Washed Away

I felt fine at work on Wednesday, although every thought and every twinge made me question if it was the early stages of withdrawal. By the end of the workday, I was starting to think that maybe I was ok after all. Maybe I would be one of those people who had an easy withdrawal period. It seemed possible to me. The evening was uneventful. I called and left a message for Nick, and went to bed early to read a magazine. I felt my eyelids getting heavy as I read, and eventually put the magazine aside and crawled under the covers.

Thursday was a repeat of Wednesday. I usually had the day off, but I switched shifts with one of the other regulars so she could go see her grandson’s school play. Again, I waited for hell to begin, but nothing had happened. I came home, watched some television, and after dozing off on the couch a few times, I opted for bed.

I awakened at 4am, soaked with sweat. I felt mildly nauseous, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. I tried to fall asleep again, but the sleep was intermittent at best. By the time daylight crept through the window, I felt worse. But since it was my day off, I had the opportunity to stay in bed as long as I wanted. I tried to convince myself that it was just a coincidence, and I actually happened to catch the flu on the same week I stopped the meds.

I heard Missy’s door close as she went downstairs for breakfast. It was a fairly quiet week for her, with most of her finals finished and nothing but a paper left to write before the end of the semester. She went to the kitchen, and then came back upstairs. She must have noticed that I didn’t start the coffee yet. There was a quiet knock at the door. “Angela? Are you ok?”

I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I yelled weakly. “I’m ok.”

“Can I come in?”

“Yeah.” She entered and approached my bed.

“Wow, what’s wrong?”

“Just trying to kick the meds,” I said, shaking under the blankets. “Really, I’m ok.”

She mumbled something that sounded like, “Uhhhnnnggh,” and reached out to take my temperature. “Wow, do you know how cold and sweaty you are?”

“I can guess,” I said.

“Give me your wrist?” She held out her hand and I handed my wrist to her. She looked at her watch and counted my pulse. She looked a little uptight. “Do you have Nick’s number around here anywhere?”

I nodded. “I tried to call him last night. His number is downstairs by the kitchen phone.”

She headed for the bedroom door. “Can I get you anything?” I shook my head and crawled down under the blankets again.

I heard her downstairs on the phone. “Nick? Hey, it’s Angela’s roommate, Missy? She’s in some bad shape?” There was a pause. “Yeah, she said that?” Another pause. “So what do I do for her?” Long pause. She mumbled something I couldn’t understand. Pause. “Ok, I’ll stick around, then? I heard the phone go back into its base, and could hear her pacing on the tile floor.

I decided that I should really go brush my teeth to get rid of the hideous metallic taste that had been taking over my mouth. I got about three steps from the bathroom door when I went down in a heap. I heard Missy running through the condo. She was standing over me in a heartbeat. “Where are you going?” she asked.

I tried to tell her about my teeth, but instead I started to cry. Since I had started on the meds, I had cried at most of the appropriate times, but often it was a shallow cry, tears streaming down my cheeks without the underlying emotion. This was a sobbing that came from deep inside me, tears that had been unlocked from the darkest recesses of my psyche. I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t breathe. I thought that my organs were being wrung dry. Missy tried to pick me up and drag me back to my bed, but I was dead weight, and she succeeded in doing little more than shifting my position.

I could feel my chest heaving with the effort of the tears. Missy, visibly scared, rubbed my back and tried to comfort me. “Shhh… it’s ok… shhh… don’t worry, it’s all right….” Her hands felt so small and distant through the sweat-soaked t-shirt that I had been sleeping in.

It seemed like hours before the tears tapered off. Missy stayed beside me through it all. I felt so drained that I could barely help her lift me back into bed. She went to the bathroom and got a cool washcloth for my forehead. I still quivered with an occasional sob, but I had no tears left; I was probably completely dehydrated. I lay motionless in bed, weak and dizzy.

“Do you feel better?” she asked. I couldn’t answer. I was shaking, and too tired to say anything. “Do you think you can sleep?” I nodded. She adjusted the washcloth on my forehead and told me she’d be back to check on me in a little bit. She left the bedroom door partially open and went downstairs. I heard her call Nick again, but this time she got his voicemail.

“Nick, it’s Missy. It’s been a bit of a scary morning. Her pulse is racing, she’s dizzy, and if there were awards for hysterical crying jags, she’d be an Olympian. I’m a little worried. What happens if she blacks out from hyperventilating?”

I noticed that she wasn’t up-talking anymore. I wondered if I’d scared her so badly that her entire speech pattern had changed.

I remember looking at the clock and seeing that it was just past 9:30. I closed my eyes and when I woke up again it was shortly after 10:00. What I didn’t immediately realize was that it was more than 12 hours later. I had slept through the entire day. I woke with a pounding headache, muscles that ached worse than any flu I had ever had, and the sense that something beneath my skin was crawling and trying to escape. I tried to sit up and reach for the light, but I was too dizzy and slumped limply onto the nightstand, knocking the lamp to the floor. Missy came running to the door.

“You’re awake!”

I couldn’t say anything. I just tried to pull myself off the nightstand. She came over and helped me back into bed.

“Are you thirsty?”

I thought about it for a moment, and nodded. I wasn’t sure that I could sit up to drink, or that I could keep anything down, but I did feel like I was completely dry. She ran downstairs and returned with a water bottle with a built-in straw. I sipped slowly, and the water felt startlingly wet on my tongue. I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry that I actually choked. The ensuing coughing fit forced me to sit up, which only aggravated my dizziness and nausea. I started to gag, and Missy ran to grab a trash can in case I got sick. She sat on the bed with me and rubbed my back, telling me that everything was going to be all right. I wasn’t sure I believed her. Even her touch on my back hurt, but I let her do it because I needed the comforting. I took another sip of water, then another. My throat felt better, and I tried to speak in a hoarse whisper: “Why did I do this to myself?”

