Chapter 5
FIVE
Monday, April 24, 6:30 P.M.
“What is my life?” Gus asked the dark hole before him. “And why am I the one with my face in a sewer?”
“Because you said, and I quote, that my ‘big ass would get stuck’ if I tried,” Walters replied from behind him. “Besides, that’s a storm drain, not a sewer.”
Gus would have flipped his partner off, but he was face down in said storm drain, searching for a lost rabbit while a small crowd of onlookers streamed the absolute fuckery to the internet.
“Quit squawkin’ and hurry the hell up!” called a high, reedy voice. “I don’t want the goddamned rats eating my Argyle!”
That was their patient, Kathleen, an elderly lady perched on the gurney inside A1 with a bum ankle and a shittastic attitude. She’d come to the park at Post Office Square to walk Argyle, her pet rabbit, a thing one could do with the help of a wee harness and leash built for bunnies. Passersby had come to Kathleen’s aid when she’d fallen, but by the time Gus and Walters had arrived on the scene, her pet had hopped off to explore and gotten itself stuck in the storm drain.
“Do you see him?” Walters asked. “Maybe stretch your arm out and?—”
“See if a wild thing eats me? No, thanks.”
Gus grimaced and inched forward, only to freeze as an unearthly screech filled the space around him and he felt his eyes bug.
“The fuck?” he blurted at the same time Walters asked, “What was that ?” from behind him.
Wild rabbits lived in the city’s parks of course, but Gus doubted they were dumb enough to screw around in the storm drains. Which made it hard not to think about what the actual fuck was in this hole with him as he shone his penlight around. He swallowed as a small thing plop-hopped into the light’s beam, its coat dirty and wet and its teeth very long. But then Gus caught a flash of unexpected color and knew he was on the right track because no self-respecting wild animal in his city would suffer a zebra-print harness with green trim.
“Hey, buddy.” Gus got another piteous cry in return. “I’m sorry about your name. Also, your mom is kind of cuckoo-bananas.”
Laughter above from Walters. “Dude, are you talking to the rabbit?”
“Der.” Grunting, Gus stretched his body as long as he was able. “Hold my legs, yeah?” he called over his shoulder. “Above the knees so my prosthesis doesn’t pop off.”
“Oh, Lord.” Walters was giggling now. “Hang on a sec while I square off.”
Despite himself, Gus had to laugh too. While still somewhat reserved, Walters had loosened up a lot over the last couple of weeks and he and Gus had a good thing going. Gus had given Walters space when he could, his faith solid in his partner’s abilities as an EMT, and Walters had responded by coming out of his shell, laughing and joking more and opening up about his kid.
Gus liked Walters both as a guy and a partner, and he straight-out loved the flow they’d found when they treated patients, a connection that went beyond words with each anticipating the other’s next move like they were dancing to music only they could hear.
The partnership wasn’t effortless what with the ups and downs of two sets of human moods, and the knowledge of Bobby Stark’s impending retirement running beneath everything. Perhaps knowing the job Walters wanted for himself would soon likely belong to Gus fueled Walters’ sometimes sullen moods, his hot-and-cold vibe still very much a thing. The guy came alive when he talked about his daughter though, his love for her palpable as he told stories about the kindergartener who played left wing for her U6 hockey team, prized pizza and baking shows, and thought purple glitter made everything better.
That heart-eyed version of his partner was the one Gus liked sketching the most, his collection of drawings of the straight boy he had no business pining for steadily growing.
With Madoc anchoring him from above, Gus put the penlight in his mouth, slid forward another few inches and stretched out both arms, carefully snagging Argyle’s harness with his fingers.
“Got ’im!” he crowed around the light between his lips, unsurprised at Argyle’s continued shrieking.
The rabbit still let Gus cradle him while Madoc helped them both out of the hole, and the crowd cheered when Gus was vertical again. Kathleen, however, remained deeply unimpressed.
“Quit your showboatin’, boyo!” she yelled, her beady eyes trained right on Gus. “And get your dumb ass over here!”
