Vida Nocturna Part 20

"Sara?" The voice came from somewhere in the blinding light.

"Sara? How are you doing?"

Not Miguel. But who else would use her real name? Everybody called her Morticia these days.

A doctor stood over her, a young Indian man who might have been handsome if not for the deep acne scars on his dark cheeks. He kept brus.h.i.+ng his black hair back from where it fell over his eyes as he talked. The room was too bright. She closed her eyes again but she could still hear him talking in a light Indian accent.

That accent ...

Someone speaking, telling her that an ambulance had brought her here to the emergency room. The same doctor?

"I'm not surprised that your eyes hurt," he was saying. "That's part of it." He lowered his voice. "Sara, I know why you had this heart attack. And I'm sure you know why you've had all these strange symptoms for so long." She felt his touch on her forearm. "Your skin temperature is finally starting to drop but there's still a lot of cocaine in your blood, Sara. Your eyes are going to stay dilated for a while."

Sara rolled her head from side to side, noticing for the first time that there was a plastic tube under her nose. Probably for oxygen.

A hospital.

"I can tell you've been using for a long time," he said. "You have evidently lost a lot of weight." His accent p.r.o.nounced it with a v: veight. "That is because your appet.i.te for the drug has replaced your appet.i.te for food. You're very sickly and thin, Sara. It's time to stop all of this now, okay?"

Sara didn't answer. The doctor released her arm.

"Mmm hmm. You think you are fine. You don't see anything wrong with the way you look, and you feel stronger than you ever did before, right?"

She didn't answer.

"It's all cocaine, Sara. It enhances your self image. It makes the blood move from your skin into your muscles, so you look pale but you feel stronger. But you don't actually have any more muscle tissue. Meanwhile you're not using your muscles and you're not taking in any food, so you're really just wasting away." Vasting avay. He pointed to the mirror above the sink behind her. "Look at yourself, Sara. You're pale and weak." Veek. "The skin just hangs off your cheekbones and your eyes have dark circles under them. I know that cocaine made you feel invincible, but I think you can see now that it isn't real. You just had a heart attack, Sara. It's time to wake up and decide to live, okay?"

She nodded and spoke weakly. "Yeah. Yeah. Okay." It didn't matter. This guy would go away soon. She squeezed her eyes shut. A quivering afterimage of the fluorescent lights loomed on the insides of her eyelids.

"Good. Now you've got to stay here tonight, and maybe another day or two. I'm going to have a nurse call a rehabilitation center for you, and they'll come and pick you up when you are discharged. You should not go home right now."

Sara opened her eyes, staring as her lids strained to slam shut again.

"No. No. You can't do that. I have to go home. I have to get out of here." She turned to jump down from the bed but realized that she was held in place by an effective web of tubes and wires.

"Sara, I know you feel like you can't quit."

She glanced up at his pockmarked face as her fingers worked on the tape.

"I know you feel like that but it's going to be fine. It's about your life, Sara. The drug stole your life. You have to do this. You have to get it back."

Sara shook her head and continued to peel the tape from her arm. No friends no family no school no job. No love, ever. Life? You f.u.c.king quack. I am getting out of here.

Paramedics were wheeling in a new patient. From what she could tell, there had been a bad car accident. She finally removed one long piece of tape. The doctor's hand appeared over one of the electrodes, holding it in place.

"You're not ready to leave yet, Sara. Not for a day or two. We need to monitor your heart a little longer to make sure you're really strong enough to leave. As for the rehabilitation issue, I know you think you can't do it, but I know you can. Otherwise, you will continue to destroy your life. And I'm not going to let you do that to yourself. You have to try, not just give up. You can win this fight, Sara. I'll be back to discuss it with you in a little while. For now, just rest a moment." He gently but firmly pushed her head back down to the pillow. "You're exhausted. Just rest."

She watched the doctor duck out through the curtain separating her bed from those of the other patients.

The IV they'd given her was flus.h.i.+ng out the drug, leaving behind a horrifying vacuum, a gaping maw of despair. She pulled the rest of the tape from her body and grunted as she pulled the IV tube from the vein on the inside of her elbow. She tried to stand but she collapsed back onto the bed. No way out- she'd collapse before she got to the door if she tried it. Then they'd package her up for rehab.

