Finding a Bed

J. was sick, really sick, but her family, too, was sick -- of her, mostly. So while she begged them for a ride to the local detox center, they told her that she had exhausted their time, money and concern. She could either figure it out on her own or die. That's when she called me. 

When I arrived hours later, still wearing the fancy black dress made from African lappa and the strappy heels and the faintest trace of Russian Red matte lipstick that I had dressed up in for the wedding of another of us that I had suddenly left, I found J.'s sister waiting outside. She had started to pack a duffel bag for her sister - a handful of glasses thrown in without their cases, making me wince, phone and insurance card, freezer bags full of meds. She led us to J.'s room to look for clean clothes in a mess that reminded me of 8th grade -- clothes strewn everywhere, empty bottles peaking out from under the piles -- the scent of vomit and worse, the attempt to cover it up with perfume.

"It's been 30 years of this," her sister said.

But J. was gone.

Her sister found her, newly 50 with unwashed hair and pores oozing red wine, curled up in her parents' bedroom. A ghoul in training.

We half-carried, half-dragged her out to the car, in which she miraculously did not vomit, over the 45 long, traffic-choked miles to the uptown emergency room where she was headed for the night. At intake, she insisted upon privacy, explaining to the nurse from a crab-like posture on the floor and in a loud whisper that the other person in the waiting room was one of her former patients. The nurse, somehow, said nothing.

After J.'s impossible change out of her soiled loungewear and into a hospital gown, and her sneering use of a bedpan, the nurse asked whether she was taking any medicine. I handed over the small pharmacy.

"Oh, my God. It's going to be a nightmare for me to put everything in the computer!"

I hoped J. hadn't heard, but even if she had, I took some comfort in knowing that her blackout drunkenness would shield her from the night's sharpest bits.

In between having her blood drawn, J. had moments of lucidity -- we talked as friends do, though her pitch changed violently without warning. And sometimes she would shout.

"If you don't give me Ativan right now, I'm going to walk out of here and buy a bottle of wine."

Her clothes and shoes had been taken away, as had her phone and wallet. Yet I knew that she was completely capable of carrying out her threat.