Gus gave her a huge fake grin. “You’re welcome, ma’am!” he called, then said out of the side of his mouth to Madoc, “I’m driving.”
“What?” Walters asked. “Why?”
“Because this boyo’s had enough shenanigans for the day.”
Glancing down at Argyle, Gus glimpsed a small brown pellet rolling out from beneath the rabbit’s rear end and over Gus’s arm. The fuck was that?
“Balls,” Gus muttered. He and the bunny eyed each other for long seconds, Argyle’s tiny nose twitching. Then another pellet came out of its bum, and Gus sighed, long and lusty.
“It pooped on me, Probie,” he said to Walters whose face was scarlet with suppressed laughter. “The rabbit fucking pooped on my coat, and I am never going to forgive you.”
After returning to the station, Gus changed out his dirty uniform and grabbed a spare jacket from the storeroom, then headed for the canteen where he found firefighters from next door mixed in with the EMS crews watching ‘rabbit rescue’ videos uploaded by the crowd in the park.
“Ay, Mr. Poopy!” Olivia called out as Gus passed by. “How you doin’?”
“Don’t call me that,” he warned, then aimed a death glare at Walters who was laughing himself sick. “Bad enough I got all dirty crawling around in a hole.”
“You shoulda called in the professionals,” agreed Sorenson, a veteran smoke eater from Barbados who rode with the ladder crew. He grinned slyly. “But don’t be sad, Dawson. Be hoppy!”
Gus sneered at the slew of rabbit puns that followed, though he only did it for show. In truth, Gus enjoyed hearing the raucous laughter and jokes and seeing Walters and Connor red-faced with giggling. But then Gus’s phone buzzed in his pocket and the name on the screen when he checked it zapped all his good feelings.
Ben: I want to talk.
Turning his back to the room, Gus grabbed a package of trail mix from a bowl on the counter while he considered what to do next. Ignoring Ben was an exercise in futility when he’d just keep messaging and calling until Gus gave in. A thing Gus would do, because no matter how badly he wanted to block his ex everywhere, he couldn’t just yet.
Gus swore under his breath when the phone buzzed with an incoming call.
“I can’t talk now, Ben,” he said upon picking up. “I’m at work and?—”
“Then meet me for dinner,” Ben said over him. “We can go out or I can cook, whatever you like.”
“No, thanks.” Gus set his mug in the coffee machine. “I had a headache for three days the last time we met up and I’m not doing that to myself again. We both know there’s nothing left to talk about.”
“I disagree. Christ, Gus.” Ben made an impatient noise. “We used to be friends for fuck’s sake, and I think we could get back to that if you’d just get over yourself.”
Gus ground his teeth. “I don’t want to get over it. You lied to me, so many times I’m not even sure where to start.”
“I did not lie to you.”
“My bank account says differently.”
“I was going to put it all back!”
“I don’t believe you.” Ben shut up then and Gus had to close his eyes for a second to center himself. “ That is why we can’t go back to being friends,” he said, “because I can’t trust anything that you say. All the talking and planning we did?—”
“ We didn’t plan anything—that was all you.” Ben was scoffing but he sounded hurt. “ Your plans to play happy family with the kids you wanted because everything is always about Super Gus Dawson.”
The bitterness in his ex’s voice turned Gus’s stomach. “And yet you’re the one who keeps calling and trying to gaslight me, so maybe ask yourself why that is.”
He cut the call, then nearly jumped out of his skin when his partner appeared out of nowhere.
“Jesus Murphy!” Gus yelped.
“ Sorry .” Wincing, Walters held his hands up, palms facing out. “I thought you heard me coming.”
“No, it’s fine.” Casting a glance around the now mostly empty canteen, Gus grunted softly. “My fault for picking a shitty spot to deal with my ex-boyfriend drama.”
“This is the guy you told me about, Ian?”
Gus shook his head. “Ben,” he said. “We were together after Ian. And shouldn’t have been, ever.”
Walters scrunched up his nose. “That bad, huh?”
