Jade Sharma - Problems

The more money they had, and the more money they gave me, the nicer and more respectful they were.

My days continued: getting high, either going out for a date or not, either getting more drugs or not. Sometimes I read.

Sometimes it felt like there was blackness underneath everything. Like a Rothko painting, how the blackness bleeds through. Feeling everything led to nothing, and there was nothing I could do about it. Day after day of being alone and numb and fucking strangers and having cash and blowing it all, and then knowing in a day or so I’d have plenty more. It would just go on like that till my teeth fell out, till I didn’t even have the strength to pull myself out of it. No kids, no family, me alone except for the growing terror my dreams weren’t in the future but somewhere far behind me. I had to figure something out, because I knew this couldn’t last forever — but whatever, if I didn’t get a bag today, it would be fucking horrible, so I got another bag. I needed a break just from thinking about it.

One more day, and then I’ll stop. Wait, I should taper down a little. Wait, I need to get Xanax first. Wait, I have a date in two days, so why shouldn’t I use a little longer to make a lot more money? Always thinking, One last big score . Go out with a bang.

* * *

I didn’t mean to kill myself, but nobody believes me. I did a lot of dope, but not more than I’d ever done before. Maybe it was the Xanax on top of the dope and the not eating or sleeping. I never would have thought Douglass would call 911 on me, so I must have scared him.

I come to vomiting white shit on the floor of the living room. Then the ambulance shows up, and I try to tell everyone I’m really okay, but once I’m in the ambulance, the EMT leans in and says, “My advice to you is if you really want to get home, act normal.” She says this with an air of confidentiality, like she is relaying a secret code. I take the advice to heart and go with it.

I fool the doctor. He asks me about the nasty black shit they make me drink that has the consistency of paint, and I joke about why they don’t sell it in vending machines. I think, What would a person who isn’t suicidal do in this situation? Obviously, a normal person would go crazy, asking questions about why they couldn’t go home, but so would someone trying to get home to off themselves, so playing “normal” means I’m not even freaked out because I know I didn’t do anything wrong, and so I’m just going to be chill and joke around. It’s the fat, annoying nurse who sees through me. “What happened? So were you trying to hurt yourself?”

I don’t know how the laws work, but I’m pretty sure the doctor isn’t going to call the cops if I tell him I do dope. But I don’t. I tell him I have anxiety attacks and took more Xanax than I should have, and also I drank some wine. I don’t know if they will test me and figure out the truth. The nurse looks at me like she doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

The nurse is a short-haired, bitchy cunt. How can you work in health care and be on your feet all day and still be that fat? How much does this woman eat?

The nurse seems suspicious, and I’m pretty sure that even if it was an accident, she would still be suspicious. She knows there’s more to the story.

I overhear the doctor and the nurse discussing me. The doctor sounds pretty sure it was an accident. The nurse is adamant it wasn’t. The doctor compromises; they will put me on a normal ward (instead of the loony bin) but keep me for observation.

This is not good for a number of reasons. The most immediate one is I am starting to get dope sick. Maybe it’s just knowing I will be dope sick, since it hasn’t been that long since I used. But it will happen, and the anxiety makes me feel queasy and desperate. Douglass needs to get in a cab and go back home and get my shit and then bring it back before they move me to a room. I can’t find my phone. I don’t want to appear too anxious. When I ask about it, the nurse says I’ll get a phone once a bed opens up. When will that be? She doesn’t know. Can I just have my phone back? She says she’ll try. She won’t try.

Hospitals are full of people trying to help people. There is not one person who can help you.

Can I just walk out? I decide to give it a shot. But then the curtain opens, and they are taking my blood.

“I have to pee.”

“This will only take a second.” The woman is already putting the rubber thing around my arm, pinching the fuck out of my skin when she twists it.

“Fuck.”

I normally look away, but this time I look right at the horror-movie-huge needle as it spikes into my vein. I sneeze. And then sneeze again. She tells me to sit still. I can’t. I am in the middle of a hospital and am sick and nobody can help me.

When she’s gone, I leave. I found my clothes under my bed, so the plan is to transform from patient to visitor. I walk past the dying people. Wives and husbands. A smattering of lonely old people. There is a gay couple. The dude looks like a poster for AIDS. Weird how AIDS seems kind of retro now — even diseases have a golden age, a prime, and then they seem played out. How annoying to get AIDS now, feeling like a song people remember being on the radio a lot but have since forgotten completely. His lover is holding his hand and whispering to him. All the other waiting people sit around like they’ve done this a million times before.

I don’t get far. I stick to my story of how I’m feeling fine now, and so I wanted to go out just for a smoke, but the nurse goes and tattles on me to the doctor, and he is not entirely positive I wasn’t trying to flee.

Over the following days I undergo a horrible, nasty withdrawal in the hospital. But finally they get ahold of my shrink, who tells them I need to be on Suboxone. At last, some relief. I sleep. The shrink also okays clonazepam, and they are generous with it. Then there’s talk about where I’m going to go. My mother and Raj are there. I don’t know when they came. I don’t even know what the conversation is. I’m too out of it to stay awake longer than forty-five minutes. There is a twenty-four-hour period when I am almost asleep the entire time. Then there is a twenty-four-hour period where I can’t sleep at all, and I have no visitors. I try to watch the television, but it’s only loud enough to be annoying.

I can’t focus but feel alert. The nightmare withdrawal symptoms are pretty much behind me. It’s plausible I could be clean. I call my mother. She doesn’t believe me. She says she’s tired and doesn’t know what to do. I get angry. She thinks it’s reasonable I tried to kill myself, or at least stupidly OD’d. “I know you were taking. .” She doesn’t finish the sentence. Like there’s a word that can’t be spoken aloud. She won’t say it. Which is weird, because she always has something to say.

I end up on a plane with my mother and brother. I keep thinking, Sound normal . But I can tell by the worry on their faces that I’ve scared the shit out of them. My mother tries to figure out where I’m getting the dope. She doesn’t know Douglass has been staying with me. Thank god he was gone when they went back to the apartment before I was discharged.

There are thirty-four texts. Johns. Money.

It is so hard to know money is waiting for you, a lot of money, and every single problem you currently have — feeling like shit, wanting to die, guilt, anger, resentment, feeling soft, feeling vulnerable — could all disappear easily, and you really would be completely fine.

You try to stick with this thought process, but you know eventually you will feel this way again. You will be in this same exact position only more time will have passed, and so it’s better just to clean up now.