“Can you take Ellie to school?” I rasped through the bathroom door. Rats’ teeth of panic were nibbling at my heart. Dave sounded disgustingly collected.
“Sure. No problem.”
I went to the computer and logged on to Penny Lane, to make sure I hadn’t placed an order and then forgotten about it. No. There was only the stuff that Dave had intercepted. Prior to that was an order for sixty pills that had arrived two days ago, and every last one of them was gone. I stared at the screen, feeling my jaw drop as I did the math. Thirty pills in less than a day and a half? That couldn’t be right. Except I could remember the package arriving, and how fast I’d gotten the envelope open and transferred the pills into my mints tin, how before I’d even gotten inside the house I had four of those babies inside me.
“Fuck,” I whispered. I went to the bedroom and began to go through my usual hiding places: my tampon box, the second drawer of my bedside table, the zippered pockets inside the different purses I’d used that month. There was nothing. I couldn’t even find a piece of a broken pill to tide me over. Everything was gone.
I sat down on the bed, heart thumping, palms and temples greasy with cold sweat. I picked up my phone and scrolled through the names of my doctors. Called her last week . . .. called him on Monday . . .. haven’t called her in so long she’ll probably ask questions about why I need painkillers now.
Think, I told myself fiercely as I heard the garage door open and the car pull out of the driveway. Maybe there was stuff left in my father’s medicine cabinet . . . except I knew that there wasn’t. I’d cleared it all out before the Realtor had come for a final walkthrough. Did my mom have anything? And did I want to risk trying to get her out of the house so I could check?
Forty minutes after Dave’s departure, still in my pajama bottoms and the Wonder Woman T-shirt I’d worn while I worked, I sat on the examination table of a strip-mall clinic where a cab had dropped me off, talking to a doctor with a heavy accent and bags under his eyes.
“You hurt the back when?”
“Two years ago.” I was shivering, sweating, and having a hard time keeping my legs still. My knees wanted to kick, my feet wanted to tap, my body itched all over, and my fingers wanted to dig into my skin and start clawing. Withdrawal, I thought bleakly. A loop of every movie I’d ever seen in which a junkie kicked his or her habit had set itself on “repeat” in my mind. I was terrified of the agony I suspected was awaiting me . . . and I was furious at myself, furious that I’d let this happen, not stayed on top of what I had and what I needed. All those weeks—months, even—of promising myself I’d cut back, just not today, when in fact my use had increased and increased, my tolerance building until I needed four, or five, or even six little blue OxyContin to feel the transporting euphoria that a single Vicodin had once given me . . . and now here I was with nothing.
“You take how much of the painkiller?”
“I don’t know. A lot. Maybe ten pills a day,” I lied.
“Of the thirty milligrams?”
“Yes.” Ten was a good day, and Oxys weren’t the only thing I was taking, but never mind. He’d give me something—I didn’t even care what. Then I’d get on top of this. I’d slow my roll, start being prudent. No more pills first thing in the morning, no more pills in the middle of the night. Three or four days—a week, tops—and I’d have this under control.
“Every day, you take them?”
I nodded, launching into the story I’d already told the intake nurse. “And, like I said, I’m going to see my regular doctor, only she’s out sick, and I’m leaving for vacation this afternoon, and if you could just give me maybe ten pills, just so I can get through the plane trip . . .”
He leaned back against the exam room’s sink, taking me in. His name was Dr. Desgupta, and his eyes, behind heavy brown plastic frames, were not unkind.
“Every day, you’re taking these pills,” he said again.
I bent my head and prayed. Please, God, just let him give me enough to get through the day and I’ll stop, I’ll get help, I’ll do something, I swear I will.
“And is it because the back hurts? Or is it because you need them, because you are getting sick without them?”
I didn’t answer. I wrapped my arms around myself and concentrated, as hard as I could, on not throwing up. “Sick,” I finally said. “I’ve never tried to stop, and I think . . . I mean, I’m not feeling so great already.”
“There is medication. Suboxone.” I lifted my head. “An opiate agonist-antagonist. It blocks your receptors, so you can’t take the heroin, or the Vicodin, or the OxyContin. Whatever narcotic you were taking. But it gives you some opiate, too. Not enough so you get, you know, the high, but enough that you feel okay.”