I jerked the wheel to the left at the last possible instant, steering the car inches away from the skeletal frame of the shaggy haired man who had precipitously stumbled off the median into the turn lane with no regard for the Buick bearing down on him. The driver’s side lurched onto the curb, its undercarriage grinding down the concrete like skateboard trucks down a rail. The wheels made a clean landing and I glided into the McDonald’s drive-through lane.

          Rashad reached over the seat back, gave my shoulders a fierce squeeze. “Damn, son, homeboy almost got wrecked!”

          “Our birthday boy’s saving lives already,” Paco quipped from shotgun, punching his right fist to the palm of his left.

          I peered up at the overhead mirror, the bags beneath my eyes leering back like black question marks. I grabbed the flask from my scrub pocket, took a quick slug of Dewar’s. “It’s too fucking early for this shit,” I croaked.

          “Naw bro, it’s Friday, it’s your birthday, it’s on! Eight hours will breeze by and we’ll be outta this bitch.” Rashad sparked the torch to the bubble, took a rip, hacked a lung and passed it to Paco. 

          “Cheer up, homie, I’m buying.” Paco tilted his pear-shaped head, arched his brow. “You sure you don’t want a taste?”

          “I’m good. A café and a vape and I’ll be straight.” I only smoked crystal on a rare blue moon. These guys were blazing on the regular.

          I panned over to the rearview. A police cruiser was sitting in the vacant lot beside Eddie’s Showgirls, its lights a pair of sabers slicing through the dawn gloom. Surely the officer had seen and heard the near catastrophe I’d just starred in. 

          Paco ordered a “killer chocolate shake” and we all had a solid chuckle. July 4th weekend, a Tampa PD sat down at a table inside and swallowed crushed glass blended in a breakfast shake. Now they kept an eye from across the way, and as I crept into a parking space, the cruiser zipped over, pulled adjacent to my driver’s side.

          I was holding my breath, clenching the wheel. The opposing window came down and I was blushing at the green eyes of Officer Lizette Suarez. “Fancy meeting you here,” I said cheerily, “and without the gift of a violent meth addict for us to babysit.” She laughed with me.

          “Maybe later today, if you’re lucky,” she smiled. She glanced at Rashad, whose hands were taloned like vise grips on the seat back, a wild grimace rippling ear to ear. She leaned forward and examined Paco. “Who are your friends?”

          As I opened my mouth to reply, Paco had already interjected. “Good morning, officer, I’m Paco. Would you like a sip of my delicious chocolate shake?” He was licking his lips, rubbing his leg. His eyes were a shiny haze of red. I stifled a laugh to pass it off as a cough, but Rashad busted a gut in the back seat and belted out a few hyena howls.

          “Paco works in environmental services and Rashad here is a mental health technician,” I said. 

          She paused, “Oh,” a frown creasing her cheek, “you work with them.” Her voice had hardened. She spoke sharp and low. “You boys are awful energetic for 7:30 in the morning. Except you, Carlos. You look like you just rolled out of bed.”

          I cleared my throat. “Today is actually my birthday, Lizette,” I murmured, flashing a thin, sheepish smile. “I kind of burned the wick at both ends celebrating last night. This coffee will do me straight.” I tipped my cup in her direction and took a gulp.

          Lizette looked down at the floor. She wrung her hands. She looked up at me and for a long time said nothing. “Well,” she said at last, “at least they don’t handle medication like you do,” with an unspoken thank-God-for-that hanging in the air like a knife.

          “Absolutely not, someone has to be the adult in the room,” I said gently.

          “Happy birthday, Carlos.” She sounded sad and reproving and caring all at once. Then she was gone.

          I gave them both a disgusted glare. “Jesus fucking Christ, could you guys have made it any more obvious that you’re fried,” I said bitterly.

          “Don’t sweat it, cabrón. I was just clowning because she’s sweet on you.” Paco held up the cross dangling from the gold chain around his neck, kissed it and crossed himself.

