Waiting in the shadows across the same alley, I’m only stomaching this show to find the right moment to strike.
“Are you close?” his female customer whines, stopping to beg him with blitzed out, mascara-stained red eyes. “I need my fix.”
“Keep sucking, bitch.” He pushes her head down into his hairy crotch.
I can’t even imaginethatsmell.
Now that drugs no longer have their hooks in me, these two bumbling junkies are a goddamn mind-blowing eye-opener. How low someone can go when they stop giving a fuck about anything else but the next high.
I’ve been on both sides. I’ve been the junkie and the dealer. But now I’m clean and sober, going on a year.
I focus on the sway of the dealer’s hips, the bobbing of his head, and I think,He’s close, sweetheart. Keep at it. Keep him distracted for me.
When he comes, his lateral orbitofrontal cortex will shut down, and his mind will blank out. That’s when I’ll make my move.
I make sure my mask is in place, a vintage leather half-face disguise. Years of performing surgery, I always covered my mouth.
I pat the Sig Sauer sitting in the right pocket on my thigh. That’s just for emergencies. I open my tailored coat and reach for one of the two glass syringes filled with a three-milliliter dose of a drug that, when it hits the bloodstream, will cause near-instant death.
It’s overkill,no pun, but these strung-out drug dealer-types have an unusually high tolerance to most drugs. Plus, I like to take them out with the same poison they’re pedaling.
For the last few months, with leads provided to me by a source from my dubious past, I’ve been working my way through some of Manhattan’s most debauched dealers.
I’m only shaking a few leaves off the tree. There’s always more. I know I have to stop before my luck runs out.
This dealer, J-Rush, as he goes by, keeps a string ofprostitutes, like this sad woman, who he made drop to her knees as part of the payment for her next high.
Fuck, man. Blow your load, already.
As I watch, I feel the thirst to slit his throat. But I keep my revenge to deadly injections. Less passion. Less personal.
Killing dealers doesn’t bring me joy. Just satisfaction. Those are two different things.
I can’t find relief. I can’t find peace.
Except when I hold my son. Until the demons start whispering in my brain, telling me I don’t deserve that perfect little human I created out of selfishness and recklessness.
Even before my downfall, I had other problems in Seattle. I left the surgical residency I loved because of politics. Las Vegas was supposed to be a vacation.
Some guy in a casino there, who I didn’t even know was a dealer, offered me free hits.
This takes the edge off better than booze.
Try it, tell me what you think.
Like a moron, I accepted. It started with one hit. Then another. Then it wasn’t optional anymore.
The next thing I knew, I was strung out. Broke and hooked.
That asshole, like this dealer here, helped turn me into the worst version of myself. A man who began to recklessly mistreat the woman I was seeing at the time.
I mentally abused my son’s mother, now my ex. That included neglecting what she needed when she was pregnant. She didn’t ask to get married, and I didn’t push it. But I was so out of it for most of her pregnancy, I barely remember anything. Whatever Ana recalls I did or said, I accept as the truth, and I’ve been asking for her forgiveness ever since.
I can barely look at myself in the mirror as it is. I sanklow, but never as low as J-Rush here.
Still, I spent more than six months in a torture camp being punished for my sins. I was sent there by my mafia family for putting everyone at risk. I’d already felt miserable but being that far away from my son hit harder than I ever thought possible. It was supposed to be for a year, but my twin Darragh convinced Kieran, our oldest brother, the mob king of Astoria, to let me come home early.
With no job, I spent a few months taking care of our mother, who has MS. Every day, I showed up to her condo in Long Island City and learned to be a doctor all over again. When her health improved, and she didn’t need me every day, I found myself with time on my hands and vengeance running through my blood.