I Choose to Live

A junky’s life is a twisted narrative about fading in and out from ecstasy to desperation. Desperation can drive a person to the edge of sanity; to a place where change can happen. It was New Year’s Eve in aught one that made me believe in alternate dimensions, or the paper-thin dividers between worlds.

 I don’t recall the exact ‘straw that broke the ‘junky’s back’, or why my lovely heroin eyed wife decided to choose the St. Vincent’s guest house as our detox center, but nevertheless, there we were. Our lives had become so unmanageable that we had decided to rent a room and shake out of our shoes until we had the strength to face the world, and that evil beast, heroin, was knocked down to size.

After the Yellow fever epidemic of the 1860’s killed over 40,000 people, the Daughters of Charity Order of Nuns founded St. Vincent’s to raise the 100,000 orphans left behind. The building was later used as a home for unwed mothers, then eventually deconsecrated and sold to a group of investors to make into a less than reputable hostel and guest house.

It was a funny coincidence that we had chosen what had been rumored to be a haunted orphanage to exorcise the demon of drug addiction that had possessed us like no Beelzebub could. Heroin was no succubus that could be cast out with a Roman collar and some holy water – she was ugly, and recovery would take time. The evil devil was a jealous mistress that would demand not only total loyalty, but proof. She seeped into you, balls to bones, and watched you submit. Before she was done, she would make you prove to everyone you knew that she was more important than your wife, your family, and your livelihood. She was the kind of evil that would even destroy your means to obtain her, and laugh while you suffered in sickness. However, there was a reason why someone would endure this tragic torment; the love she gave you. That rush was like standing up too fast, having an orgasm, and falling in love for the first time, every time. It was the ultimate cure for pain; every pain, from a toothache to Jimmy stealing your girlfriend in the tenth grade, just melted away. It made the world sharp and beautiful, but somehow you still belonged in it. It was everything that elan vital and mana both professed to be, but at the same time still junk. 

We were really going to do it, not that we hadn’t tried before. Everytime we had made it to the horrible halfway point, where everything in the world smelled like death’s adult diaper, we had caved. There was this putrid urine odor that coated the world in its pissy presence. Then there were twitches that felt like a clandestine force was pulling a string embedded in your spine that sent shivers through your bones like a labor contraction. Not to mention the temperature changes, one second there weren’t enough covers in all of Siberia to keep out the cold, and the next it was so hot that no two folds of skin could touch without creating that foul smelling sweat. It was torture, and in the midst of this sleepless nightmare came the screeching cries.

The walls in the old hotel seemed very solid and stallworth, but not enough to cancel out the baby crying in the next room.

We had sweated and vomited and shook for three days with no hint of sleep. My wife, Jesi, had been slow to go along with my designs for detox, but once agreed she was the backbone of the plan. There had been several times in the first two days where I had almost caved, but she was resilient. She puked and cussed and was coated in that rancid smell, but she pressed on.

The detox built to a fever pitch when that baby started crying. Whatever frequency that child’s lungs were broadcasting on they were rattling my already fragile bones. Any other time I would have drowned it out, but the infant’s hours of howling were torturing my soul worse than waterboarding.

I had gone over every scenario in my head about why that baby was crying, but I knew the answer. There is only one way someone could sleep through that relentless racket. That child’s mother was some junky just like us, except she was high. That mom had passed out on heroin or died and was sleeping the ultimate blissful peace, and that baby was hungry or wet or cold and couldn’t see to its needs alone.

Finally, with a jump that meant this was the final straw Jesi said, “You have to do something. That baby is driving me nuts. Go wake that bitch up!”

Even in my disgusting, weakened state, being able to solve a problem for my wife gave me some purpose, energy, and hope. As I pulled on my pants and boots I told her not to worry I’d handle it.

I was out the door in a flash and pounding the next.

The hundred-year-old oak doors combined with my malnutrition and insomnia made the door get the best of me, but I persisted. The baby kept crying, the junky sleeping, and painfully I kept knocking.

Eventually I began to admit defeat, until I thought of the desk downstairs. I sprinted down the stairs, and my boot soles echoed through the hotel like drum accents to the baby crying.