          Rashad fist bumped my shoulder. “Yeah, that fine piggy got the hots for my boy,” he crooned.

          Two blocks away we rolled into the employee lot at Safe Harbor Wellness Center. It sat behind the crisis unit we worked in, nestled between the new addiction treatment center and a patch of forest abutting the back of the neighboring subdivision. I slowed to a halt and took a long haul of Indica from the vape. We passed around the Visine, popped a couple mints, and cleared out.

          It was an oppressively hot and sticky Florida morning, an August day when you would break a sweat inside a minute of stepping outdoors. The sky was a purple canvas pleated with tufted rows of cotton. A swirling mass of sooty storm clouds flickered over the western horizon. 

          A bolt of light ripped down behind the canopy of passing clouds. It riveted me where I stood as I gazed up, and for one shining moment it was the Quito sun of my youth smiling back at me, and the warm cocoon of mountains accompanied the wind, and voices stirred that had been silent for many years. 

          Rashad broke me from my reverie. “You alright, bro?”

          “That sun’s just too damn bright,” I said, looking away. I blinked a few times, then strode into the lobby and clocked in.

          The shift started like any other. I took report, checked the charts, pulled and passed the morning meds without a hitch. It was the typical mix of depressives, manic depressives, schizos, drunks, meth heads, dope fiends, and career sociopaths trying to game the system. Chronic malingerers made up most of the latter category. Suicidal for three hots and a cot, or hallucinating shadows and hearing whispers until the first of the month brought the next SSDI check. Others knew from experience that a diagnosis of schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder could be a get out of jail free card. 

          Deion Wright had learned that his diagnoses could not only get charges dropped but were also a free pass to do whatever the hell he wanted in the psych ward with the only consequence being a shot of booty juice to calm him down. A prolific car thief and dope slinger, he had his first psychotic episode during his final stint in juvenile detention. He spent his first years of adulthood in and out of mental institutions and the county jail. During his first admission to our facility, he had set fires in multiple rooms before escaping through a rip in the fence outside the recreation patio. Nine months ago, we got wind of Deion’s arrest for raping a woman in an abandoned house and beating her within an inch of her life.

          Now Deion was standing in front of me on the other side of the nursing station desk. He had been admitted on the night shift. “Morning, boss man,” he said. He spoke with a lisp and was squinting his eyes.

          “Hi, Deion.” I continued typing and eventually said, “Do you need something?” 

          “I need to get a good look at you.”

          After a minute of ignoring him accomplished nothing, I said, “Okay, you got your look. Do you need something else?”

          He erupted in a shrill cackle that made my skin crawl. His laugh was like a razor scraping car paint, and as it subsided, he was bobbing his head and chanting, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah . . .”

          “Deion, step away from the nursing station. Go sit in the dayroom or go to your room.”

          “I will,” he replied, with a suddenly serious tone. “But Carlos, if you think you’re gonna’ try me like the last time I was in here, you got something coming.” Last time he was here, he had knocked another patient to the ground and was attempting a face stomp when Rashad tackled him mid-air. Once we had him in the room, I sucker punched him in the gut to let him know who was in charge.

          I stood up, resting my palms on the desk. “And what’s that, Deion, what have I got coming?”

          “You’ll see,” he grinned, wide-eyed. “Something tasty. Something juicy.” He watched the tall and slender figure of Connie, the pharmacist, walking behind the nursing station towards the med room. Then he shuffled off to the dayroom, whispering “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah . . .”

          “Happy birthday, Carlos,” she winked, as I followed her into the med room. I liked to be there when Connie loaded the controlled substances so she could show me which ones were duds and which ones were real. It was useful information for my nursing work. Half of the opiates and benzos she delivered were actually sugar pills. She was a whiz at fake packaging, and Paco and I were slinging the pills she diverted.

          I finished up with Connie, left the med room, and was settling back in at my desk when I sensed what was about to go down in the dayroom. A group of patients were playing cards at a table in front of the white board. Deion had walked up and planted himself immediately behind Stephanie, a college student being treated for depression. Stephanie slowly pivoted to face him, her eyes lit with panic, and several patients were asking him to step back.

