Remedy

REMEDY
By Laura
Susan
I looked at the plastic, naked body of my favorite Barbie doll. She was blonde, with emotionless eyes and abnormal, matador red lips that curled up in an innocent, perky grin. She was just wide enough and tall enough to be the perfect hiding place, somewhere where nobody would ever look. I popped the head off of Barbie and looked at the hollow space inside.
I stuffed the cold, clear, frosted bottle of Absolut Vodka inside her hard body and stuck the head back on.
Vodka didn’t have a scent. My mother would never, ever guess.
I stood up with the deformed doll in my hand, and looked at my reflection in the mirror. Plain, never-touched-by-a-curling-iron hair and bangs. Short, skinny frame and protruding collarbones. I was the exact picture of the perfect small-town daughter. Which is exactly what I needed to cure. With the ravenousness of a wolf bounding towards his kill, I tore off the blonde head of Barbie and took a long, cool swig. The vodka burned down my throat in a river of relief. I had needed that drink. Sighing, I took another one, and then another, until the bottle was almost empty. I would refill later that night.
I loved the taste, swishing in my mouth. I loved the wonderful feelings that only a drink could master, and I craved that sensation that I was on top of the world. I had been boring and ordinary and normal. Now that I had that drink, I was bubbly and free and wild.
Drinking got me into a lot of trouble.
I found myself stripped down to my underwear in some unknown guy’s house, playing beer pong with a bunch of people that I didn’t even know. I found myself climbing the top of the flagpole and spray-painting our American flag at school. I was a drunk, and there was no other word to describe it. I was an alcoholic. I would stand up against my locker, drunk at school, and wave to everyone. They all smiled at me, and it was the best feeling in the world to be so popular and fun and flirty. Seeing all those faces that had once ignored me, looking up at me in awe and envy, was everything I had ever wanted.
Roger
I had a new girlfriend. While I was singing at a nightclub with my downtown, cigarette-and-all-night-party band, I could see that she had been looking at me with interest in her eyes. I decided that as soon as I got offstage, I would find her, and so I did.
We had spent thirty minutes together, sipping Cosmopolitans and talking. Her name was Rachel.
She asked me to go outside with her. I assumed that she was going to take me home with her, or maybe the other way around, but instead she shot up. As if it was the most casual thing in the world to do, she pulled a needle out of her red book bag and jammed it in her wrist.
It looked painful, but I could see that she felt better now. She asked me if I wanted to use the rest of the powder in the needle. When I looked into her eyes, and she had that wonderful, mischievous sparkle in her glare, I wanted it too. So I agreed, and stabbed myself in the arm with the needle.
It hurt like hell to feel that bloody, incisive needle, but afterwards, the feeling was sensational.
Everywhere on my body, from my lower extremities to the top of my head, tingled with a feeling of sheer joy that was amplified tenfold. My headache was gone. I wanted to lie down, and fall asleep, because everything was just right. Rachel slid down on the grimy floor of the alley outside the club and giggled. We held hands and felt wonderful together all night long.
It was two months, fifteen days, and thirteen hours after that night when Rachel received her test results. She did not have the HIV virus.
However, she had tested positive for Hepatitis C.
They sent Rachel away after that, to try and treat her. I never got to say goodbye, and a couple weeks later her name was in the obituary. All I had to do was take a glance, and I shredded that day’s paper. I couldn’t read the tragic details of a partying girl’s death, because she was a stupid drug user. I couldn’t face the fact that she was gone, and that I was stupid enough to put myself at risk just like she had.
I remembered all the times we had touched. Kissed. Made love together. Shared drugs and shot up together.
I remembered and I hated it all and I regretted it all, but it didn’t change the fact that she was dead.
I walked into my bedroom and punctured myself again with the needle, because it didn’t matter one bit that I was injecting my own death.
Landon
My father had remarried, and she was a bitch.
