The Antidote for Everything

by Kimmery Martin

  She knelt and gathered up his big blocky head, scratching behind his ears. “You’re right, you’re right, we need to get out of here,” she told him. He panted in agreement, the sunlight streaming in through the window behind him transforming the ruffled frieze on the back of his head into a halo. “You’re a good boy. I love you,” she said. He drooled happily, batting his head under her hands the instant she tried to stop scratching.

  Across the room on the kitchen counter, her phone buzzed. Instead of walking around the futon like a sane person, she hurdled it like a track star, only just missing hooking her foot into a cushion. She made it to the counter and snatched up the phone midway through the second ring, hoping, of course, it was Jonah. It wasn’t.

  “Georgia.”

  Mark’s voice: she basked in it for a second, caught in the brief respite from stress. Then she realized she should be paying attention to his actual words, not just the tone of them.

  “Say that last part again?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You’re already here?”

  “Yes, I’m here in Charleston. I switched flights for one last night but it got delayed. I actually got in last night around two o’clock but I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “That’s wonderful. You should have gotten me up.” In the background of the call she could hear the murmur of television. “Where exactly are you?”

  “Just waking up.” He sounded sheepish. “I got a hotel last night. Same place I stayed earlier. It’s lovely, actually.”

  “Perfect,” she said. “I can pick you up in five minutes.”

  * * *

  —

  Mark had an hour before he had to check out of his room, so she met him upstairs. In happier circumstances, greeting your lover in a beautiful hotel suite in a beautiful city on a beautiful weekend morning would lead to a lust-addled frenzy, but today, after one look at her, Mark seemed to recognize that any romantic action was off the table. He sat down on the bed and patted a space beside him. She sat down, leaning into his arms.

  “What’s the latest?” he asked.

  “I still can’t reach Jonah.”

  “He’s in the mountains?”

  “Yes. As far as I know.”

  “The media . . .”

  “Yes,” she said again. “Brutal.”

  Softly: “I’ve seen it.”

  She said, “He gets depressed. Not often. It’s been a while since the last time.” She thought back to a few years ago, when his antidepressant medication had stopped working, coinciding with a bad breakup with a fierce-eyed M&A banker named William. “He gets quieter and quieter and stops going out and then he stops answering texts. He functions, but he functions at about twenty percent of normal—everything nonessential shuts down. He goes from crazypants to normal to dull, and then he dips below that and becomes some sort of automaton. It’s terrifying, like part of his mind’s been sucked out.”

  The room in which they sat was white-walled, very bright, with a huge sleigh bed and silvery brocaded chairs, light streaming in from the open balcony doors. Here amid all this serenity, the black rot of depression seemed to be an alien concoction. You could grasp the concept intellectually, but it felt mythical, otherworldly. Still, Mark made a valiant effort: “Given what he’s going through, anyone would feel situational depression. But you think it’s more than that?”

  “He’s done so well,” she said. “Through all of this. He’s been upset, but he’s been himself. But now, I don’t know. It’s one thing to be stressed and anxious, but if he becomes depressed, he won’t fight back. Or—” She couldn’t bring herself to state aloud the other way in which he might decide to opt out. She rolled toward Mark and clutched his arm. “I think it’s a mistake for him to be alone. I should drive to the mountains.”

  “I’ll go with you,” he said instantly.

  Gratitude flooded her. “I need to know he’s okay.”

  A buzzing sound from inside her bag reached her ears. She’d dropped her handbag just inside the door, and so for the second time today, she hurtled across a room to reach her phone before it quit ringing. Jonah, she prayed, let it be Jonah.

  But it wasn’t Jonah this time either. It was Stewart, asking where he was.

  “I haven’t seen him in a couple days,” she said truthfully.

  Stewart, no stranger to evasive tactics, followed up strong. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I hope so,” she said, honestly enough. “Why?”