“That bad,” Gus agreed. His smile wry, he resumed his coffee making. “Ben and I were friends before we got together, and I always considered him to be a good guy. But now I wonder if I ever truly knew him or if I just became expert at looking past stuff I didn’t want to see.”
“I get that.” Walters stepped up to the coffee brewer too. “Can I ask what happened between you?”
“Ben ripped me off. As in took most of the money in my checking account and completely cleaned out another we were using to … it was a nest egg,” Gus finished weakly.
He hadn’t meant to spill all of this tea with his partner. Wasn’t ready to talk to Walters about the family and future he’d wanted either, a future Gus increasingly felt sure he’d have to navigate on his own.
Lemonade stalked up to them then, carrying a banana-shaped toy she favored in her mouth, and Madoc scooped her up, gently chucking her under the chin before he handed her off to Gus.
“Ben invested my money in crypto,” Gus said as he got the cat settled in the crook of his arm with her feet up like a baby. “On paper, the investment was worth a fortune. Except the coin was a pump and dump scam and the company and the people who ran it weren’t real. After the coin hit a certain price, the so-called executives disappeared with the whole pot of money, and all Ben and the other investors had left was a bunch of worthless virtual currency and no way to recoup the loss.”
“At all? The money was gone, just like that?”
Walters sounded horrified and yes, nearly eighty grand of Gus’s money had disappeared exactly like that, along with the future he’d planned with Ben.
Unless Ben was right, and Gus’d been alone in his planning.
Gus scritched Lemonade’s fur around her collar. “Yep, it was all gone. Which sucks very much, obviously. But the thing that’s almost worse is Ben refusing to take responsibility for what he did. He acts like I’m making a big deal over nothing. Like it’s ridiculous for me to be angry that someone I trusted stole from me and lied to my face.”
“I’m sorry, man.” Genuine sympathy filled Walters’ face. “Noelene and I have had money troubles,” he said. “It sucks so bad having to dig yourself out of a hole. Being broke even for a short time is the worst.”
“Yes!” Gus said, then sighed. “Anyway, Ben knows I’m friendly with lots of cops, so he’s been paying back the money he took out of my checking account. Both our names were on the nest egg account though, so I doubt I’ll ever get even a penny back.
“I’m okay,” he added hastily when Walters frowned. “Been staying with my sister to save on rent and most of my medical stuff is covered by my pension with Boston Fire and my health insurance. I worked a ton of overtime for a while and budgeted like it was a second job, but I still had to put some stuff I wanted to do on a back burner. Including school, which really killed me to do.”
“School like more training?”
Gus shook his head. “I’m in a program at Bunker Hill Community to get my A.S. in paramedicine. I’d have been finished by now if the shit with Ben hadn’t gotten so messy, but I’m hoping to start back up again in the fall.”
He and Walters fell silent when the station’s alarm sounded.
“A1, person down at 45 Province Street, unresponsive to stimuli,” the dispatcher said. “Male, twenty-two years old, 23-C-5, suspected overdose. Code One, police dispatched following reports of an altercation.”
Gus and Madoc wasted no time booking it out to the garage. ‘Person down’ could mean anything from fainting to illness to someone who’d had one beer too many. But like so many cities, Boston had seen a massive jump in opioid-related overdoses and deaths and there was no way to know what shape their patient was in until they laid eyes on him.
Gus didn’t notice anything off with his partner at first as they cruised toward Downtown, flashing lights and siren doing a decent job of clearing the way. But then a car traveling ahead of them veered into their lane and Walters leaned hard on the truck’s horn.
“Dude, what are you doing!” he hollered with a vehemence that had Gus’s eyebrows going up.
“What are you doing?” Gus asked. “Road rage isn’t a good look on anyone, Walt, not even you.”
Madoc muttered something about Gus shutting the hell up, clearly shifting to pouty and fuck it, Gus wasn’t going to let the guy stew in his own juices this time.
“What’s going on with you, Rook?”
“Can you not just call me by my actual name?” Walters bit out. “It’s always Probie and Rook and God, freaking Walt .”