I, 16 years old, was living in their basement, a one-room with no working bathroom and no paint on the walls, merely a cot and a dresser to put my clothes in. I had made myself a makeshift desk out of the door to the unfinished bathroom, but I left the front door intact.
I grew weed behind it.
The scent was sometimes unbearable, but I had gotten used to it and whenever my dad or the new wife came downstairs, they just figured that I hadn’t showered in a while and smelled funny. It was better off that they believed that.
I could hear, sometimes, my dad talking in whispers on the phone to my mom or one of her family members, who almost always relayed the message. He said something like ‘he’s in a depressed remorse, and possibly a rebellion’. All of it shit, but whatever. I guess marijuana might have been my rebellion against Dad. But I didn’t think that smoking weed would make my father divorce or anything. It was just my way of saying ‘ha. See how little daddy’s boy is all. Grown. Up.’
I can’t remember the first time I smoked weed. I might’ve been at a party that lasted all night, and ran into someone who had some pot on them. Perhaps I just found some on the street and didn’t know what it was at the time. I didn’t really remember much of anything anymore.
I found myself lying on the sidewalk in handcuffs. “What are you doing to me?” I shouted.
“Are you high?” asked the police officer, standing over me.
My father’s Hybrid was really hugging a tree now.
“I said, ARE YOU HIGH?!” the police officer screamed.
“What are you talking about?” My head throbbed.
The man backed up and scoffed at me. “He’s completely stoned,” said the officer to his buddies. I bet they were enjoying this.
“Let me out of here!” I whined, squirming and sounding more like a toddler than a teenager.
“Oh, we will,” the officer said, dragging me towards the car. “Run the drug tests on him before we take off.” He got into the front seat.
One of the officers pinned one of my arms and stuck a needle into it. “Owchie!” I cried, and it really did hurt. I had been feeling so fine before these people had come in and ruined my day.
As we drove off from my father’s house, I saw him and his wife looking out the window at me leaving in the police car. His wife was holding a leaf of crumpled weed in her hand.
Susan
The walls were whitewashed. The hospital room looked just like the one she had been in when she had childhood pneumonia, except this one had a bigger bed and on the table were a pile of Sudoku and crossword puzzle books, instead of big, chunky, Noah’s ark toys.
I didn’t like this place. This was not bubbly at all.
I rubbed my head. It hurt so badly. Was it from the alcohol? I didn’t remember much. I had been drinking at one of my friend’s parties, but I didn’t even remember leaving. I had dressed in my skimpiest bikini and headed out, looking for someone to flirt with. I had a martini in hand and bloodshot eyes, but guys still looked me up and down. I knew that I was the life of the party.
Lisa would know when I had left.
I reached into the pocket of my jeans to pull out my cell, but my jeans weren’t there. I was in a hospital gown with ducks all over it. Shit, I thought. I’m stuck in the insane asylum for improper exposure. I bet they’ll make me wear snowsuits all the time.
A nurse came in. She looked like the nurses from ‘House’.
“Are you awake, sweetie?” she asked me.
“No, I’m asleep.” I retorted.
“Okay then,” the nurse said, her beaming smile unfathomed by my demeanor. She pissed me off.
“Do you want something?” I asked her.
The nurse rolled her eyes. “I was just checking on you, Susan. Why don’t you go back to sleep?”
“I don’t want to. I’m not even tired.”
“Okay then, why don’t you do one of the Sudoku puzzles?” she suggested, and tossed a book in my direction. I couldn’t catch it, but I woozily leaned over the side of the bed to pick it up. She left, and I rested my head on the pillow, not bothering to attempt the Sudoku.
“You really should try them, you know,” a voice said. I looked around. There was a boy about my age, but taller, standing in the doorway, wearing a hospital gown. His black hair was messed up, but his green eyes, though dull, were piercing. “My name’s Roger. You’re new here?”
“I don’t fucking know,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I just woke up, and I’m in this idiotic hospital, with all these idiots who keep annoying me. Where is here? And why am I here and why are you here?”
