Before I Let You Go(67)

The rush wasn’t instant—there was a pause when the needle left my arm—just long enough for me to smell and taste something odd; something alien but not unpleasant. The taste rose in the back of my throat and then raced along my tongue and into my nose—it was blood and chemicals and salt and metal and then . . .

The rush hit me.

I’ve heard some stupid analogies for the heroin rush over the years, and I get why—it’s impossible to avoid being enthused over it once you’ve felt it, but it’s also impossible to cram the feeling into words given the limitations of the English language. It’s like you’d need some other, higher language to describe it.

It was like I was pressed down into the couch by an exceedingly pleasant weight that dissolved me somehow. And Owen was right—every negative thing in the world disappeared in an instant—and all there was to know and to be was bliss. The euphoria lasted for ages that first time—I remember thinking that it might last forever, and that just one single injection might have made life perfect for all time. It was like a lucid dream—I lived in another reality during the high, a much better one—one I could control.

I vomited for hours once the rush finally faded. I woke up the next day and every time I moved, I gagged. And it wasn’t like the movies—I didn’t rush out and start robbing elderly people to feed an instant habit.

No, when I first started using, heroin was actually just like a new boyfriend. I did want to spend all of my time with him, but I couldn’t because I had school and shifts at the diner, and besides, I didn’t want to get too reliant on him—so I paced myself.

I used only occasionally during the rest of my time at college. My grades were okay—although if you graphed them from my first semester to my last, you’d see a definitive curve downward. During the first two years, I’d entertained ideas of staying on at school to complete a master of fine arts in creative writing, but by the end of that third year, my GPA was too low to get in and I’d lost the drive to keep studying anyway. But I graduated with a degree, and then I even got a proper job—a foot in the door to a career in book publishing. I was an assistant’s assistant essentially, for a small children’s book press, but it was a start.

I moved out of Owen’s apartment. He was using constantly by then—he’d reached the stage where he even sold his TV to buy drugs and was close to being evicted by his landlord. We didn’t ever really break up; I just never went back to him. I set myself up in a little studio, just a half-hour walk from my new office in Chicago. I bought a laptop and started writing. I had it all planned out in my mind—one day, I was going to have a career as a literary novelist. I wanted to write sweeping works of brilliance that critics would rave about and college students would puzzle over for hours on end.

But that was a fairly lofty goal, and I knew I needed to start somewhere, so I started writing essays and short stories and submitting them to literary magazines. I had a few published, and earned a little money, too—but that little bit of cash felt like so much more because of the way I’d earned it.

All this time, I was talking to Lexie every Sunday night. She was so busy at med school and always sounded tired—but every minor victory I had, she celebrated as if I’d just won a lottery. She framed the first short story I published and she sent me a photo of it up on the wall of her room. It was actually Lexie’s idea that I write a collection of essays and try to publish them as a book. I mentioned this to an editor I met at the ofice, and he asked me to send him some of my work.

It all sounds pretty good at this point, doesn’t it, Luke? I’ll bet you’re on the edge of your seat, waiting to hear how I fucked it all up. Well, by then, I’d been using casually for two years. I’d crave it, but only after a bad day—or sometimes on weekends when I wanted to write and I felt blocked. I couldn’t write straight after I shot up—I’d be way too fucked up for that. Instead, I’d use the rush as a brainstorming session. When I came down, I’d sit at the computer and the words would pour out of me.

Heroin was my muse, Luke. The love of your life usually is.





29


LEXIE


Another week passes before Luke calls to tell me that Annie is ready for a visit.

Daisy is now four weeks old. She is finally tapering down on the morphine. The first few times her doctors tried, she got sick again, and had to step back up to a higher dose. But she’s making steady progress at last, and she’s finally gaining weight. Her face has filled out, and the agonized cry is softening—now, when she’s due a dose of her opiates, she cries as if she’s a normal newborn.

Daisy changes a little every single day. Her wellness seems to be approaching in slow motion, but then other times I look at the clock and realize how many days have passed and how much Annie has already missed, and I wonder how on earth she will ever catch up. I take hundreds of photos. My phone is never far from my hand, ready to record any positive moment, no matter how small. When I look back at my camera roll some nights with Sam, he teases me for being overzealous.

“It’s like you’re doing one of those time-lapse films,” he says with a laugh.

But I’m achingly aware that I’m not just standing in for Annie’s arms and warmth, but also her eyes and ears. At first, I observe Daisy with just a little clinical detachment. But then I start to sink under her spell, and soon I’m riding the waves of it all, so invested in her progress that her every achievement becomes mine.