Gus almost smiled; his partner was really feeling this sulk. “I call you by your real name all the damned time, dude. The nicknames are just for fun.”
“Nah.” Walters made a quick left onto State Street. “You call me nicknames because you don’t respect me. Because you think you’re better than me.”
Gus’s amusement died a quick death. “Hey. I do not think I’m better than you.”
“Bullshit. I can hear it in your voice when you talk to me. And it’s going to get worse once you have that degree and can throw it my face.”
For a second, Gus simply stared. Where was this even coming from?
“Are you for real right now?” he asked. “My education isn’t about the job or you, Walters. It’s about me .”
Walters scoffed. “Just like everything else.”
Abruptly, Gus’s brain circled back to his phone call with Ben. “Everything’s always about Super Gus Dawson.” And shit, had he fucked up with Walters?
Gus frowned at his partner. “I don’t think I’m better than you,” he said again. “Or that you’re not good at your job or unworthy of being on this truck?—”
“Just stop, okay? I already told you, I don’t need to be hand-held and if you just want to go through the motions with me until you’re promoted, that’s totally fine.”
“I don’t just go through the motions, ever. I’m committed to this job as much as you are.”
“Please don’t compare yourself to me.” Disdain dripped from Walters’ words. “I’m not like you, Dawson . I’m not going to make my whole life about work the way you do, because I have a family who needs me.”
And you don’t .
Gus turned his gaze out the windshield, the siren’s muffled wails the only noise in A1’s cab as they sped through Downtown. Walters was right—Gus had no business comparing them. Walters had a home and a spouse and a kid and probably plans for the future. Unlike Gus, who was single and staying in his sister’s spare bedroom to keep from blowing money on rent, exactly as he’d done sixteen years ago at the start of his career. Except this time, Gus was bunking at Donna’s because he’d been too clueless to notice his boyfriend looting his bank accounts.
God, I’m fucked up.
Walters turned the truck onto Province Street and when the flash of police cruiser lights caught Gus’s eye, he gave himself a hard internal shake, knowing he had to get out of his own head and stop spiraling.
After easing up to the curb, Walters peered through the windshield. “You see the patient?” he asked.
“No.” Gus watched a tall guy wearing a cowboy hat—a truly rare sight in New England—gesture wildly at a uniformed police officer and thumbed his radio’s button. “A1 on scene and BPD are present. Are we Code Four?”
“Roger, A1, you are Code Four.” There was a pause and then, “P1 ETA in three minutes, additional BPD en route.”
“That’s weird. Why would they call for more cops?” Walters cut the ignition. The hard edge in his voice was gone, replaced by an uncertainty Gus hadn’t heard from him in weeks, probably because it was dawning on him that he’d just accused his supervisor of doing a shit job of managing him.
Frowning, Gus eyed the pub too. “Not sure. Could be there’s something going on inside. The dude with the hat sure looks pissed off.”
“Yeah.” Walters sighed. “Listen, about what I said,” he started, but fell silent when Gus shook his head.
“We’re not doing this now.”
Gus didn’t look at his partner. Had no idea what to say now that he knew what Walters truly thought of him. But he could do his job and have Walters’ back and maybe that’d make him feel a little less shitty for a couple of minutes.
Focus, Dawson.
Gus popped his door. “I’ll take point if it’ll make you more comfortable.”
Walters practically sprinted around the front of the ambulance to meet him. “I didn’t mean you should take point,” he said. “I just?—”
“Have more in your life than the job, I know.” Gus hefted the jump bag onto his shoulder. “I won’t write you up if you choose to stand down.”
“I want you to stand down until we know more. I say we wait.”
“For what? Dispatch to tell us we’re Code Four again?”
“I don’t know.” Walters cursed under his breath. “I guess I’ve got a bad feeling about going in there.” He moved like he’d put a hand on Gus’s shoulder, but Gus quickly sidestepped him.
“I’m done talking about feelings,” Gus said, without looking up. “You want to stay here and wait for P1, you can do that.”