"I hope I gave you some to believe in, cause none left for me."
"The softest soul can't hurt a fly."
"If I die before I wake, then it's my soul for him to take."
"We can do whatever we want, but boy don't you dare go falling in love."
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"What do you say movie night? We can watch Edward Scissorhands or anything you want to watch it's up to you." Buck asks me while we're getting our stuff from our lockers. "Is this your attempt to cheer me up?" I grab my bag and he gives me a shy smile, "Is it working?" He asks and I smile in return. "A little, you're lucky you're cute. Alright, I'm in." Since we went to his apartment in separate cars, it was a way to clear my mind. The memories of me suffering in Mexico with my brothers were never going to end, we may be in Los Angeles but the setting doesn't really change anything, it's about the past, present, and future that sets the tone of this story, my story. _________________________________
Buck and I were all cuddled up against each other watching a horror movie, there's a few times when he flinched but I ended up laughing in the end. "So you're not afraid to walk through fire but you're a little afraid of a jump scare?" I ask him. "Isn't that the point of horror movies? It wouldn't be good if didn't scare you." I roll my eyes at him, "You may be right but that does make you a pussy if you can't go 5 seconds without covering your eyes." He looks down at me and I look back at him with a grin, "Don't start something you can't finish."
"For your information Buckley, no one tells me what to do, I would have thought you would have learned that by-" he grabs my face and it turns into a full make-out session, "don't you think your hands are starting to wander a little bit too low?" he smirks against my lips. "It's one of my favorite things about you besides your face." his finger drags along the scar on my cheek. "That's it?" I was trying to push for more information. "And what's in here." he taps his finger on the left side of my chest. "That's my boob silly." I pull him back in for a kiss until he gets a knock on his door. I got off his lap and sat back down, I laughed to myself. "I'm not expecting anyone, I'll be back."
He opens up the door and as I'm staring at everything around me, I hear Eddie's voice but mostly another female. "Buck you have to see this." Eddie walks me with urgency, "Ohhh, wow I did not expect you to be here, did we interrupt something?" Eddie looks at Buck he nervously chuckles. "Hi, I'm Ana." I looked at Eddie with a smile before I shook Ana's hand. "I'm Artemis, so you must be the famous Ana that Eddie keeps talking about." she looks at him and then looks back at me. Eddie gives me a look as if he's going to kill me. "Anyways you're gonna wanna see what Ana found about the kid Charlie, from earlier."
Me and ana sit down at the table and she opens up the computer to show us the important thing that interrupted our moment earlier. Both boys were right behind us, "I was thinking about what Eddie had told me about the call you guys were on, you know how that family supports themselves through their FundMe page, so I started looking around. I was trying to donate but I think there's something wrong with this woman."
"Seems like kinda a leap, you didn't meet her." I look at Buck and shake my head no. "No, but I found some weird stuff online. I think she lied to you guys." she started to scroll down to all the fund pages, "theres Sheila and Charlie Burns in El Paso. Sheila and Charlie Young in Phoenix, and Sheila and Charlie Watts of Santa Fe. It's him the same kid every time, just different cities and last names." I covered my mouth with my hand, I was shocked, yeah she seemed nervous but I thought it was just the moment. The woman was hanging off her balcony, "Charlie did say they moved around a lot which would explain the different accounts and cities." Buck says, "She didn't really say what his illness was, I mean autoimmune disease? That's kinda general." Eddie rubs his face in disbelief at what is going on, "Charlie did say he goes to a lot of different doctors, which could be doctor shopping, it's mostly when they are looking for a doctor to say he's sicker than he actually is. You're not always gonna get the same diagnosis, so they could be picking the worst one."
