Nosedive

“A beautifully tragic portrait of drug abuse in the Rust Belt.”

April Findlay

NOSEDIVE

a novel by

ALEX MCCULLOUGH

Figure 1. A Dilapidated Hovel in a Wheat Field. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/ 824018063044939246/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2019.

NOSEDIVE

a novel by

ALEX MCCULLOUGH Brunswick Publishing & Production Evanston, Illinois brunswickpnp.com

Figure 2. Syringe Drawing Silhouette. Ayoqq.org, ayoqq.org/explore/syringe-drawing-silhouette/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2019.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword

8

PART ONE

10

– BONNIE –

I II III IV V VI VII VIII

Organza Curtains and Cigarette Burns Master Escapists Ballad of the Mason County Hospital We Can Never Truly Change Wishful Thinking Ave Maria Needlepoint Freefall

PART TWO

12 28 42 56 70 80 96 110 130

– JACK –

IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI

I Remember How She Used to Dance Culture Shock Almost Normal The Last Train to Valhalla How Could I Be So Blind?

Gratia Plena Ludlow The Papaver Project

APPENDICES A B

A Brief History of Opioids in the United States Annotated List of Works Consulted About the Author

132 140 152 164 178 188 200 212 229 230 233 313

Published by Brunswick Publishing & Production Evanston, Illinois USA www.brunswickpnp.com ISBN 978-1-29191-808-3 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015930126 Copyright Š Alex McCullough 2019 First Paperback Edition: June 2019 Printed and bound by BookBaby Toledo, Ohio USA www.bookbaby.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are productions of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by Alex McCullough at Brunswick Publishing & Production in Adobe InDesign CC.

To Darrin Broadway,

a true inspiration in leadership, effective communication, and hairstyle.

Please don’t give me a B on this project.

FOREWORD Alex McCullough author of Nosedive

There is certainly a degree of glamor to the drug addictions of modern America. We see it all the time: magazine articles, TV shows, movies, books, informational videos—it seems that those who themselves are not hooked on cocaine, marijuana, or ecstasy are admittedly obsessed with people hooked on cocaine, marijuana, or ecstasy. The national government is probably the greatest proprietor of this glamor, what with the current media hubbub surrounding the legalization of marijuana, or the stimulus-chasing drug addicts who roam the streets of New York taking up a significant chunk of prime-time news coverage. But until the Donald Trump administration asked, “Hey, what about the rest of ‘em?” the federal government had little interest in acknowledging the suffering occurring west of the Appalachian (Segedy para 23). In the dismal ghost towns of once prosperous industrial beacons dotting the Rust Belt like violet blemishes on the face of America, there is no glamor, no attention, and certainly no sympathy. And if no one cares about the Rust Belt, what else are we to expect but a community—a culture—characterized by failure and misery?

This is what Nosedive attempts to explore. The opioid epidemic that has torn apart this region of the country is of a particularly dangerous caliber, and unlike the other major drug epidemics that saturate popular media, the opioid epidemic is directly influenced by corruption in the healthcare industry and misdirected government legislation, and can quite literally affect anyone and everyone. Therein lies the inevitable misery of life in the Rust Belt. Since it is so easy to become addicted to prescription opiates and, subsequently, heroin, there is often no way to completely avoid the impact of addiction. Lives are ruined, families are torn apart, and communities are destroyed, leaving the dilapidated shells of once bustling Midwestern cities in its wake.

I grew up in Toledo, a post-industrial city in northwest Ohio which has a downtown scene very similar to that of Ambrose, the fictional West Virginia city in Nosedive. As much as I want to believe that these issues are exaggerated or contrived, I cannot help but think of my grandmother, who spent much of her life oscillating between different addictions; my parents, who fight an everyday battle with the ethical conundrum faced by modern-day healthcare professionals; and my hometown, which, although incomparable to the post-industrial hellscapes of southern Ohio, Kentucky, and West

8

Virginia, has felt its fair share of the opioid crisis. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t inspired by J.D. Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy. Never had I seen such an eloquent take on the plight of the white working class even though I grew up with it all around me. I finally understood why President Trump was able to persuade over half the country to elect him to the White House. I understood why there is such a low rate of monetary success stemming from Appalachian youths. I understood why the media never seems to cover stories of the wretched, the damned, and the destitute people of rural America. And I was angry. I saw a particular sadness in the figures of Vance’s life, and it resonated with me so deeply that I felt an overwhelming need to dig a little deeper.

And then I struck oil: the opioid crisis. With such a strong, concrete public health emergency that is concentrated so heavily in the Rust Belt, it’s difficult not to see the short and long-term effects of the havoc it wreaks. Though it is certainly not exclusive to rural America, that region has seen such an overwhelming attachment to opioid addiction that I was instantly able to connect addiction to all the other plights of the Rust Belt. Thus, I was left with a strong narrative, the ideal subject, and a compelling zeal to make known the injustices of the American people. Because what I know for certain is that until the opioid epidemic is recognized as what it is—a legitimately dangerous and indisputably unique public health emergency—it will continue to ravage rural America.

Alex McCullough

Figure 3. Thurston, Gabrielle. My Trip to Toledo, Spain. 15 Nov. 2018.

