Memoirs Aren't Fairytales: A Story of Addiction

by Mann, Marni

  Woods surrounded both sides of the river, and the sun was shining above. It was my favorite time of year. The air was crisp, and the leaves were different shades of reds, oranges, and yellows.

  Water splashed into my mouth, tasting sweet like candy.

  Waves rocked the boat. The raft weaved from side to side to avoid hitting the boulders that stuck out of the water.

  My bangs flew into my face, and my lifejacket fit snugly around my stomach.

  We came to a pool of water with mountains of rock on three sides. The raft pulled up to a wooden dock. The child stepped onto the dock first, and the women followed, and then the men. I was last. I reached for the handle bar on the dock, and one of the women slapped my hand. She pushed the raft and I drifted away from them.

  The boat came to a dead stop in the middle of the pool. The water was calm. There weren't any oars.

  “Help,” I yelled to the people on the dock. “Throw me a rope.”

  Claire appeared on the dock. Somehow, she was alone and everyone else was gone. Then my parents and Michael showed up and stood behind her. By Claire's side were Sunshine, Richard, Eric, Renee, Que and Raul. Tim's dreadlocks poked Eric's face, and Frankie's pot belly squeezed in between Sunshine and Claire.

  “Claire,” I shouted. “Come get me.”

  They all put their hands in the air and waved. And then they disappeared.

  I put my hands over my head, getting ready to dive and swim to the dock. Just then, the waves returned, and the current moved the boat. The wall of rock opened into a tunnel, and the raft floated through.

  At the end of the tunnel, I saw it. The peak of an enormous waterfall. The boat stopped at the tip of the drop and teetered along its edge. Would the raft make the drop? Would I?

  I wanted to jump off the edge, glide through the air and feel the water spray over my face.

  I moved to the front of the boat, bent my knees, and took a deep breath. My throat was tight. And suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

  From somewhere up above, I heard my name.

  “Nicole, Nicole,” a woman said. Her voice was familiar. “Open your eyes.”

  A fish jumped out of the water and stared at me. It was yellow and blue, and its fin was pointy like a shark.

  I heard her voice again.

  “Nicole, baby, we love you,” she said.

  Something hard was in my mouth. I looked down and didn't see anything except water. But I could feel it when I touched my lips. It was a long tube.

  I tugged on it, and the tube loosened and moved.

  “Nicole, no,” the woman said. “Michael, call a nurse.”

  I yanked on the tube again.

  The raft rocked back and forth over the ledge.

  Hands touched mine and they tried to pry my fingers off the tube.

  I gagged as the tube came up and out of my mouth.

  The raft and river disappeared, and all I saw was darkness. Was the dream over?

  Were my eyes open? I touched my lids and they were closed, so I opened them.

  The light was blinding.

  A needle was in my wrist, attached to another tube that ran along my arm and into a machine. A blanket was pulled up to my stomach. And from my stomach to my chest was a white and blue, dotted—shirt?

  Four sets of eyes looked down at me. Mom and Dad. Michael and Claire.

  My throat was so dry. “Where am I?” I asked and coughed.

  “Mass General,” Mom said.

  “Is that a town?” I asked.

  “No, honey,” Mom said. “Mass General is a hospital in Boston.”

  A hospital? Had I been hit by the train? Motorcycle? Car? Did I still have my legs? I reached down and touched my thighs. Legs were still there and both arms too.

  “You overdosed, Nicole,” Claire said.

  I overdosed? But that was impossible. I knew how much to shoot and how much my body could handle, and Richard didn't sell junk that was laced or cut. Though I'd been shooting a lot more since the abortion—that was what I called it anyway. Six bags, six or seven or eight times a day for the last six months. I used more than Sunshine, and she was a vet.

  “Cole, you almost died,” Michael said.

  What happened to the raft? I wanted to be back on the raft, teetering along the edge of the waterfall. Anything would be better than the looks on their faces.

  I closed my eyes.