In the lobby on the first floor I realized I couldn’t hear the baby, but there wasn’t a desk clerk. There was a tiny bell and a wall full of keys a few feet behind the high counter. I rang the bell and called for a few minutes to no avail. I don’t normally give up on challenges so easily, but a wave of sickness suddenly hit me. The fear that my bowels would betray me spurred me into action, and I bolted back upstairs. I narrowly made it to the bathroom as sickness descended on me in full force. I was in death flu mode for at least an hour, and I had a scalding shower after to feel human again. I stepped out of the shower and wondered if maybe I could sleep. The second I laid on the bed, I could hear the crying. 

“Ugh, when did this start?” I asked.

“It never stopped.” She screamed, “I am about to kick that door in and beat that junky bitch!”

I knew what the consequences of that would have been. We had paid up our room for two weeks. The sickness should be over anytime, then we would be alright. I couldn’t be certain though,  because we had never made it much past that mark. If she kicked in that door, we would be thrown out on the street in the midst of a dope sickness battle. That is a war on too many fronts. I tried to offer her a cigarette out of a crumpled pack of Parliaments, but she cussed me and the foul tasting tobacco.

I told her I’d fix it. She replied that if I didn’t, she would.

My pants slid over the boots and because of a poorly aimed vomit I was forced to go shirtless, but I was on the job. I once again beat on the door till near collapse and then started to head downstairs. Something stopped me. At first I thought it was an echo, but then I could hear it clearly; there was more than one baby. After focusing on it, I was certain. There were at least two, even possibly three babies. Was that why the mother had passed out? Was she exhausted from caring for triplets? Was she there right now, breasts engorged with milk, sleeping like a gargoyle, while those babies lusted over their flesh-encased breakfast only feet away? I shook it off and ran downstairs again.

The lobby was still empty, but unlike before, I could still hear the little ones wailing. The sound coated the halls like wallpaper. I looked around, rang the bell, and called for help before finally making my move. I jumped the counter and with the speed of a junky thief, flipped keys until I found the one I needed. Like a track-marked track star I hurdled the desk and clattered up the stairs.

The key slid in the lock like it was brand new, and the knob turned like a well oiled machine.

The door wouldn’t budge. That was when the crying got louder. It was bouncing off the walls and funneling into my ears until I could feel the physical pressure of the sound. It had to be multiple babies. Their little lungs sounded like a platoon of banshees attempting to drive me insane with their siren of sadism. I shoved and they screamed. I tried to yell out to the mother, but the crying just intensified till I couldn’t hear my own voice. The deafening screams were joined by hundreds of tiny wailing voices, and the harder I pushed the more intense it got, until one final rush sent me rocketing through the door, windmilling out of control. With a jarring blow that smashed the right side of my face, busted my nose, and filled my eyes with stars, I landed head first on the hard oak floor.

When the pain subsided enough for me to survey my surroundings, I was stunned into silence. I lay dripping blood in the middle of an enormous room, twice the size of mine, that was completely empty. There was nothing, no junky mom, no beds, and most of all – no crying babies. I lay there on the floor in an empty room, but I can tell you beyond an iota of a doubt that they were still there. I could feel them and their little eyes on me. I could picture the empty room filled with rows of cribs, and I could almost make out the little parentless people staring through wooden slats at my intrusion. Then I knew what they were crying for. They wanted to live.

I was dope sick with five years of killing myself. I couldn’t put a gun up to my head, but I was doing it on the installment plan. I was working tirelessly on my slow, sick suicide. They just wanted to live, because life was sweet and wonderful. It was filled with love and laughter, but also hurt and hopelessness. They wanted the choice; I was throwing mine away.

In that second that the epiphany washed over me, I finally felt tired. Sleep, or a concussion, made me almost narcoleptically sleepy. With the ringing in my ears of the babies’ silence, exhaustion picked an awkward time to take me.

“Baby, wake up,” Jesi shook me awake from the floor where I had faded. As I gathered my wits, trying to piece together how I had come to be in the empty room, I noticed a maid in the doorway ringing her hands.

I tried to apologize, but she said it wasn’t needed because this had happened before. 

On my way out of the room I smelled the sweet smell of Jesi’s crumpled cigarette, and asked for one of my own, only then realizing that the sickness had passed. Not only were my bowels calm and my stomach stable, but the world was no longer urine scented and rotting.

She handed me the lit cig, and a smirk crossed her pencil thin bowtie lips as she asked, “Feeling better?”

That was the best smoke I had ever tasted, because like I told her, I chose to live.