“Where’s everyone?” I asked him, mush-mouthed.
“Luis and Courtney and Mel are all back at the farm,” Jamie told me, looking like she might still break out into giggles.
“How? They said you’d been captured too?”
“I had people working inside the camp. We have to move fast because my people broke cover to get them out and attack the facility you were held in.”
“Where was I?” I asked him.
“It was supposed to be a DNR trout farm, a research center. Obviously, it wasn’t,” Steve told me.
“How long?” I asked, looking at Jamie.
“It’s been a while, Dick. We couldn’t move until we knew where you were,” she said.
“Why’d you come back for me?” I asked her.
“You wouldn’t have ditched us. I couldn’t leave you behind,” Jamie said.
“Yeah, the green monster kind of took over when she was insistent on that,” Steve said. “And then when you kissed her, I lost it. I really am sorry.”
“Don’t worry. With all the shit in my system, I had thought I was hallucinating. To be honest, I still am. This could be another dream,” I told him.
“It’s not a dream. We’ve got a doctor back at the farm. I want you to get looked at. What did they give you, by the way, so I can have ready for when we get there?”
I didn’t want to tell him, so I turned my head, looking out the back window of the Hummer. Somebody grabbed my left arm, pulling it out. I turned to see Jamie examining the needle tracks.
“What was it, Dick?” she asked me.
“Don’t,” I told her.
“Dick.”
I looked into her eyes and knew I couldn’t or wouldn’t hold back. She had kissed me back, dammit, I knew she did. Even if it was a dream, she kissed me back.
“Skinner said it was a morphine-heroin cocktail. To make me beg for a fix after a while.”
“Did you?” she asked me, her eyes never wavering from mine.
“Yes,” I admitted. “It made the time pass and the pain go away.”
I heard murmuring and saw that Steve had raised a large radio to his mouth and was speaking into it. I heard him repeating what I’d just said, and when the radio crackled, he told them “Good” and put it down.
“Doc there says he has the stuff to fix you up,” Steve told me.
“Don’t waste your time or meds, Steve,” I told him. “Salina told me the next time I got hooked, the withdrawals would kill me.”
“She’s wrong,” Jamie said, immediately letting go of my arm.
“What she told me,” I insisted weakly.
“Listen, we’re going back to the farm and getting you all fixed up. You brought my family back to me,” Steve said, his voice choking up. “I’m not going to let you die. I owe you that.”
I considered that and nodded. Family was the best, but running second best was good friends. I was one more step closer to Mary and Maggie. I knew half my confusion was from the smack, but damn, there was something there, and Jamie wasn’t looking at me again.
“Is Dick ok?” Mel asked.
I’d fallen asleep again. I pulled myself up and out of the back door of the Hummer and stretched.
“Just a little busted up, kiddo,” I told her.
For the moment that was truth. I must have slept off much of the last shit, and I was in that twilight zone between high and the cravings for more. The Hummer stopping was what had awoken me, and I could see that the sun was beginning to set. Ahead in the distance, I saw a small barn, a windmill, and the shimmering light reflecting off a small pond.
“That’s good,” she said and ran to her dad and threw herself into his arms.
She might have been a kid, but she was as tall as a young woman. Steve picked her up in a bear hug like she was nothing and gave her a squeeze. Soon Jamie was joining in. I could see the love in their eyes. I knew at that moment that I needed to kill the part of me that was yearning for Jamie. I wouldn’t sour this for them. This moment right here, I could let her go. I had to.
“Dick?” I heard a shout and saw a couple come out of the barn and start walking towards us.
“Who’s that?” I asked, leaning against the Hummer for support.
They broke the hug and walked over. Steve put a steadying arm under me, and we started walking.
“You guys set up the perimeter. I think we got out clean, but I want to be sure,” Steve said to someone behind me.
I half turned my head and saw the rest of the deputies nod and start moving.
“That’s Luis and Courtney,” Jamie told me.
“We made it, we all made it,” I told her.