          “Back away from the table now, Deion,” I yelled. I was racing towards him from the nursing station and Rashad was closing the distance from the back of the room, but it was too late. Deion cocked his right arm back and smashed the hammer of his fist into the fragile cartilage and bone of Stephanie’s nose. 

          Rashad and I had Deion on the ground in a flash, but all hell was breaking loose around us. “The voices made me do it,” he pleaded, as a melee erupted in the mob of enraged patients pressing forward against the mental health techs who had formed a protective half circle around Deion. Lavonne, the other nurse on the unit, was tending to Stephanie, who was badly dazed and gushing blood.

          “Get him to his room, Carlos,” Lavonne urged, “I’ll take care of things out here.”

          Rashad and I hoisted Deion to his feet and ushered him down the hall. We were almost to Deion’s room when Paco came out of the soiled utility closet next door with the laundry bin. He and Deion were roughly the same thick build, five foot sixish, top heavy, broad shouldered. Time slowed to a crawl as they locked eyes, until Deion, who couldn’t tell a rattlesnake from a rabbit, or didn’t care to make the distinction, flipped the bird and quipped, “What you lookin’ at, pussy.” He topped it off with an air kiss.

          Paco’s eyes flashed daggers. “The fuck you say to me, puta,” he murmured, shooting in behind the three of us and closing the door. In that moment, I knew I was the only thing standing between Deion and a severe beatdown or worse. Paco was one loco firecracker motherfucker, a live wire always ready for anything. At our first meetup with the dealers we were supplying, he had stabbed a dude in the stomach with a screwdriver for a disparaging comment.

          “We’re at work, compa, let it slide,” I said, placing my hands on his shoulders. “We can’t do it in here. We’ll catch him on the outside.”

          Paco drew in a deep breath, closed his eyes, slowly emptied his lungs.

          “I, I’m sorry, sir,” Deion said slowly. “The voices tell me to do all kinds of stupid shit. I didn’t mean no trouble.” He sounded genuinely terrified.

          “That’s a line of bull and you know it,” Rashad said. “You cracked that girl for shits and giggles.”

          “Naw, you got me all wrong,” he quivered. “Nurse man, you gotta believe me. I didn’t come from a good home like you did. The things my daddy did to me shouldn’t be done to no one. Your father was—”

          I cut him off. “My father was what?” I stepped towards him. His mouth had stopped moving but the glimmer in his eyes was speaking. “What the fuck you say about my papa?”

          “I said,” he paused, a smirk creeping from one ear to the other, “your daddy raised a pussy and your momma was a two-bit crack whore.” With that, he spit in my face, but I didn’t close my eyes or even blink.

          I was firing an uppercut, but everything was already transposed to black, already submerged in an absence of space and sound, and it gave way to a pristine whiteness, the whiteness of light suffusing an azure sky, and it was like a screen, a white diaphanous cloth, and on the other side of it was the sixth floor of the wrecked building where we squatted in the 24 de Mayo, my barrio in Quito, and Papá Salazar had my mother by the hair, had her bloodied and begging. My older brother Gustavo leapt onto his back and cinched a chokehold, but then my papa slammed Gustavo to the ground, pinned him by the throat, and was burning him with a lighter. I grabbed the bottle of aguardiente off the table and smashed it over his ear.

          He stumbled to his feet and was dragging Gustavo across the room. I charged and caught him off balance, breaking his grip on my brother’s arm. He couldn’t help staggering backwards as I plowed him over the low edge of the windowsill. He cartwheeled six floors to the street.

          When the police pulled up that night, they didn’t ask any questions or talk to anyone. He was just another street level hustler they supplied with weed and coca paste. They rifled through his pockets, chucked his broken body in the trunk and sped away.

