by Kyanna Skye
Lana felt like she should've been grateful. She had a place to go and food in her fridge. Jim was a good man. At least he never hit her. There were times when it got close, but not once did he do it. If he did, she'd be stuck there with him, yelling at her and cussing with a bottle in his hand. That was her worst fear.
She stopped at the store and picked up some spaghetti using the change in her car's ashtray, then she drove back to the trailer. They had a single-wide sitting on the edge of the highway with an old, dead garden in front where she kept trying to grow different vegetables and flowers.
She parked her car to the side of the trailer and walked in. When she opened the door, she knocked over a bottle of malt liquor that had been sitting next to the bright-orange couch and cursed. “Jim!” She walked farther into the living room, doing her best to wade through the mess of old beer cans and bottles. “Jim! You can't be doing this anymore. You gotta clean this crap up.” She wanted to bash his face in, leaving things the way he did.
He was never going to stop. They'd been living like that for a decade. Lana kicked a green bottle across the hall and it landed in her room at the foot of the bed. “Jim! Where are you?”
He was there. His old, yellow pickup was outside. “Jim!” She stumbled into the hall, unable to believe the mess she was looking at. TV dinners were sitting in a pile on one side of the couch and there were ancient clothes strewn across the hallway.
The only reason Lana stayed with Jim was because without her he'd end up mummified in the desert with a forty-ounce bottle fused to his fingers. The man would never survive on his own, not without a steady flow of beer and cigarettes.
“Jim, you in there?” She peeked her head into the bedroom where the clothes that covered the floor were piled higher than the bed.
“Jim!”
Lana turned around to open the bathroom door and jumped back. He was so pale he was almost blue and his lips were losing color fast. The most frightening thing was the peaceful smile stamped on his fat face. Oh, he enjoyed it. She kicked him in the stomach. “Fucker!”
The needle fell out of his arm and crashed to the floor along with the spoon covered in black-amber heroin residue.
“I fucking hate you, you piece of shit. You can't do this to me.” She fell to the ground and started pounding him over and over again while she wailed at the top of her lungs, going until she was drained of all of her energy.
He didn't mind dying; he wanted to die. You don't shoot up heroin unless you've completely given up. Death was his release from the mess their life had become. Well, she couldn't let that happen. She wanted him to live so he could suffer and eventually end up drying out in the middle of the desert, sick and homeless, the way he deserved. He didn't get to go with a smile on his face.
She sat up, completely numb, and stared down at him. His stomach had grown and his eyes were ringed with pink and black circles, but he was still her dark god, a kind of poison that she couldn't escape. If she did this, she couldn't give into him, because the second she did, she'd lose the strength she would need to walk out the door and drive away. He knew what to say to make her stay. He always did.
She crouched down and swiped away a strand of black, sweaty hair away from his eyes. She still loved him, and she always would. He was her first and only, the boy she'd laid down with in the dry riverbed while they made love and planned their life out. He'd just given up.
She hated him for killing all of this, the life they were supposed to have together, and the family. They were supposed to move to Phoenix and buy a cookie-cutter house so he could become a software designer and she could work in a group home until they had their children. But he couldn't do it. He killed their dreams and for that, he had to suffer.
“You're gonna fucking live.” She pulled out her phone.
“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”
“Piece of shit boyfriend overdosed.”
“Hold for the sheriff's office.”
“Sheriff's office, what is your emergency?”
“My boyfriend overdosed on heroin while I was at work.” Jim was smiling up at her, taunting her. He just wanted to get high and he didn't care what it did to her or their life.
“How does he look?”
“His lips are going blue,” she said. Her voice was cold with fury.
“Ma'am,” the officer said. “I need you to begin CPR. Go ahead and tilt his head back.”
“I'm a nurse; I know what I'm doing. Just send somebody to the trailer near the 440 mile marker. I'm going to concentrate on him now. If he'd dead, he's dead.” She hung up and fell to her knees. Then she punched him square in the face. “Get up!”
About thirty percent of overdose victims will snap out of it if you beat them hard enough.
He didn't move. She used two hands to compress his chest as hard as she could, hoping to break his ribs in the process. “You don't get to die.” She slammed him in the chest over and over, tears flying down her face.
She checked for a pulse. His heart was beating, but his pulse was weak. She ducked down and pressed her cheek against his greasy nose; he wasn't breathing. She tilted his head to the side and squeezed his jaw open. Then she slammed him in the back of the head as hard as she could to remove the layer of mucus that had built up in the back of his throat. A yellow glob smacked onto the tile floor.
She hadn't kissed him in over two years, and even then it was uncomfortable. She told herself this wasn't a kiss, but it was, and it was one of the most passionate kisses she'd ever given him because she needed him to live. It wasn't just because she wanted him to suffer, but also because she loved him.
She slammed her lips against his and breathed life into him, over and over again, then she slammed into his chest, wailing and begging. “You've got to live. You've got to live. I love you.” She slammed him in the chest. “I love you. I love you. I love you.” He was going to die. “I love you.”