Part One

BONNIE Figure 4. Scenes of the American Midwest through the Eyes of the Youth. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/531213718544492734/. Accessed 15 Apr. 2019.

“ There are haters everywhere, but in these Rust

Belt cities that have seen such challenges with economic and social decline, you would think people would be primed for change. You’d be wrong about that. Anyone who wants to try to change things is going to get brutally slammed.

Aaron Renn

(Segedy para 2)

Figure 5. Spider Silhouette Halloween. Pixabay, pixabay.com/vectors/spider-silhouette-halloween-insects-3357489/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2019.

”

I

ORGANZA CURTAINS AND CIGARETTE BURNS

Figure 6. Motto, Renzo. “Old-growth Forests and Silviculture in the Italian Alps.” Geocities, www.geocities.ws/renzomotta/ogf.html. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER ONE Organza Curtains and Cigarette Burns

I opened my eyes at around six in the morning to a spider on the ceiling.

It wasn’t small, either. In my groggy daze, I estimated about three inches in length, with narrow brown legs spindling around a dark, woolly abdomen. Rather than acknowledge the implications of a spider hanging directly above my very vulnerable face, I instead let the sound of Jack’s radio clock filling the room with the booming voice of Roe DeLawder—Mason County’s most notable radio personality and former resident of Ambrose, West Virginia (Achenbach para 10)—occupy my waking thoughts. I’d like to think Mr. DeLawder was so notable because he emigrated from Ambrose, but that might have just been me being bitter. After all, he only moved about ten miles out towards Point Pleasant, which was hardly a significant improvement from Ambrose but an improvement nonetheless; just as sad but at least quieter during the daytime. The spider inched slowly across the cracked and inconsistent stucco ceiling towards the left wall, purposefully, with a bullet-shaped hole above the bedside table being its destination.

If I were a normal person, I’d have jumped from the bed immediately and armed myself with a tennis racket and aerosol spray— normal isn’t always rational—but I did not move. Jack—my more normal husband—would joke about my nonchalant attitude to a lot of typically alarming occurrences. Spiders on the ceiling, rats in the kitchen, unpaid phone bills, suspicious objects in the garden, et cetera; these were all regular or irregular happenings that I chose to ignore, blissfully I might add. “It’s because of your ‘PTSD,’” Jack would say, laughing like he’d heard the funniest joke in the world.

Then he would clam up for hours on end and refuse to meet my eyes like a dog who’d been chided1 for pissing on the recliner.

My head was turned on its left cheek toward the spider—now migrating toward the door, having become bored with the bullet hole— 15

Alex McCullough while the radio on Jack’s side of the bed talked incessantly at the back of my skull. When I turned my head to the other side, Jack was sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over and pulling sneakers on over his feet. Through his thin baby-blue scrubs, I could see the outline of his spine, taut and flexed as he bent further and further downward. He wasn’t hideously gaunt, as close friends would joke, but I would refer to him as “attractively thin,” with dirty blond hair tossed in mousy curls atop his slender head. He still hadn’t noticed the spider, which had begun to cross the ceiling toward the window.

“There’s a spider,” I mumbled groggily.

“Where?”

“Ceiling.” He turned his chin upwards and instantly lept into a defensive squatting position. The spider was scampering hastily toward the wall, and by the time Jack had removed his sneaker and poised himself to attack, it had made its way to the curtain. “I know.

It’s big.”

“Where the… fuck… do these things keep coming from?” he muttered breathlessly as he paced around the window, staring down the spider’s eight beady, microscopic eyes.

“You didn’t believe me,” I asked, suppressing a guffaw as I sat up against the wall—the air mattress we slept on had no headboard, “when I said Grace and I called this house ‘Little Australia?’”

“Christ Almighty, it’s huge!” His back arched deeper, mirroring the slow, methodical migration of the spider down the curtain.

“Have you called Orkin?”

“I called them on Tuesday and they were supposed to come yesterday.” I stretched my neck and let out a quiet laugh. “They never showed, though.”

“Of course.”

Jack flung his shoe daintily at the window, careful not to shatter it. The spider was able to avoid the impact by about two inches, and scampered behind the curtain while the shoe slammed into the glass.

“Fucking fuck,” Jack muttered, picking up the shoe defeatedly and pulling it back onto his foot. Beneath the curtain, the spider laughed victoriously. “These spiders are going to be the death of me.”

I hummed with soft laughter and turned my head forward, letting it lean against the wall. The smallest of the three bedrooms in my mother’s house was also the least maintained. When we arrived one month prior—in June—the only object in the room was the air mattress, which my mother hadn’t even bothered to inflate for us; anything more fell under Jack and I’s responsibility. The ancient beach chair in the corner left of the window—covered in holes and ketchup stains—the plastic bedside tables—four hours of scrubbing 16

Nosedive to get the noisome2 stench of dead rats and mothballs out—and the blue organza curtains I bought to add some color to the otherwise asylum-like room. Sometimes, the sun would come through the window in such a way that the entire room was soaked in aegean blue, which made it easier to look at than when it resembled a white-stained-yellow prison cell.

Aside from the faint hum of birdsong outside the window, all I could manage to listen to was Roe DeLawder’s voice crackling through the radio clock.

