out of my fucking way and leave me alone,” I said, cutting my eyes toward her and continuing through the automatic emergency entrance doors. A wave of cold air hit me at once, and I hurried up to the front desk. “I need help. Please.”

The woman stared at me and clicked her pen. “With what?”

“My mother overdosed.”

She rolled her eyes. “Another slum’s overdose tonight.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Imani’s mother asked the woman, stepping up to the desk, glaring at her, and calling the emergency room physicians and nurses to come help. “I’ll deal with you later.”

A couple people flooded out of a back room and took Mom from me, checking her vitals and determining that she wasn’t breathing anymore. When they hurried her into a back room and shut the door, telling me that they would do everything in their power to save her, I tried to shove myself through the doors to see her.

“Let me see her,” I said through gritted teeth, pushing past a couple women.

Someone seized my arms and pulled me back, shoving me against the wall. A security guard snapped his hand around my throat to hold me in place and started mumbling something about hating dealing with the slums every night.

When I shoved him back and he came back toward me twice as hard, Imani’s mother stepped in his way and placed her hands on his chest, shoving him back. “Don’t touch him. Go sit back down at your post. I’ll handle this.”

“Dr. Abara, he’s dangerous.”

“So are you with that gun on your hip,” she said, pointing to his post behind the counter. “Now, sit your ass down and let me handle João.”

Since when does she know my fucking name?

The security guard took one last long look at me, then turned and moped all the way back behind the counter to his lousy, shitty little seat to resume his boring fucking shift for tonight. Imani’s mother turned back toward me.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“What the fuck do you care?”

“He choked you.”

“I barely felt it. Are you done?”

“I’m just trying to help you.”

Snapping, I directed all my anger toward her. “How have you ever helped anyone like me?! If it wasn’t for Imani, you wouldn’t have looked twice at me outside. You would’ve walked right by, rolled your eyes like that fucking lady at the desk, and said that this was what happened every fucking night. You don’t give a fuck about people like me.”

Imani’s mother stared at me with wide eyes, her body suddenly shrinking in on itself, as if she were scared of me. And she fucking should be. I could fuck her entire life up with the gun I had in my waistband.

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