Black Clouds of Cotton (In Vein Series Book 2)

by C. M. Radcliff

  “Call him,” she demands as she walks past me to the door. Rising on the tips of her toes, she peers through the peephole, looking out into the hall. “There’s no one out there.”

  Pulling my phone from my pocket, I quickly unlock it and go to my call log. Tapping on Ander’s name, I hold it up to my ear as it rings. It rings through the speaker of the phone, but in the distance, the ringing sound echoes from the other side of the door. Sloane’s face contorts as she narrows her eyes at me. My eyes widen as I stare at her and we listen to the ringing echo again.

  “What the fuck?” she growls as she quickly unlocks the door and pulls it open. “Oh my god, Hadley.”

  Glancing over at her, my eyes drop to the floor as I watch Ander’s crumpled form roll through the doorway. All of the air leaves my lungs in a rush and my phone slips from my hand, landing on the tiled floor of the kitchen with a loud crash. My feet move on autopilot as I sprint over to the door. Dropping to my knees beside Ander, I take his face in my hands in a rush. Moving along his neck, my fingers feel for his pulse and it’s easy to find.

  Holding my breath, I stare at his chest, watching as it moves in a shallow, rhythmic way. A sigh of relief escapes my lips as I glance up at Sloane. “He’s alive.”

  “What the hell is going on then? It’s not like he just fucking fell asleep, standing outside our door.”

  I swallow over the lump that forms in my throat, feeling the tears as they well behind my eyelids. Sloane knows that he’s an addict, but doesn’t know the extent of it. Is it too far of a stretch to assume that he’s high and did in fact nod out standing here?

  No. Now I just sound like I’m looking for him to be doing something wrong.

  His clammy skin sticks to the palms of my hands as I hold on to his face and examine him. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. He looks as fucking thin and emaciated as he did when I saw him earlier. There’re no bruises on him anywhere and I can’t find any blood.

  He didn’t overdose if he’s still breathing, but maybe he did too much.

  The closer I examine his skin, I take in the sweat that coats his pale skin that was once a shade of tan. It’s hard to distinguish whether he’s just extremely pale or if there’s a different tint to his skin tone. I wipe the beads of sweat away from his forehead and lightly lift his eyelids up with my thumbs. His eyes are completely rolled back in his head, but the whites of his eyes aren’t white anymore. They’re bloodshot with a yellow tinge.

  Adrenaline mixes with the panic that resurfaces as I release his eyelids. Grabbing his shoulders, I give him a swift shake, feeling his dead weight in my hands.

  “Ander!” I yell as I shake him. His body moves as I move him, but that’s all that I get. “ANDER!” I yell again, but I still don’t get a response.

  The nursing student in me runs through all of the possible things that could be going on, but it’s fucking endless. He fucks with the deadliest of drugs and injects them into his veins on a daily basis. He’s so unhealthy, it’s not even funny. There’s literally no way that someone with my limited knowledge can pinpoint what the hell is going on.

  “Call 911,” I tell Sloane as I glance up at her. “We need to get him to the hospital because there’s something seriously fucking wrong here.”

  “Are you sure that he’s not just fucked-up?” she asks as she crosses her arms over her chest in defiance. “He fucking uses heroin, Hadley. Is this something that’s so uncommon?”

  “He’s completely unresponsive,” I argue with her. “Whether he’s fucked-up or not, he needs to go to the fucking hospital.”

  Sloane stares at me for a moment as she grabs her phone and dials the number. I stare back down at Ander, carefully positioning him back on the floor as the tears build once again. Sloane rattles off the information to the operator as I watch the steady rise and fall of Ander’s chest. I wish I could reach inside him and slay his demons, freeing him from the pain that he harbors deep inside. Things would be so much easier if we didn’t live in a constant state of uncertainty when it comes to the future.

  “They are ten minutes out,” Sloane says quietly as she lightly touches my shoulder and gently squeezes. “We’ll get him the help that he needs.”

  No, we won’t. You can’t help someone that doesn’t want to help themselves.

