The woman burst into tears then. Her arms, bloody from raking broken nails down them, came up to cover her face. Bill bundled her into the ambulance and closed the back door. He caught Nate’s eye and shook his head. They’d known each other since elementary school, and Nate could see the stamp of exhaustion in his sunken eyes, his sloped shoulders.

“We had four overdose calls yesterday,” Bill said. “This one will check herself out of the hospital as soon as she can. When will it stop?”

Nate had no answer. Most overdose patients refused further treatment. Even a brush with death was rarely a turning point for an addict.

“Get some rest tonight, Bill.” He clapped his old friend on the shoulder, then waved as the ambulance whooped and headed for the hospital.

Nate sat in his cruiser and jotted a few more notes as he waited for social services to arrive.

Nate hadn’t always wanted to be a cop. Just the opposite, in fact. He’d seen how hard his dad had worked for their small town, how much being a cop had taken out of him. The constant stress and resulting high blood pressure had caused the stroke that eventually cut him down in his prime. He’d worked his whole life to make Skamania a safer place. Nate couldn’t appreciate that when he was young. He did now.

One night his childhood friend Robbie Sadler had gotten out of bed, written a suicide note to his parents, stolen his father’s gun, walked to the bridge that spanned the Skamania River, and shot himself in the head. His body was found downstream three days later. So when Nate finished high school, he’d signed up at the police academy, determined to save lives and stop others from taking them.

From his cruiser, Nate watched Stevie through narrowed eyes. The young man exhaled, a gray cloud of smoke swirling around him as he talked to one of the neighbors. Is it possible that Stevie dealt the oxy to that woman? Stevie was bad news. He’d been caught hacking the school system to change his grades last year and had been picked up for dealing weed to younger kids.

Nate groaned. If he arrested Stevie, the paperwork would take him all morning. But then he remembered that white cross. Pain expanded inside him like a balloon, so tight, so intense, he wanted to slice it open to relieve the pressure.

Nate pulled out a tin of toothpicks he kept in his slacks pocket. He placed one between his pinky fingernail and the nail bed, and then slowly, excruciatingly, pushed the toothpick into the tender skin.

Searing pain burst through his fingertip, jarring and brutal. Nate gasped. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the pain remind him what he had to do.