(Thanks for askin’, Kelly. I’d say I take the most pride in my cheekbones, if we’re bein’ honest. Ain’t it a damn shame I’m a radio host—a damn shame, I tell ya! Ma always used to say I should be a model with this dashing complexion, ‘n make herself some money for once. Ha ha! She was a real treat. I liked to catch’er in the sweet grace period of tipsy, where she wa’n’t sober but not blackout neither. She had some real charm then. But then she’d start with the screamin’ and I’d make myself comf’table in my room all by my lonesome. Best not to test her while she’s in her moods. A wild ride, my ma. I still see’r now, ev’ry day! I know she can’t live without me too long, ha ha!)

I sighed loudly, and muttered under my breath, “What am I doing here?”

My comment elicited no response from Jack, who was seated in the beach chair, his eyes pointed downward at his phone. I cleared my throat three times before he took notice.

“Did you say something?”

“Not going to repeat myself,” I retorted with as much incendiary3 jeer as I could muster. I wasn’t sure why I took this tone in that moment, but I made no attempt to subdue it. “Maybe if you weren’t looking at your phone.”

Jack gave me the wounded look of an abused puppy. His black Avett Brothers t-shirt stuck out from beneath his scrubs like a sore thumb. I remembered buying him that shirt at a concert in Key West for our honeymoon over four years ago—they had finished their set with his favorite song, Ain’t No Man, and we got to see them after the show when they were signing records. I casually mentioned my name was Bonnie, and I got to have a five-ish-minute conversation with Bonnie Avett-Rini. Jack said we had the same milk-chocolate hair and defined jawline, but in retrospect, I didn’t really see the resemblance. She was a very sturdy kind of beautiful; you could see in her eyes that she was a “do no harm, take no shit” kind of woman, whereas I was obviously a “do a little harm, take a little shit, and complain incessantly about all of it” kind of girl. She could walk confidently into a volcano, waiting for the ocean of lava to part for 17

Alex McCullough her, and I would meekly request an airlift.

“I was checking my email,” Jack said.

“I was checking my email,” I mocked.

“Do you want coffee?” he asked genuinely. “You seem to be a little… high strung.”

“Fuck you.” That came out a little more caustic than I intended, and Jack was already horrendously awful at reading between the lines.

“Look, I know it’s rough for you, but—” “You don’t know shit.”

“Bonnie!” he hollered.

“Don’t ‘Bonnie’ me, Jack! Rough? Rough doesn’t even begin to cover what it’s like in this house!”

“I can’t have this argument right now!” Jack screamed definitively, loud enough that I couldn’t reasonably match it without blowing my vocal cords. Yet I tried anyway.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me!” I swung my legs over the side of the bed and marched after him, meeting him at the door and slamming it shut before he could reach the knob. My kitten-soft amethyst robe billowed gracefully around me as I swept across the floor, exposing small glances of my nude figure below. Unfortunately, Jack wasn’t so primal when it came to sexuality, and would probably just get more angry if he thought I was being intentionally indecent. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

“I’m not walking away.” He paused a second, pondering whether to push me aside and flee the room or let me win. “I need to go to work.”

“You’re ignoring me again.” I pressed harder on the door as he began to tug at the knob, my slightly-tanned, bony hand rattling against the plaster. I felt heat rise into my skull and drain into my cheeks. “Again and again! I can’t say a word in this house without you treating me like a fucking baby!”

“I’m going to be late, Bonnie.” His voice was heavy and somber.

“Waah waah waaaaahh! I’m going to be laaaaate!” I jeered at him.

“I can’t deal with you right now.” He shoved me aside and threw the door open, storming into the hall. I followed with open arms and what I could only imagine was a contorted and livid expression plastered over my face.

“Jack, stop it!” I wailed furiously. I was going to wake up Emily. My voice undulated4 as if I were close to crying, which I suppressed quickly and painlessly. “Jack! Stop! Come back here!”

Just before reaching the door, he turned and stared me down with a beet-red physiognomy and overwhelming frustration filling his 18

Nosedive eyes with acid. Behind him, rays of early-morning sunlight cast through the narrow windows in the front door, and he became but an ominous silhouette in the hall.

“I’m going to be late for work.”

“Talk to me!”

“I have to go.”

“Jack, please!” I cried desperately.

Silently he turned, opened the front door, and left me behind in the dark hall. I stared through the thin panes of glass as he slid into his old beat-up yellow pickup and let his head fall limply on the steering wheel. Five seconds later, the car sputtered to life and peeled quickly out of the gravel driveway and down Hummingbird Lane toward Main Street.

“FUCK!” I threw a tightly-wound fist at the wall, making a sizable dent in the plaster. On the opposite side, in the living room, a picture frame fell and pounded dully on the filthy brown carpet. Inside the frame was an older photograph of my mother, stepfather, and a fouryear-old Grace. My mother was holding Grace in her arms, her face warm and filled with joy, while Grace had one arm outstretched with regal glamor toward the camera, her auburn hair spun in fastidious5 curls and her dress clean and expensive. I could only imagine that I, the only family member missing from the portrait, was the one taking the picture. My stepfather’s face had been messily excised with scissors.