“I’m home, Dick,” my daughter said.
“I know, Maggie,” I said, ignoring the look Steve gave me.
“It’s the drugs talking,” Jamie said.
“Sorry, I did it again,” I said, realizing it.
This was sort of awkward. I expected Steve to dump me on the ground for trying to usurp his family, but he just tightened his grip and helped me start walking.
“Like I said, we got a good doc here, Dick. He’ll fix you up.”
God I hoped so. I wanted my Maggie, my Mary. I was within a few days’ travel. It wouldn’t be long now. We had traveled across a third of the country, but my journey wasn’t done yet. I had to make it out of Nebraska. I wouldn’t wait long, and I’d be on the road again if I survived withdrawal.
“Everything’s going to be ok, Dick,” Mel said, and I grinned back at her.
“It really is,” I told her.
I believed it. Everything would be ok. I hoped. I prayed.
-The End-
Volume Three
Book 3 - The Devil’s Due
34
I’d started throwing up almost as soon as I settled in at the farm. Much of what had happened to me and how I had been rescued was a blur. They’d explained it to me, but my entire body felt like one big sustained cramp which started in my stomach. Even now, I knew it would get worse. The first day was just a warm-up, the next few days would be an utter hell, and I wasn’t sure if I could do it.
Breathe. Easy to say, hard to do, especially when you’re curled up around the toilet, worried you won’t have the strength to lift your head when the nausea becomes too much. I still hadn’t seen the doc Steve was talking about. He’d been called away in the middle of our rescue mission to a woman in labor. Part of me raged, the bitter, jealous part of me. I knew she was more important than a useless junkie. If I were in his shoes, I probably would have done the same thing… but I’m me. I’m broken.
“You can’t lay there, Dick,” a feminine voice told me, trying to lift me from behind my arms.
“Hurts,” I said, unable to help myself.
“The doctor just got back. I need you to get on the couch,” she said.
I couldn’t see her, despite trying to get up. The cramp was all consuming, and it took everything not to plead for something to ease it. Mentally I understood, having gone through it a few times already, but I also knew from the times I’d tried to get clean and had given up, that a quick shot would ease the pain. Even if it was just for a short period.
“I can’t,” I said. “I just need a minute.”
I made it to my knees with her tugging at me, and it was a good thing, because I vomited again, and not on the white tiled floor of the main bathroom. Score one for me.
“You’re too big for me to carry. The doc is about a hundred years old, so you’ve got to do this,” she said.
I struggled, and my free hand found a grab bar. It was one of those stainless steel ones made for the elderly. I was lucky that the house had been upgraded before the O’Sullivans had purchased it. That grab bar was the only thing that enabled me to pull myself up. I had been drugged, beaten, and interrogated for more than a week, but that first shot had been enough to get my body rolling down the road of addiction again. It was why I never took pain meds. Not that I could have found them, even if I’d wa
nted them.
“Ok,” I said, gaining my feet.
I could feel her body behind me, how her arms and chest muscles strained to keep me from falling over. Slowly, I straightened up and turned. My entire body was sweating, and I knew it wasn’t going to be long before the shakes and the cycle of sweating and then freezing would begin. Then, I got a good look at the woman. It was Courtney.
“What’s wrong?” Courtney asked when she saw me looking her over.
“For a second there, I thought you were Jamie,” I admitted.
“Dude, you’ve still got bruises from Steve, don’t start this,” she whispered, but she was grinning.
“You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you?” I asked her seriously.
“Watching you suffer, or picking on you?” She grinned.
“Either,” I gasped as she held onto my arm and started walking backwards.
Damn, I hadn’t flushed the toilet. I should have taken care of that, but I was moving now, and I didn’t know if I could get up again if I fell, so I went with her.
“I don’t want to see you suffer,” she said seriously, walking slowly. “But the Jamie thing, yeah. I do tease you a little too much. I can stop.”
“You know,” I gasped, “you’re mostly right.”
