EMERGENCY ROOM
Headlines the front door. Lee drops his friend off and vanishes.

The phone rings at the Powers Home. Between nursing her face and getting her enraged husband up, Tabitha has to muster the strength to now show up for her son.

"Administer 2cc of Naloxone! He's been using Opioids. Acute Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in rounds!! Intubate, he needs to breathe and chest compressions have only done so much.
I'm gonna need hemoglobin levels, and a metabolic panel. Determine his creatine kinase levels as well as his arterial blood gases tox screen.
Can I get an X-ray of his chest please. ECG right away nurse!"

Dr. Talat orders the emergency room around, but also states he's just another addict from the hills. Eddie hears this as he stands near.

Mikey comes too!
The nurses continue monitoring but almost immediately become distracted by other more important client care needs in the ever busy hospital.

Tabitha and Carney arrive and hold their eldest son's hand. Tears roll down his mother's color pallet art collection of a face.
Mikey can't speak due to the trachea.

Carney can barely muster a level of understanding. His intoxication was severe. A nurse walks in and immediately covers her nose due to the strong smell of whiskey and unwashed genital area of a decomposing Carney.

"Do you need a doctor?" She says in her Filipino accent to Carney. He loudly says that he can't understand her gibberish. She is annoyed and leaves the family there to watch over their addict son.
Eddie leaves the curtained off space they allotted to Mikey's care. He looks around the waiting room and sees a lot of his neighborhood sitting waiting for care. A sense of sadness overcomes him, his misfortune bag is full.

Outside the ER he wanders aimlessly through the trees. A black bird catches his eye. Then another and two more appear. He stops. They pause and head tilt toward him, as though communicating non verbally but gracing him with their presence.

Silence. The open air and all its environment. Silent, as if the world was on a break waiting for anything to happen.

Eddie checks his watch, and with two minutes to four he hears the prayer chime go off. A new temple had been built right in the hospital park. This park used to be the playground of the trailer park, now it houses people who devote.

The chime is fifteen minutes late.
The birds that watched over Eddie now flock to the door of the temple.

Eddie sees people appearing as though mourning was taking place. All dressed in blue, head to toe with their hands neatly placed on their bellies.

In that moment Eddie sees death. He can feel it. The birds, the fully covered people the chimes.

Seven hours later, Eddie sleeps in a waiting room chair. Tabitha and Carney in Mikey's room.
Mikey is allowed to self discharge and so he does.

No one cared.

His body was found in the park the next morning, needle inserted in his right cephalic vein.
The birds were still there.