  When I woke up, there was a tray in front of me with apple juice, water, broth, pudding, and Jell-O.

  Mom took a spoon off the tray. She scooped up a cube of Jell-O and held the spoon up to my mouth.

  I wasn't hungry.

  “It'll give you strength,” she said.

  My eyes shut, I couldn't keep them open.

  A man in a white jacket was standing next to me. He was reading the machines behind my bed and writing on a chart.

  “You're awake,” he said.

  I wasn't sure what I was.

  He asked if I wanted to talk in private and I said yes. He turned around and said something to Michael and my parents and waited for them to leave before he spoke.

  “You're a medical miracle, Nicole,” he said. “With all the damage you've done to your body, I don't know how you're alive right now.”

  He said on Tuesday evening I'd been admitted to the hospital and had gone into cardiac and respiratory arrest from the heroin I'd injected.

  “What's today?” I asked.

  “Saturday.”

  I'd been asleep for four days? I didn't even feel dope sick, which was strange. I thought.

  He said I had grand mal seizures throughout the first night, and my organs began to shut down, so I was put on a ventilator.

  “Your body is weak, but it'll repair itself as long as you stop using heroin,” he said. “If you don't, I'm afraid the damage will be progressive and eventually fatal.”

  He had gray hair and wore glasses, and had probably been a doctor for longer than I'd been alive. It wasn't that I didn't believe what he said. I saw the damage when I looked in the mirror. I just didn't care.

  “In addition, you're malnourished, dehydrated, and your teeth are decaying from regurgitating the acid in your stomach,” he said.

  I touched the back of my mouth with my tongue and felt the hole where my molar used to be.

  “Do you vomit regularly, unintentionally or self-induced?”

  “I'm not bulimic,” I said.

  He wrote something down in the chart. “A side effect of longterm heroin use is vomiting.”

  The queasiness and lightheaded feeling had stopped after the abortion, but the puking hadn't.

  He asked if I had any other questions, and I asked when I could go home. He said in a couple of days.

  “You were given another chance,” he said.

  I moved my hand to my chest, a couple inches from my heart. The bullet hole had healed, but it had left a scar.

  He walked to the door and turned around. His hand went in the air and his finger pointed at me. “I don't want to ever see you in my ER again,” he said and left the room.

  Claire came in a few minutes later. I was glad to see her and not my parents. She sat on the bed and put my hand on her leg, covering it with hers. “I thought I'd lost you forever,” she said.

  “I'm still here.”

  But not for much longer. Tomorrow morning, I was going to leave the hospital regardless of what the doctor said. I wanted a shot with a new rig and seven bags in the chamber.

  “If I hadn't gone to your room to check on you, you wouldn't be here,” she said.

  Was I supposed to thank her for saving my life? Did I want to be saved? I was tired, I knew that much. Tired of panhandling, tired of boosting, tired of turning tricks, tired of being short on cash, and tired of going to Richard's.

  I was tired of thinking about how I'd murdered my baby.

  Was I tired of using? I was tired of chasing that first high—the one in Que's bedroom and the one in the McDonald's bathroom. No matter how many bags I
shot, I was never going to catch it.

  “How would you feel if you came into my room and found me on the floor, convulsing, with foam coming out of my mouth?” she asked.

  She touched my forehead, brushing the hair off my face. Her fingers glided down to my cheeks, and I thought of all the boils and whiteheads her fingertips were caressing.

  She cupped my chin in her palm. “I really want you to think about that and consider how I felt when I found you,” she said. “You wouldn't do that to me again, would you?”

  And then she left my room.

  Outside the door, I heard my mom say, “Did you tell her how you found her on the floor, foaming at the mouth?”

  There was silence.

  “Do you think it scared her into going to rehab?” Dad asked.

  More silence.

  “Thanks for everything you've done, Claire,” Mom said. “You saved our daughter's life.”

  My parents and Michael came into my room, and I pretended to be asleep. Their breathing was loud, and their feet squeaked when they walked towards me.

