To inject, place black end against outer thigh, then firmly—five... four... three... two... one... injection complete! Please seek emergency medical care!

The darkness swam before her eyes, pops of light like the flash bulb on an old polaroid slowly, surely revealing... the halogenic glow of a Quik-N-Easy. She knew it was after dark, because her eyes—still adjusting to the bright, white interior of the gas station—couldn't quite discern the parking lot outside. She knew she'd fucked up, because a great big paramedic whose name tag read PICKENS was hoisting her up into the air and setting her ass-first on the grimey countertop next to the register.

"She's back," Pickens declared, disrupting her pupils by penlight. She cringed, feebly lifting a shaking, shuddering hand to shield her eyes. "You're back. You OD'd. Do you remember what you took?"

"Nar... narcan?" she asked muddily.

"No, honey, we gave you the narcan. You're flushed out. Are you on a script, or was it heroin?"

"Yeah," she answered dismissively, brow furrowed as she cast her gaze limply around the room. "Yeah, heroin."

"Okay. You're gonna—"

Logan interrupted Pickens by hurling on his chest, thick chunks of a half-digested burger, pink and raw. Bile burned her throat and nose, and her stomach tightened like a fist as she bitterly fought the incoming waves of nausia.

"—come on, let's get her out," Pickens grumbled, an undercurrent of annoyance souring his tone.

"S-sorry," Logan murmured weakly, pushing down the urge to sob. "Your shirt, I'm... I didn't—sorry."

Another paramedic rolled a stretcher into the store, and one loose wheel jiggling fruitlessly against the tile floor struck a chord in Logan. She threw up again, all water and bile this time, and she wondered briefly if she'd just ruined the start of some register jockey's third shift.

"One. Two. Three," Pickens and his partner counted down, lifting Logan up from the countertop as if she weighed nothing at all. They deposited her on the stretcher, which barely shifted under her mass. Once they'd strapped her in, the stretcher was wheeled out into the parking lot, down a wheelchair-accessible entry ramp, and up into an ambulance's open bay, where the stretcher's legs buckled and folded so that it could be slid inside the van.

She lost consciousness as Pickens pulled the doors shut.

* * *

It felt off. She knew that. She knew it was off, that the whole thing was fucking off, but... what choice did she have? She hadn't pushed in eight hours, almost, and if she couldn't get a fix soon—well, she really didn't want to think about fucking detoxing right now. She really, really didn't. So she jammed her hands into her pockets, kept her head down and trudged forward into the bone-chilling wind.

"Duane," she greeted as she got close. Duane was tall—a lot taller than she was—but he was lanky, too. A total beanpole. He probably played basketball in high school. Now he sold heroin.

"Yo," Duane replied, glancing her way... and then pausing. He squinted at her in the dark, scanning the sharp, bony cheeks beneath her hood. "Mac? That you, girly? Goddamn, you don't look so hot!"

"I need... just gimme a bag, Duane."

"You know it. That's twenty. How long since your last push, girl?"

"Fuck, man," she swore. Duane's prices had gone up. Or maybe she'd gotten poorer. She couldn't tell anymore... but she pulled a folded-in-half wad of bills out of her jeans pocket, discreetly counting four of them. "Here, man, just... fuckin'... there. I don't know. Like, eight. Maybe. Maybe ten."

"Damn, Mac, you finna get rolled if you don't get a fix. All right, girly, all right, here..."

Duane produced a balloon from behind his third molar and offered it to her. It was knotted off on one end, and she could see the white of the powder through its thin green skin. She palmed the balloon and jammed it into her pocket, turning away from Duane.

"Hey, Mac! Come on, girly—you need a safe place to nod, or what? You can always come back to mine and we'll—"

Everything spun apart. Two men had stopped in front of her, handguns drawn. Panicking, she stumbled backwards and lost her footing on a patch of ice on the sidewalk, collapsing onto her ass and throwing her hands in the air. She could hear the scuffle of Duane's sneakers, but she dare not look away from the armed men in front of her.

"PORTLAND POLICE! PORTLAND POLICE DEPARTMENT, PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!"

She heard a commotion. Maybe they had tackled Duane. No gunfire, anyway. One of the cops hurried forward while another kept his handgun on her, as if she was some sort of menace. She was rolled onto her stomach, arms wrenched back just above her butt, wrists tied together by the metallic click-click-click of handcuffs.

"Fuck," she swore, laying her cheek against the cold, dirty asphalt.

* * *