PROLOGUE - ON HOPE ALONE
©Rebecca del Rio

Every morning, the same morning. Eyes slit against the assault of sunlight, stomach roiling, every footfall a wretched thud through his body. Jack Carlisle poured four fingers of Christian Brothers Brandy and stuck it into the microwave. Fourty seconds exactly. Neither room temperature nor too hot—just warm enough to go down and stay down. More than hair-of-the-dog, more like hair of the whole damned litter and the bitch, too.

Every morning, the same morning. Knot the tie with booze-steadied fingers, pass the comb through blonde hair, filling with silver, grab the briefcase. One more for the road—this time two fingers and twenty seconds.

The morning drink was something new, something that he started after moving to Tucson, trying a geographical cure for the guilt, rage and depression that hung in his chest like a slab of frozen meat. But the cure didn’t take and the soul sickness came along as certainly as it would had it been wrapped in bubble paper and packed along side the wine glasses—the wine glasses he and David bought in Italy to toast their five year anniversary.

Goddamned David. Five years dead David. David dead from so many opportunistic infections, Jack’s skin crawled just remembering. Thrush. Kaposi’s Sarcoma, pneumonia, fricken micro-aneurysms in his eyes and every digestive complaint imaginable.

Every night for the past five years, Jack crawled inside a bottle of brandy and unsuccessfully tried to kill the past. Every morning lately, he awoke to find he’d wet the bed or thrown up on the floor beside the couch.

No matter, he could still work. I’m not an alcoholic—I’ve got my job and it’s a damned good, responsible one, too. Filled with warm brandy and a couple of Vicodin from the latest forged prescription, every day he climbed into his red BMW and roared out of the Tucson Mountains toward the city center.

Every day, but today. Today, the first day of school, his car airborne, launched off an unexpected rise, came to a shattering halt in the rear end of an empty school bus.

The first thing Jack noticed was the smell—antiseptic and sharp, mixed with the pungent ammonia of urine.

Crap, I wet the bed again. When he raised, his chest flamed as his ribs rubbed against bruised and torn flesh. What’s going on? Where am I?

“Sir, lie down, please.”

Jack looked to his side, staring straight into a service revolver and the wide, black utility belt strung with the tools of the law enforcement trade.

“Lie down,” came the order a second time. The young officer put his hand on Jack’s wrist. Cold metal pressed into Jack’s arm. A handcuff’s chain clanked against the gurney rail.

Suddenly the room flipped sideways and as a bitter stream rolled from his stomach into his mouth, Jack heard a pitiful, disembodied moan. “Oh God, help me!”