          As they receded to the horizon, I was still firing the uppercut, and Deion’s teeth were slicing into his protruding tongue. He fell the way a dress falls, but crumpled as only a skeleton can, with a loud clattering crack of the skull. He was twitching something fierce and spurting blood from his mouth like a hose hiccuping water. It was clear he was a goner.

          I saw this unfolding from above, not hovering or floating but verging just beyond myself, and my hands were a shivering white blur, and in one screaming moment I was joined again to my flesh.

          “O fuck. O Jesus fucking Christ—” I cupped my head in my hands and shuddered, a deep chill coursing through my diaphragm. I felt like all the air had been sucked out of me. I swayed as in a breeze, trying to catch my breath.

          “It had to be done, amigo,” Paco said softly.

          “Damn straight,” Rashad cracked his knuckles, “you broke that motherfucker off the way you saw fit. Dude had it coming.” His lips curled in a stiff smile. He whipped out a coke spoon and baggy from his pocket, pinched a lump and took a sniff. 

          “Buck up, homie, here’s a birthday bump.” He loaded the spoon and passed it my way.

          As a rule, I never did blow at work, but if I ever needed a jolt, it was right about now. I eagerly pressed it to my nostril and snorted. Then I plucked the vape from my scrub pocket and took a long toke. I coughed out the invisible cloud and was certain I would get this sorted. That everything would get sorted. I grinned as it dawned on me. 

          “What are you thinking, boss?” Paco asked.

          I walked over to the window, turned the dial to open the shades. I knew from my daily drives past this side of the building that there were no cameras covering the area outside this room. “We’ll put him in the dirty laundry bin, then break the window and say he eloped.” 

          “That’s wassup,” Rashad nodded. “We’ll put some of his blood on the window to make it look legit.”

          “Before we do that, I’ll finish him off,” Paco said. He picked the pillow off the bed and pressed it down tightly over Deion’s face. He seized a few times and then was finally and forever still.

          “Let’s get this mess cleaned up and—” I froze at the sound of the door creaking open behind us. 

          Before a pin could drop, Rashad had darted into the opening sliver of door and collided with the intruder, mental health tech Laura. She teetered backward and skidded to the ground in the hallway.

          “What the fuck, Rashad!” She was livid. “What the hell is wrong with you!”

          “You can’t come in right now, nurse’s orders,” he said, stepping in front of the door and pulling it shut behind him.

          She picked herself and her glasses up off the ground. She was rubbing her left wrist with the fingers of her right hand. “Lavonne sent me to get Carlos. We need him out here. Let me in.”

          “No can do.”

          “What are you guys doing in there, Carlos,” she yelled.

          “Go back to the dayroom, Laura. We’re still dealing with Deion in here,” I yelled back from the other side of the door.

          “Why is Rashad out here then? He pushed me! I think I hurt my wrist.”

          “We’ll talk about it later, Laura.” I didn’t know what else to say.

          “I’m getting Andy. You’re going down for this, Rashad.” She stormed off to the nursing supervisor’s office.

          Rashad pulled the laundry bin into the room. “Yo, Andy’ll be here any minute. She’s pissed,” he said.

          “Stand guard outside,” I said. “Give a few quick knocks when you see Andy coming. I’ll deal with him.”

          Rashad stepped out. Paco and I boosted Deion into the bin and covered him in a wad of bed sheets. We were wiping up the blood when we heard Rashad tapping at the door.

          I came out and there was Andy, in a huff as usual. Sometimes he reminded me of Boris Johnson. Well, his blond weathervane of a comb-over did at least. It was always newly ruffled, even on a windless day.

          He scowled at Rashad. “Having another one of your roid rages, are you?” His nasal twang was as grating as ever.

          “Andy, I put my time in at the gym fair and square. I’m not a juicer,” he said mildly.

          “Well, you could have fooled me. Either way, you put your hands on Laura.”

          “No, I didn’t. It was a simple accident. She was coming in as I was going out. We didn’t see each other.” 

          “That’s not how she described it,” he said sourly. “Open the door. I want to take a look at Deion.”