“You’ll get used to it,” Roger said, swaggering in like we were best friends and not total strangers. “Yeah, the people around here are pretty much stuck-up goody-two-shoes. But it’s no matter. This is Bartholomew Drug & Alcohol Abuse Recovery Center, fondly referred to as BDAARC,” he said.
“What the hell is that?” I asked. “I don’t see how any of this could’ve happened. I have to get back to Lisa,” I said. “We have lunch plans in an hour.”
Roger chuckled. “I don’t think you understand the situation as much as you think you do.” He looked at me curiously. “You’re an alcohol abuser, and we’re here to change that.” He patted me on the head.
“I don’t need therapy, you idiot. Now get me out of here.” I tried to get up out of bed, but I couldn’t. There were restraints on the bed to hold me back. “LET ME OUT!” I shrieked hysterically. “I DON’T NEED THERAPY, I DON’T NEED TO RECOVER, I NEED TO GET OUT OF THIS FUCKING HOSPITAL!”
Roger stared at me, with a look of pity in his eyes. I could almost see a tear. “You remind me of…” he started, but then his voice trailed off and he seemed to be staring into something that I couldn’t see. My breathing was heavy.
“How come you can get up and walk around and I can’t?” I asked.
“They know I won’t get up and walk out,” Roger said, closing his eyes for a little bit longer than a blink. “But we can’t risk you getting to your lunch party, now can we? Besides, I’m sure your parents will have contacted your friend Lisa and-”
I clenched my fists. “Puh-lease,” I said. “You don’t know a thing about my parents, and my parents don’t know a thing about me. When they figured out that I drank at all, they probably told whoever it was who tattle told to bring out the hidden cameras and asked what reality TV show they were on.”
“Susan. I know it may seem like they don’t care, but we’re all just here to care for you.”
“I don’t want your care. I want to be let go.”
“Well life isn’t exactly full of getting what you want, Susan, especially not for you and me.” Roger stood up and left the room. Tears collected in my eyes when I realized that this stupid, stuck-up goody-two-shoe might’ve been my first friend here at BDAARC.
Landon
I wandered around the hospital a bit. I scolded myself for getting high. I hated myself.
I hated everything, I hated the drugs, I hated my father, and I hated my stepmother, commonly known as Cruella deVil. I hated this hospital where everything was bright and cheery and the nurses kept telling me it was going to be okay. I hated the drunken teenager that I had seen stumble through the doors and into the room beside me. I hated that she probably didn’t know what was going on with her. I hated that she probably wouldn’t be here in this freak-show hospital as long as I would. And I knew this for a fact. I had heard the nurses whispering. I was the freak boy from the basement who was growing marijuana behind his door at 16 years old.
Yes, that’s me.
“Do you need anything, Landon?” one of the nurses that I passed asked me.
“No,” I replied, and bumped purposefully into her with my shoulder as I brushed by. She stumbled and knocked a tower of toilet paper that she had been carting all into the aisle.
I didn’t even bother apologizing, since she hadn’t either.
She hadn’t apologized for sending me to this awful, awful place.
I stepped into Roger’s room.
“Why did you do it?” I asked him. “Why in the hell would anybody give up a normal, peaceful life and choose to come and stay here. Why would anybody give up such a problem with such wonderful consequences?”
I knew Roger didn’t want to answer the question. It was rude for me to ask.
“I gave myself up because… Because my life didn’t have wonderful consequences. You don’t know it because you can’t see through those beer goggles or through the foggy haze of a puff of marijuana, but your life isn’t really too good right now. You sit there all day, and you crave it. You crave marijuana. It’s something that overpowers you, and takes away your every thought, your every conscious, your every emotion. You start not to care about anything else. That’s all there is; it’s an addiction. It burns through you and it eats out your insides and you know that it is killing you but you keep doing it. Because it’s just easier that way. Sometimes you’ll regret starting; and yet you just keep at it, because that’s the easiest thing to do. And oftentimes, you can’t even remember life without it. You can’t remember life with family. That girl down the hall, Susan, she can’t remember life without her friend, Lisa. I can’t remember life… at all. I knew it had to stop.”