  A clipped puff of air, Stewart’s version of a sigh: “I’m afraid there’s a warrant for his arrest.”

  She made the same noise you’d make if someone whirled around and punched you in the stomach. Across the room, Mark’s head rose; stricken, he mouthed, “What happened?”

  She shook her head at him, and then, realizing how he might interpret this conversation, she put her hand over the phone and whispered, “They’re going to arrest him.”

  “Please tell me he didn’t leave the county,” Stewart was saying. “I can voluntarily surrender him, but he’ll have to do it soon. Otherwise, they’ll come after him.”

  “You can’t let them arrest him, Stewart. He didn’t do this!”

  “Submitting to an arrest is not an admission of guilt. But evading arrest is a crime in and of itself. We don’t need to make this any more complicated than it is. Jonah needs to come to my office.”

  “Is he evading if he doesn’t know he’s supposed to be arrested?”

  “They’ve asked him to come in today, Georgia. Is that going to be possible? He hasn’t been returning my calls.”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t been returning mine either.”

  “Have him call me as soon as you hear from him.”

  She ended the call and smoothed out her dress, a maxi, studded throughout with small mirrored discs sewn on with embroidery thread; it was light orange at the top, deepening to a dusky blood-orange at the bottom. It was a dress that screamed Happy! You’d wear it to a festival or a groovy concert or a day of browsing the Charleston markets. You wouldn’t wear it to fetch your best friend so he could be arrested. “We should go, right now,” she told Mark, slipping the phone back into her bag.

  He stood and started dressing, his back to her as he pulled a long-sleeved gray shirt over his head and tucked it into a pair of jeans so worn they’d softened to a velvety blue-white. His hair had grown an infinitesimal amount since she’d last seen him, enough to trigger a small curl at his neckline. Even with a houndstooth-patterned old blazer thrown over the top, this was as casual as she’d ever seen him; she realized she’d become used to the sight of him in a suit. In all, he looked relaxed but elegant, like a glossy magazine ad for good scotch or expensive men’s watches. Even in the midst of her worry, she felt a small stab of amazement that she’d met him, that she liked him, that she wanted him here, and, most of all, that he wanted to be here too. “Thank you,” she told him. “Thank you for coming.”

  He paused, one foot suspended above a battered leather shoe. “I’m glad I came.”

  “I’m sorry it isn’t going to be a fun trip for you.”

  He waved a hand as if to say this wasn’t worth consideration. “Did you call the place Jonah’s staying?”

  “It’s an Airbnb. There wouldn’t be anyone there.”

  “But you could try the owners,” he said. “Maybe someone could go check on him.”

  She was already thumbing through her phone in search of the details. “Good idea.”

  “I mean, he’s probably just let his phone battery die. Or there’s no reception there. But getting a message to him would be a lot faster than driving to the mountains, yeah?”

  She found the information and dialed the number. It rang five times before a woman’s voice came on the line.

  She explained she was a friend of Jonah’s who needed to reach h
im urgently; was there any way she could get a message to him in person? She was in the midst of apologizing for the inconvenience when the woman interrupted.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “He’s already checked out. The day before yesterday, I think it was.”

  She froze. “What?”

  Her voice hovered somewhere between defensive and apologetic. “We have to keep the payment, you know. There’s no time to rent it to someone else.”

  “That’s fine,” Georgia said. “Did he say where he was headed?”

  The woman hesitated, as if searching her recollection. Georgia bit her tongue to keep from crying out for her to hurry.

  “I don’t think he said where he was going,” she offered finally. “But he said he had to leave right then because he had something that couldn’t wait.”

  * * *

  —

  Mark drove Georgia’s car so she could keep trying Jonah. Since he wasn’t familiar with Charleston, he’d activated the GPS on his phone, which issued its instructions in an efficient English-accented voice, directing them out of the city and down Highway 171 toward Jonah’s house at Folly Beach. As the miles ticked by, Georgia tried to stay calm, placing her flushed cheek against the cool glass of the window and taking big, slow, regulated breaths. She didn’t dare vocalize her thoughts, or even allow them to take form in her mind, but even so, unspoken and unarticulated, they battered around in the hollows of her skull like demon-driven bumper cars, flattening any attempt at rational thought.