"So you think she's lying?" Buck rests his hands on my shoulders and I pinch him to get them off, now is not the time for that kinda thing. "We wouldn't be the only ones, multiple fundme pages were shut down." me and buck take a closer look as Ana shows us the comments under the page. Basically saying how Sheila was a con artist looking for money and attention, and also that she was a fraud. "Oh shit." I found one comment that made me uneasy, "I think she's making her kid sick." Buck reads it off the laptop and closes it. Buck goes into his kitchen and serves Ana and Eddie wine. The thought of that woman possibly making her kid sick was stuck in my mind, who would do that to a child? It's horrible.
When they left I was laying on Buck's lap on his couch, staring at the ceiling while he was playing with my hair. "Is that still on your mind?" I sit up and face him, "A little bit, parents are there to protect you from the world as much as they can not hurt you before someone else does. My father broke my heart before any other man could, I get it he was struggling with addiction but we all went down with him. Now we're suffering from the long-term effects of it, he's in jail for the murder of my mother. But that was years ago, he's not going to be in there forever." Buck places his hand on my knee as comfort. "Los Angeles is far away from where he is right?" I take a deep breath and bite my bottom lip, I nod as he places a light kiss on my head. "sure let's say that." _________________________________
"Guess B shifts still at a call." chim, Buck and I enter the station to see Eddie looking a little roughed up, now he's the one with bags under his eyes. "Damn your early." Buck enthusiastically says to Eddie, who looks already drained of energy. "I couldn't sleep, I did some more research about Sheila and Charlie, it's been probably been years since she's started making her kid sick." Eddie is really having a field day with this case. "Munchausen by proxy? That's a big accusation, Eddie." chim says. "He's right though, all the signs lead up to that, she has to be poisoning him."
"Poisoning him with what?" Buck asks. Eddie thinks hard about anything he could have found her house while he was taking of Charlie. "Eye drops, I saw them in the kitchen." his face goes blank. "Tetrahydrozoline could cause symptoms like frailness and throwing up, it's lethal if it's ingested but it doesn't show up on standard toxicology tests." Buck looked at me weirdly, surprised that I knew what I was talking about. "She's dosing him, not to kill him but to keep him sick. I called social services, they're coming here to do a report." Eddie says. "Why would she do that?" Buck asks.
"Sometimes it's just to gain sympathy." we were all pretty uncomfortable and concerned about the situation until Eddie got an unknown call. "Charlie are you okay?" the rest of us look at each other slightly confused about what's going on. "Eddie, I think I did a bad thing." the bell soon rings and the three of us go running to get into a car to see what's going on with Charlie while the B shift just arrived at the scene. "Buckley, you get promoted to captain when I was looking?" it was because of the vehicle available that we could take. "Diaz you called it in?" the other captain says. "Yeah, possible O.D." We go running up the stairs, of course, Buck gets there first, curse his long legs, skipping the stairs. They break into the door and we see Sheila lying on the ground convulsing. "She's over here!" Charlie says. Me and Eddie pull Charlie to the side while Buck informs the rest of them about what she took. "She always puts eye drops in my food when she thinks I don't see her but I do. I just wanted to see what would happen if I gave them to her. I'm sorry" Eddie pulls the kid back from seeing what's happening to his mom
"It's okay, Charlie, you didn't mean to hurt her," I say to the kid while I call the paramedics to check up on him. "The kid is gonna need treatment too, it's the same kinda of poising just, smaller doses."
The relief we had when Charlie was safe for once was very consuming. I was standing in front of Eddie, trying to get him to calm down, he was acting unusual until I felt a sharp pain piercing through my shoulder. Everything soon went blurry and I lost the feeling in my entire body, half of the blood on me was mine but the other half was eddies. This was all happening too fast, I was lying in my blood beside Eddie, and he was losing consciousness. We were lying beside one another but I was more responsive than he was, he took most of the impact.
"Eddie!" I yell as more shots are being fired, soon I see Buck's face covered in blood, Eddie's blood. The echoing of the shots brought me back to the day I was shot in my stomach and the day my mother was killed, guns really take the fun out of everything.
