“Do you want more? I can get you something. Your father and I will get you anything and everything you need, my darling. Just tell me what.”
I close my eyes. She doesn’t get it. I shake my head. I don’t want that shit again. Why does she think I’m shaking and sweating?
“I had…the RC surgery…” I stop to get a careful breath. “On my throwing side?
??to avoid…” To having to take that fucking stuff again, in a few more months. I grit my teeth. Even talking hurts me where the bullet did its damage.
“You had the surgery sooner to avoid requiring Dilaudid again…so soon after they fixed the gunshot damage?” I watch her perfect Siren face as she realizes fully what I mean. “I think I see,” she says softly. Her fingertip traces my eyebrow. It feels really good. My eyelids shut.
“You didn’t want to recover from this—” her hand hovers over my left side— “and then go in again for surgery on your right shoulder that’s been hurting for a while. I remember you said in the burrow that you’d have to get it sorted. So you convinced them to do both. They fixed up your left side, of course, and then turned right around and did the other surgery on the right shoulder—for the rotator cuff—the day you arrived in Boston from Cape Town. So…I believe that would be four days ago. Is that right? And time from the…gunshot itself…has been ten days.”
I nod slowly, and she strokes my hair back off my forehead. “Your father told me some of that. I’ve missed quite a lot,” she says hoarsely. “Now you’re wrapped up like a mummy.” Her hand waves to my chest. “You’re in ghastly pain. And I think perhaps you’re disappointed over the Dilaudid, even though no doubt you required it to keep from going mad, as you are now. Sailor…what must we do with you? Hopelessly stubborn.”
I shake my head. I can’t think straight enough—talk straight enough—to make her understand. I’m craving it again, so fucking bad now. Even more so because I feel so shitty. Even my skin and hair hurt from withdrawing again…since surgery.
“It’s not…supposed to be this bad.” The words are whispered, half delirious.
“What isn’t? The gunshot wound with these two ribs fractured?” She points to where I’m hurt, up near the collar bone. “Your father said the bone in back is cracked as well—your scapula. I suppose that’s why you can’t take deep breaths. I’m sorry for that bit of horrid advice.”
I shake my head. Don’t be sorry.
“Is that supposed to be less painful, or the repaired shoulder on the other side? And I’ve heard that craving what you formerly relied upon daily for years and were re-introduced to in a dire emergency is quite the cake walk. Clearly going back off opiates won’t hurt at all…”
My lips crack as they tuck up. Such a fucking wise-ass, Siren.
“Where the devil is your nurse? Who on earth has been here with you?”
“I had him go…before you got here.”
“Wrong choice. But let’s now take stock.” My eyelids feel weighted as she looks at the pill bottles on the table by the chair. “Antibiotics and the empty Toradol.” She lifts a brown bottle and frowns at it. “What’s this then? CBD and THC…what’s that?”
I swallow against my dry throat. “Marijuana.”
“It’s been legalized here, correct? It can be a powerful painkiller.”
“I don’t need it…if I don’t move much.”
“Why would you forego it? It’s not an opiate.”
I lift my shoulder out of habit and grunt as I realize the mistake.
“Can one become addicted to this?”
“Psychologically,” I rasp.
“Okay, so as one could become addicted to chewing fingernails, or not eating…or over-eating…or melatonin. Psychological or mildly physiological. On television yesterday, I heard of the term ‘nothingburger.’” She smirks, and I lick my dry lips.
“Yes,” she says, unscrewing the bottle’s top. “There’s even a dropper, my favorite way to dose my wayward Sailor. What’s this other bit, this wee canister?”
“It’s marijuana,” I whisper. “For vaporizing.”
“Let’s do all of the above.”
I swallow the tincture, and she gives me some water.
“There now.”
I’m half asleep as she rubs something on my lips. I want to ask her how she’s feeling. Did she get all the vaccines my dad told me she’d need so something like the measles doesn’t take her out? Dad said he made her take a Xanax when the Albatross left Tristan.