Free Friends with Benefits by Melody Mayer

pen and scribbled down the address as the dispatcher gave it, then nodded at Possum, who was behind the wheel. “Go to it,
esa.
” He turned to Esme, adding, “Hold on.”
    Possum, Junior’s paramedic partner, might have gotten his nickname for his ability to do an entire eight-hour shift without a word, but whatever aggression he felt that was unexplored verbally, he took out on the road. When the red light and the siren went on and he was driving . . . look out.
    Esme knew this because she’d been in the ambulance with him and Junior before; she fastened her seat belt as Possum gunned the ambulance forward. Technically, Junior wasn’t allowed to have passengers in the ambulance without clearance from his boss, but this wasn’t the first time she’d come along for the ride. Sometimes there were hours filled with nothing more than skinny old guys—Junior said the ambulance term for them was “skels”—who passed out in the street from drugs or alcohol. Once, Esme had seen her boyfriend resuscitate a skel only to have him puke all over the ambulance. Then Junior and Possum had to clean up all that crap before they could take the next call.
    Other times it was rush, rush, rush, from one crisis to the next. Bloody car accidents, burned survivors after an apartment fire, the aftermath of a gang war drive-by with multiple casualties lying in the street. When Esme was around for such pickups, especially if they were children, she was overcome with sadness. You couldn’t stay innocent for long in the Echo. If Our Lady of Guadalupe herself was in the wrong place at the wrong time, it could be her blood forming the river to the nearest sewer or pooling on the asphalt before a crew of lethargic city workers hosed it off. If they were slow, or on another job, the dry city air made it evaporate, leaving nothing behind but a crimson stain. The police sometimes roped the spot off. It was, after all, a crime scene. They might as well rope off the entire neighborhood, Esme thought, for all the good it would do.
    In the past, a night shared in the ambulance had always bonded Esme and Junior. This was where his competence and kindness to the injured and scared came into stark focus for Esme. The patients sensed his ability and looked up to him. Esme had often heard them beg for Junior to hold their hand, to stay with them. He’d do it, assuring them they’d be fine. There was just something about him that made people believe it would be all right.
    After his shift ended, he and Esme would usually go back to Junior’s house, have a couple of beers, and make love. But tonight, nothing felt right. Everything Junior said or did rubbed Esme wrong. The idiomatic
barrio
lingo, his habitual butchering of the English language, the low-rider magazine on the dashboard that he was reading. When had she ever seen Junior read a book? She couldn’t remember.
    â€œWhat’s a two-nine-eight?” she asked.
    â€œWoman in labor,” Junior translated.
    â€œAge fourteen,” the dispatcher continued over the crackling radio. “Home alone, copy.”
    â€œWe copy, we’re on it. Damn traffic.”
    â€œYou taking surface streets or the freeway?” Junior asked.
    â€œWhat you think,
esa
?” Possum asked. He snapped on the flashing lights and siren and pulled into the center lane. Possum was short and Latino, built like a sumo wrestler, with tattoos covering his beefy caramel arms. Esme could see the names of three ex-girlfriends as well as his mother, and a drawing of the Virgin Mary with a glowing halo that crept under the short sleeve of his white shirt.
    â€œFourteen years old and in labor,” Esme mused. “A baby.”
    â€œBabies have babies all the time,
niña,
” Junior said. “Ain’t nothin’ new there.”
    True. Esme had known girls in the Echo to give birth as young as age twelve. Some of them were proud of it,