After I’d said it, I felt terrible. I had told my best friend to go and do something for me that was illegal for one and for another it was utterly against his morals in every degree. Hell, we even joined one of those anti-drug club things a few years back when the Backstreet Boys were still new. On top of all that I had the nerve to put Brian in some kind of unsuspecting trap even after preparing to die hours before. Had I gone nuts?
Brian seemed to think so. He was just standing there, scratching his head and giving me this look that said to me either he had to go to the bathroom or he was thinking very hard. Suddenly his face tightened and I knew he had thwarted my devious plot of uncontrolled drug abuse. I’d planned ahead and I knew exactly what he was going to do. I was prepared. The thought of the fact that I’d prepared to diminish my friend’s morals sickened me to the very core. Months of drug abuse and street talk were finally getting to me. After a long period of self-destruction I was totally irreversible. But I would set the plan forth anyway.
“I know what you’re going to say,” I paused briefly to clear the phlegm into the shiny bowl positioned conveniently by my head, “and I respect that.”
“Then why did you ask me?” He was getting all teary-eyed and the fact that I’d never thought I’d ever see him sadder was starting to creep up on me. Brian never got depressed. It was either me or AJ or Kevin who really got down. Howie sometimes felt it too, but never Brian. He would just tell us to “leave it to the Lord!” and things would eventually balance themselves out. Well you see that’s why when Brian’s dog runs out onto the street the cars just miss him. Mine die.
“I hate to say this Bri, but I’m going to die soon enough. You don’t want me to die with a horrible craving worse than one for peanut butter and jam do you?”
“Nick, this is different! When did you even start taking drugs? Why did you start?”
At that point my face grew solemn. At that point I felt anger towards Brian that I’d never, ever thought imaginable. Bubbles of anger traveled through my veins to my heart. When they got there they burst with powerful joy and I became furious.
“Did you really think I chose to do this? Did you?” He was about to answer, but I cut him off, “You really think you’re so smart, and wonderful, and that you’re going to heaven while everyone else who doesn’t follow in God’s way should rot in hell. Well I’ve got news for you. God created this world with plants that contain the drugs that I’m on and although they mess me up and although I’m already dying I’m willing to inject another needle into my shriveled, itchy skin. And I don’t really give a damn because I’m fucking hooked! No, I never chose it to be this way. If I told you exactly what happened word for word you’d just piss and moan about what an incredible liar I am. So really there’s no point. Either you sit there and watch me go through withdrawl, chemotherapy, and whatever else there is in store, or you skip merrily down the street, pick up some stuff to make me happy, then be on your merry way. In fact, go to the church after that if it makes you so happy. Beg for forgiveness. Pray for me to get better. Pray for me to live. Pray to awaken.” And with that I shut my eyes and silently drifted off to sleep.
Even though I didn’t see Brian leave the room, I knew that he was gone. The more I lay there, dreaming away about a distant future that wasn’t mine, the more terrible I felt about the way I treated him. He was probably wishing that my mom had just left me to die in the snow, not because he was mad at me but because he thought that I was suffering. Which I am. After all, I thought, I’m only going to be a vegetable for the rest of my life. The most I’ll ever move at once will be to blink and scratch my nose at the same time. Even that will take some effort.
I reopened my eyes, hoping that someone would be in the room so that I could get my mind off feeling sorry for myself and the horrible itch that seemed to be traveling throughout my body now. Funny thing that itch was; when I ignored it suddenly it would disappear and when I felt it, it just got worse. I couldn’t scratch the damn thing, not because I was crippled, but because it was under the skin. You can never satisfy an itch that lives under the skin.
Then I got a brilliant idea. Feverishly I worked to bring my left arm to the right before it caught the itch. The skin on my arm came off quite easily; it shocked me in fact. How horribly disgusting it was to feel big lumps of skin under my nails and to feel the blood trying to drown my hand. The first five or six layers of skin that I went through had no effect, but once I got deeper the pain began to numb that damn itch.
After that my cravings just started getting worse. How is a guy supposed to win around here? I thought. To keep myself from screaming I stuffed a wad of hospital blanket in my pie-hole and chewed on it like it was good quality beef jerky. By rocking myself back and forth I was able to ease the nausea bit by bit. That may seem odd to you, but instead of nauseating me even worse, the gentle rocking made me feel comfortable and relaxed.
In my daze I’d forgotten that a loved one could trample in through the door at any second and see me do this. They’d think I went crazy. But I was much too comfortable to stop. Eventually I chewed right through the fabric to my fingers, but I didn’t stop there. I pulled up some more blanket until my bare feet were exposed. The rest of the slobbery, wet blanket rested on my lap.
There was a knock on the door and through my blanket I croaked “Go away!” at it. No one out there ever listens to me, seriously. I stopped chewing when I heard the knob turn and flopped back down onto my pillow. As soon as I did, the horrible itch returned. On top of that I was too miserable to have guests.
