So hed taken out his phone and opened up the very simple police band radio app. It just an app hed downloaded on a whim two years ago. He hadnt been expecting much out of it but quickly discovered that when he adjusted the settings to a few specific locations and frequencies, it was a remarkable app. Hed spent some nights listening to police and ambulance chatter, even eavesdropping in on fire department frequencies. Listening in to the back and forth between ambulance drivers and police, hed gotten the slightest taste of what hed started working for ten years ago.

Hed gone to med school and found it much harder than hed expected. Still, hed done well, his sights on becoming a doctor so that he could help people. It was all the result of watching his mother suffer, of wanting to do something to help herto ease the pain shed been feeling for years as shed battled a variety of illnesses and diseases. Nine years ago, shed lost a kidney. A few years after that, diabetes had nearly taken her. And now there was her liver, actively poisoning her from the inside, slowed only by a variety of medicines that she could just barely afford. Hed helped as best he could, but the medicines and doctors visits were wiping him out as well.

After a while, it had come to this…trying to do everything in his power to make sure she got a new liver. At her age and as weak as she was, he really wasnt even sure shed survive the surgery, but it was the only chance she had.

He thought of her, alone in her bed right now, as he listened to the static-laced chatter on the police radio app. Over the years hed listened to high-speed chases, a few shoot-outs, and multiple arrests. Hed also listened to the urgent conversations of drivers on the ambulance frequencies, rushing people to the hospital, arriving at the homes of those in need of assistance. If the course hed chosen in life had gone the way it was supposed to, he would have been doing that. But his mother had gotten sickvery sick at one pointand hed had to drop it all just to take care of her. Hed then picked up his meaningless job to just help pay for her bills.

He was listening to the app while sitting in the fast-food parking lot, hoping to hear some sort of banter about any sort of widespread police involvement in trying to check-in with certain people. He could not escape the nagging suspicion that they were on to himthat they knew he was using the transplant list to target his victims. And if they did know that and were actively protecting the people on the list…well, then, he was screwed.

And she would be so disappointed.