AJ was the only one who really understood. He got the rest of the guys under control and placed a comforting hand on my head. I got the impression that he dug my new look because he kept looking at my bald spot until he got the nerve to touch it.
“It was a unique circumstance,” I told them after the doctor left.
“How so?” Kevin questioned. I could tell that he was more than a little angry with me.
“Maybe another time. But for now what I’ll say is that it’s really not my fault and I’m addicted which is incredibly frustrating.”
“You just gotta have it right?” AJ had some knowledge on this topic. Smoking is a common addiction.
“I researched all about heroin,” Brian told me,“ and I want you to quit. But the problem is that I don’t know how withdrawl is going to effect the impact of your chemotherapy. I also don’t know how the heroin is going to effect your chemo.”
“Another unique situation,” Howie muttered.
I took a deep breath. Suddenly living was just not a priority for me anymore. Who needs life when you have a bunch of friends who don’t act at all like they used to and as a person you yourself have changed for the worst? Oddly I felt a sense of not belonging; like even so I was the only one who really belonged in that room I felt that I was the only one that shouldn’t be there. Like that everyone would just be happier without me. Of all the guys only AJ and Brian touched me; the other two just stood there like I was some kind of disease. AJ was creepy though, he didn’t hug me like Brian did, he just kept touching my head as though it was some sort of precious gift.
Then I just blew up. “Get out!” I screamed, “Out, OUT!” and friends ran. They were so afraid that they left the door open on their way out. I thought I had scared poor Howie so badly that he would never speak to me again. But I really needed to think my life through. I needed to think about little Aaron, who was too afraid to see big brother Nick with no hair. I needed to think about the rest of my family who was too afraid to visit me.
In a great long effort I managed to swing my twig legs off of the bed so that my feet touched the ground. Gradually I lowered myself to my hands and knees and began to crawl to the nearest spot in which I could find some privacy: the bathroom. I crawled in there and locked everyone once else out and that’s where I stayed for the entire day.
At various intervals of time I wanted to cry out and scream bloody murder until I couldn’t anymore. But my raw throat and my unusual new shy persona prevented me from doing so. Other times I thought “No more tubes, I can’t live this out.”
Many times I longed to escape and thought about how simple it seemed to be. Just put one foot in front of the other, Nick, is what I told myself. But I couldn’t do that task because it took more than 200mg of morphine just to put on a coat. How on earth was I supposed to walk away from this new life? How was I to walk back to the beach where I belonged, where I had meant to die so many ions ago? I then came to the conclusion that I needed help. If I were to walk somewhere, I would need a shoulder to lean on to get there. I would need someone devoted, strong and true. I would need someone like Brian.
Friendship was gone. It was gone from my life like it never passed it. How could I trust someone again to hold me, to help me, and never to let me down or expect anything more gracious than my love in return? I couldn’t. Not after I had been alone for so long. I was totally dependent on myself to survive. But what about all of those doctors and nurses, and the people I met while I was away – good and bad? Didn’t they count for anything? I was so confused.
My body refused to sit up for me anymore so I laid down on the cold bathroom floor, sighing as my cheek touched the smooth tiles. I never noticed until then that my body was burning up with fever. That is one of the smaller prices you pay for having cancer, I learned. The pain and deterioration are the worst prices. Sometimes the pain is so uncomprehendible I cannot find a word to describe a tenth of its evil manipulation. Pain searches for burdened souls like mine and feeds off the inner and outer doubt. Because pain isn’t just about nerves, it is about feelings as well.
In the hospital I spent a lot of time looking out of the window and thinking about ways to escape. No matter how hard I pressed my face against the glass I still couldn’t convince myself that I was outside looking in. Children passing by my window couldn’t help to second glance the pitiful thing that was me, tugging on their parents’ hands just for that second look. And I could feel how bad they felt, how in all of their innocence they wished me well even so they didn’t know my story, or why the poor dying man got himself such a nice hospital room. Those days I revisited the mind of a child who doesn’t see race or apparently a dying man’s past. And so began my love for children.
Lying in that bathroom I realized how I could use this love to do some good. I would visit the sick children, who were going through what I was, minus the drug problem. If I managed to get there somehow I would try to lend them the strength I thought I never had from anyone, therefore guaranteeing that none of them would ever be lonely. Unfortunately I was no angel and even so I’d done this kind of thing before I wasn’t sure I could go through with it without bawling my eyes out. Just to see these poor children go through what I go through everyday would be enough to keep me crying for days. I need to be stronger for them and myself.
At times I still want to just close my eyes and get it over with. We all know that our next life will be the best we’ve been through, but still we live on here… it’s senseless. But if everyone died, but will become of this world, in all of its beauty? It would become useless. No one would learn a valuable lesson and no one would learn respect or anything we’re supposed to learn in this world. That’s what I believe this world is for. For us to learn, to teach each of us a lesson in hell.
