The gaunt, hollow-eyed receptionist is covered in the speed addict’s scabs and sores, she’s clearly high as a kite on crack or crystal and has the tweaker’s run-on mouth. And as she talks and talks and talks, I think, “Oh, you are not really doing this? You’re not actually trying to engage me in small talk? No, no, me no can do, not now— I’m going down. Down to the sea in ships.” I don’t remember where the “ship” quote comes from, what it means, or why I’m even thinking it. But I do know that the receptionist is as sick as I, in her own way, and she’s not thinking about my plight or me. Having a God-given take-charge personality, I have no trouble cutting her off mid-sentence: “Look, I’m really not feeling well and have to get to work. Will this take very long?”
She disengages from her chatter easily. “Have a seat in the waiting room,” she tells me as she returns to her paperwork. This isn’t an appealing prospect—all the chairs are covered in stains that I’m convinced are various forms of body fluid. All eyes are on me, the new kid, as I settle uneasily into one. I’m wearing Jimmy Choo’s, a black Prada skirt, an Anne Fontaine blouse I’d purchased in Paris, and a very expensive string of pearls with a cabochon-ruby clasp, in striking contrast to the women wearing ill-fitting sweats or jeans covered in the same kinds of stains I imagine to be on the furniture. Some are in stiletto pumps, short skirts and glittery sequined or Spandex tops. Most of the men are wearing worn jeans, boots, and cheap logo tee shirts boasting vacations to Six Flags or sayings like, “Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.” Hilarious to them, but let’s face it: This isn’t exactly the Algonquin Round Table. Then there are a few bikers with bandanas, leather, rivets and shaggy beards. I feel clownish in my designer clothes. I want to turn to these other people and say, “I don’t want to be dressed like this. I have to dress like this, for work. I’m here for the same reason you are—succor.”
The truth is, in this room, I’ve found a people, my people, more than any other crowd. You can’t hide end-stage drug addiction behind anything, not even a chic Anne Fontaine blouse. Like everyone else in the room, I have my fair share of scabs up and down my arms. One of the side effects of opiates is itching and I scratch so hard and long that eventually I draw blood. And all of us in the waiting room have that thousand-mile stare, that hard, hostile look that says, “Don’t get too close.” I can always spot the celebrity who’s been on heroin. Even after years of recovery, you don’t lose that gravelly voice and gritty appearance that comes from being entombed in a layer of crushed stone.
I’m not really that concerned with my appearance anymore because I seldom if ever put in one. The main thing I’m focused on: how long it’s going to take to get dosed with methadone. Finally my name is called and I’m taken back to see a man in an official-looking white coat, although there’s no M.D. nametag above the pocket. He gives me a TB test and a questionnaire concerning my drug use: Which opiates do I take? How often do I take them? How long have I taken them for? When answering these questions, I’ve learned it’s always good to up the numbers lest they under-medicate you. But the truth is bad enough. Ten years ago a doctor wrote me a prescription for fifteen Vicodin to combat a migraine, and ever since I’ve been a homing pigeon for a drug nest, with getting and taking drugs my highest priority.
“Now I need to see an empty Vicodin bottle,” White Coat tells me after I hand him the completed questionnaire. Apparently this is required to prove you’re an addict and get on methadone maintenance. When I called to make sure the clinic could take me right away, no one mentioned an empty Vicodin bottle. Did they? I rifle through my purse. I can’t find one. Those empty bottles fill my life and now I can’t find a single one. I’m growing frantic. I simply don’t have the wherewithal to drive all the way home and back.
“Why do you need a fucking bottle?” I want to scream. “I’m here. I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve been sitting out in the waiting room with the rest of the lost, the halt, and the bewildered. Do you think I actually want to be here?! Why else would I be here?! Just give me the goddamned methadone!!!” Instead, I say, with a certain lethal calm, “Look, I have lots of doctors who can vouch for my being a drug addict; call one.” Not exactly the glowing references that brought me in fifteen short years from The Honey Sanders Agency on the corner of Melrose and La Brea (next to Pink’s Hot Dogs) to the Head of Casting for one of Hollywood’s most important production companies.
“No,” White Coat tells me, quite firmly, “I need the bottle.” I rifle through my purse once more. I’m growing more anxious and even sicker. Plus I have two legs filled with coal miners. I’m drenched in a cold sweat and my heart is beating so fast that I think I’m in danger of going into cardiac arrest. Which would be a very unfortunate thing to have happen in this place—not a genuine medical professional in sight. I’m close to the point I reach in emergency rooms, where, having been kept waiting too long in pain and fear, I fly into an inappropriate and entitled rage, desperate to get to the front of the line or I’ll die. I’m hitting that “this must be resolved” desperation point. Gangway to the injured, the elderly, and the terminal. Then I find a bottle at the bottom of my purse, just one, in a place where they usually gather in clusters, and, at last, I’m taken back through a vestibule to be dosed.
A woman is standing behind the same kind of bulletproof window they use in convenience stores and gas stations. She doesn’t seem to be a nurse, but let’s not stand on ceremony; she’s holding a small plastic bottle filled with a clear pink liquid. Methadone. My methadone.
“Now I’m giving you a starter a starter dose of 40 milligrams,” Not-Nurse says. “This may not be enough to keep you comfortable.”
At which point I decide: This isn’t going to be enough to keep me comfortable.
“But…,” Not-Nurse adds.
I’m glad there’s a “but.”
“…If you’re not comfortable, let us know when you come here tomorrow between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.”
Okay, okay, I get it. I have to come here every day. No problem. Now hurry up.
“Friday we give you a three-day dose,” Not-Nurse continues. “We’re not open weekends.”
Which is a concept I like. I already see myself taking all three doses at once on Friday night.
Then—finally—Not-Nurse drops the bottle into the sliding metal tray. No sooner do I get the bottle in my hands, than I down it, the Ancient Mariner with his bucket of rain. I rush out the back door to the lot where I’m relieved to find my car still parked.
Cara, at first I was reluctant to read these posts because of how terrifying the story is and because I love you. Now I read each installment eagerly, for exactly the same reasons. I have to keep reminding myself that you are safe and alive, and also, coincidentally, not at the Algonquin round table.
"This isn’t exactly the Algonquin Round Table." Hilarious. You cannot put enough dark humor in this for me, humor keeps us alive.