All Fall Down(73)
Author: Jennifer Weiner

I nodded. This sounded like an acceptable solution. I could take this Suboxone stuff and stop hurting, and then take a day to sort myself out. I’d get more pills, either online or from doctors, enough so that this would never happen again. I would contact a lawyer, and a child psychologist, which Ellie would undoubtedly require. I would taper myself off the pills, maybe try more of those meetings, or get myself a therapist, or start running again. But all I wanted, at that moment, was something to take, something to swallow or smoke or snort. Something that would ease my panic, slow my heartbeat, let me feel okay again.

“Here.” Dr. Desgupta had finally pulled out his prescription pad. “I will write for seven days. The medicine is a film; you dissolve it under your tongue.” He ripped off the page. I snatched it out of his hand. “How long ago was last dose of OxyContin?”

I tried to remember what time it had been when I’d chewed up the last of my pills, and tried not to remember licking the inside of the jewelry box where I’d found the final two Vicodin. If you were ever wondering whether you had a problem or not, the taste of jewelry-box felt was answer enough. “Four in the morning?”

He looked at the clock, calculating. He had big brown eyes, a bald head with a few strands of black hair carefully arranged on top, and a soft, accented voice. “Take first one at noon. You should be started in the withdrawal by then. Feeling like you have the flu. Sweaty, hands shaking . . . you feel like that, you take first one.”

“Thank you,” I said faintly, and was up and out of the chair, the prescription in one hand and my cell phone in the other, before he could tell me goodbye.

• • •

I could remember the rest of the day only in snatches. I remembered my cab ride from the doc-in-a-box to the drive-through lane of the pharmacy. The flu, the doctor had told me . . . except this was to the flu like a pack of rabid pit bulls was to a Chihuahua. I was running with foul-smelling sweat and shaking so hard that my teeth were chattering. My skin was covered in goose pimples; whatever I’d eaten the day before churned unhappily in my belly. I remembered the pharmacist telling me that the medicine wasn’t covered by my insurance without prior approval, and insisting, over and over, that I didn’t care, that it didn’t matter, that I’d pay out of pocket and worry about reimbursement later.

Back at home, I speed-read the instructions, then tore open one of the packets and let the yellow film dissolve into sour slime under my tongue. I locked the bedroom door and lay on my bed, where I endured six hours of the worst hell I could imagine. My entire body twitched and burned. My legs kicked and flailed uncontrollably. I couldn’t hold still, couldn’t get comfortable. My skin felt like it was host to hundreds of thousands of fiery ants wearing boots made of poison-tipped needles. I scratched and clawed, but I couldn’t make them go away. The first time I threw up, I made it to the toilet, and, from there, I managed to send my mother and Dave a text explaining that I was sick and that, between the two of them, they’d have to handle Ellie and her obligations. The second time, I made it to the sink. The third time, I couldn’t even make it out of bed. I was freezing cold, so I’d tried to get under the covers, but the kicking—kicking! I was actually kicking!—had disarranged everything, had loosened the fitted sheets and the mattress cover. I writhed on the bed, trying to moan into the pillow, praying that the Suboxone would start its work, that I’d feel better, that Ellie wouldn’t see or hear this.

My mother knocked at the door. “Allison? Allison, are you okay?”

“Flu,” I called back, in a voice that didn’t sound like mine. I’d gotten myself wrapped in a blanket and was sitting, hunched over and moaning, in the old glider chair I’d used to nurse Ellie. I was burning up, my hair glued to my cheeks in matted clumps, making high, whining noises. I moaned and rocked, moaned and rocked, as the minutes dragged by. At six o’clock I couldn’t stand it any longer. I found the phone, crawled into bed, and managed to dial the clinic and tell the receptionist that it was an emergency and that I needed Dr. Desgupta.

“Yes, hello?” he answered.

I told him my name. My voice was a high, wavering whisper. I didn’t sound like myself; I sounded like Ellie when she woke up sick in the middle of the night. “There’s something wrong . . . I’m really sick . . .”

“You are having the nausea and the diarrhea?”

“Yes,” I whispered. I was crying, on top of everything else. “I’m cold . . . I can’t stop shaking . . . everything hurts . . . I feel like I’m going to die . . .”