I glanced anxiously around the room at all the various framed photographs on the wall and tables, searching for anything with me in it. No such luck. Only Grace’s shiny plastic face smiling back on me, sugar on her teeth in every last picture.

(I should take care of my baby.)

Emily’s room was the middle of three doors on the long wall bisecting the house between the public and private spheres. In the dimness of the narrow hallway formed by the wall, I could see but a sliver of apricot light peeking from under Emily’s door. Somehow, that room was always the brightest of the three bedrooms even though they all faced out the same side of the house, with the early morning sunlight blending with the deep boysenberry of the wallpaper—an array of purple and blue roses in various arrangements—to create a breathtaking mix of rich, luxuriant colors painted across the air. That was Grace’s room growing up; hers was the only room in the house with wallpaper.

As I quietly entered, the luster from the early-morning sunrise flooding into the room was so starkly distinct from the sparsely-lit hall I instinctively shielded my eyes. Grace’s bed was relocated 19

Alex McCullough against the right wall, her bedsheets still neatly pressed against the mattress and pillows cleaned and fluffed. In the spot it used to be, just below the window, was Emily’s bed. I hated seeing her sleep in it. She used to have this beautiful wood crib with a professional cream paint job that Jack and I found at a local retailer in Norfolk, where we also bought her a beautiful pair blue onesie pajamas with “I <3 VA” on the chest. The crib broke during the move, though, and she was getting too old for it anyway, so we were forced to use an old twin bed from my mother’s basement that was likely discontinued a decade ago. I would bet my own life it was mine and not Grace’s. There were soda stains and cigarette burns all down the frame, and the mattress was thin and solid as cardboard. Looking at her sleeping peacefully under the canary duvet, I couldn’t help but notice how wildly out-of-place her pajamas looked.

“Baby…” I whispered hoarsely. My voice was still sore from my altercation6 with Jack. “Baby girl…”

Her eyelashes fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings before lifting to reveal a pair of hickory eyes filled with all the gold of a thousand burning suns and charcoal pupils that could hold a thousand shining stars. When she was born, Jack said not a second after looking at her that she had my eyes, which I saw as a preposterous statement, since my eyes are only brown. She definitely had Jack’s face; I could already tell, with her feminine nose and dark, full-bodied eyelashes.

“It’s the Stepford gene,” Jack commented when I pointed this out on her first birthday, and though it was merely a joke, I invested an unhealthy amount of faith in its veritability nevertheless.

“Good morning, pumpkin,” I whispered again. She stretched her arms taut above her head before letting them fall limp on the bed, and I couldn’t stop myself from beaming like a child gleefully unwrapping a Christmas present.

“Good mo’ning, Mommy,” she murmured, before smiling back at me.

She was halfway through three years old when we moved back to Ambrose. Even the cadence of “my three-year-old daughter” was discordant7 to my ears. I preferred not to know her exact age at any given moment; each passing month was just an uncomfortable reminder of the inevitability of her growing up, which I flat-out refused to accept as the truth. I didn’t care so much about the physical torment of breastfeeding or the physiological changes I endured for months after the delivery as much as I feared the responsibility of having to raise a baby. After all, I was as much a child as she.

“Cereal!” Emily shouted indignantly. I had been staring blankly at the wall. No holes or dents in the paper. I liften her onto my shoulder and carried her into the kitchen as she shrieked with exuberance 20

Nosedive all the way. She could walk, I was aware, but it had become our personal tradition, where I would carry her to breakfast every morning and let her walk herself through the rest of the day. I couldn’t imagine what I would do when she outgrew that tradition.

I’d always regarded my mother’s kitchen as uncomfortably sparse.

There was a certain warmth missing from the barren counters and unpainted walls, not dissimilar from the feeling of an abandoned amusement park. The tile on the counters was never tasteful—it was the classic tiny white squares, cheap but utilitarian8—but years of being ignored by my negligent9 mother had not been kind to the worn ceramic. The wood cabinets were chipped to no end, and the window was bordered by a layer of brown grime, which likely harbored a number of different extermination nightmares.

I nervously sidestepped the mysterious stains on the floor on my way to the fridge, which, according to my mother, was absolutely horrible at being a fridge. Every month, we got a routine phone call asking for some obscene range of money—four hundred, five hundred, two thousand—and a brief interlude about how corrupt appliance manufacturers are and how she was scammed—yet again—by the sales representative at Lowes who, as she ascertained from their brief interaction, was a “scraggly butch with no respect for the elderly.” I always found this as an opportunity to remind my mother that she is forty-nine and should never be considered elderly, but she chose to ignore me every time. I still sent the money. It was a lowrisk investment, as I liked to think.

I pulled a gallon of milk from the fridge and the box of Cheerios from the cupboard, and placed Emily securely in her booster seat at the table while she swung her legs and chanted, “cereal, cereal, cereal, cereal!”

“Shhh, baby, you’ll wake up…”

(What was Emily supposed to call her?)

“Gramma,” I finished. “She needs to rest.”

(Needs readjustment. ‘Gramma?’ As if.)

“Sorry,” she giggled before plunging her beloved plastic frog spoon into the bowl and setting it before. I grinned. Sometimes it wasn’t so apparent that we were so broken.