Courtney stopped and looked at me, “You fell in love with her,” she said very softly.
“I’m in love with Mary,” I replied, the house eerily quiet, “but I… You’re right, too,” I told her seriously, surprised at how loud I was.
The house was an old sprawling farmhouse. White wood siding, modern metal roofing. Half a dozen bedrooms, a basement… a big but claustrophobic kitchen, full of old appliances from a century when power was seldom used. The dining room had been converted into storage, for both the gun lockers and tactical gear. I’d been told that the basement was where the friends and family of Steve and Jamie were housed, with bunk beds stretching across the entire width. Across the stairs from the basement were the stairs leading up to the bedrooms, and a third-floor loft.
Mel had told me all about it, but I had only been on the couch or in the bathroom since I’d arrived. The house had been strangely silent, except for a sudden gasp from the staircase that came down to the main floor. Courtney paled and led me to the couch. Before I started to sit down, I chanced a look over my shoulder and saw a flash of raven hair as somebody retreated back upstairs.
“Was that…?” I asked.
Courtney nodded. “Bad timing. I’m sorry, I didn’t know she was inside.”
“Not your…” I fell forward onto the couch, almost crushing Courtney with my weight. The cramp had gone from unbearable to absolute evil, and my arms and legs started shaking.
Courtney pushed my body onto the couch, rolled me on my side, and put a bedpan close to my head. Then she turned around and ran for the front door, calling for the doc. I figured since I was either having a seizure or dying, I’d at least pray for one last chance. Unable to make the words come out, I struggled to even hold them in a thought.
I prayed for the safety of Mary and Maggie, I prayed for my friends, and I prayed that someday, Jamie would forgive me my slip of the tongue. I never should have said it, and I couldn’t blame it on the withdrawals or the drugs. At least, to myself I couldn’t. The door banged open as I was trying to finish my prayer. Courtney and an elderly man who was wearing a white button up, black slacks, a stethoscope and carrying a doctor’s bag, came in. Despite his age, he looked quite spry.
“I’m Soams,” the doc said, “Can you hear me?” My legs were twitching, and I was moaning in pain.
I tried to nod, tried to talk. Nothing came out. I blinked both eyes deliberately.
“Good, let me check you over,” he said.
I wanted to scream that I was having a seizure. He flashed a penlight into my eyes, took a quick feel of my pulse and nodded, mumbling to himself. For half a heartbeat, the pain felt a little less, and the cramp began to let up just a little bit, so I drew in a deep, shuddery breath.
“Ah hah… doc…” I finally managed.
“Good, not a seizure. You’ve been through this before?” the doc asked, looking at the needle tracks on my arm.
I blinked big, noticing that at some point, someone had gotten me a large plain white t-shirt. It was wet with sweat and sticking to my skin.
“Then you know, it’s going to get worse. Before the power went out, I had rules I had to follow for procedures like this. Now, I’d like to ask you something, and it’s going to impact your course of treatment.”
“Go,” I mumbled out.
“Go? You want me to leave?” he asked.
“No, he meant go on,” Courtney told him, and I blinked in agreement.
“Oh, well then. In Canada, their treatment for heroin withdrawals is a little different than here. Here, we use methadone and other drugs to wean you off of it, with intense therapy and psychiatric drugs. It works and works well… the problem is that this treatment benefits the drug companies more than the patients. In one protocol in Canada, the addict is put under sedation and given another drug that purges the heroin’s withdrawal effects from the body. The body experiences cold turkey within forty-eight hours and not one to two weeks. Going without sedation is not recommended, ever. Still, you will be sleeping for much of this procedure, and I would be available to monitor your condition. So, do you want the conventional treatment or the quick?”
I trembled. A quick treatment? But it would be worse than this? Sedation was something I’d avoided whenever I was clean because it was always a slippery slope back into addiction. Mentally, I knew I would always be an addict, but this time, I hadn’t gone on the smack on my own. It’d been forced on me. I was hoping that distinction would make a difference. If not to me, then to someone above. I still didn’t know if I could live through it. The seizing up was worse this time than it had ever had been at any other time that I’d tried to go clean. It was this that Salina had told me would be the death of me, if I ever got on the drugs again.
