“Barbiturates.”
“Nothing else?”
“No.”
“Who prescribed them for you?”
“Another doctor.”
“Why do you need them?”
“I’m a singer. I keep late hours.”
“You’ll have to stop taking them. Your blood pressure is too high.”
“What will happen if I don’t stop?”
“They can put a severe strain on your heart.”
“Can you give me that test now?”
“Tell the nurse to make an appointment for you tomorrow. I can’t give it to you this morning,” he said. “Don’t take any barbiturates today, regardless of whether you have a prescription or not.”
“It’s a habit with me. I can’t get rid of it just like that.”
“You’ll have to unless you want to seriously damage your health.”
It was raining when J.P. returned the next afternoon. The sky was yellow from the rain, and the trees along the street were wet and very green. He went into the office and put his hat and raincoat on the rack. He went into the small white room and lay on the table while the doctor put the recorders on his chest. When the test was over the nurse came in and removed them. She and the doctor left the room. J.P. dressed and sat on the table. He looked out the window and saw the rain falling on the street out of the yellow sky. There was a magnolia tree in the yard by the side of the building, and the white petals of its flowers were scattered on the grass. The doctor came back in and closed the door behind him.
“I can’t tell you much more than I told you yesterday,” he said. “The murmur isn’t a bad one, but you will have to be careful.”
“About them barbiturates. I been taking them a long while. It ain’t easy to stop right off.”
“You might try a withdrawal period.”
“Ain’t there a treatment to let you down easy?”
“Is it only barbiturates you’re worried about?”
“I done told you.”
“You should commit yourself to a hospital if you’re addicted to anything stronger.”
“I ain’t taking nothing else.”
“I could get you into a private hospital.”
“Listen. You’re supposed to help my heart.”
“There’s nothing to do for a murmur. I can only tell you not to put a strain on yourself. Will you let me contact a friend of mine who treats narcotic cases?”
“No,” J.P. said.
“Then good day, sir.”
J.P. left the office and walked out on the street in the rain. He caught a taxi and rode back to the hotel. He listened to the tires roll along the wet concrete. He thought about what April had told him of her hospital cure. Six months to a year in a small room without any furniture except a bed that was bolted to the floor, and the shock treatments when they turn the high-pressure hoses on you or strap you to a table and run an electric current through your body, and when they gradually reduce your dosage of narcotics and then one day shut you off completely and you start the nightmares and your nose runs and you get sick if someone talks of food and everything inside you goes crack like a broken plate. Then someday you would get out and think you were clean, and like April you would be on it again in a couple of weeks. He couldn’t do it, he thought. It was too much. The taxi arrived at the hotel. He stepped out on the curb and stood under the colonnade out of the rain and paid the driver through the window. A year of treatment and it would start all over. He couldn’t beat it, and that was the end of that.
A week later was election day. Lathrop’s ticket won the Democratic primary by the largest majority in the state’s history, and the opposition was considered fortunate to have taken four parishes in the southern part of the state since it took none in the north. J.P. was at the hotel that evening, and April, Seth, and Hunnicut were listening to the returns over the radio in the next room. Seth opened the door that joined the two rooms. He had a glass of bourbon in his hand, and his face was red. He came over to the bed where J.P. was resting and put his hand on J.P.’s arm.