Page 1 of A Handsome Devil

CHAPTER ONE

Truman

“Holy shit! Don’t jump!”

Accustomed to weird shouts and proclamations, I just kept talking to my medical assistant as he gave a client an injection. “We’ll need to increase our suboxone order this month. Stats just came out. This is worse than during the pandemic.”

Gunning Vaghti spat out the needle’s protective cover as he held the guy’s shaking arm. “How many so far this year?”

We didn’t care if we were talking like that in front of a patient. This chick had staggered in off the street completely whacked, her cadaverous red face slowly being eaten alive, bleeding where she’d scratched it. She didn’t give a shit what we said. “Seven hundred fifty-two so far.” That was overdose deaths in the city, “accidental” they always called them.

More shrieking came from the front door area. I recognized voices of a few existing clients and a couple of assistants.

“For God’s sake! Don’t jump!”

“Stay right there! Don’t move!”

“Don’t do it, dude!”

I locked eyes with Gunning. He nodded ever so slightly, suggesting that I go see what the fuck.

Patting him on the shoulder in a fatherly manner, I went to see what the fuck.

Edging my way past the humans clogging the entry doors, clients and my crisis management team, I reached the sidewalk. Humans with hollow faces and open mouths gazed up into the aquamarine sky, so I did too, shading my eyes with my hand. Sure enough, a silhouette of a tall man stood on the edge of the sixth floor, yelling stuff. I strained to hear his words, and even had to “shush” some people around me.

“Addicts are humans just like you! Punishing them just turns them sicker. Only compassion can make them better.”

Wow. It sounded like he just intended to make some great speech, not jump.

He went on in a lush, tonal voice, as though he was accustomed to being an emcee. “This fucking war on drugs forces cops to treat sick people like criminals. Just imagine if the cops chased down people with diabetes, putting taxes on insulin, driving it underground.”

“Yeah!” people around me started yelling, some raising their fists. “Yeah!”

“Right on!”

When the guy strode along the roof’s edge, his lanky, muscular legs reminded me of a man I’d seen earlier. Yes. It was that guy. He’d found something to wrap up his long curly black hair so it didn’t fly around his face.

“What if the government told doctors they couldn’t treat diabetics, then sent them to jail?” He roared now. “Lots of people didn’t have dignity to start with. Being humiliated sends some of them over the edge.”

This guy was really revving up the crowd! He must’ve had an entertainment background, suave and smooth. What a talker! Folks were grabbing each other’s shoulders, jumping up to see the shadowy man.

He yelled as though he held a microphone. The crowd quieted down, straining to hear him better. “People forced onto the streets are only deteriorating! Fuck it. There’s all this wondering why overdose deaths are rising, yet only one or two mentions of us chronic pain patients being forced off opioid therapy by fucking illogical, irrational government laws, doctors paranoid of prosecution. What do you have? A ton of people in severe pain with no help. I’m jumping off this fucking roof in protest!”

The crowd exploded. I knew some of them had medical ailments, chronic pain that forced them to turn to drugs. But all of them were clamoring, absolutely howling for this magnetic guy. About half, the only half that owned them, held up cellphones to video the man. It even looked like one guy shouldered a news camera.

He kept orating throughout it all. I even shook some people’s shoulders, trying to get them to shut up so I could hear. “Of course people turn to the streets, but the drugs are laced with fentanyl and animal tranqs. Totally lethal! And they OD. And people are shocked. How’s about we treat chronic agony like the dangerous crisis that it is? Give people the medication they need to function and not die? Stop prosecuting doctors!”

Again the crowd went wild, some of them eagerly pointing to me. “Truman Oakley!” some of them yelled at me. “He’s your man!”

Yes. This hypnotic, seductive man sounded just like me.

His last words were, “What do I have to do to get attention around here?” I saw him pass out. First the hand that held the invisible microphone folded, just drooped like a swan drinking. Then the other slender, muscular arm. Then this man’s knees collapsed, the last thing holding up his unconscious body.

He was gone, like thread into a needle.

I’d better back up here, to explain my day, which had begun as mundane as any other.

I had gone down the street to the Dollar Store to buy maxi pads. Yes, this was part of my job. When I got back to The Establishment Club—my witty name for the safe injection site and addiction recovery clinic I’d founded last year—a prison bus lingered, like it couldn’t wait to get out of there. It vomited paroled convicts, men hauling backpacks and grocery bags, lining up at my door.