Xavior

*** CW: Drug Use ***

I knocked on the door to an upscale home in an area where most of the houses were fairly average. Based on the exterior, there was no telling how much magic the place might have built into it. It smelled like a lot from the sniff I took standing on the porch.

Health checks were sometimes part of the job, but this one was a high profile person. Franklin Gibson was a hotshot audio producer, and no one had heard from him in over a month. When he never showed up to record his next album with the latest grime-pop band, everyone and his mother called Jefferson PSH. 

Her name was Marianne. Greg talked to her for over an hour. 

All of the attempts by anyone Gibson knew to reach him had been thwarted. All they knew was that he was alive, but possibly not in his right mind. The descriptions from various people indicated as much, from the slurred language, to the fanciful explanations Gibson gave to people about where he was and what he was currently doing. 

The door cracked open. “Is Franklin Gibson here?” I was surprised someone was lucid enough to answer the door based on the reports.

“Who’s asking?” A shorter person, with a psy-band controller around their head and haptic gloves on their hands, looked at Greg and I like they were annoyed we were there.

“We’re with Jefferson Public Safety. Several people have called in regards to Mr. Gibson's safety. We're here to make sure he’s okay. Can we come in?” Greg asked.

“Babe! Some guys are here to make sure you’re okay!” They yelled and let the door swing wide open without even asking to see our shields or the service order we had obtained so we could enter the premise legally. 

The place reeked. I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket to cover my nose. Sometimes the living smelled worse than the dead.

A guy came out of a room in his bathrobe. Greg and I looked at him as he started running in circles. Presumably, this was Franklin Gibson.

Greg and I looked at each other and walked toward him. Gibson kept running in circles, yelling, and throwing anything he could grab at us. Mostly pillows, since his living room was basically a nest of them. 

Instead of chasing Gibson, we stood in the middle of his massive living room, watching him freak out. The gamer who answered the door, continued playing the latest holo game at a volume that was completely unnecessary.

“So, call it in?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Greg replied.

Greg pulled out his phone and called back to Central Communication. We asked for further instructions and called for an E-Med bus because it was fairly clear that Gibson had taken something. When the paramedics showed up, Gibson lost it.

“Don’t leave me!” he kept repeating. Gibson tried to grab onto Greg as the paramedics worked to calm him down. 

"Do you know what he took?" One of the paramedics asked as I transferred a copy of the service order to his records device. 

The other paramedic poked Gibson with a blood analyzer. 

"No, we're here on a service order for a health check. Based on his state it could be anything," Greg said.

"Probably involves magic. He reeks of it," I added. The medic who asked the question nodded. 

When it lit up with a result, the paramedic turned the device in our direction. Greg read it to verify what we all were seeing.

“Dreamweaver, huh?” Greg said. Normally they wouldn’t have told us, and we wouldn’t have asked, but the service order let us make medical decisions for Gibson in the case of impairment or emergency. I don’t think anyone would have argued that he was impaired at this point.

“Yeah, seems that way, though this guy is stuck in a loop. What’s left in his system shouldn’t have kept him in this state. We need to take him to the hospital to see if we can do more for him there,” The paramedic taking notes stated.

“That sounds like the best plan right now. Let us know if you need anything else. Our contact information is on the service order,” Greg said. 

We let the paramedics take Gibson out of the house. With any luck, they could help him, and he might be able to make decisions for himself when he was lucid enough. As it was, the service order only lasted for seventy-two hours.

I walked back over to the gamer still playing the immersive holo. “Excuse me. Can you pause that a moment?” I asked as I put my handkerchief away. I tried not to wrinkle my nose from what I could smell, or breathe too deeply.

They made a hand motion that paused the game and turned toward us. 

“We’re taking Mr. Gibson to the hospital. Do you live here with him?” They blinked and then turned back to their game and unpaused it again. I yanked the controller off of their head, which caused the game to pause.

“Hey!” They yelled.

“We need you to answer some questions if you could. Do you live here with Mr. Gibson?”

“Sure. I guess,” they said. They crossed their arms and squinted at us, obviously annoyed by our intrusion.

“Do you know what he was taking?” Greg asked.

“That Dreamweaver stuff. It’s hella trippy, but hey, if that’s your thing, I say go for it.”

“Are you alright on your own?” I asked.

“I'm fine. I'm working on a record, which you are totally fucking over right now. Can I have my controller back?”

“How old are you?” It was hard to tell their age from their clothes, their size, or anything else. I could have definitively determined a species by smell, possibly, if I wasn't so put off by the general stench. I'd been trying to breathe through my mouth for the better part of the twenty minutes we'd been in the house.

“Twenty-five. Franklin’s not a perv or anything, if that’s what you are trying to get at. I met him at a party a couple of months ago, and he’s been high ever since. I’ve been making sure he eats something and doesn’t wander outside. What he’s on makes things even worse in a bigger space. Even I know that.” They fidgeted a bit and had twitches they couldn’t control. “Can I have my controller back?” They repeated.

I handed the controller back to them. They put it on their head and returned to their gameplay. Greg shook his head, and we turned toward the door. I left my information with the house monitoring system if someone wanted more information about Gibson’s whereabouts or needed assistance. 

“Rock-paper-scissors on who ends up with the paperwork?” Greg asked as he tried to lighten the mood a little. I nodded and promptly won. Rock beats scissors.

“Two out of three?” Greg begged.

“Nope.”

“How about a snack run?”

“Nope.”

“The next three rounds of beers?”

“Nope, this one’s all yours!”

Greg shook his head as we left, knowing he was in for several hours of paperwork, and follow-ups with the hospital. I’d made it up to him later by having dinner delivered to the station. While he was stuck doing most of the work, I wasn't so cruel as to leave him behind or let us starve. We had each other’s backs.