  My heart aches as I stare at his helpless face. I knew what I was getting myself into when he came back into my life. I signed up for this heartache with a piece of my soul. At some point, something has got to give, right? We can’t live like this forever and every time something happens to Ander, it just proves how fucking true that statement is.

  I gently run the tips of my fingers down the side of his face, tracing every hard edge. Tears quickly fall from my eyes, glistening as they land on his skin. Brushing them away, I stare down at him feeling nothing but sorrow and pain as it wraps its jagged arms around me. We wait in silence for the ambulance to come and I can’t take my eyes away from him.

  We can’t live like this forever, Ander.

  Everything is a blur when the paramedics show up and before I know it, we’re following them downstairs and out the front door with Ander on a stretcher. He stays unresponsive as they load him into the back of the ambulance. I watch, wrapping my arms around myself as one climbs into the back with him and the other slams the doors shut behind him. The woman, one with a face that I recognized from somewhere, turns to look at me with pity in her eyes.

  “We’ll be taking him to Anderson Medical Center,” she tells me softly.

  “Thanks,” I whisper as I nod at her. Sloane steps beside me, wrapping her arm around my shoulder. The woman gives me a small, sad smile before walking around the side of the ambulance to the driver’s side door. The engine hums loudly as it starts and the lights on the roof flicker on as they pull away from the curb.

  Standing, frozen in place, I watch in horror, feeling completely helpless as they take him away from me once again. Sloane squeezes my arm and rubs it lightly. “I’ll give you a ride.”

  Swallowing back the tears that rapidly build, I nod as I step away from her. “Can you call Troy?” I ask her quietly as she grabs my arm and leads me into the parking lot. “He should probably know and so should Ander’s mom. I don’t have her number.”

  “Whatever you need, girl, you just say the word.”

  I sit silently, lost in my own thoughts and overwhelming despair as Sloane drives us to the hospital. She calls Troy and gives him a rundown of what happened and where we’re going. I tune out their conversation as the reality of this mess that we’re caught in fucking hurts my soul.

  Sloane ends the call and drops her phone into the cup holder. “Troy is going to meet us there and said that he was going to call Ander’s mom right now.”

  Nodding, I continue to stare out the window, afraid to look at her. I’m too overcome with such a mix of emotions that I can feel myself teetering on the edge and could break at any given moment. I watch as our surroundings pass quickly and before I know it, we’re pulling into the parking lot at the hospital.

  Everything feels like a dream as we walk through the sliding glass doors. I take a seat in one of the chairs in the waiting room as Sloane walks to the front desk and tells them who we’re here for. As we sit and wait, dread fills me, but in a sense, I’m numb. So fucking numb. This isn’t the first time that it’s happened and I’m not so sure that it will be the last.

  His addiction is killing him, and he’s slowly killing me in the process too.

  34

  Ander

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  The sound rings in my ears, causing my brain to throb against my skull. My eyelids flutter open as the rhythmic beeping continues to echo around me. A bright light from the ceiling burns my eyes as I struggle to let my vision adjust. As everything slowly comes into focus, I take in the white walls that surround me in the small room. My joints are stiff and my body aches as I push myself to sit up.

  I first notice the hospital gown that I’m
wearing, covered by the thin white bedsheets. Wires attached to probes stick to my chest, pulling on my skin as I sit upright. The top of my hand is stiff and burns as I move it to inspect the IV that is carefully placed in one of the few veins that they probably had access to.

  The monitors continue to beep as my mind wanders to how the fuck I ended up here. The last thing I remember was going to Hadley’s after I had gone to see Javi. I knew that something was wrong then, but I pushed through it all and pushed my body too fucking far. I remember the dizziness that had consumed me the entire time until I finally passed out right outside of Hadley’s apartment.

  A wave of nausea rolls in the pit of my stomach and the weakness in my body is unbearable. Leaning back against the pillows, I rest my head, letting out a ragged breath. Movement from the corner of my eye catches my attention. An older woman dressed in scrubs walks through the door wheeling in a computer on a stand. She doesn’t notice me at first as she stops by the bed and holds her name badge up to a card reader by the screen.

