Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 1

run. The shot wasn't clean, but I got enough of his shoulder to spin him around and knock him down. I flipped over onto my belly and tried not to scream with the pain of my right arm. It felt broken from shoulder to wrist.
    The whoop of a siren bounced off the brick lined street and a patrol car, lights flashing, came roaring the wrong way on the one-way street. Lights flashed, spinning along with my vision. Red, blue, melting, swirling. I heard the whoosh of the pipe as the last of the men took a swing at my head. I fired blind, a cold fear washing over me. Then something connected with my temple. It wasn't like the lights went out, like when I'd been knocked out before. This was a slow fall from a very great height. I had plenty of time to think— to remember. Down through the memories of my life, through the memories of tonight, down through the terror of what they might have done to Travis.
    ****
    I woke just as slowly as I fell. I was climbing out of the deepest, darkest hole. A well? Where was I? Where was Boudreaux? Gradually, the barely perceptible flicker of a fluorescent light permeated my drug-addled brain. The beeps, crepe soles on linoleum, urgent voices, whirring squeezes on my triceps every few minutes. Hospital. I was at the Medical Center. I tried to open my eyes, but the glare of light pierced my brain, and all I could do was moan.
    I must have slept, because this time when I woke, the lights in the room were dimmed. I tried to move my arm to reach for the call button but it weighed thousands of pounds and was apparently tied to the bed.
    "Hello?" I managed to croak out.
    "Hey. Hey, Sam. You're awake," said a familiar voice that I couldn't place. Then Carmichael stepped out of the gloom. "Let me get the nurse," he said.
    "Where's Boudreaux?"
    Ignoring me, he stepped through the door, letting in the harsh glare of the hallway lights. He returned a moment later with a dark-skinned man dressed in pale teal scrubs.
    "Well, hey there, sugar. I'm Nurse Marco Westin…but you can just call me Wes. It's nice to see you awake. There've been cops here all day waiting to see you're okay. How are we feeling?"
    All day? Hadn't I been brought in at night? "I have no fucking idea how you're feeling— Wes. I hurt like hell and I want to see my partner. Where's Boudreaux, Carmichael?"
    The nurse interrupted me before my rant fully got going. "Detective Carmichael… I'm going to have to ask you to step out while I take Detective Garrett's vital signs. Doctor Gonzalez is on her way up, so it will be about thirty or forty minutes before he can have visitors. Would you mind going to the waiting room and letting all those nice officers know that Mr. Garrett is awake? Oh, and I believe your Lieutenant wanted to be called the minute he woke up."
    Wes kept up a steady banter of details about my vital signs until the door opened and a tiny woman who looked to be as old as Methuselah stepped into the room. After introductions, she got straight to business. It was a bad business. My right arm had been shattered from shoulder to wrist. I was now held together by screws and plates— a walking advertisement for the power of titanium. She couldn't say how much range of motion I'd regain. She couldn't say if would be able to shoot right-handed. She couldn't say if I'd ever be able to be a cop. She couldn't fucking say if I'd be able to hold a goddamn pen.
    She left me there, the stunned owner of a shattered and newly repaired bionic arm, and when I'd asked the question foremost on my mind… what happened to Detective Boudreaux… she couldn't say that, either.
    Wes did something with the IV bag attached through a shunt to my left forearm and then a burning sensation flowed up my arm and my heart efficiently pumped the drug through my body to take away my pain and the rest of my questions. I heard the words as sleep pulled me under, the words I'd already known were coming. "I'm sorry, sugar. Detective Boudreaux didn't make it."
    CHAPTER 6
    The world changed during the week I was kept drugged and in the hospital. Changed in the way humanity understood its existence. As Wes wheeled me through the hospital to the vehicle waiting to take me to the funeral, I saw face after face, all ordinary people stunned, shocked, afraid, angry. They were all changed in the same way the horrific events of 9/11 changed New Yorkers. There was no telling when, or if, anyone would feel safe again. Before we would know what normal was.
    The Vampire