It looked like Brian was back. I didn’t really want to talk to him, although I felt terrible about what I said to him before. Over the past few months I had completely lost all of my sensitivity. As a result I just laid there and waited for him to say something to me. An apology never occurred to me and in all honesty an apology would never make up for all of the mayhem I caused. The interviews with my parents, the tears, the pain; they all would have been better off if I just died right then and there. Aaron was right; they would never have their old Nick back. I would be this grouchy, intolerable bastard for the rest of my life.
He approached the bed with the same forlorn expression he had left with earlier. “I’m sorry,” I started to tell him, but he shushed me with his hand. Silently he handed me a small, brown paper bag and I just held it for a while, staring him straight in the face.
Because I knew what was in it, I didn’t waste any time dumping it onto my lap. A syringe stared me straight in the eye, its needle a sterile, glistening color. This needle was special because unlike the ones I had been using in the past few months, this one was completely clean. In fact it looked like Brian himself had polished and washed it until it shone.
“I took your advice Nick,” he told me, “but I went to church before I bought it. I went to ask God what I could do for you, what you needed most right now. And the answer was forgiveness. As much as I don’t want to stand here and watch you take your own life, if this is God’s will then that’s the way it should be.”
“You mean that God wants me to die?”
“No, He wants me to let you live. So go ahead, take it. But enjoy it now because it will be the last one you’ll ever have.”
Expertly I prepped the needle for usage. When I finished I looked back at Brian, expecting him to look away. He just looked right back at me and nodded his head. As anxious as I was to do it, I just couldn’t bring myself to inject the needle while Brian was around. That must have been his plan all along.
My hands started to shake with anticipation and my mouth flooded with saliva. If Brian didn’t want to see it, he should have lift the minute he gave the stuff to me. Unable to take any more self-inflicted suspense, I jabbed the syringe into an artery so violently that Brian jolted backwards and tripped over the garbage can in his path. I hardly noticed. Once again I had fallen into the dreary I called heaven, which was actually only a smarter, more twisted version of hell. The drugs didn’t really take my soul into foreseen futures of relentless fire and endless torture – did they? They just affected my body in such an adverse way that I could only feel pleasure as my body felt pain. Never had I been so separate from myself.
I let my eyes dilate and roll up into my head as I usually did. In the back of my mind I could feel that drool I’d built up before slide down my cheek. Then I began to drift in and out; a stage commonly referred to as being “on the nod.” Then of course there was the rush, followed by the trademark warmth, then dry mouth, and then the heavy, weighted feeling of my body. Still, good feeling comes with a price and there was no way in hell that I would give up this feeling for anyone. No more agonizing pain, no more pay-per-pleasure films that embarrassed me every time someone walked into the door. Somehow I would have to beg Brian for this again – I just wasn’t convincing enough before. This stuff was better than I gave it credit for and I hardly noticed it when I was sick. I craved more.
For the next few hours or so I was completely dead to the world; stopping only momentarily to perhaps reveal the contents of my stomach to my hospital johnny. I did that so many times that I gave up on keeping track of it. Brian got very worried about it though, something that I couldn’t comprehend while in a drug-induced phase. You understand. He actually got worried after he got up and noticed that my eyes were rolled up into my head. Normally the first thing he would do if he saw that would be to go and tell a doctor, but he was afraid the doctors would find the drugs in my system. It was a little more than very obvious. And, being the faithful Christian that he is, he would confess and possibly face some hard jail time. Instead of going through all that, he settled with taking my pulse and praying that I wasn’t dead and that he wouldn’t inevitably go to jail. That’s about all that he told me happened. My memories are slowly coming back now, that’s why I’ve recorded them like this; if I ever have a doubt, I can refer to this log. But sometimes you can’t really trust Brian (as off as that may sound) because I think there was a little something else that he’s not letting me on to. I guess I’ll never know.
Anyway, somewhere in the duration of all of his panic, Brian decided that it was too much of a hassle to get drugs for me and to watch me “torture myself.” What he didn’t understand was that I couldn’t feel myself being tortured, it just felt really good. Actually I even feared the inevitability of withdrawl syndrome - drug craving, restlessness, muscle and bone pain, insomnia, diarrhea and vomiting, cold flashes with “cold turkey” (goosebumps), “kicking the habit” (kicking movements), and other symptoms all of which I was not particularly looking forward to.
Still, things were starting to happen to me that I was only somewhat concerned about. For instance, it was getting extremely difficult to see at night. One time I really needed some pain relief and do you think I could find the damn call button? I didn’t think anything of it at first, but when I started being able to access a wheelchair and wheel myself to the bathroom, do you think that I could find the door without a light? Or the toilet for that matter?
Before I left the hospital I had pneumonia a total of six times and all of my doctors were convinced that it was an effect of my drowning immune system because of the chemo I was taking. That’s what I thought too, for a while. But really it was the heroin.
Brian stopped coming to see me everyday and I thought that it was because every time he did come I would ask for more heroin. When he stayed, he stayed for a really long time; I’ll give him that. He even convinced the rest of the guys to see me eventually and I could tell that they were frightened for me. I did my best to stay comforting, but a doctor ruined everything by doing my regular physical in front of them. For about the forth time that week I got a speech on how bad drugs are. The worst part was seeing the shocked looks on my friends’ faces because Brian didn’t break the news to them previously.