Marcos went code and everyone on the street scrabbled desperately through dim memories of time spent studying the DMV manual, each coming up with something different. Some pulled to the left, some to the right, some, confused and frightenned by the wailing, dancing lights, sped up to outrun us. Most people, however, just slowed down and cowerred in place, as if the whole bleating, gnashing event would blow harmlessly past if they were inconspicuous enough and didn't make eye contact. The result, as usual, was a traffic jam and a palpable rise in anxiety that could be measured with a barometer. Marcos swore softly from the front seat and swerved to avoid a particularly large sports utility van with a particularly small goggle-eyed driver, both more or less ground to a halt under the paralysis of spontaneous indecision. Plasma bags gyrated erratically on their hooks as I braced myself against the creaking gurney. The occupant of this was a small, elderly man with about six minutes left on the clock, with or without the ER, and I think the old guy knew it. As my partner slowed at an intersection to give the traffic lights time to switch gears, our ward met my eyes for the first time since we shovelled him into the truck and gestured weakly to his heart, which was rapidly running out of work to do. I was trained to encourage him not to move and say something authoratative yet soothing, but his dark eyes, bright from pain and galvanized with a certain mortal urgency, shot clear through to my soul and held me motionless, waiting unprofessionally breathless for an explanation of this supplicating gaze.
It came in carefully measured english, which was nice. When we first arrived at the scene of the accident, he'd been mutterring feverishly in a language I didn't get, which would put it in the category of anything other than english, some spanish, and the punjabi phrases for "why don't you call us" and "when are you going to find a nice girl". At this point, the morphine must be setting in and wresting enough of his higher mental functions away from primitive damage control to translate his dying thoughts into sounds I'd understand, the quantity of which he checked with some parsimony. This last owing more, I figured, to a handful of broken ribs than a lack of linguistic errudition. "Please", he said clearly, hand resting on his chest, and stalled for a second to catch his breath. At this point in the training video I said "You'll be okay, sir. We're almost there" in a way that made further conversation an evident violation of procedure, but we both knew I'd be lying and his sudden application transfixed me.
"Give this letter to my daughter," he said, reaching into his coat and touching off a spasmotic attack of retching coughs. I gently restrained his hand with one of mine, which I should have done to begin with, and reached into his coat pocket with the other, which I shouldn't have done at all. "The locket too". I liberated both and held them at an easy distance as he cleared half his remaining circulatory system from his throat and heaved a couple deep, rattling breaths. Glancing at the letter, I was suprised to see only a couple faint traces of blood on the envelope, improbable since this guy had enough in his left shoe right now to transfuse a baby giraffe, so I held it by the corner, trying valiantly not to make things any worse. "We're almost there", I said mostly out of habit, only later glancing up through the small front window to see if it was true.
Seeing me in possession of the small, wooden pendant and his last correspondance to posterity put the old guy in an improbably peaceful state of mind, and he settled back into his crimson pillow as our sirens keened through the cold night and brilliant scarlet halogen bursts burned to mark his passing.

In the hospital, I shuffled off to file the evidence accordingly. My unidentified friend had been found mowed down in a parking garage on the fancy side of town with no money missing, and you were pretty much forced to bet your ass the cops wanted every little thing in a well-marked plastic bag. I was touched that the old guy had entrusted me with such a noble charge, but he hadn't been given a vast choice of couriers, and I didn't think he'd mind if I handed it off to the proper authorities. After all it would mean my job at the very least if I didn't.
I smiled lamely at the triage nurse that never noticed me, and rounded the corner to more or less run bodily into a knot of uniforms already starting in on Marcos about the case. The rattled medic had obviously been on his way to the commisary for a cup of thin coffee when the strong arm of the law had ensnared him in a mid-hallway huddle around which the bustling night staff of Mercy General was now forced to resentfully squeeze. Two patrolmen, one forensics guy, and a dick.
And what a fucking dick.
I didn't have a problem with human guts much anymore. If I did, I'd have to find a job that didn't involve holding other people's in. About the time I'd found a good detergent to get the nightly stains out of my clothes, I'd supressed the inner child that recoiled in abject horror at the eviscerated human form. No, I didn't have a problem with anyone's guts but Andy Stotler's. This guy's guts I hated. 
"Miles Garcha, what a suprise."
"Andy Stotler, you old son of a bitch," I rejoined in a dead-pan tone that left two patrolmen, a forensics guy, Marco Rodriguez, and probably Andy Stotler ponderring the greeting's affability. "What brings you to Mercy General?" I flourished my right hand demonstratively while jamming a letter and a little wooden pendant deep into my pocket with the left.
"Actually Miles, it seems we have a murder on our hands."
"Really? Well, that's why we wear gloves, right?" As evidenced by the joke, it had been a long shift, and I wasn't in any mood to watch Andy parade and posture all night with what must have been his first job off noise complaints.
"You mean the DOA we just brought in, ofcourse." 
Andy gave me this same smug look I remembered from highschool and took a deep, self indulgent breath. Apparently, this was the -beginning- of Andy's day.
"Five foot five east asian male, about sixty, well-dressed, no identification. We're running the prints now. Looks like a hit and run. Maybe an accident..."
"But...", I coaxed mechanically.
"But maybe not. It seems unlikely him getting clipped in a parking garage at four in the morning at a speed like that."
"Like what." It wasn't a question. It didn't need to be.
"Well, we make it to be about 45".
"Huh. Kids, maybe?"
"Maybe."
"So what do you want to know from us?" I had a date with my matress, and I didn't want to keep it waiting. Most detectives are known for making mountains out of mole hills. It is, after all, their jobs to scour and scrub. Andy and I went entirely too far back, and I knew damn well he was gearing up just now to make the Taj Mahal out of a single mouse turd. I hoped against reasonable hope I'd get overtime for this.
"We'll need you to sign some things. You know, the usual."
Right. Three hours later, I left feeling like I'd personally confessed to killing the guy myself and signed my name to a triplicate copy in at least a dozen places. I felt all in and violated, and I needed a drink. What I really needed was a wife, 1.5 children, a 401k, and a sense of job security, but I knew where to find a drink. Those other things would have to wait. Except job security. If I could keep away from a nervous break-down and never get tired of Maruchan Ramen or the graveyard shift I knew people would keep getting old, injured, and/or killed.