  “What am I doing here?” I ask her, but my voice sounds so distant and hoarse.

  She quickly lifts her head and her brown eyes fly to mine. “You’re awake,” she states with a small smile as she pulls a phone out of her pocket and types something on it. Grabbing a thermometer, she steps closer to me and runs the cold metal ball over my forehead. “How are you feeling?”

  “Pretty fucking confused,” I mutter with a sigh. “I know that I fainted, but what the hell am I doing here? Where is Hadley?”

  “Your girlfriend? She’s been in the waiting room all night since you were admitted.” The nurse purses her lips for a moment and her brow furrows slightly. “Do you know why you fainted?”

  I scoff, feeling my stomach coil from the nausea and the annoyance grows inside me. “Probably because I was dehydrated or some shit. Fuck if I know.”

  She stares at me for a moment with sadness washing over her expression. “I paged the doctor so he can come discuss your condition with you and share his diagnosis.”

  My condition. What a nice fucking way to put it.

  “Look,” I snap at her, feeling the starting effects of my withdrawal kicking in. “I know that it’s your job and everything, but I don’t need someone with a medical degree to come talk to me about my addiction.”

  “You don’t know, do you?” she asks me quietly, staring at me with nothing but pity.

  My jaw clenches as I narrow my eyes at her. “Know what?”

  I watch as she nervously shifts her weight from foot to foot as she gnaws on the inside of her cheek. The door opens farther just as an older black-haired man dressed in a lab coat walks in.

  “Mr. Capelli, I’m Dr. Stephens,” he greets me, extending his arm to shake my hand as he walks over beside the bed. “It sure is a good thing to see that you’re awake. I’m sure that you’re not feeling the best right now, given everything that has happened.”

  With an incredulous look on my face, I glance back and forth between the two of them. “What the fuck is going on here? What aren’t you fucking people telling me?”

  “When you were brought in, your blood sugar was dangerously low, which could be because of not eating properly and being underweight.” The doctor pauses for a moment as he tucks his hands into the front pockets of his lab coat. “Hypoglycemia can also be caused by a number of different things, so as we stabilized you, we also ran additional tests to see if there were any underlying causes.”

  “Okay…” My voice trails off as I clear my throat. “So, I’m fine to go then, right?”

  Dr. Stephens frowns deeply as he grabs a chair and pulls it closer to the bed. I watch him as the anxiety builds inside me as he takes a seat and carefully folds his hands on his lap. “Unfortunately, no. We were able to figure out what is really going on, but it’s going to require immediate intervention and you’re going to have to make some serious life changes.”

  I’m sure when they ran their blood tests, it wasn’t hard to detect the heroin that consistently stays in my system. But why do I get the feeling that there’s more to what he’s saying than the drugs?

  I cut my eyes at him. “Can you cut the shit already and tell me what exactly you’re getting at here?”

  “Ander,” Dr. Stephens says my name quietly with a look of sorrow in his eyes. “You have Hepatitis C.”

  “Nah. I don’t,” I scoff with a swift shake of my head as I reject his inaccurate diagnosis. “Run the tests again. I’m fucking clean.”

  “Given all of your symptoms and the confirmation from the blood tests we’ve already done, I am certain of your diagnosis.” Dr. Stephens pauses for a moment, his lips pursed. “Have you shared needles with anyone before?”

  My expression falls and what little color was left in my complexion quickly fades from my face. Keeping my eyes trained on his, my brows pinch together, but I stay silent. There’s no need for me to answer him, not when we both know the answer. Asking a junkie if they’ve used a dirty needle before is like asking a living person if they breathe oxygen.

  Of course, I’ve shared needles with other people.

  Of course, it’s something that I knew I wasn’t supposed to do, but then again, I also knew I wasn’t supposed to inject drugs into my veins.