I knew the tears were going to start pouring, because that’s just where I was in life.
Susan
I stared and I stared and I stared at that suitcase. Inside was my favorite, plastic, blonde, naked Barbie doll. Inside was my heaven. Inside was my sweet escape.
When you’re walking through the convenience store, you want a Twinkie. You want a cup of coffee in the morning, when you’re drowsy and can hardly roll out of bed. You want a husband.
I don’t want that drink, that swig of cool, running relief and that feeling of being on top of the world.
I needed it.
But what would be the point of this, of two months of endurance and toughing it out and abstinence, if I just gave it all up and took that drink?
I got out of bed, for my restraints had been lifted a month ago but I still pretended like they were there and hardly ever got up.
I ran my finger along the zipper and opened my suitcase. Inside was the Barbie, staring back at me.
You know you want me.
Oh, but I don’t. I could never want you.
You won’t feel a thing without me.
How can you possibly know that?
You’re a clumsy, fat, ugly little bitch.
And you’re going to change that?
I’ve changed you this much, Susan.
“And look where I’ve ended up!” Susan cried. “Look, Barbie,” and she gave her doll a panorama of the room she was in. “Look at where I’ve gotten because of you! I might never see my friend Lisa again. I wonder what she’s doing without me. I wonder if my mom is putting spaghetti in the oven or if she remembers to boil it on the stove! I may never know, because I’m here, because you ruined my life. You ruined. My. Life.”
I tore up my favorite doll and felt the cold, frosted bottle. I needed that drink.
You’re a clumsy, fat, ugly little bitch.
I could never want you.
Not thinking, I flung the bottle across the room and it hit the wall, smashing into a million pieces. Alcohol splashed all over the tile floor. I stared sleepily at it pouring in miniature waterfalls over the creases of the air vent and dripping down into it.
I tried to get back into bed. “Wait, stop,” I heard a familiar voice. It was Roger. He was standing at the doorway. “Don’t walk over yet, you’re barefoot and the shards of glass could be sharp.”
Roger picked me up like I was just a dirty sock on the floor and carried me over to my bed, setting me down gently.
“That was astonishing, what you did.”
“Thanks. It was hard.”
“It was amazing,” Roger said. “I could never do that.”
“What are you talking about?” I retorted. “You offered yourself up to BDAARC so they could take care of you. That’s something I could never do.”
“My girlfriend died,” he said suddenly. “Her name was Rachel. She had hair and a voice just like yours, but her eyes were blue and not brown.”
I didn’t say a thing. I was too shocked to move my mouth.
“She died of hepatitis C, and she got it from sharing a needle with someone. She had also shared needles with me, but I didn’t get the disease. After her death, I prayed so much to God to give me that disease. I wanted him to infect me so I could leave this earth and suffer the same awful punishment that she did. At least I’d be with her then, even if it wasn’t in heaven.”
I stared at Roger.
“She did look very much like you, though,” he said. “When I saw you, I thought you’d be just like her, but it turns out that you’re very different. You would’ve been good friends.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. There was a long silence.
Finally, I said, “Am I going to be here for the rest of my life?”
“Maybe.” Roger shrugged. “Maybe I will, too. Landon will probably get out, as soon as he can.” He chuckled. “But we’ll be the oldies here soon enough. We can be like the welcoming committee.”
“Yeah, you and me. Quite the welcoming committee, huh?”
“Definitely.”
We sat there for a little while longer before Roger got up and left the room, tears streaming down his face. I sighed and took a sip of water from a plastic cup. It tasted good, like cold ice touching your face after a heated workout.
Shaking my head for clarity, I picked up a pen and started on Sudoku puzzle #32.