  Mom pulled the blanket up to my chin. Her touch had always been so soft and tender, and it still was.

  I didn't have to pretend to be asleep for long. I was so tired. Whatever the nurses had put in my IV was some good shit.

  When I woke up, my parents were sitting by my bed, and Michael was leaning against the wall. Sun was pouring in through the blinds, and I smelled coffee.

  Had they slept in my room last night? Mom was wearing a shirt with faces painted on it. Had she been wearing that yesterday? I couldn't remember.

  Michael moved to my other side and my parents stood, all of them surrounding me. They looked like they were staring at an open casket, saying their last respects.

  Who was going to speak first? It wasn't going to be me.

  Mom sat on the mattress by my waist and ran her fingers along my arm. She looked so clean and smelled like fabric softener and vanilla. Her eye shadow was sparkly and medium brown. I bet she didn't use markers like I did.

  There was nothing about me that was clean anymore. I didn't deserve to be clean, not for everything I'd done. The nurses should have left me in my dirty clothes instead of dressing me in a clean gown.

  “We don't want our baby to die,” Mom said.

  I felt the same way, but mine had.

  “And that's going to happen, Cole, if you keep this up,” Dad said.

  Dad looked clean too. I could smell his aftershave, citrus with a hint of musk.

  “Will you go to rehab and get sober?” Michael asked.

  Michael's hair was gelled, each strand placed just so perfectly. His shoes were the same color as the brown stripes in his shirt. But Michael had a secret, and I doubted if my parents knew what it was. He wasn't the cleanest, but he was cleaner than me.

  Would I go to rehab—sit in meetings, listen to other addicts tell their stories, work the Twelve Steps, talk to counselors, and promise to never do junk again? And stay clean?

  What would life be like, looking through clean eyes?

  I wanted the needle.

  But I was tired too.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  For two days, I lay in my hospital bed and listened to my parents and Michael talk about rehab. They said the same things they'd probably said in all their voicemails—they loved me and missed me, they didn't want me to die like Eric—and so I agreed to go. The rehab center was in a ‘burb outside Boston, but they didn't have a bed for me and wouldn't for a couple days. In the meantime, we'd all stay at Michael's.

  My decision was more for them and the baby than for me. My parents looked tired and older since the last time I'd seen them. For them and for the child I'd killed, the least I could do was get clean. I also didn't want to hurt Claire anymore. She had told me that before she died, she wanted to see me sober. And like she said, she was seventy-nine.

  I left the hospital wearing the clothes I'd come in with, with my purse and cell phone. Those were the only things I owned, everything at Sunshine's was hers. In the car to Michael's, I looked in my purse and it was empty except for my cigarettes, lighter, wallet, and the picture of Michael and Jesse kissing. The bags, spoons, and rigs were gone. Claire must have cleaned out my purse before she brought it to the hospital.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Mom said as we walked into Michael's apartment. She took my hand and pulled me into the guest room.

  Her suitcase was on the floor under the window, and her cosmetics were on the dresser.

  “Look in the closet,” she said.

  I opened the closet door and there was a rack full of clothes. Did she want me to see her wardrobe or her new Nikes still in the box?

  “I didn't know your size,” she said from the doorway. “But hopefully everything will fit.”

  “This is all for me?”

  “Honey, you don't have any clothes to wear in rehab, so of course it's all yours.”

  She said rehab like it was my first day of school.

  The shirts were all a size small and the jeans a size two. I couldn't remember the last time mom had bought me clothes, and pants that were a single-digit size. I hadn't looked at the tags on Sunshine's clothes. I just put them on and they fit.

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  She walked over and gave me a hug. “We're just happy you're in our lives again.”

  I was too, but that didn't mean I'd stopped thinking about heroin. Actually, it was the only thing on my mind.

