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Two... Amá means Mom.
One.BANG!A gunshot ricochet’s down the street.
I pass out.
Pink Paste
NEVE
No!I pinch my thigh so hard, my ass jolts in the air.
No passing out, Neve!Another pinch of thigh fat, this time I dig my nails in deep. The pain keeps me in the present.
Terrified, I get on my knees, snatch the keys from my purse, and unlock the door.
Please don’t shoot me.
Please, don’t shoot me.
Please, do not shoot me!I chant to myself; each line of morbid, mental poetry retains an element of encouragement, like a superpower that activates an imaginary bulletproof bubble around me. Delusional but widely effective in offering a sense of security.
The wider the door opens, the louder my brain gets, the longer the sentence.
Please, p-pplease, please... do not shoot me.With my brain currently stuck in stutter mode, popping the “p” of every stringed please, I peek outside and risk a heart attack.
With my palms flat on the ground, and me on all fours, I stick my head out the door frame and see a body on the ground, no more than six feet from me.
Puta merda.I drop my forehead to the back of my hands, fully aware that my ass is up in the air. Fully aware that he’s not moving.
I should have opened the damn door.
Against my better judgement, I haul myself onto my feet, ankle throbbing, bladder stretching, and heart aching for the guy I never met. A shitty guy, from what his mother had told me, but one she loved so much it brought tears to her eyes. A runaway son she’d forgiven for every mistake, every call he never made, every letter he never sent. Mama Rosa said I reminded her of Styx, even went as far as saying we’d be perfect for each other.
And, like the awesome person I am, I basically killed him.
No fucking positive in that! Minus a million percent for that one.
His chest moves and his hand twitches.
Oh.I rush out toward him like a possessed monkey, awkwardly maneuvering my legs and arms in ways I didn’t know possible.
Glancing down at the abdomen of the owner’s son, I throw the flaps of his leather jacket to the side and lift his jade green shirt. The gasp escaping my lips isn’t because of the wound.
Three kilo packs of white powder are strapped to the guy’s abdomen with silver duct tape.
Not a good sign.
A small hole pierces the top half of one of the plastic packs; drug dust had scattered down his dark jeans and had nestled in the crevices of his jacket. The wound is underneath all of this baggage and the blood... it’s leaking out of him at too fast a rate, mixing with the powder.
Blood + Cocaine = pink paste. Bet they don’t teach that shit in medical school.
Not that I could get back into med school.
Not relevant,I tell myself and focus on the dude bleeding out next to me. My only option is to judge the rate of release by the color of the pulp and the consistency.
Thick pale pink means less blood. The darker and thinner, the more dangerous the situation.
Apply pressure, my instinct demands, but the latent germaphobe inside me cringes at the thought of dipping my fingers into the pastel-colored pulp. Who knows what else is under there. Liver chunks. Intestine pieces. Shit.So gross.