  Wisely, Mark didn’t try to talk to her. His face grim, he gripped the wheel tightly at ten o’clock and two o’clock as if he were an old lady, deftly whipping the car around the actual old ladies clogging up the road. They made good time; the roads were sparsely populated at this hour on a weekend morning. Even so, by the time they reached Jonah’s house, Georgia had aged a million years. Like the character in the Stephen King story who stays awake during a galactic journey lasting eons, she expected to emerge from the car with a shock of pure white hair and an auto-cannibalized brain, driven mad by her own thoughts.

  They raced up the long flight of stairs to Jonah’s front door. Mark rang the doorbell and Georgia pounded, but there was no answer. Even from up here they could make out the edge of Jonah’s front bumper through the slats in the garage wall below them; at some point, he’d come back. Georgia peered through the panes of glass on the side of the door into Jonah’s foyer, and beyond that, his living room, finding both in a state of unviolated order.

  “Key?” said Mark. Even on this, the lee side of the house, a strong wind off the sea riffled his dark hair. He thrust a hand through it, pushing it off his face.

  “In back,” she panted.

  Mark followed her as she galloped down the stairs, through a gate, and around a narrow path between the houses to Jonah’s back porch. Just beyond the house a little dune rose up, encrusted with an undulating row of sea oats, their spiky tops dusted with wavy green florets. A battered old walkway of silvery wood wound through a break in the dune, leading out to the beach in one direction and to Jonah’s patio in the other.

  Georgia rushed up the creaky back steps to his upper deck, where she retrieved a spare key from the mouth of a copper statue guarding one corner. With an unsteady hand she inserted it into the lock on the patio door, remembering to jiggle the key a little as she lifted the door slightly off its tracks. With a creak, the door slid open.

  They stepped into Jonah’s living room, a tidy space dominated by a blocky sectional sofa printed in a geometric pattern. Jonah had chosen to forgo the typical beach house decor for an edgier, more industrial look; there weren’t any seashell motifs or rope-twined lamps or plump navy-and-white club chairs. The room held an eerie air of desertion. Despite the sunshine pouring in from the patio doors, all the lights were on, pooling onto the chrome and leather surfaces from recessed LED pockets in the ceilings; the only sound, a faint mechanical hum, came from somewhere in the adjacent kitchen. A galaxy of dust motes caught in a shaft of light glittered benignly in one corner of the room.

  “He’s not here,” said Mark.

  Georgia hooked a finger in the air, as if testing it for the presence of human life. “Wait,” she said.

  Mark followed her to the front of the house, where she performed a cursory check of the guest bedroom and a little study. She didn’t expect to find anything, and she didn’t; even Jonah’s computer in the study had been fully powered off. Next, they hit the kitchen. It too was clean, but in contrast to the perfectly ordered living room, the kitchen showed signs of human habitation. A junk drawer had been left open, its contents askew. On the buffed concrete counter rested a silver bottle opener, one end dangling perilously over the edge. The bottom shelf of the liquor cabinet was in disarray, bottles turned every which way, with one even lying on its side. An empty ice cube tray lay glistening in the sink.

  They exchanged a glance.

  Beyond the kitchen, the door to Jonah’s bedroom hung slightly ajar. No light emanated from within, not even daylight from the large bay of windows facing the sea; he must have pulled the blackout shades. Georgia eased into the room quietly, listening for the sound of breathing as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. After a moment she thrust a hand to the wall beside it where she knew there to be a light switch.