Her clothes were piled on a chair next to the bed with her purse on top of them. No c.o.ke in it, but there was another way out.

No f.u.c.king rehab. Not one day. How can a killer decide to live? Not one day.

She unzipped the worn Coach bag and fumbled inside, removing her gun from its special hiding place, the metal cold against her skin as she placed the barrel under her chin and c.o.c.ked back the hammer.

"I don' think that's really what you want."

The accent had already told her who she would see. She lowered the gun and held it in her lap.

"Hi, Miguel."

Miguel came closer. "I call the ambulance for you, you know." She nodded. "This ..." he said, gesturing at the gun, "this is not a good way to thank me."

She gave a ragged sigh. Her whole body shook as a few tears rolled down her cheeks. "I'm not what you think I am, Miguel." She couldn't look at him so she just focused on a part of the white sheet covering her legs. "I have a problem. You warned me not to get involved but now it's too late." She managed to look into his eyes. They were squinted painfully tight, like her own. "I'm addicted to cocaine, Miguel. I can't go without it - even for a little while."

He nodded and gave her an understanding smile. "Yeah, I know that." He looked from side to side, then lowered his voice. "Me, too."

Of course he was hooked on c.o.ke. He'd always known so much about her problems ... and Miguel did have the look. But even Miguel would never understand all of it. She shook her head without lifting her eyes from the bed.

"Not like me."

He nodded again. "You think so?" They stared at each other, saying nothing, listening to the chaotic sounds coming through the emergency room curtain.

"I not so much bad, like you," he said finally. "That's true. But that's 'cause I seen bad stuff early. I decide to fight, you know?"

Sara wrinkled her forehead and flipped one wrist away from her lap in exasperation. "But I don't want to fight it, Miguel. I don't want to stop." She brought her hands back together, bending her head down toward her lap. Her tears had made the gun's blackened metal surface slippery. "I'd rather die than give up c.o.ke."

When she looked up at him again, he was nodding enthusiastically. "Me, too," he said. "I rather die than stop the c.o.ke, too. But still I can fight, you know? I can fight it every time I think I wanna do it. Sometime I win that fight. Most time, I lose. But I fight every time."

Why is he being so nice?

He's a nice guy. That's all. Maybe he wants a friend.

n.o.body's just nice. What does he want? Why is he here? n.o.body would want me as a friend.

"You mean you don't keep using more and more?"

He shrugged. "No, I don' mean that. Sure, I use more an' more. Sure, someday I'm gonna be in here with a heart attack. It will win someday. But still I fight. Maybe I slow it down like this. If I don' fight, then it just going to win sooner, you know?"

Survive ... for a few more high times. Maybe. She sniffed, tucking the gun back into her purse and reaching for her clothes.

"Miguel, I need you to help me get out of here."

The people at the front desk had nothing to say as Miguel quickly scooted her away from the emergency room.

"Aren't they going to come after us?" she whispered. "At least to make sure I pay the bill?"

"Don' worry about it. I take care of that."

He had? How? Did he have access to someone else's insurance card? Had he pa.s.sed them a bad check? The night had been too exhausting to ask him about it right now.

They made it to his car and he drove her home, with her nodding off and jolting back awake over and over again. The car's motion, combined with her withdrawal from c.o.ke, heroin and pills made her dizzy and sick. She retched but there was nothing in her stomach.

He helped her down into her apartment and they sat on the couch, looking up at the vampire poster she'd taken from Alexander's apartment and taped to the wall above the dusty little television.

"Excuse me," Miguel said, ducking into the bathroom. She heard him snorting and dug into her own stash with her fingernail, sniffing up just enough for survival. No base anymore, of course. She couldn't do that. Just powder. Just to get by. She put the stash back into her purse as the bathroom door opened.

Miguel peered at her. His eyes narrowed as they met hers. He must have seen the tears. "You all right?" he asked.

"It seems like everyone around me is dying."

Miguel sniffed and sat down again. "Death will always be around us. It is a part of what we are, now. If we are not strong enough to change what we do, then we will always have to see death."