  Dr. Stephens frowns and nods at my silence. Giving me a look of hope, he leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “I know that this may be somewhat shocking news to you, but I can promise you that in today’s world, it is not a death sentence. There are options for treating it and you can go on to live a long and normal, healthy life.”

  He pauses for a moment with an expectant look on his face as if he’s looking for some kind of a response from me. With all of the information being shoved down my throat, I can barely focus on his words. My newfound diagnosis consumes my mind as the self-loathing settles in my soul.

  “If you are willing to get help, it would be best now for us to start looking for a bed at a detox facility and seeing what your options are for rehab. We would also like to get you started on an antiviral medication that will help to get rid of the virus. You’ll be followed for about three months and then reevaluated to see that the virus is no longer detected. There’s a new medicine that we have had a lot of success with.”

  I stare at him, feeling the coldness settle within my bones. “Get the fuck out of my room.” I have no desire to hear anything else from him, not after he just dropped a bomb like that on me.

  “We need to discuss your treatment plan—” Dr. Stephen’s starts, but I abruptly cut him off.

  “What part of ‘get the fuck out of my room’ do you not understand?” My tone is harsh and I spit my words at him like icicles. He opens his mouth to say something, but quickly closes it. The nurse’s eyes widen and she ducks her head to avoid my gaze as she slips out of the room without another word.

  “Very well,” Dr. Stephens says with a sigh as he rises to his feet. “I will give you some time to process, but know that the quicker we act, the better chance we have at preventing it from destroying your organs.”

  I watch him until he steps out into the hall, pulling the door shut behind him. Dropping my head back onto the pillow, I close my eyes as the intrusive thoughts fill my head. I’m disgusted and disappointed with myself. Despite his reassuring words, I can’t help but feel fucking helpless. I could have prevented this; I could have prevented all of the bad shit that has happened in my life, but instead I’ve done nothing but continue to feed my demons.

  A part of me is stuck in a state of shock, bordering on the edge of denial. Hepatitis C. I knew it was a possibility, but like all of the other consequences in my life; I never paid them any mind until they smacked me in the face.

  What the fuck am I going to tell Hadley?

  After all of the pain and destruction that I’ve caused, now I’m going to fuck her up all over again. We were foolish and she was on the pill, so we never used a condom. Diseases weren’t anything that we had even given thought to, only pr
eventing an unwanted pregnancy. Hepatitis is transmitted by blood. Even though the chances are low, there’s still a possibility that I could have infected her too.

  I have to tell her.

  After all of the lies that I’ve fed her, she’s filled to the brim. I warned her about how deadly truths are in my world and she’s about to find out how easily one truth can cause your entire world to come crashing down.

  35

  Hadley

  Sitting in the waiting room, it feels so surreal that I am lost in a dreamlike state. After Ander was rushed to the hospital and evaluated in the emergency room, they had decided to keep him overnight. Troy and Hera both showed up last night, not long after Sloane and I had gotten here. Until they figured out what was going on with him, only family was allowed in the room. Hera had been back and forth throughout the night to keep us updated. Her updates were vague, but he was stable and that was the only thing that mattered right now.

  “Mrs. Capelli,” the doctor says from the doorway, gaining all of our attention. “Ander’s awake and we would like to discuss how we’re going to proceed with his treatment.”

  Treatment?

  A sliver of hope flickers to life inside me at the mere thought. Treatment typically means rehab, and if they’re talking about that then that has to mean that Ander finally wants it. He’s finally getting the help that he has needed for a long fucking time.

  Hera gives me a small smile and gently squeezes my hand as she rises to her feet. “As soon as we’re done in there, I will make sure that they let you come back.”

  Nodding, I release her hand and watch her as she follows the doctor out into the hall. Glancing across the room, I watch Sloane and Troy as they talk in hushed voices as they stare at the vending machines. They’ve been over there for longer than it should take to pick something out. Neither of them have said a whole lot since we’ve been here. It’s almost as if they’ve just been standing and watching from the outside. Neither of them know what it’s like being caught in the dark depths of this fucking storm.