  Before I'd left the hospital, the doctor had given me a prescription for six pills of Xanax. I had asked for Klonopin or methadone. He said Klonopin shouldn't be taken in short-term doses and methadone had worse withdrawal symptoms than heroin.

  “Take two pills a day,” the doctor had said. “They should help take the edge off a little.”

  The Xanax was about as strong as rubbing coke on my gums. If there was an edge, I was way fucking past it. My stomach was jittery and my hands were shaky. My brain was swimming laps, and heroin was at one end and rehab was at the other. If my parents weren't shadowing me around the apartment, I'd be looking for alcohol or glue, or computer duster, anything that would get me high.

  I wanted a minute alone, so I got off the living room couch and locked myself in the bathroom. I ran the faucet and the shower and sat on the toilet taking deep breaths.

  “Unlock the door,” Mom said from the hallway.

  “I'll be out in a sec,” I said.

  My chest was tight, but the steam was clearing my lungs.

  I heard a drill, and the screws on the door handle fell to the ground. Then the whole handle crashed to the floor, and the door swung open.

  “You're not going to shut us out,” Dad said.

  He handed the drill to Michael. Michael took off all the handles from every door in the apartment.

  Dad wasn't kidding. There was literally no way to shut them out.

  “We're going to get through this together,” he said.

  I went to bed after dinner. Mom changed into her pajamas too and got into bed beside me. She opened a book and read. She dragged her nail over the corner of the page and flicked it a few times before turning it. Sometimes, she'd lick her finger, flip, and hold the corner of the page between her pointer and middle finger.

  Heroin. Heroin. Heroin.

  “Do you want to talk?” she asked.

  I was on my back, counting the popcorn bumps on the ceiling. There were eighty-nine in the spot above my head, but I could have miscounted.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “The last four and a half years you've spent in Boston, rehab, Claire, anything?”

  Except for rehab, everything on her list was personal. If I told her all the things I'd done, it would only upset her more.

  “How about rehab,” I said.

  She put her book on the nightstand and rolled on her side, facing me. “We believe in you, Cole, and we know it'll work if you just give it a chance.”

  If the rehab counselor ever a
sked me why I did heroin, what was I going to say? I didn't wake up one morning and decide to be a junkie. Dope helped me forget about the rape, but that wasn't the reason I used. I came from a good family and my parents loved me. I wasn't picked on in school and dated lots of boys.

  “How do you know it'll work?” I asked.

  “You're a fighter, baby and you always have been. And when you want something bad enough, you don't stop until it's yours.”

  I couldn't think of a single thing I'd fought for. I gave the cops my statement, and when there weren't any leads, I didn't fight to find the guys who raped me. I dropped out of college because I couldn't take the looks and stares from the other students. I didn't fight for my relationship with Cody. I pushed him away because I couldn't stand to be touched anymore. I couldn't fight off the urge to use and caused the miscarriage. The one time I fought for what I wanted was when I pushed Claire away from the door. And Claire didn't deserve that.

  My mom didn't know me at all anymore.

  I told her I was tired, and she switched off the light. I listened to her breathe. And eventually, dad shut off the TV in the living room, and I heard Michael go into his bedroom.

  I watched the minutes change on the clock. I counted the seconds in my head. It was two-thirty and mom was still awake. I felt her eyes on me, her hand rubbing my head, her fingers tickling my arm every time I moved. Heroin. Heroin. Heroin was on my brain and it wouldn't go away.

  I got up from the bed and went into the bathroom, turning on the faucet just enough so the water trickled. Hopefully mom would think I was peeing. I had to hurry.

  I moved into the hallway and stood in front of the closet where Michael kept his jackets and skis. If I opened the closet door, she'd hear me. I'd just have to go to Richard's in my shorts and bare feet.

  I tiptoed into the family room, and dad wasn't on the couch. He was asleep on an air mattress by the front door. There was no way out of this apartment.

  Michael should have something that would get me high. I searched through the kitchen cupboards and hidden behind a box of cereal was a half bottle of vodka.