I hoped she was wrong, or had been telling me a lie to make me stop.
“I’ve got everything here,” the doc said, pointing to his bag, “and a battery operated IV stand that’s in good working order.”
I tried to talk, to tell him to give me the second one, but no words came out. Footsteps could be heard, and I looked to the staircase to see both Mel and Jamie coming down. Mel’s hair was wet, and she was pulling a brush through it. A gesture so normal and familiar that it hurt to see it. Had Maggie’s world changed? Would she have the normal things like food, water, a house to live in? I prayed that they were fine at Mary’s parents’ house.
“How is he?” Mel asked.
“He’s going through withdrawals, the drugs have him talking funny,” Courtney said.
As soon as she’d said it, I knew she’d thrown out that lifeline for me. I wasn’t going to correct her, but the look on Jamie’s face said it all. Something was bothering her, and her usual features had always been joyful.
“Maybe he’s just saying what he really means,” Jamie offered.
“He hasn’t talked to me,” the doc said, “He’s almost mute from the pain.”
“Pain?” Mel said, putting the brush down on the side table and running over to me.
“Cramped,” I whispered to her, as she took my hand and gave it a squeeze.
“He was talking and cursing up a blue storm when I got him out of the bathroom and brought him to the couch,” Courtney said. “I think he was trying to piss me off deliberately.” She dropped me a wink.
From the way she was standing, I was the only one who would see it, and I appreciated it.
“Second,” I gasped out as another cramp seized my body.
The doc held the bedpan as nausea took control of me, and then went to the bathroom to dispose of it.
“Want me to get Luis?” Courtney asked.
I took a deep breath to answer and then realized that very fact was calming. The cramp was losi
ng its hold again. I took a couple of breaths more as the doctor came out. I felt bad, but I was able to talk for a moment.
“Doc, I want the second protocol,” I said wheezing, “I’m going to sleep it off?”
“Good, yes. You will sleep during it. I don’t have the typical anesthesia I would at a hospital, but I have stuff here that’ll do the trick. My only concern is that somebody needs to sit with you the entire time. I can’t do that, not with sixty people here on the property.”
I thought it must be the drugs that had me hearing that wrong. Sixty? I hadn’t seen that many people, and the basement couldn’t have held that many.
“I’ll do it,” Jamie said, not meeting my eyes.
“I can help,” Mel said.
“I’ll do it,” Courtney said to Jamie. “You’ve been away from your husband for a while. Besides, another knock on the noggin from your husband will make Dick look like he’s got horns.”
I hadn’t seen myself in the mirror yet, but I figured that was why the doc had checked my eyes. Most of the time when you get knocked out, there’s some sort of concussion. Probably trying to gauge how much of this was withdrawal and how much of it was from the abuse and a knockout punch.
“Really, it’s no problem—”
“I got this,” Courtney said, kneeling down by me and taking my other hand.
Mel gave me a pat on the shoulder and let my hand go, wrapping her arms around her mother.
“But—”
“I still haven’t paid Dick back for rescuing me,” Courtney explained, “I’d really like to do this. I need to do this.”
“Oh,” Jamie said in a small voice, “I understand. I just… it’s hard to see somebody hurting like this.”
“That’s another reason for letting me do it. It’s going to be bad,” Courtney told her.
Jamie looked to the doc, who nodded in confirmation.
“Well, let’s get some of the men in here to carry you up to the guest room,” the doc said. “You’ll be taking the bigger guest room with the adjoining bathroom for the next few days. You and the young lady… Courtney is it?” She nodded in agreement. “Courtney will need to be comfortable. She probably won’t get much sleep, but I’ve already cleared it with Mr. O’Sullivan.”
The Devil Dog Trilogy: Out Of The Dark Page 38