Gretchen stood in the darkness under a viaduct. Cars roared by overhead. Even at this late hour, the city was alive with activity. Streaks of light from passing cars exposed graffiti on the sides of train cars parked on the crisscross of tracks nearby. Ten minutes to twelve. She had worried about her safety at the rodeo. That was nothing compared to where she found herself now.
If she screamed, no one would hear, no one would come to her aid. If she was murdered tonight, her body wouldn't be found for days, or weeks, or ever. Yet Daisy was at home in this isolated corner of Phoenix where shadows constantly shifted and social outcasts roamed. Gretchen didn't see any signs of life at the base of the massive concrete supports. Nacho's home. She remembered her surprise at that. A homeless person with a home. The destitute man usually lived inside his head, inebriated more often than sober, but Daisy loved him. They had a better relationship than Gretchen had ever had. She put her personal problems out of her mind. There would be time later for self-pity.
Nacho had reconstructed his home several times. He called it upgrading. When weather conditions destroyed one of his makeshift homes, he built again in the same place, risking flash floods to live here instead of in one of the shelters where he would have to abide by someone else's rules.
His house consisted of cardboard walls framed around an enormous steel beam, secured with duct tape and painted steel gray to blend into the surrounding concrete. His home cleverly fooled the eye. Unless Gretchen looked very carefully, she couldn't see that it was there. She stood motionless, unwilling to approach the cardboard house. Whose blood had stained the shed and Daisy's shopping cart? That was the thought that kept going through Gretchen's mind. Was Daisy hurt? What about Nacho? Had he returned from his trip to San Francisco?
Sensing someone behind her, she whirled, preparing to release a blast of her pepper spray. Daisy stepped forward.
"I was worried about you," Gretchen said with relief, reaching out for the homeless woman. She hugged her close, ignoring the ripe odors.
"Why worry about me?" Daisy drew back, uncomfortable with Gretchen's display of affection. "I get by just fine."
"I went to the shed and found blood on the door and on your shopping cart. I took your belongings to protect them. What's going on?"
"I'll show you. Follow me." Daisy moved out ahead of Gretchen, in the direction of Nacho's house.
Inside, newspapers were taped on the makeshift walls and on the ground, serving as insulation to keep the chill of the desert night from seeping inside. The small room had enough space for several rolled-out sleeping bags, an old propane camp stove, and a few boxes of miscellaneous items.
"Watch where you step," Daisy advised when they entered. "I'll get us some light."
Gretchen waited while Daisy fumbled around in the dark. The homeless woman struck a match and touched it to a lantern wick. Low light played against the cardboard walls, illuminating the women and casting gigantic shadows on the walls. Someone slept on the ground inside one of the sleeping bags.
"It's him," Daisy whispered. "I found him in the alley, and I thought he wasn't going to make it."
"Nacho?" Gretchen blanched. "Oh, no. What happened to him?"
Daisy shook her head. "Not Nacho. Ryan Maize, the crazy druggie."
"You're kidding." She hadn't expected that. She drew closer but couldn't see any signs of life from the sleeping bag. "Is he alive?"
"He almost wasn't. I found him hiding behind a Dumpster two nights ago. He was in bad shape. He spent yesterday in the hospital."
"What's wrong with him?"
"Plenty." Daisy sat down on a sleeping bag next to Ryan. He didn't move.
Gretchen bent over him and checked for life. The dirty sleeping bag moved slightly with his shallow breath. He didn't react when she placed her fingertips on his neck and felt for a pulse. "His pulse isn't very strong," she said.
"I had to break him out of the hospital yesterday. The place is more like a prison than a place to fix people."
"I thought you didn't associate with drug people."
"I don't. But I'm the one who found him. He's my responsibility now."
Daisy felt responsible? That was a switch. Gretchen knew that most of the homeless were on the street because they couldn't accept society's constraints. Responsible wasn't an adjective commonly used to describe the indigent.
Yet here she was, claiming responsibility for a fellow human. Maybe Daisy was on the right path after all. Gretchen knelt beside Ryan. "Why didn't you leave him at the hospital where he was getting professional care? He looks very, very sick."
"If they had found out who he was, it would have been jail for him. He didn't even want to go to the hospital, but he was too weak to run away."
"What's wrong with him? An overdose?"
"I told them I was his mother. The doctor said Ryan snorted some toxic drug. He burned it, inhaled the gases, and it caused horrible hallucinations. Ryan thought demons were slicing him into pieces. He fought them off with a knife but ended up cutting himself. They sewed him up at the hospital, but it's the drug that hurt him the most."
Gretchen recalled her first meeting with Ryan and his bizarre behavior. "He must have been high on the same drug when he hit me."
Daisy nodded. "He's been in one long, ugly nightmare. The doc said he's taken the stuff more than once or twice based on the amount they found in his blood. He might have permanent physical and mental problems and be disabled. There's no way to tell."
"What a messed-up kid."
"Whoever sold him this stuff," Daisy said, "had to know how bad it was."
"Dealers don't care what happens to their customers,"
Gretchen said. "They're sociopaths without a conscience."
"This dealer really didn't care."
"What makes this one any different from any of the others?"
"Ryan took something called ep. . I can't remember the name of it. The doctor wrote it down." Daisy dug around in her layers of clothes, searching through her pockets. She handed a crumpled piece of paper to Gretchen. "That's the thing he inhaled."
Gretchen couldn't believe her eyes. It couldn't be possible. "Epinephrine?"
Daisy snapped her fingers. "That's it."
"Are you absolutely sure that's what the doctor said?"
"It's his writing. The doc wrote it down for me."
"And he said Ryan inhaled it?"
Daisy nodded. "That's exactly what he said."
"Are you sure he didn't say Ryan injected it?"
"No, he inhaled it."
Gretchen rubbed her eyes and studied the dirty paper again. "His aunt died from a severe allergic reaction," she said. "Sara might have lived if her epinephrine wasn't missing. That's the medicine she needed to overcome the reaction. Without it, she died."
"I didn't know anything about that," Daisy said. "You think Ryan stole it from her so he could get high?"
"I don't know. I've never heard of such a thing,"
Gretchen said. She remembered saying almost the same thing when she learned that Charlie had died from a nicotine overdose.
"Drug addicts will try anything to get a rush," Daisy said. "The doctor said the same thing you just said. He'd never heard of it, either."
"What does Ryan say when he's awake?" Gretchen nodded toward the sleeping bag.
"He doesn't say anything. He was conscious enough to help me get him into a wheelchair at the hospital, but that's the last time he's been awake. Getting him to Nacho's wasn't easy at all."
"We have to take him back to the hospital. He's very sick." Gretchen pressed her fingers against his cold flesh again.
Daisy shook her head and crossed her arms. "Don't worry about him. He'll recover."
"You don't understand," Gretchen said. "I can't find a pulse."