  After she flicked it the change was startling, like a strobe or a crack of lightning had gone off, dousing the room in supersonic whiteness. She blinked. Mark came up behind her, his hand wrapping around her waist just as the shapes in the room resumed their form and color.

  Jonah was on the bed.

  He lay on his back, his mouth gaping. Georgia ran to him, her breath coming in desperate little hitches. His eyes were shut but not all the way; she could make out a little rim of white between his lids as she pressed her hands to his face. He lay still, nonreactive, one leg folded under him in an odd way, but his skin was not cold; not yet, anyway. She felt for a carotid pulse, her fingertips digging into his neck too deeply. She forced herself to lighten her touch, but she couldn’t tell if the faint pulsation she felt was from Jonah’s artery or the violent trembling of her own hands. Lowering her ear to his chest, she allowed her cheek to brush against the soft cotton of his T-shirt; through it, she could feel the indentation of his ribs. After a moment of holding her own breath she heard his: a harsh but shallow inhalation.

  She lifted her head and looked at Mark, scarcely able to force out the words. “He’s alive.”

  Mark’s face had gone dead white. “They can pump his stomach, right? He’ll be okay?”

  “Call nine-one-one,” she said, lifting her head from Jonah’s chest. Gripping his shoulder blades, she rolled him onto his side on top of the crisply made bed, in case he were to vomit, propping him into position with a pillow. Even with her maneuvering, his slight form barely made an indentation on the smooth coverlet on which he lay. Next to him, on his bedside table, two shapes caught her attention: the gleam of a cocktail glass and the tall silhouette of a bottle. An empty pill container lolled next to them, its label obscured. She picked it up and read it: Clonazepam. A benzodiazepine; a sedative. He’d used the alcohol and the pills to knock himself out, to wallop his pain into oblivion, maybe even to try to die. But Mark was right; this was survivable, as long as they could get him to the hospital and as long as he hadn’t spent any significant time without oxygen. She felt again for his pulse.

  Her own heart was hammering so hard it could have escaped her chest, a steel hummingbird in flight. Still, she managed to scoop the pill bottle into her pocket; the ER docs would need it to try to determine how much he could have taken. She swept her hand across the table as she listened to Mark giving the details to an emergency services dispatcher on the phone: Overdose, yes, he’s breathing; no, he’s not conscious; no, he’s not seizing or vomiting. Mark tilted his head toward her. “Is he a known addict? Do you have any Narcan?”

  “
He’s not and I don’t,” she answered, recognizing the name of the broadly used antidote for opiate overdoses. “And I don’t think this is an opiate overdose.”

  Mark listened to the dispatcher and turned to her again. “She wants you to check for other pill bottles.”

  “Of course,” she said. “But I don’t think—”

  She froze and Mark broke off his conversation with the dispatcher to look at her. Alarmed, he set down the phone. “Georgia? What is it?”

  Pointing at Jonah’s table, she tried to speak, but all she could manage was an awful inhuman rasp.

  22

  HER PARTICULAR DOOM

  Mark strode over to the table and picked up a second bottle, this one giant and white. “Acetaminophen?” he asked, confused. “That’s just generic Tylenol, right?”

  She nodded, still unable to speak. She felt herself folding in the middle, like her spine had given way. The floor rushed toward her, a loud whooshing noise between her ears.

  Mark jumped to her, pulling her into him before she could hit the floor. “Hey, hey, easy there,” he said. He lifted her away from Jonah’s inert form, away from the bed and the table of horrors beside it, easing her onto the only chair in the room, a low-slung steel and black leather contraption that had been exiled from the living room because no one ever wanted to sit in it. She had a fleeting memory of mocking that chair, calling Jonah’s bedroom the dungeon because of it. He’d played along with good grace, but in truth his bedroom was the least sexy room in the house, since there were at least five photos of his beloved Nana Midori, his maternal grandmother, by the bed. Additionally, one whole wall of the room had been devoted to shelving containing his childhood collection of Star Wars toys and books.