The sound of rustling sheets and breathless swearing emerged from the hallway, which meant my mother was awake. Panicked, I rushed back to the fridge to retrieve one of the plastic containers full of soup she’d been stockpiling next to the expired chicken broth and moldy apples. I could almost laugh at how accurately her diet was reflected in just her fridge. It certainly harkened back to my own adolescence, when my quotidian10 meals, social gatherings, and escape routes were all located in the Speedway on the corner of 21

Alex McCullough Jefferson and Main, where the neon red sign sparkled like starlight in the distance and every fathomable snack food filled the aisles in manufactured, multicolored arrays. My mother was perfectly content eating her cold soup every day, and I was perfectly content with being out of the house for as long as possible. I eventually got sick of the indigestion their hot dogs gave me and settled for the soup most nights. She was running out of money for me to steal, anyway.

“Bonnie Elizabeth, git your ass in here with my soup!”

My nostalgic reprieve ended quickly. I shuffled towards her room with one hand carrying the soup and the other pulling the collar of my bathrobe up to cover my chest.

The transition from the hallway into her room was a sensory experience, to put it mildly, to which I had never become inured11.

Not to say my mother’s house smelled decent by any standard, but there was a particularly potent stench hung aloft in her bedroom— some mix of asbestos, emesis, and mass-decaying skin cells. It was so strong I immediately felt compelled to wash my nostrils with a Q-tip. The room, like mine and Jack’s, was empty save for the bed, a plastic table covered in cigarette burns, and a despondent12 air purifier under the window. The sunlight mixed with the trees and passed through the pistachio organza curtains I had bought for the room, casting a verdant13 tinge on the walls and floor. Despite it being so empty, I’d never felt so claustrophobic. On the bed, buried under a thick comforter covered in crumbs, mysterious brown stains, and even more cigarette burns, my mother’s frail, sickly figure lay, with her small head adorned with wispy brown tangles poking out the top and resting in a mountain of white pillows, yellowed with age.

“About fuckin’ time,” she mumbled in my direction, her eyes half-open. I nudged some of the various pill bottles and half-empty Marlboro packs on the bedside table to make room for the soup.

“I’m starvin’.”

“Good thing I’m here,” I muttered caustically.

She began violently coughing into her elbow, and I prayed she wouldn’t start throwing up again. My weak attempt at scrubbing the vomit out of the comforter was particularly visible from where I was standing. She reached for the soup and cautiously picked up a stray cigarette from the table between her pinkie and ring finger.

“Momma, could you at least not smoke when you’re this sick?”

“You ain’t got no fuckin’ clue what you’re talkin’ about,” she muttered, placing the cigarette weakly on her bottom lip and using her right hand to reach for the lighter.

(Does she keep it under her pillow?)

“It relaxes me.”

“It destroys your lungs.” I circled the bed, scanning for any loose 22

Nosedive garbage and the inevitable pile of cigarette butts stashed somewhere under the mattress. It was my job to keep the room as clean as possible, I suppose, but to think it was by any means clean when my mother wasn’t ill was nothing but wishful. “Plus, it’s bad for the baby.”

“Baby needs to toughen the fuck up,” she said with a strident14 growl “Lookit you! I smoked at least a pack a day when you ‘ere a baby an’ you’re half-decent now.”

“I’m just trying to protect my daughter, Momma. You know I don’t have a choice.”

“What choice?” she said, flicking the lighter with ease and holding the flame to the end of the cigarette.

“Being here, Momma.” I reached for her cigarette but she swatted my hand away. “I had to leave my job, my friends, my town to come here and take care of you, and you won’t even stop smoking! For my baby! I don’t ask a lot—” “You ask to live in my fuckin’ house again you’ll play by my fuckin’ rules. It’s about time you came back anywho. I’ve no idea why you’d ever leave me here all alone. Ambrose is your ‘town,’ if tha’s what you’ll be callin’ it, not fuckin’ Chicky Ticky or wherever the hell you live now.”

“Chincoteague,” I said, running my hands across my scalp and moving toward the window. “It’s beautiful down there, you’d like it. We bought this gorgeous house right on the Little Oyster Bay. It’s got a circle driveway and a hot tub. Do you know anyone here in Ambrose with a circle driveway and a hot tub?”

“I suppose John paid for this?” she muttered.

“Jack,” I said, re-entering her field of vision as she began gazing blankly at the wall. “And you didn’t answer the question.”

“Or are you some kinda prostitute now?”

“What?!” I screeched.

“I tell you somethin’ about this town. We ain’t got no hot tubs or circle driveways, unless you count the moneygrabbing fucks down in Culver. We also ain’t got no prostitutes, Bonnie Elizabeth. Now I’on know what you and Jack get up to down in Shucky Tucky, but I know the scum of the earth lives on the East Coast, and the rich fucks down there pay anythin’ they want for a quick suck-n’-fuck.”

“Momma, what the hell are you talking about?”

“People here respect themselves! They ain’t let anyone else destroy their bodies like that!”

“No, of course not! You’re all do-it-yourselfers!” I screamed, plucking the cigarette out of her mouth and burning it into the table.

She curled her mouth into a snarl and pulled another from under her pillow.

23

Alex McCullough “You’re going to die by winter,” I murmured.

