At the crack of dawn, Kate woke with an urgent need to vomit. She didn’t bother to roll out of bed discreetly like she normally did; it would have been pointless considering the god-awful noise that echoed from the porcelain bowl seconds later.
“Shit,” she muttered before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
That overly bubbly woman’s healthy concoction can’t still be in my system, can it? It’s ridiculous!
Kate pushed herself up from the toilet and reached into the vanity where she kept her birth-control pills. She rotated the dial to today’s tiny colored tablet before another wave of nausea hit, forcing her to whirl toward the toilet. In doing so, she banged the container against the edge of the counter, breaking loose the plastic cover and spilling the contents all over the floor.
“Shiiiiit…”
Once her urge to vomit had passed, she stared down at the pills scattered across the tiles.
Do I really want to pick these up and put them in my mouth later?
With the hours she’d been working lately, she had very little time to clean the apartment. Last time she’d mopped the floor would have been, what, two, three months ago? And Matt’s urine always seemed to spray well past the toilet bowl.
I’ll stop by the pharmacy and get new pills.
Another unplanned cost that would hurt her tiny budget. No way she’d take one of those dirty ones right now. She’d just have to take a double dose tomorrow morning. Thankfully, or not, sex had become an infrequent pastime, so the risk of getting pregnant from missing a single pill was likely nil.
“Are you okay?” Matt asked, his voice rough from the vestiges of sleep.
“Just puking my guts out,” she grumbled, too low for him to hear. Then she spoke up to ease her husband’s concerns, “I’m good. Sorry for the noise. Must be food poisoning or something.”
“One more thing,” Sergeant Bailey said near the end of his morning brief. “You may or may not have heard about this on TV or online, but there’ve been a few reports about dead pigeons and squirrels—”
“Who cares about those?” Bower heckled.
Kate caught Johnston’s eye, and he shrugged. He appeared as surprised to hear this now as Kate was. He must not have been the one to mention it to their supervisor.
The sergeant exhaled loudly. “I know, Bower.”
The room rumbled with annoyed grumbles and groans.
“Calm down, guys!” yelled the sergeant. “I get it. We’ve all got more important things to do—”
“Much more fucking important things, I’d say,” Bower interjected.
“I know. Quiet, Bower. But the mayor cares, so we have to care. Or at least pretend to.”
Another tremor of groans rumbled through the space as everyone around Kate shook their heads.
She did too after a few seconds.
After all, she understood how they all felt. Who cared about a few dead animals? She certainly didn’t want them dead, but she’d joined the force to help people and to solve crimes. To restore justice and to put bad guys behind bars. Guys like those who’d murdered her family. She didn’t join to protect the local wildlife—or pest, depending on how one saw pigeons and squirrels. Animals fell within other people’s responsibilities, not the BPD’s.
“I’m officially mentioning it here during my brief, so I can tell the district commander who will report back to the mayor and say that we’ll all be on the lookout for any weirdo going around doing target practice on small animals… or poisoning them or whatever. The mayor doesn’t want PETA, Greenpeace, or whatever animal-loving, tree-hugging organization talking shit about Boston, so that’s his plan. Getting us involved.”
Another wave of swear words, insults directed at the mayor, and other non-productive comments filled the room.
But Kate kept quiet.
As much as she wanted to fit in with the guys, she’d never been one to randomly insult people or disobey orders.
If that’s what the mayor wants…
“Okay, enough!” yelled the sergeant. “What are you all still doing here? Get on with your duties, guys. Stay safe and keep your eyes open.”
After an uneventful shift, while feeling a little freedom in her schedule since she hadn’t received a special meal request from her husband today, Kate stopped by the drugstore to refill her prescription.
She mentally reviewed her upcoming bills and verified her checking account balance on her phone, and then she stepped into the store, happy to know she had enough to cover this unexpected expense without the risk of overdrafting or her card being rejected. A recent memory of that surfaced briefly.
Yeah… That was pretty embarrassing.
“Could you give me another three months’ worth?” she asked the scrawny mustachioed pharmacist. “Can’t believe I broke my last one this morning.”
“You broke it?” he asked, his face scrunched up. “What do you mean?”
“I banged it, and it fell apart. My pills scattered everywhere.”
He tilted his head slightly. “That’s odd.”
“Odd?” she repeated. “Goes with my unlucky streak, I guess.”
The middle-aged man shrugged. “If you say so. Anything else?”
Kate shook her head, paid for her pills, and then walked out, puzzled. Before her mind started its downward spiral into random what-if theories, her gut churned, giving her a heads-up that she needed to find somewhere convenient to puke, and quick. She didn’t have many options, so she settled on a young, sick-looking oak tree on the edge of the sidewalk.
Mostly clear liquid left Kate’s throat and splattered on the dirt. Once she was certain her gut was done expelling its contents, she let go of the tree she’d recently nourished with her home-grown fertilizer, and then walked back to her car.
She had to make it home before Matt, so she could start preparing dinner for him and avoid getting into trouble.