She whispered back. “Because you want to be better. You want to be strong and healthy.”

I laughed weakly. “This is the path to health? Feels like the path to hell.”

She smiled. “Nick says that the worst will be over by Sunday? But you’ll have lingering dizziness and nausea for a few weeks.”

I looked her in the eye. “Am I hallucinating, or are you not doing that up-talking thing anymore?”

She thought for a moment. “I guess not. I started doing it to piss off my parents. Somehow it automatically goes away when I have to be an adult.”

I closed my eyes and started to drift away. “I like you better as a grownup.”

“Me too,” she replied softly.

I slept through the night and straight through until noon on Saturday. When I woke, I found Nick sitting in a chair near my bed. I thought I was dreaming.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m on guard duty this afternoon while Missy works.”

I nodded. “Water,” I whispered, reaching my arm out from beneath the blankets. He handed me the bottle and I drank several gulps.

“I feel awful.”

“I warned you.” He pulled the chair close to my bed, and pushed my matted hair from my face. “It’s the hardest way to do it.”

“What day is it?”

“Saturday, around lunchtime. Missy called you in sick.”

“Hmm, she didn’t think I could work like this? Wonder why?” The room was swirling. “So when does the dizziness go away? And if you don’t have an answer, ask the guy next to you.”

“Yeah, you’re doing just about as well as could be expected. Hard part’s over, though. Symptoms will linger, but your skin won’t burn and crawl past today.”

“How did you know my skin was burning?”

He leaned in and winked. “I’m a professional.”

I stared at the ceiling for a moment, watching the world spin. “I have a killer headache. Can I have some Advil?”

“Nope. Not yet.”

I groaned. “When?”

“Next Tuesday.”

“Oh my god, no!”

“Ok, that was a bad joke. Sorry. But you really shouldn’t put anything else into your body right now. Except food.”

The thought of anything more than water made me sick. “No food yet. Please.”

“Ok, but you have to eat dinner tonight. No arguments.”

I closed my eyes and imagined myself on a boat, rocking with the current. When I was very young, I went fishing in the bay with a friend’s father and uncle. It was hot and the current was fairly strong, so the boat never really settled down. I remembered being afraid that the boat would tip over, leaving me alone in the water, far from shore. But of course, everything was fine, and we came back to shore with three big fish and four bad sunburns. My boat rocked and rocked in the summer heat, and I could hear the sounds of other motorboats in the distance.

I opened my eyes to see daylight streaming through the curtains. I had slept through the night. I felt slightly less dizzy and nauseous than I had before, and I managed to sit upright under my own power. Missy entered my room with a gentle knock. “Look at you! You’re not horizontal!”

“It’s the little things that mean a lot,” I said.

She handed me my sports bottle. “I made you a smoothie.”

“The powerboat,” I said, putting it all together.

She looked confused. “No, it’s a sports bottle. Are you still hallucinating?”

I laughed. “No! I was having a dream. There were powerboats. I think it was the blender.”

She looked relieved to know that I wasn’t confusing everyday items with boats. I held the bottle, comforted by it’s coolness. “Drink it,” she said.

I put the straw to my lips and tasted the most wonderful combination of fruits. “This is amazing,” I told her.

“It’s just frozen fruit. Nothing fancy.”

“Trust me, when you haven’t eaten, it’s something pretty close to heaven.”

“You look so much better,” she told me.

“I still feel weird, but compared to yesterday, this is easy.”

She fluffed my pillows and helped prop me up comfortably. “I have to leave for work in about 15 minutes. Nick’s on his way over here right now. You should have seen how he took care of you yesterday.” She smiled. “He’s a keeper if you want him.”

“We’ll see if he wants me after seeing me like this,” I said.

“He does.” She smiled knowingly, and skipped over to the bathroom to grab my hairbrush. “Here, use this. You want to look as good as you can after two days in bed.”

I pulled the brush through my hair, wincing as I did. My hair follicles hurt. I’d never felt anything like this before.

The doorbell rang, and she bounded down the stairs. “She’s awake,” I heard her say. “And drinking a smoothie.”

His head appeared in my doorway. “Knock-knock.”

“Come on in,” I said, suddenly very excited to see him. “Did you bring your friend?”

He looked at me strangely, then remembered my double-vision of the day before. “No, I’m hoping he stays away.”

“Me too,” I said. He sat on the bed and smiled at me. I felt like everything was going to be ok.

“Are you still dizzy?”

I nodded. “But I think I can stand up. I need a shower.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” he said forcefully.

“Why?”

“You haven’t stood up since Thursday. The combination of your weakness and the hot water could cause you to pass out.”

“Can I take a bath?”

“Only with supervision.”

I shot him a look of mock horror. “Nick! Are you trying to make a pass at a patient?”

“Not at all,” he said sarcastically. “However, since I have had dinner with you, the parameters have changed slightly.”

He filled the tub, came back to help me out of bed and walked me to the bathroom. I stood still while he gently undressed me, and helped me ease into the warm water. He sat on the edge of the tub and gazed at me admiringly while I let the water surround me, healing my pain and washing away my sins.

Dizzy, nauseous, weak, and with three days’ worth of bed head, I managed to land myself a guy.