Mending Ryan Falls ✓

9 | in which he refuses drugs

I should be over it,
But I'm not.
It still haunts me everyday.

.\.|./.

Ryan Falls

|in which he refuses drugs|

Pain sucks. Big time.

My entire body hurts. People who say that physical pain is better than emotional one, have probably never experienced a broken leg and a cracked skull. Six stitches across my eyebrow, that's enough to tell me what pain really is.

Drugs help. Temporarily. But the thing about drugs is, their effects wear off. From aspirin to heroin, it wears off. Drugs aren't a cure. They're a temporary distraction. And for a while it seems worth it, because as long as you take it, you're free.

As long as I took them, I was free.

Getting drunk so I wouldn't have to go home, was something that didn't help in the long-run. Sure, I didn't have to listen to my mom yell curses at me and call me shit for one night, but the next morning's hangover and deteriorating grades were a definite disadvantage. Still ... drugs help. Temporarily.

Maybe that's why people keep taking them.

That's definitely why I kept taking them.

Not anymore though.

Back in LA, I tried all sorts of shit. It started with snorting coke to drinking everything from piña coladas to vodka whiskey. It helped for a bit, fighting off the nightmares and easing the anxiety. Sex also helped, causing natural endorphins to run through the bloodstream and numb me for a while. The high filtered out the pain.

But like I said ... the effects never last.

Moving to Alaska was supposed to be my big break. A break from all the sex and the drugs and everything else that was nothing but trouble. I left all of that behind when I left LA, and I don't plan on going back. To any of it. Even if it's morphine.

The minute the doctor hands me the prescription and I catch sight of the familiar drugs listed on the square page, I crumple it up and stuff it into my pocket.

"Give it to me," Olivia insists, unable to reach out because both her hands are busy pushing my wheelchair out of the hospital.

"I'll get them," I lie.

"How?"

"Online, Olivia. I can handle stuff, you know," I say.

I'm lying; I can't handle shit. But letting myself jump back to drugs for pain-relief isn't something I'm willing to try. This pain is bearable. Or at least close.

Five days in the hospital nearly killed me and getting out was what I wanted most. I hated being trapped in bed, unable to move from one place to another. The last time I was this helpless, still haunts my dreams.

Olivia suggests we go to her place.

"I'll be able to watch over you easier," is her logic.

Her logic is pretty logical.

I refuse nonetheless. The refusal is motivated by two equally important thoughts.

One, she has work and her own life to watch out for before me. She's already doing too much for me by being here, to put up with me the five and a half days I've been stuck in the hospital.

Two, she has a boyfriend. Ted is nice enough and has never gotten all 'who the fuck are you' with me. I'd like to keep things like this and not piss him off.

"I can take care of myself, Olive," I tell her as she helps me into the passenger side of her car. "I always have."

"Well, this is different." She straps me in before getting into the driving seat. "You're my responsibility here."