The medics had to drag her away and out of the house. She wrenched away from them as soon as they got her outside the front door. “Are you giving him Narcan?” she asked the medic.
“Ma'am, just calm down.”
“You need to tell me what is going on,” she demanded.
She could barely see the medic's cold face with the way his head blocked the sun.
“What is going on!?” She rushed at him, and he dodged her. She fell to the ground and looked up as they carried Jim out of the trailer on a yellow gurney. He was alive with his eyes locked on her, holding his stomach. He would be cramping and vomiting with a headache a thousand times worse than any hangover. He was going to live—and he was going to suffer. That's what mattered.
The police grilled her, searched the house and accused her of being a junkie. She screamed at them and they eventually left. Then she started grabbing her things.
Most everything was trash. All her old clothes were stained and wrinkled. Some stank like old smoke. There was nothing in that house that mattered. She tried. She put up a cottage painting in the living room and bought fine dishes with roses on the rims. It was supposed to be their first love nest. It didn't matter that he smoked a little bit of weed and went out with friends, but it did matter when he started bringing home cocaine and women and he began spending all his time on the couch. The drugs started drifting in shortly after. The bong on the coffee table turned into a pile of heroin-stained aluminum foil and broken pieces of glass pipes. Then their love nest became her personal hell and she found herself living with a monster.
There was one last thing to do. He was never really going to be gone. She'd see his glazed-over eyes staring at her from the couch when she walked home from work, and smell the liquor pouring out of his mouth. The sweat-and-filth-stained air would always be stuck inside her nose, and every time she saw a cigarette sitting in a puddle, she'd think of the perpetually swollen mixtures of alcohol, bile, and cigarettes sitting in cups and bottles strewn all around the house.
If she wanted to get rid of him, she'd have to destr
oy everything he was—his essence—and find some closure so that she could tell herself that he was really gone.
Lana took a shovel from the decomposing shed attached to the side of the trailer and brushed the cobwebs and dust clumps off it. Then she walked into the living room and used it to throw out his old comforter, a filthy piece of tattered rags covered in every body fluid and disease known to man. It hit the dirt outside with a soft flutter. Then she went on to the beer bottles, his clothes, and all of his old records. She lined the entire trailer with everything he owned. Then she doused his things with gas and threw a lit match onto it.
As Lana drove away, unperturbed by the fact that she had just given everything up, she told herself over and over again that she was free, but even her closure ritual couldn't give her the relief she needed. Somehow, he'd find a way to creep back in. A part of her died in that trailer, and she was never going to leave.
Chapter 3
Lana had never traveled farther west than the Sonoran Desert, a relatively green patch of dirt with dry river beds and creosote bushes sitting beneath gray mountains. She thought it was terrible. It got well over a hundred in the summer, and it never snowed. But the farther west she traveled, the worse it got. The first six hours, the heat increased until it was unbearable. She had to keep a cup of water next to her at all times. If she didn't take a drink every few minutes, her throat would go dry; longer than that and she'd start to feel faint.
Then, after about ten hours, the desert turned into nothing but mounds of yellow sand dunes, stretching for miles and miles. The heat from the sun reflected off them, turning her car into an oven that slowly started to bake her skin.
She was never leaving the desert. Even the hills past the California border were covered in boulders with tiny clumps of yellow grass sticking out from in between them, and just a few hours away from one of the largest bodies of water, she was still stuck baking in the heat. That's how it always seemed.
When she finally got her nursing license, they were surviving on ramen and fast food wages. She was so excited. She thought that she could finally have a good place, nice things, and a decent car, but her money kept disappearing. Life threw her back down onto the pavement and she was stuck at rock bottom, wading in dirty clothes and empty forty-ounce bottles.
San Diego was going to be just as much of a disappointment. All she wanted was a chance to walk a few blocks from her house so she could look out at the water. She'd only seen the ocean once when she was a little girl. Her mother saved up a few hundred dollars from waiting tables and took her on a day trip. Lana remembered how she had to drive the whole way there and back without sleeping just so she could get back to work on time.
Lana didn't want to live that way. She wanted to be comfortable, not tied to a terrible job with no savings, and no hope for the future.
There was a series of hills, sharp twists and turns through rocky terrain that led farther upward until she reached the top and she could see San Diego laying out before her. She could smell the water. It was like foam and seaweed drying out in the sun. When she saw the water, she thought she was staring at the end of the world. She'd never seen anything so big in her entire life.
She was dusty, sweaty, and unshowered with scraggly, sandy-brown hair flaring out on all ends. There was no way she would ever be a part of that world. She was a desert rat and had no place in the water.
Lana stopped at a Motel 7 sitting just outside town with a chain-link fence and a line of semis surrounding it. She parked her car where she could see it in front of the office and checked back when she opened the door. This was the kind of place where tweakers and crackheads roamed, breaking into cars and running off with everything they could find. She didn't want to let her car out of her sight. The desk clerk was a young, blond man with dreads and a pipe sitting next to him. He nodded his head in acknowledgment when she walked in.
