Take Me To the Hospital

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It’s two-thousand something, and I make my living as a licensed dealer, grower, and workhorse for a cannabis collective. Not an easy job. Although well paid, and running swaths of business, I quickly hit the glass ceiling. One of the men two rungs higher on the ladder is my abusive boyfriend, hereafter referred to as Dick.

Like all Phish songs that ramble on, and pretend to be about something,

so was my life. I missed my sister that left way too soon, and there was no answer for that. I was getting bored, annoyed and turning to prescription opiates.

A year or so later.

I wake up and get ready for work.  I don’t feel the same, and my makeup isn’t looking right on my face. I apply more foundation, but it won’t blend.

My pills are lined up next to my mascara, so I devour my entire stash.

I put on American Beauty by the Grateful Dead, the king-spawner of all jam band, patchouli drenched, sun groping, pathetic fourth-generation lose-bags who identify themselves as hippies and bohemians. Those living in Oakland at the time knew at least a half dozen of these strip-mall versions of the beats.

Hoping to bleed out in the bath, I take my sliced wrist for our last wash.

I’m not sure this was the best idea.

I call the police twice. When they arrive, I convince them not to take me away.

I lie face up on the living room rug and lift upwards from my body.

I miss my sister more than I miss myself. She isn’t coming back, but I can.

I call Dick.

Dick shows up and carries me to his new car, a white soccer-mom mini-van.

I call Dick a dork. Most of me doesn’t want to step into the attrocity, but as sad as it is, a soccer-mom van is the only ticket out of my self-medicated ghetto. I make him drive to John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek. It’s the place of my birth, the hospital where my sister passed, and a world I have travelled so far from. During the twenty minute drive, he yells at me repeatedly to stay awake. As much of an asshole as he was, Dick also saved my life.

As I stand in the parking lot, I watch Dick carry me inside the hospital. I have my arms around my sister. I’m not sure if my eyes are open or closed as I say goodbye to my sister, goodbye to the fears of who I could become, and goodbye to the shitty part of me.

The blinding fluorescent lamps of the ER remind me of who I am, and I rip the cords from my body. I lay my neck back down onto the bleached white sheets. I hit the red button to call the nurse.
I am back in my body.