“Mind your own business.”

“I would never put that shit in my body,” I said with a smirk. “I’d rather live to see my daughter be happy and successful.”

“I never liked winter.”

“How is that relevant, Momma?”

“You said I’d die by winter.” She began to cough violently again, a few sprays of mucus flying out of her mouth and sprinkling the duvet. “And I said I never liked winter.”

“Why don’t you like winter?”

“Drained the shit outta my bank account,” she chuckled. “You kids always wanted your fancy fuckin’ toys ‘n movies ‘n vacations because a’ Christmas, and I was always stuck tryin’ to pay fer all’a’it! If it weren’t for your scum-sucking stepdaddy I mighta been able to to swing it but, a’ course, he was always off divin’ into some twenny-somthin’-year-old tart in Iowa or Ohio or Illinois, God forbid. That fag—I rememmer him comin’ home one night at four in the mornin’ and you know I’d been breastfeedin’ Grace, the poor baby, and he had the nerve to tell me he was out to dinner! I swear he had the stench of some bitch’s perfume but God help me for doin’ nothin’ about it!

“Let me tell you somethin’ about livin’ on this fuckin’ planet, Bonnie Elizabeth, you ain’t gettin’ nowhere with makin’ regrets. I should’a burned his ass inward with my rifle the second he walked in the door but I didn’t. I needed the money. But was it worth it?”

She shifted a little, digging her head into the pillows. “Maybe, maybe not. I’on know.”

She held up the container of soup and began drinking the broth.

Some of it dribbled onto her chest.

“Don’t you want a spoon, Momma?” I asked, my voice suddenly docile.

“I was loyal to my fam’ly too!” she hollered, completely ignoring my question and continuing with her tirade15. “Tha’s somethin’ I ain’t ever gonna understand about you, Bonnie. I suffered for this family! That man woulda left us and we’d’ve been broke and starved, and then what? Don’t even get me started on your fuckin’ daddy, Bonnie Elizabeth. Most selfish bastard I ever did knew, gettin’ himself killed and leavin’ me wonderin’ how I’s gonna feed my daughter that night. I learned from that regret. I wasn’t goin’ to be lone never again. An’ lookit what you’ve done! If it weren’t for Grace—God bless her!—I’d be here all lone to die by myself!

Where’d my oldest daughter go? Where is Bonnie Lambdin?”

“Sutton,” I said plainly. My mother frowned, confused. “Bonnie Sutton.”

24

Nosedive “Eh,” she muttered, and continued drinking her soup.

“Sorry we can’t all be Grace, Momma,” I said. Not loudly, but emphatically. I suppressed a tear that had begun brewing in the corner of my eye. “Didn’t it ever pass your mind that I could be happy somewhere else, not here in Ambrose? Momma, I love you, but I’m married with a daughter and a job! What else do you want from me?”

“Wha’s Ambrose got that Shinny Titty ain’t?”

“Chincoteague! Fucking Chincoteague! Virginia!” I was screaming, throwing my hands about my person in wild and erratic motions. “And maybe, Momma, consider this for a second. I wanted more out of life than fucking spiders on the ceiling and shit on the walls! I wanted more than being lonely and sad and smoking cigarettes in bed, dying at forty-nine and leaving behind two fucked-up children to fend for themselves! You’re lucky I got out! You’re fucking blessed I escaped! Maybe you don’t want fancy circle driveways and hot tubs, but I certainly did, and I certainly do!”

“Don’t you dare raise your voice at me,” my mother uttered, her voice low and visceral. My hands, folded into my elbows, twitched with an unbridled desire to be freed. “Can’t you think ‘bout your poor family for once? I rue the day I let you go, Bonnie Elizabeth!

Pride is a sin!”

“Fuck your sins!” I cried, my voice shattered like broken crystal.

“I’m proud to say I left this nightmare of a city! I’m pro-o-oud!”

“Oh, Lord, please forgive my daughter!” my mother wailed at the ceiling. “Please forgive her, for she disobeys You! She done harm onto me, her own mother, for her own sinful ways!”

“Momma, stop it!”

“Repent, child!” she screamed. Emily began crying from the other room. “For your greed! Your wrath! Your pride!”

“Momma!”

“Oh, your pride, Bonnie! You’ve made covenant with the Devil, you filthy bitch! I know you’d leave me here to die. You want me dead!”

“I don’t want you dead, Momma,” I said, suddenly quiet and sober.

“I would die for you, Bonnie!” she croaked at me. “I would die for you children, and Grace would die for me. Now where d’you fit in?”

“Then ask Grace to fucking live with you!” I screamed, my ears hot and throat full of bile. “If you really think she’d die for you and I wouldn’t, you should have no qualms asking her to bring you soup and wash your… duvet! Every day! And… and deal with all the fucking spiders!”

My mother was upright, her face five different shades of purple.

25

Alex McCullough “Your sister is hurtin’, and she has her own shit to take care of right now. Lord help me for believin’ I’d be able to get my daughter back, Lord help me!”

I stood there, at the foot of the bed, breathless and angry.

(Don’t let her see you cry.)

I couldn’t argue with her. I wouldn’t.

I didn’t want to come back.

