SIX
CHAPTER
It didn’t take long for the addiction to torture her.
By afternoon, watching movies was abandoned. She paced her small living room, her face dampened with sweat, her eyes wild.
By early evening, she alternated cursing me out with begging for a drink. Soon, dry heaving was added to the rotation. Rage. Plead. Retch.
I stayed out of her way. I gritted my teeth through her tearful begging. I held her hair until she regained the strength to start the cycle again.
Rage. Plead. Retch.
Occasionally she fell into short, exhausted sleeps that gave me ten or fifteen minutes to catch my breath. They didn’t give her anything. She woke up more angry, more desperate, more wretched. Thirstier.
By midnight, she was in free-falling anxiety. There were short fits of uncontrollable tears as she paced—she never stopped pacing, pulling at her hair and glancing around with frantic eyes, as if she’d lost something precious.
I watched helplessly, unable to do more than block the front door and coax her to drink water. Sometimes she clawed and hit me. Sometimes she curled limp into my arms, her body trembling as if she were freezing to death.
It was a long night. The second day dawned, and we were already exhausted. Withdrawal, however, was just getting warmed up.
Day Two nearly killed her. And it nearly broke me, too. By afternoon, I wanted to call it quits. Resign and take her to a professional.
“No, Teddy,” she begged. Her face was blotchy red from crying, her clothes drenched in sweat, her voice hoarse from screaming at me. “Don’t give me to strangers. Please…I can do this. I can. I will. ”
What could I say? If she could, I could. I held her close until she pushed away to pace more, to vomit the water I’d managed to get her to drink into the kitchen sink.
I didn’t think it could get any worse. Then delusional tremors—the DTs—started.
Kacey’s hands shook as if she’d been doused in ice water, and it scared me to the bone.
I answered a knock on the door in the late morning to an African American woman in jeans, an orange shirt and wielding a baseball bat.
She jumped back when I opened the door and readied her bat for a swing.
Turned out she was a nurse who lived next door.
She heard Kacey’s screaming and thought something criminal was happening.
I let her in, and she helped me check Kacey’s vitals.
Her pulse was fast, but not too fast. She wasn’t hallucinating.
She wasn’t convulsing beyond tremors. The nurse—Yvonne—okay’d me to keep her home unless it all escalated, and I felt a little calmer after she left.
The ordeal still tore at my goddamn heart, but I was less terrified.
We spent the second night on the living room floor. It must’ve been eighty degrees in that small house with no air conditioning, yet Kacey bundled herself in blankets, crying at how cold she was. She didn’t sleep more than a handful of minutes.
I didn’t sleep at all.
Day Three.
Kacey burst out of her blanket cocoon and sat up, ramrod straight, as if she’d remembered what she’d lost and knew where to find it. She kicked her legs free. Her T-shirt stuck to her skin with sweat, all down her back to darken the waistband of her sweatpants.
When she glanced at me, her eyes had a clarity I hadn’t seen in days. The terrible fever had finally broken, and hope rose in me. This fucking nightmare was almost over.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
“Hot,” she said in a croak. “It’s so hot in here.”
She scrambled off the floor and hurried to the bathroom, stripping off her shirt. Her tattoos were dark blotches against her pale skin. I followed.
“What, you don’t trust me alone?” she said, turning on the shower then stripping off her sweatpants, leaving her in nothing but her underwear.
“No.” I averted my eyes from her almost naked body, and busied myself getting a clean towel from underneath the sink.
Kacey stepped under the stream of water and shivered.
“Cold,” she murmured through clenched teeth. “It’s like rain. Cold rain.”
The water fell over her tangled hair and pale, goosefleshed skin. Her face crumpled, and her hands clutched her chest between her bare breasts, over her heart.
Here it comes, I thought. The worst. The lowest. The most excruciating. The demon king of pain. What I was too fucking scared to face myself.
“The rain,” Kacey whispered, the water dripping off her lips and chin. “Up at the Basin. I danced for him in the cold rain. I danced for him…”
She slowly slid down the tiles, collapsing to the shower floor. Pulling her knees to her chest, she rocked back and forth under the water. Great howling wails filled the small stall.
I stood frozen a moment, my chest tightened, my own grief trying to well up in an echo of hers.
I shut off the water, took a towel and bent into the shower to wrap it around her before lifting her up.
She felt like nothing in my arms, yet she clung to me hard as I carried her into the bedroom and laid her down on the bed.
I lifted Jonah’s glass orb out of the way and set it on its stand on a near-empty bookshelf.
I’m not going to let you down, bro, I vowed as I set it down, and curled up next to Kacey. I wrapped my arms around her and she clung to me.
She cried forever. Hours, maybe. I lost track of time, but just held her, stroked her wet, tangled hair, and rocked her gently.
“Is it over?” she said.
“Almost. You can sleep.”
I tucked her blankets tighter around her, watching as her breathing deepened. Her chest rose and fell in long, even waves. Even though her face was splotchy red and her closed eyes puffy, the tense edges of her expression had relaxed.
I exhaled from my bones, eased off the bed and left her to sleep. Leaving the bedroom door ajar, I staggered down the arrow-straight hallway to the couch. I could hardly keep my eyes open. Every muscle howled in protest as I sank into the ratty cushions.
“Holy shit,” I muttered, and then I was gone, but only for a few hours.
I shot awake in the deepest part of the night. Creeping into the bedroom, I found Kacey still sleeping on, deeply and peacefully, and I knew then that she’d be okay. She’d fought the hardest battle and come out the other side.
I lay back on the couch, covered my eyes with the arm, and let out another breath, this one loose and shaky.
That was a close call, bro, I told Jonah. But she made it. She fucking made it. You’d be so proud of her.
My thoughts began to scatter like beads of oil over water as sleep took me again.
Proud of Kacey. She loves you so much.
Loves you…