“You looking for a room?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“60 a night. I need a credit card.”
She pulled out her prepaid card and slapped it on the desk. He stuck it under a piece of receipt tape and rolled a pen over it then handed it back to her with the keys.
“Just keep it cool.” He picked up his pipe and smoked himself further into oblivion when she walked out. She couldn't help but think of Jim wasting away on the couch with a pipe in his hand. It was sick.
Lana walked back out to her car, and leaned against the door, staring out at the long row of rooms. Hers was at the end, which meant that she would have to walk all that way. She didn't think she could do it. Her legs were ready to give out, and her hands were raw from being baked in the sun.
Lana got back in the car, backed up into the space near her room, and got out with her keys in hand. Just as she was about to open the door, she realized that she couldn't just leave her things in her car; they'd get stolen as soon as she walked inside.
“Ugh!” Her head collapsed onto the door, and she took a moment to catch her breath. Then she walked back and opened the back so she could pull out all the trash bags holding her things. Once she was certain that she had taken everything out, including the burger wrappers, she threw herself onto the bed and nearly died of exhaustion.
She checked the clock when she woke up. It was 5:30 in the morning, the worst possible time, but she needed to find work or she wasn't going to survive. Lana was going to get a job that day.
She scrubbed the desert dust off her body until her skin was raw. Then she pulled out the phone book and called every nursing agency and hospital in the city. Many of them needed help, but quite a few had lengthy interview processes that she couldn't afford. She'd only have enough money to survive for three weeks at the motel; that meant she had no time for error.
Three places told her to come in. One was a nursing home. She refused. Then there was a hospice. She regretted even calling them. Then there was a small clinic near the beach on the southeast side called Miller House. They said they were constantly busy and they needed somebody the next day. She knew they would hire her, so she tied her hair back and put on the best clothes she had that weren't stained.
Miller House was a standalone, stucco building sitting in the middle of a field near the sea cliffs. The office was dingy. The receptionist was busy fielding off the rest of the staff and the frantic patients in back—just what Lana expected. They had the hiring paperwork ready when she walked in and completed the process without asking too many questions. They were obviously desperate for somebody. The doctor that oversaw the whole thing was pale and sweaty; he had been running around helping people all day.
Lana tried to be optimistic. The pay was three times what she made at Sunset Boulevards, and the work would keep her busy, but nothing seemed real. She was still stuck at home. She didn't know what she was doing there in San Diego or what was going to happen. She was confident that she could survive, but she didn't feel like there was a future so long as she was mentally stuck in the trailer.
Chapter 4
After some negotiation with payroll and a quick sit down with a doctor, the clinic agreed to give her the first check in a week with a small advance if she came in every day on time until then. That meant that she would have enough to get a cheap place.
California had a different currency system altogether. Her trailer was four hundred a month but a one-bedroom apartment in San Diego was $1,500not including utilities. If she was making the rate the clinic was giving her but was back in Arizona, she could've had a nice house and a new car. In California, their pay was barely enough to get by.
The receptionist looked like she was going to collapse when Lana walked in. “They need you in the back right away.” She pointed at a box of gloves and hand sanitizer next to the automatic sliding door.
“What is it?”
“Gunshot.”
“Shouldn't they be in the ER?”
“It's always packed.” She opened the doors with a button under the desk and Lana ran into the main room, whic
h was filled with dozens of patient beds surrounded by sliding curtains.
“Move. I need this blood stopped right away,” a doctor in the back of the room called. He was treating a beast of a man on a gurney. Lana pressed down hard on his shoulder and locked eyes with him while they took out the bullet.
His screams drowned out everything. Then the clink of the lead bullet hitting the bottom of a metal basin brought Lana back to reality.
“Tramadol,” the doctor barked and motioned towards a closet on the other side of the room. Lana pulled out a vial and syringe and filled it up. It occurred to her as she shot the man up that she wasn't supposed to be doing any of this. She was just an LPN; her job didn't include bullet wound treatment. She knew how to handle everything the doctor was doing, from stitching up the patient to monitoring his blood flow, but she wasn't supposed to be doing it. Even stopping the blood and administering painkillers was beyond her capacity. She needed certifications, fingerprint clearances, stuff she simply didn't have. This wasn't legal.
When the painkiller kicked in, the man fell limp and passed out, unconscious.
“Am I going to be doing this all the time?”
“This is your job.” The doctor took off his gloves and started sanitizing his hands.
“I'm not certified for any of this.”
“Does it look like I care?”
It didn't.
“This is what we do,” he said. “If you can handle it, it's easy. Don't ask questions. We're here to save people's lives, not get into the patient's business. Do you understand me?” He was telling her to keep her mouth shut and not to go to the authorities. That might be a problem.
“Yes,” she answered. She wanted the job. It'd be some action for a change. She never did anything at Sunset Boulevards.