Take Her Man

“Please, Tamia,” I cried. I

tried checking for a pulse and to see if she was breathing, but I was shaking so badly, I couldn’t feel anything. “Please don’t be dead. I need you here with me. I’m sorry I left you alone. I’m so, so, so, so sorry, Tamia. Please.” I started shaking her. “Oh my God, what is happening to my friend? Please help her. She doesn’t deserve to die. She just needs your help,” I prayed, holding Tamia in my arms.

I sat there in the bathroom with Tamia’s lifeless body, waiting for what seemed like hours for someone to come upstairs. I said every prayer I ever knew, even some I didn’t, asking God that he might see me through and save my friend if it wasn’t too late. I’d already lost one in some small way, and I couldn’t lose another—not like that.

The room was soon filled with people from the hotel, cops, paramedics, and people asking me questions about who we were, what we were doing in Los Angeles, and what we had done the night before. They asked if we used crystal meth, cocaine, heroin, crack, marijuana. No, no, no, I answered all of their questions. It was just alcohol. Just some drinks.

After they informed me that Tamia was not in fact dead, they began asking me questions about her and what I thought might have happened. I didn’t know if I should tell them about the over-the-counter pills Tamia had been taking. I was sure she’d stopped using them like she’d promised me she was going to. But after one of the cops asked me to get her purse, I found something that made my heart heavy for my friend and myself. Tamia had an empty bottle of Stay Up in her purse.

“It’s not conclusive yet, but we think she had a minor heart attack and then she went into cardiac arrest. We pumped her stomach and it was clear that she’d just taken the pills. They were found throughout her system,” a strange doctor said to me in a strange hospital. He went on to ask if I knew she had been using the drugs and how long it had been. I kept telling him over and over that Tamia was not the kind of person he thought she was. She wasn’t some junkie. She was an A student, she was going to be a lawyer, she was the smartest person I knew.

“Ms. Smith, this is very common,” he said after telling me that Tamia was in what they were calling a mild coma. “No one’s judging your friend. I actually see this kind of drug abuse a lot in young professionals. You get so caught up in being perfect that you get afraid when you realize that you’re not. And then you try harder and harder, often abusing these over-the-counter drugs to help you stay up longer and focus harder, but then you keep hitting that brick wall when the drugs aren’t enough. And one pill becomes two, then three—then you’re drinking cups and cups of black coffee, then not eating, using starvation to stall sleep, then drinking, then you finally come crashing down. Your friend is crashing down right now, Ms. Smith. I can’t give you the specifics of her illness, but she shut down her whole system with those drugs. We’re just lucky nothing happened to her central nervous system, so we’re expecting a full recovery when she wakes up. It’s a good thing you got back to the room when you did. She could not have survived much longer with no oxygen getting to her brain.”

I fell into the doctor’s arms, crying as he held me. His words went exactly as the story did with Tamia. I knew because I had been there for the whole thing and I’d allowed it happen. I didn’t do enough to make her stop. I didn’t do anything.

“When will her father be here?” the doctor asked.

I’d used Tamia’s phone to call her father in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Through solos, he said he would be on the next flight and not to leave his baby until he got there. “Don’t leave her. Don’t leave her,” he cried like a child as he ran out of his office en route to his car.

“I don’t know what flight he was able to catch out of D.C., but I gave him all of the information about the hospital and he was on his way, so he should be here in the next few hours,” I said, looking at my watch.

“Good. I think she’ll be up by then. I hope she’ll be up by then. It’s usually really hard for the parents,” the doctor said, looking in from the hallway at Tamia’s body hooked up to all the machines. “They don’t understand how their children could end up here.”

I didn’t understand it either. It felt like a nightmare that wouldn’t stop. Just twenty-four hours ago we had been laughing and picking out clothes for a night on the town. It was girls’ night and things were as they always had been. The 3Ts were together. But everything was fading away from me and I felt as if I was all alone in the world. I was miles and miles away from my home, my family, and now my friends.

I needed someone to talk to. Someone to assure me that everything would be okay, that Tamia would pull through as the doctor said she would, and soon we’d be back in New York living out our lives as we had before. I sat down in the hallway in front of Tamia’s room in case she woke up, and I called Tasha, but she didn’t answer the phone. I supposed she was still upset and had no clue what had happened to Tamia.

I called my mother and father but they weren’t home. I figured they off doing their usual Saturday afternoon routine, so I didn’t leave a message with Desta. I didn’t want them to get it and be alarmed.

Then I found myself dialing Julian’s number.

“Hello?” Julian said.

“Oh, it’s Troy. Did I wake you up again?” I asked. I could hear sleep in his voice.

“Nah, I’m fine. Just getting some shut-eye before I go in for my next shift. How’s L.A.? You’re still there, right?”

“Yeah, I’m in a bit of a jam.” I started crying.

“What’s wrong, Troy?” Julian asked. “You sound upset.”

“Tamia just, Tamia just…we’re at the hospital,” I managed. “She passed out, they pumped her stomach, and she went into cardiac arrest—”

“Wait, slow down, Troy,” Julian said. “How did this happen? Was she sick before?”

“No, I just found her on the floor in the hotel. And that was it. She was just lying there.” I started crying harder. I couldn’t tell him about the pills.

“Oh, baby, she’s going to be okay. Stop crying like this. I heard everything you’ve said and it sounds like your friend will be okay. Just listen to the doctors. Are you alone? Where is Tasha?”

“I had a big fight with Tasha and she left the hotel before I even found Tamia. She doesn’t know what happened,” I cried hysterically into the phone. “And now I’m just here alone at the hospital waiting for her father to get here. I feel so alone. I just feel so alone.”

“You’re not alone, Troy. There are professionals at the hospital who can help you.”

“That’s not what I mean, Julian,” I cried. “I just feel alone. That’s why I called you. I don’t have anyone else. I don’t know these people.” All of the pressure from the past two days was crashing down on me and I just wanted support. I just wanted him to support me.

“Troy, your friend will be okay. You just have to be strong and know that. You have to stop letting things get you so upset.”

“My friend is in a fucking coma,” I cried. Everyone in the hallway looked at me.