Thinking of that reminded me of another timeless phrase; “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Could Brian have the same exact chance to go to hell as I; because of the numerous “good intent” he had upon his reactions to me? Was he the reason why I fed off of his good will and his smothering friendship? Did I feed because I knew that he would fold and because I knew he wouldn’t forsake our friendship for a sin of God? No answer to this question came to mind and that made me come to one conclusion; I fed off of his good intention so automatically I had no idea what I was doing. Like a child after a good spanking would I be corrected if Brian had just told me “No” in the first place and betrayed our friendship to goodwill?
Possibly was the answer to that question. I was not certain. Knowing myself is not a strong point of mine and the only way to solve the equation was to go ahead and do it. Unfortunately the time had passed and I could not try. Brian was now never coming back, I thought. I screwed up and the only way I believed I could get him back would change my life for good. Maybe it would not make me a better person, but if I quit the drugs and started all over again by asking for forgiveness in church, maybe I had a chance at a new life. After all, doesn’t everyone deserve a second chance?
Even after I had decided all of this, I still lay there on the bathroom floor perfectly conscious and aware but unmoving. Something was telling me that I had some unfinished business somewhere, but I’ll be damned if I knew what that was. Who even said that I was going to live long enough to sue Screwy Louie for the hell he caused me and my body and the experience of withdrawl successfully tortured me with? No one is supposed to pull that kind of prank anymore. It was foiled ages ago when it started happening, but how did they let it happen to me? Something tells me that I should have stayed in bed. Right after the “End of tour” party I should have gone to bed and stayed there. But I had to keep on moving and screwing up my life more than necessary.
Funny story though, about that Screwy Louie. I managed to get him in the end after all. During my long and painful wakes of withdrawl (which I will describe more thoroughly later), through the bumps, kicks, drooling – I had one person to blame. And that was Screwy Louie. I call him that now because in the end I screwed him over good. Every time I wanted some heroin or just something to sniff enough to get a bit high, I screamed at him. Even so he wasn’t there to hear I told him wonderful stories about killing him and how I was going to do it. I told him what a bastard he was and how I was going to rip off every one piece of his body, one fat chunk at a time, and feed it to my pet piranhas. Which I didn’t have … yet. I told him what I felt and what he did to me inside and how it truly ached when I started losing my hair in clumps and he laughed at me. Little did I know it, but my mother caught on to this and recorded every session. Sometimes I want to hear it because it’s really funny and I don’t remember saying those things. When I listen to those recordings I can hear out how drugged I sound, even when untapped. I sound like one of those guys who had their jaw kicked out of place and beside this obvious personal flaw they still attempt to talk. Which results in a lot of drool and slurred words.
Eventually, through my maniacal descriptions on tape, the police were able to track down Screwy Louie. Personally I was shocked at the promptness of the LA police department. I had no idea that on the tape I had described the park and how to get to Louie’s from there. “…Perfectly described the route,” the police told my mother. Screwy Louie was so cocky that he hadn’t moved from where he was before. He was so sure that I was so extremely debilitated that I couldn’t see where Nancy was taking me.
Nancy. I had forgotten Nancy. Well, not exactly, but I did forget to acknowledge her enough to save her from being jailed. I was able to convince the police that she was a victim, and along with the teenager – Chad? – that delivers drug to all of Screwy’s victims. Chad turned out to be very valuable in the end – he was able to lead the police to several more victims, all with a watered-down version of my story at hand.
I told the doctors as best I could to watch out for Nancy. She was admitted into the hospital because of that personality disorder problem she needed a diagnosis for. Later on I would talk to her again.
Anyway, back to the bathroom. Several people figured out where I was after they came into the room and saw that I wasn’t there. My mother panicked, she thought that I was kidnapped, the shadow that was me. Then the nurses all came rushing in, trying to calm my poor, distressed mother. One of the nurses discovered the locked bathroom door and for the next hour they tried to convince me to come out.
There were still so many things I needed to figure out, so many things I needed to do before I ran out of time. It was so frustrating to have so little time and to watch it slip through my fingers day in and day out. Every day came new and I withered it away. With each new day I planned to get better and with each new day everything got worse. Much worse. Soon I would have to stay bedridden and lay in this retched place until I died. Well I wasn’t about to let that happen. As long as they can’t reach me, I’m safe, I thought. And I was right in a way. They couldn’t reach me without breaking the door down, but my mother wouldn’t have that because it would only make me feel worse. This was my way of getting some private time to myself. Unfortunately, it would do more bad then good if I stayed in there longer than a day. I needed some medicine, pain killers most of all. Without them I would probably relish in the pain for about an hour because I couldn’t take any more than that. Then afterwards I would faint, possibly igniting suspicion that I was not in the bathroom after all. After that, well you know.
Oh, avid reader, how I wallowed so. I wallowed over my reflection, my reflections on life past and on life now. Every day my past life spun in front of my eyes, and every time I thought I was dying. Then I would wake up, alive, sort of. This new life I found was killing me inside.
I crawled out of the bathroom. After six hours, which wasn’t really the amount of time I had planned to stay in there for, I finally gave up on the thoughts I was thinking. How foolish was I to think my reflections in the bathroom would be any different than the ones out here? The bathroom was not another world for me. I didn’t discover anything when I was in that bathroom, but someone else did. While I was in there, my mother discovered psychologist Dr. Ken Menoza.
Chapter 52
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