She raised her hands to her face and inhaled, trying to think of something else.

"Hey," Miguel said to the backs of her hands, "you okay?"

"I have to get more c.o.ke." She laughed once to herself. "I don't know if I'm up to seeing Iggy right now."

"Forget about that a.s.shole," Miguel said. "I hate that f.u.c.kin' guy."

"You know him?"

"Yeah. I know him. He used to work at Vida Nocturna; he wash dishes with me."

"No," she told him, shaking her head. "That can't be the same guy. This guy is a really big c.o.ke dealer, Miguel. He used to sell kilos to some people I knew. He doesn't seem like the dishwasher type."

"Hmmm. This guy, he looks like he's dead. He's got long hair around the side of his head, an' he's bald on top. He lives in a bas.e.m.e.nt an' he don' leave. Right?"

She nodded. "Yes. How ...?"

"He did the same you did. He decide to quit the job an' just sell c.o.ke all the time."

"But if he had that big of a business selling c.o.ke, why would he ever have washed dishes?"

Miguel shook his head. "No. That's not how to think about it. You an' him, you think the same. You don' know that the job is the way to be fighting the c.o.ke. You don' know you gotta have responsibility. You gotta have something to make you wake up an' work. You have to take it serious; tell yourself that you can't do c.o.ke because you are on the schedule at work. I tell him that, but he don' listen. Now I don' talk so much with him."

"Yeah, well, that's fine, but that guy has enough business to sell kilos, Miguel. Think about the money you could make if you could move kilos. I don't think anybody would be was.h.i.+ng dishes in a restaurant when there was that much money to be made."

"Oh, I think you are wrong. Was.h.i.+ng dishes, it's a great job." He smiled slyly. "I still was.h.i.+ng dishes there, you know."

She acknowledged his joke with a short laugh, and then played along. "You sell a lot of kilos, do you?" she asked. "You buy from the same guy Iggy does?"

"No. That Iggy guy ... he buy from me."

CHAPTER 15.

Pure Blood THE WANDERING DEAD search for what is lost. By the thousands they shuffle in all directions, unconscious, driven only by perpetual, insatiable thirst.

Even for her, their ruler, the memory of "life" has faded to an empty nostalgia for walking in the daytime.

But now there is the power. The pleasure. The intensity.

This existence is one of intensity. And she is now the most intense of her kind.

Miguel narrowed his dark eyes, peering at Sara through the gla.s.s. She lowered the window.

"What? You don't like the car?"

He glanced at the new Jaguar. "I like the car. But maybe it's too fancy, you know? Why you wanna stand out so much?"

"I didn't even get the red one. See? Silver. It blends right in." She revved the twelve-cylinder engine. "Listen to kitty purr. Hop in. I'll give you a ride to work." She laughed. "Here I am, in my new Jag, picking up Miguel the Dishwasher outside the Hanc.o.c.k building ... where he lives." She laughed again. He got in, seating himself in the gray leather bucket seat and running his fingers along the burled wood dash. The Jag took off when she gunned it but the twelve cylinders kept it from being jerky. She turned up the music: "...Got fire in your veins. Burnin' hot, but you don't feel the pain ..."

"Are you okay, Sara?"

She changed lanes, lighting a cigarette. "Why wouldn't I be okay? I got a new car, new place to live ... I'm somebody now, Miguel."

"Yes. I see that. But your face. It seems ... vacio? Empty. Very empty. I am worried about you, Sara."

"Yeah? Well, don't. You know what I figured out the other day? I'm buying pure flake from you, right? And that translates into more rocks per gram, which is good 'cause I'm selling more every day. If I do this for another year, I'll make more money than my father."

"If you live a year."

She laughed again. It sounded hollow, distant. The steering wheel was like cardboard in her hands. The road, the lights, the buildings, all cardboard cutouts with fading colors. Even Miguel was a facsimile of himself, desperately making noises to get her attention.

"You are still in your ... your abyss ... right?" he asked.

"I'm fine, Miguel."

"Sara, I know you are not fine."

She accelerated, the cutout car sliding effortlessly along the sketch-paper road.