          “No, Rashad, don’t open it,” I said. “We need to let him sleep.”

          “Are you countermanding me, Carlos? I’m in charge here.” He turned back to Rashad. “Open the door now.”

          Rashad didn’t budge. “Andy,” I said softly, “I have something to tell you. Come here,” I purred.

          “What? What are you on about?”

          “You’re not going to want me to say this out loud. I’ll whisper it in your ear.”

          I told him I knew about his relationship with the program manager, Veronica. I knew about the BMW she bought him and that he never drove to work. I knew where Veronica got the money for it. I knew that she and the head pharmacist, Abdul, were bilking this place for the better part of a million dollars.

          Abdul had started scrutinizing Connie for her after hour visits to the pharmacy. She was feeling the heat. I started investigating, and after I turned up their embezzlement scheme, Connie confronted Abdul. Needless to say, he backed off and was no longer a threat to our pill slinging business.

          Andy’s reddened cheeks were turning the color of his hair. “I see,” he said quietly. He narrowed his eyes, rubbed his chin. “Alright, whatever you guys have got going on, wrap it up ASAP. I’ll handle Laura. And Carlos,” he frowned, “keep your nose clean.” 

          “No worries, Andy.” I grinned and wiped the lingering booger sugar on the shoulder of my scrub top.

          Andy looked us over with a mixture of fear and loathing before making off hastily down the hallway.

          I returned to the nursing station and helped Lavonne medicate a few patients who were still upset by what they had witnessed in the day room. Meanwhile, Paco and Rashad stashed Deion in the soiled utility closet. A few minutes later, I gave Rashad the signal and the whole unit heard the glass shattering.

          No one seemed to suspect anything. After all, Deion had escaped in dramatic fashion once before. Fortunately, Andy and Laura weren’t around for the excitement. He had sent her home then left early himself.

          About an hour before shift change, Paco and Rashad were lugging the bin to the employee lot. I was keeping watch from the kitchen exit when I saw a patrol car cruising down the entrance road. I knew where it was headed. I took off at a brisk clip after it, trying not to look like I was running. 

          The sky had blackened over the course of the day. Thunder cracked overhead as I reached the lot entrance. The crash of lightning that followed framed a chiaroscuro of Lizette exiting her cruiser.

          “What are you up to out here? What’s in the trash can?”

          “We donate stained bed sheets to the Salvation Army,” Rashad replied.

          “Anything we can do to help the needy,” Paco added.

          “Oh really? I saw you dragging it down the road. Looks awful heavy to be bed sheets.”

          “Lizette,” I said.

          She tilted her head toward me, “Carlos,” the surprise evident in her voice.

          “I know,” I nodded. “Trust me, I know. Paco and Rashad are not perfect employees, far from it. But they’re reliable. They show up, and they’ve always got my back with the more violent patients. I try not to get on their cases too much. Some new hires get scared and don’t make it past orientation. Others don’t stick around longer than a month or two. When we’re short staffed, things get dangerous. I need these guys.”

          She glanced back warily at Rashad and Paco, slowly turned, and walked towards me, clasping her palms together. Her brunette curls were playing fast and loose in the wind.

          “I’m going to trust you, Carlos,” she said emphatically. The first drops of rain were starting to fall.

          “Thanks, it means a lot.” I had to clench my teeth to keep a straight face. Over Lizette’s shoulder, Rashad was humping the air and Paco was licking an invisible treat with quick flicks of the tongue.

          She was sitting back down in the cruiser when I worked up the courage to ask, “Would you like to meet up for a cup of coffee later?”

          “You know,” she smiled gently, “I would love that.”

          I smiled back. “How about 8:30 at the Starbucks on Hillsborough.”

          “That’ll work, I’ll see you then,” she said softly, waving as she drove off into the downpour.

          I decided to walk rather than run back to the unit. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face and felt like getting drenched to the bone. Maybe this birthday wouldn’t turn out so bad after all.