The company we keep

Have you ever seen that movie?...
You know the one. The possession of Emily Rose. That's who's sitting in front of me on the hospital bed. Her dark hair is a snarled tangle of dirty brown. She looks like a skeleton. She looks broken, but her eyes are alive with a wild crack induced fire. She's high and can hardly sit still. Her arms wave in strange contortions as she tells me about the gunshot wound to her wrist.

Her first name is Deanna and she has at least four different last names that I know of. In another life she wanted to be a cop. She even attended the Law Enforcement academy. The same facility I graduated from.

She was married and has two children that someone else has raised. Now the only thing she cares about is crack.

As I look at her I am convinced she would smoke a two hundred pound rock if she could stuff it into a crack pipe. I've never in all the years I've dealt with her seen her anything but high.

I talk to her a bit about her life before asking her how she was shot. I've already looked at the wound. It's superficial. Just grazed her wrist and it's already stopped bleeding. She's very lucky.

We talk about her kids and her ex-husband. Her kids are doing well she tells me. I don't know how she would know that. She says her daughter is studying to be a nurse and will maybe go on to be a doctor.

I tell Deanna I saw her mom a few days ago.

"My mom?"

"Yep, she was drunk but she talked about you. She worries about you."

"She's always drunk." Deanna says, while her arms flail around excessively in strange archs and swoons.

The doctor peaks into the room and Deanna asks for a xanax to "calm her nerves." I cynically wonder if she didn't hurt her wrist herself so she could come to the emergency room and get some pain meds.

In my experience dealing with crack heads, Xanax and crack seem to go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

"You got crack in my xanax, you got xanax in my crack" I think to myself in a dark humorous sort of way. Dark humor seems to take the edge out of dealing with the human condition day in and day out. You just have to be careful with it. Not everyone understands it.

I finally ask her how she got shot. She tells me that a bunch of guys were at the house drinking and began to argue. She said several of the guys started shooting at each other and a bullet grazed her wrist as she dove to the ground....No she didn't know who any of the guys doing the shooting were, and really she's fine.

I ask her if she isn't getting tired of her life. She says she is. I don't talk to her about changing her life as I know a pep talk about a better, crack free, life will do her no good.

she simply says she wants off crack, and we leave it at that.

"Where is Louis?" she asks me. I tell her I don't know.

Louis is her boyfriend. Louis doesn't use crack. She says she and Louis have been fighting a lot lately about her drug addiction.

Louis wants her off crack. Louis wants her in rehab. Louis loves her.

Ironically Louis is the biggest dealer of Crack cocaine in the area. He is so big in fact people often come from out of state and the surrounding counties to buy from him.

Louis is big time and knows how to play the game.

Louis is respectful to law enforcement.

Louis is one of the smartest men in his chosen profession that I have met thus far.

I've had long conversations with Louis late at night while he sat in his cell block the last time he was locked up.

Louis didn't rat anyone out last time he got caught.

Louis did his time quietly, serving his sentence and never complaining about anything.

Louis knows what the game is about.

Louis is a millionaire and to look at him you would never know it.

The feds never found his money. Neither did we.

Louis is a smart man.

One time several years ago, a crack head came to the house Louis dealt out of with no money. Just a bad crack habit and a shotgun. He put the gun against Louis' chest and demanded cocaine and money...

...Louis promptly took the man's shotgun away from him and beat him into the hospital with it. To my knowledge no one has tried to rob Louis again.

I try to be the best cop that I can be and Louis tries to be the best drug dealer he can be. I have a sort of morbid respect for that.

Louis comes into the room. Louis smiles at me. "Hey how are you man?" he asks. He looks at me as if I'm an old friend. I guess in a weird sort of way we are. A sort of way where what we do is nothing personal. It's just what we do.

It's just part of the game.

We shake hands and chat for a moment. He's worried about Deanna and is relieved when I tell him she's fine.

She's discharged, still high and wild. We all shake hands again and say our goodbyes, knowing next time we meet we might all be trying to kill each other. We stand there. Deanna. Louis. Me.

She thanks me for talking to her like a real person. No one's done that in a very long time she says. Especially a cop.

We all leave.

As I drive my squad car out of the parking lot I begin to think of how bizarre the encounter was, or must have seemed to an outsider.

Deanna...High on crack.

Louis...A well known drug dealer.

Me...A cop.

Just talking in a civil manner about anything but our differences.

All of us knowing it's just part of the game.