I left my mother’s bedroom in silence, while she continued to hurl profane insults at me all the way out until it was merely muffled, incoherent screaming. In the kitchen, Emily was babbling obliviously, flinging milk-soaked Cheerios at the cupboard and shrieking with laughter when they stuck. Shockingly, I was able to sustain my strict abstinence16 from outward displays of vulnerable emotion long enough that Emily couldn’t tell anything was wrong, though I knew it would only become more difficult to protect her from the environment into which I’d dragged her. Meanwhile, my mother’s words ran through my head, rebounding like gunfire off the walls of my skull.

(I would die for you children, and Grace would die for me. Now where d’you fit in?)

26

â&#x20AC;&#x153; After World War II, [the cities of the eastern Great Lakes region] began a protracted, incredibly painful and traumatic period of economic and social decline, as the triple whammy of economic restructuring (the outsourcing of manufacturing); regional outmigration (to the Sunbelt); and rapid suburbanization (in a region with a strong tradition of balkanized local government and a history of economic and racial segregation) took an agonizing toll on these cities and their neighborhoods.

Segedy para 17-19

Figure 7. Apocalyptic Gas Station. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/521573200567567838/. Accessed 1 Mar. 2019.

â&#x20AC;?

II

MASTER ESCAPISTS

Figure 8. Donvan. Car, Filling Station, Computer Icons, Silhouette, Symbol. Kiss PNG, www.kisspng.com/png-car-filling-station-computer-icons-gasoline-fuel-d-846080/. Accessed 19 Mar. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER TWO Master Escapists

“Bonnie, what time d’you get off?”

“Three,” I responded blankly, not looking up from the register.

“D’you maybe—” “I’m married.” I upturned my head to look Graham Sullivan directly between his sunken eyes, sustaining a callous but still amiable17 expression. “Happily.”

“I di’n’t ask if you’re married, I asked when you get off,” Graham said, the corners of his mouth creeping upward into a forced, almost psychotic grin. “Wha’s a girl like you doin’ in Ambrose, anyhow?”

“Didn’t have a choice.” I utilized a docile but commanding tone, which I learned throughout my teenage years to master for occasions such as this. Graham—like many of the forty-plus virgins with untenable bacne living in Ambrose, West Virginia—was desperately horny all the time. I almost felt sorry for him, until I remembered that he was the perfect candidate for my potential rapist lest my words of encouraging rejection be misconstrued as an invitation.

Once I could convey my lack of interest, he would cycle through the rest of the female staff at the Walmart where we toiled day in and day out, and finally resort to masturbating in his office once he hit three strikes. Plus, he signed my paycheck every two weeks, so I didn’t press too hard on his ego.

“Tha’s too bad,” he sniggered. “Y’know, you could really go Vogue if you wanted.”

“I tried, but they didn’t want me,” I said, even feigning a sad expression to keep the mood light. Before he could say anything else, I added: “Graham, I’d really love to chat, but I have customers.”

“They can wait.”

“Bye, Graham.” I waved goodbye to him and put on my best smile.

He glared at me with his dull jaundiced eyes and meandered away.

I continued scanning the groceries on the belt: bananas, Froot Loops, popcorn, a pack of Marlboros.

31

Alex McCullough “Bonnie?” A voice said.

I looked up and beamed at the customer.

“Is that Aaron DeBerardinis?”

“In the flesh,” he said, gesturing to himself and reciprocating18 my smile. “How long’s it been?”

“God, eight years? Since 2011?” I responded, giggling girlishly.

He still had the same sea salt-blond hair and bulky nose as in high school, but now with a near-buzz cut and a patch of gauze masking a fairly recent rhinoplasty surgery. His legs were crossed over each other at the ankles, the toe of his combat boots perpendicular to the dirty linoleum, as he leaned against the belt. “What’s with the nose?”

“Broke it,” he said. “Hockey.”

“Ah.” I continued scanning his items. Cheez-Its, apples, candy corn, a handle of cheap whiskey. “Glad to see you’re still playing.

You were a real star back in the day.”

“Don’t even,” he chuckled. “Like there was much competition.

What are we, like, one of three public schools in the tri-county area?”

“Five, actually.” He shrugged. “Yeah, not really a lot to compare to. You still carried, though, if you didn’t realize.”

“No, I realized.” He threw another pack of cigarettes on the belt.

I swallowed nervously. “And, more importantly, Midwest hockey enthusiasts realized too. They ‘ere, like, half my tuition.”

“Where did you go to college again?”

“NYU. Graphic design major,” he said, and then added: “Aren’t many a’ those here in West Virginia.”

“Well, there are probably some at WVU.” “Yeah, I don’t count those northern parts,” he said, glancing down at his thumbs. “That part a’ the state should be annexed by Pennsylvania in the best interest of the people. It’s like two separate countries. You go up there and it’s like you’re in Vegas compared to whatever fuckfest is goin’ on down ‘ere.”

I giggled girlishly.

(Why do I sound like that?)

“What about Clara? How’s she?”

“We’re engaged, actually.” I cocked my head ever-so-slightly. “To be married in August.”

“Hopefully it’s not too hot.”

