I chewed another of the fentanyl lollipops I found. They seemed pretty useless. I wondered if they’d put this guy on Oxy or anything good, pillwise, before they had him on the patches and the pops.
Inside the kitchen, next to the coffee cups, I discovered a cabinet filled with bottles of pills. The usual useless suspects — Advil, Tylenol, gaggles of vitamins, and, scattered inside the cabinet, the snake-oil desperation of shark’s fin and whale cartilage and shit like that. I pocketed a bottle with about ten ten-milligram Vicodin and kept scrambling through the cabinet until I found something worthwhile in a near-full jar of eighty-milligram OxyContin. I felt myself smile. I took two of the eighty-milligram tablets, crushing one and allowing the other to slide down my throat and release itself over time.
There was nothing else of value in the cabinet. I swapped the contents of the Advil and OxyContin bottles and kept the Advil in my pocket.
Back in the living room, I looked closely in the guy’s eyes. Nothing registered. He was alive — that’s what the machines seemed to be saying — but there wasn’t much going on. I wondered, again, if I could cut him to get that vial out. I supposed I could — people could do all sorts of things they didn’t want to do in life. Just not think about it, and get it done. It didn’t have to be any more complicated than cutting into a steak, so long as you turned your brain off.
I sat on the couch and looked through a TV Guide. I had no idea about any of the celebrities or shows — that’s another thing dope does. The outside world of news and talk just goes away. You can’t tell anyone a single current event, even if they offer you a million dollars. The world fades and recedes. I glanced around. There was an antique musket over the fireplace. Everything about the house felt old. Murder mysteries piled up by the end table. This guy, or maybe Sandra, really liked mysteries. There had to be a hundred new hardcovers in that room alone. There was Luna’s great Penthouse CD open on the stereo — so, evidence of someone not old too. I suspected the CD was in the machine and I really wanted to hear it, but I didn’t want to do anything wrong, so I didn’t hit play.
I listened more to what Doc and Sandra might be doing. If they were fucking, they were being fairly quiet about it. I fingered the fentanyl patches in my pocket. I wanted to ask Doc how much longer we’d have to wait. I was starting to get nervous. We’d been there for twenty-five minutes and I had no idea if this guy ever had visitors and, if he did, when they might be coming by.
In any event, all this was Doc’s call. I was just along for the ride. I went back into the bathroom, still feeling vaguely sick. Not dope sick anymore — the fentanyl and OxyContin had trickled some help into my blood and brain — but sick from the familiar nerves of being somewhere I didn’t belong. The fear of being caught pressed on me like a vice. The fear of having to cut that guy open to get the morphine vial. But if I had to do it, I would.
I started running the bath. When the water first came out, it was rust brown, and then slowly started to clear. The fentanyl patches work better if you’re warm. I put one on my right arm and one each on my right and left thigh. I took some deep breaths and made the temperature as hot as I could stand it and lowered myself in. Then I took two more eighty-milligram OxyContin.
Twenty minutes later I was nodding off. It felt so good, a warm waking dream, that I was worried I might be close to overdosing. I felt this incredible warmth inside me — it was like my heart was a glowing road flare and my bones were hollowed-out bird bones. Balsa wood. I could have weighed ten pounds, the way I felt. Behind closed eyes I had firework displays blasting in slow motion. My head rolled from one side to the other and it didn’t seem connected by anything thicker than dental floss.
I heard the voices out in the living room. Yelling. A man’s voice I didn’t recognize.
“I said, who the fuck is this?” he screamed.
I heard Sandra’s voice. “He’s a doctor I’m consulting, Rick.”
And I thought, Rick? Who the hell is Rick?
Rick yelled, “Consulting? Is that what the fuck you were doing? Consulting?”
She started to talk again, but the man named Rick said, “Get the fuck downstairs — do you understand?”
I stood on legs that could barely hold me up and banged into the towel rack and knew instantly the noise was too loud — Rick had to hear it even over his yelling. My bag was in there with me, along with twenty-seven patches and the bottle of OxyContin I’d taken and my clothes. I had a few lollipops. I thought about Doc, but didn’t figure I could help him any. It was one of those situations where my presence could only add to the trouble.
Behind that door. Rick. Doc. Sandra. The dying man, helpless to do anything about the anger that swirled around him.
And what would adding me do to the situation? It couldn’t make it better.
I got dressed as quietly and as quickly as I could, without drying off. My clothes stuck to me and I held my arm out to the wall to keep myself upright. I double-checked my bag and made sure I had all the drugs.
The guy kicked the door in as I was trying to reach for it.
“And who the fuck is this wet fucking junkie?”
I closed my eyes for a moment.
“Back in the fucking room, junkie.” Rick had a gun.
The three fentanyl patches clung wetly to me and itched under my clothing. I looked at the side exit and noticed the doorjamb was all but destroyed by termites; it didn’t look like anybody had used the door in a while and it didn’t look like I’d be using it now, either.
I came back into the living room. Rick had Doc and Sandra in front of the TV and told me to stand with them.
“Dude, you took a bath?” Doc said.
I nodded, not wanting or feeling much need to explain.
Rick pointed with his gun hand at Doc. “So, you’re a doctor?”
Doc nodded.
Rick said, “So am I. And THIS,” he said, waving the gun around, “is my hospice connection.” He looked hard at Sandra. “Or did someone forget that?”
“I’m sorry, Rick.”
“Shut the fuck up!” he yelled.
He wasn’t on dope — he paced and chewed his lips and had picker scabs. All speed and meth shit. I can’t take speed freaks — they pounce on everything, darty and unpredictable as bats at sunset.
He walked back and forth. “Yeah, I’ve done fucking seventy-two-hour fucking shifts sewing up idiots like you, you careless fucks. Fucking zombies. You BUY this shit from me, you don’t take it, is that understood? You better believe that’s motherfucking understood.”
He rambled on for a bit, not even looking at us, just screaming, while the oxygen tank and the machines did their job.
“You want to know something about our fucking insides?” Rick said. “My first day in ER they tell me to sew this guy up. They needed to get at the liver and you know what they fucking do to get at a liver? They take the fucking twenty-five feet of your guts and they put them in a silver tray next to you. Upper, lower intestine, all out and throbbing in a bowl, still connected to you but outside your fucking wrecked body, while the doctors fix you idiots. And then they tell me to put it back together and you know how we do that? We just motherfucking DUMP the guts back in, all thirty, forty feet of guts, any old place, and sew the fucker up. It takes about five days, and they’re all back to where they’re supposed to be.”