Dave put his arm on my shoulder. “Are you all right, buddy?”
“Yeah,” I lied, “I’m fine. I don’t wanna talk right now. I just need to think.”
Dave nodded, and we spent the remainder of the ride in silence.
Fifteen minutes later I was sitting in Dave’s living room, feeling hopeless and desperate. The insanity seemed even worse now; my spirits had plunged to impossible depths. Dave was sitting next to me on the couch, saying nothing. He was just watching and waiting. In front of me was a pile of cocaine. My pills were on the kitchen counter. I had tried calling the house a dozen times, but Rocco had started to answer the phone. Apparently he’d turned against me too. I would fire him as soon as this was resolved.
I said to Dave, “Call Laurie on her cell phone. It’s the only way I can get through.”
Dave nodded wearily and started punching in Laurie’s number on the cordless phone. Thirty seconds later I had her on the phone, and she was crying. “Listen,” she said, snuffling back tears, “you know how much Dave and I love you, Jordan, but, please, I’m begging you, you gotta go to rehab. You gotta get help. You’re about to die. Don’t you see it? You’re a brilliant man and you’re destroying yourself. If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Channy and Carter. Please!”
I took a deep breath and rose from the couch and started walking toward the kitchen. Dave followed a few steps behind. “Does Nadine still love me?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Laurie, “she still loves you, but she won’t be with you anymore unless you go to rehab.”
I took another deep breath. “If she loves me she’ll come to the phone.”
“No,” said Laurie, “if she loves you she won’tcome to the phone. You two are in this thing together; you’re both sick with this disease. She might be even sicker than you for allowing it to go on so long. You need to go to rehab, Jordan, and she needs to get help too.”
I couldn’t believe it. Even Laurie had turned on me! I never would’ve thought it—not in a million years. Well, fuck her!And fuck the Duchess! And fuck every last soul on earth! Who gave a fucking shit anymore! I had already peaked, hadn’t I? I was thirty-four and had already lived ten lifetimes. What was the point now? Was there anywhere to go but down? What was better, to die a slow, painful death or to go down in a blaze of glory?
Just then I caught a glimpse of the vial of morphine. There were at least a hundred pills inside, fifteen milligrams each. They were small pills, half the size of a pea, and they were a terrific shade of purple. I’d taken ten today, which was enough to put most men in an irreversible coma; for me, it was nothing.
With great sadness in my voice, I said to Laurie, “Tell Nadine I’m sorry, and to kiss the kids good-bye.” The last thing I heard before I hung up the phone was Laurie screaming: “Jordan, no! Don’t hang—”
In one swift movement I grabbed the vial of morphine, unscrewed the top, and poured out the entire contents into the palm of my hand. There were so many pills that half of them tumbled on the floor. Still, there were at least fifty, rising up in the shape of a pyramid. It looked beautiful; a purple pyramid. I threw them back and started chewing them. Then all hell broke loose.
I saw Dave running toward me, so I darted to the other side of the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, but before I could put my lips to the bottle he was on me—knocking the bottle out of my hand and grabbing me in a bear hug. The phone started to ring. He ignored it and took me down to the floor, then stuck his tremendous fingers in my mouth and tried scooping the pills out. I bit his fingers, but he was so strong he overpowered me. He screamed, “Spit them out! Spit them out!”
“Fuck you!” I yelled. “Let me up or I’ll fucking kill you, you big fuck!”
And the phone kept ringing, and Dave kept screaming, “Spit out the pills! Spit them out!” and I kept chewing and trying to swallow more pills until, finally, he grabbed my cheeks with his right hand and squeezed with tremendous force.
“Oww, fuck!” I spit out the pills. They tasted poisonous…incredibly bitter…and I had already swallowed so many of them it didn’t really matter. It was only a matter of time now.
Holding me down with one hand, he picked up the cordless, dialed 911, and frantically gave the police his address. Then he threw down the phone and tried scooping more pills out of my mouth. I bit him again.
“Get your fucking paws out of my mouth, you big fucking oaf! I’ll never forgive you. You’re with them.”
“Calm down,” he said, picking me up like a bundle of firewood and carrying me over to the couch.
And there I laid, cursing him out for a solid two minutes, until I started to lose interest. I was getting very tired…very warm…very dreamy. It felt rather pleasant, actually. Then the phone rang. Dave picked it up, and it was Laurie. I tried listening to the conversation, but I quickly drifted off. Dave pressed the phone to my ear and said, “Here, buddy, it’s your wife. She wants to speak to you. She wants to tell you that she still loves you.”
“Nae?” I said, in a sleepy voice.
The loving Duchess: “Hey, sweetie, hang in there for me. I still love you. Everything’s gonna be okay. The kids love you, and I love you too. It’s all gonna be okay. Don’t fall asleep on me.”
I started to cry. “I’m sorry, Nae. I didn’t mean to do that to you today. I didn’t know what I was doing. I can’t live with myself…. I’m…sorry.” I sobbed uncontrollably.
“It’s okay,” said my wife. “I still love you. Just hang in there. It’s all gonna be okay.”
“I’ve always loved you, Nae, since the first day I laid eyes on you.”
Then I overdosed.
I woke up to the most horrendous feeling imaginable. I remember screaming, “No! Get that thing out of my mouth, you fucker!” but not being sure exactly why.
I found out a second later. I was tied to an examining table in an emergency room, surrounded by a team of five doctors and nurses. The table was positioned upright, perpendicular to the floor. Not only were my arms and legs tied but there were also two thick vinyl belts affixing me to the table, one across my torso and the other across my thighs. A doctor in front of me, dressed in green hospital scrubs, was holding a long, thick black tube in his hand, the sort you would expect to find on a car radiator.
“Jordan,” he said firmly, “you need to cooperate and stop trying to bite my hand. We have to pump your stomach.”
“I’m fine,” I muttered. “I didn’t even swallow anything. I spit them out. I was only kidding.”
“I understand,” he said patiently, “but I can’t afford to take that chance. We’ve given you Narcan to offset the narcotics, so you’re out of danger now. But listen to me, my friend: Your blood pressure is off the charts and your heartbeat is erratic. What other drugs have you taken besides morphine?”
I took a moment to regard the doctor. He looked Iranian or Persian or something along those lines. Could he be trusted? I was a Jew, after all, which made me his sworn enemy. Or did the Hippocratic oath transcend all that? I looked around the room, and over in the corner I saw a very disturbing sight—two policemen, in uniform, with guns. They were leaning against a wall, observing. Time to clam up, I thought.
“Nothing,” I croaked. “Only morphine, and maybe a bit of Xanax. I have a bad back. I got everything from the doctor.”
The doctor smiled sadly. “I’m here to help you, Jordan, not to bust you.”
I closed my eyes and prepared for the torture. Yes, I knew what was coming. This Persiranian bastard was gonna try to stick that tube down my esophagus, all the way into my stomach sac, where he would vacuum out the contents. Then he would dump a couple of pounds of black charcoal into my stomach to push the drugs through my digestive tract unabsorbed. It was one of the rare moments in my life when I regretted being well read. And the last thought I had before the five doctors and nurses attacked me and forced the tube down my throat was: God, I hate being right all the time!