“We’re getting married in Vancouver, so I’m more concerned about it snowing, actually.” We both laughed. Wonder Bread, a carton of eggs, chocolate milk, a six-pack of Busch Lite. I tapped my foot anxiously against the linoleum.

“I actually went to UVA,” I said, casually trying to keep the con32

Nosedive versation going. There were at least two feet left of groceries to scan, and the bagger had glanced at his watch four times in the past two minutes, anxiously waiting for three o’clock to come.

“No shit, really?” he said, cocking his head. “I thought you was goin’ to stay with your momma?”

“Fuck no,” I laughed. “I just didn’t tell anyone. Didn’t want her to find out.”

“Oh?” I sighed. “She’d been a little sensitive at the time, and I didn’t want her to freak out or anything. Twenty-one seventy-three.”

“I get it. My momma didn’t like me leavin’ neither,” he said, digging his hand into his pocket and fishing for his wallet. “So what made you come back?”

“Well, that’s actually funny.” A short chuckle. The last item on the belt was jumbo-sized bottle of Advil. “It’s my momma. She’s sick with something, and needs me to take care of her. Probably all the drinking catching up to her.”

“Isn’t she sober?”

“Aren’t you?” I immediately clasped my hand to my mouth. I couldn’t help it. The beer, the whiskey, the cigarettes, the Advil—it was all too familiar. I could distinctly remember scanning the aisles in search of the same cheap whiskey and the same cigarettes, and even occasionally the same bottle of Advil. It was rarely for me; as soon as I was able to walk, hold her massive pocketbook, and sidestep the listless, closeted pedophiles roaming the streets, my mother sent me out to purchase whatever legitimate groceries we needed with her government-issued food stamps and shoplift the booze and cigarettes. It was easy—no one persecuted nine-year-old girls with Hello Kitty windbreakers—and it kept me on her good side for at least two days. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Thankfully, he merely laughed at my insensitive retort and handed me two twenty-dollar bills. “When wasn’t I?” I had forgotten that Aaron was possibly the only pupil in my graduating class who didn’t regularly drink.

“No, the beer and stuff is for my momma. We’re actually here visitin’ for the summer, just me an’ Clara at my momma’s house. My sister’s on break too, so she’s here, which is good. I need a couple a’ buffers between me and my momma, y’know?”

“Yeah,” I said, pursing my lips as I punched forty dollars into the till and calculated change. “I wish I had that. Eighteen twenty-seven’s your change.”

“You best not be short-changin’ me,” he teased. Grateful he managed to keep the conversation cordial19 after my comment, I handed him his change and smiled, cocking my head playfully to the side.

33

Alex McCullough “I get off at three. Want to catch up some more?”

He paused, grinning ear to ear. “Speedway?”

“Speedway.”

“It’s a date.”

• • • It didn’t take long to walk anywhere in Ambrose. I learned to view the town as a circle with four distinct boundaries—the Thurgood United Methodist Church in the north, Grimm Farms in the west, Culver Estates in the south, and the Mason County Hospital in the east—all no more than a twenty-minute drive from their polar opposites. Walmart happened to be just on the southern border between downtown Ambrose and what we called the “well-to-dos” in the Culver Estates. They were either bankers, local politicians, or the legacy children and grandchildren of factory owners from the early 20th century, when it meant something to make a career out of industrial manufacturing in West Virginia (Segedy para 19).

My mother always loved to throw herself into animated20 hissy-fits whenever someone insulted the sanctity of our town—“Largest steel producers in the great state of West Virginia, an’ don’t you ever forget it!”—and when my grandmother was alive, she’d supplement in a malediction21 toward the entire state of Florida for “takin’ all the good and the upstanding and the well-to-do from this town!” (Segedy para 20). Walking down Jefferson Road towards the downtown area, I could see the the myriad22 of vacant, condemned factory buildings infiltrating the atmosphere, the ghosts of industrial productivity and propserity hovering above and begging for liberation.

“I always loved this part of Ambrose,” Aaron said. I had almost forgotten he was there. “This was the road I took both to school and to Speedway—two of my favorite places in this town. This gravel”—he dug his feet into the tiny stone pebbles—“holds so many memories.”

“School was one of your favorite places?” I jested. “Nerdy ass.

Knew we shouldn’t’ve been friends.”

“Wow, Bonnie. I di’n’t really take you for a ragin’ bitch!” he groaned, feigning exasperation and kicking a rock off the road into the ragweed. I giggled mincingly. “No, I just loved feelin’ like I belonged somewhere. You and I, we were good at school, but I di’n’t ever feel like I belonged in my house. As long as I focused on school, I had some semblance of purpose in life. I could go to college, and leave this place for good.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I understood on some level. To see a kid ever 34

Nosedive truly wanting to go home from school was a preposterously baffling occurrence. More often than not, school was these kids’ home. If not the school, then Speedway, Walmart, McDonald’s; anywhere but the house they lived in. It took but a modicum23 of common sense to understand why. “But you tried in school. I didn’t. That’s the difference.”

“You di’n’t need to. You were jus’ that smart.” I tucked a strand of loose hair behind my ear. “You coulda blown us all out the water if you actually cared a wit.”

“Really?” I tucked a loose strand of hazelnut hair behind my ear. “‘Course!”

I never dated Aaron in high school. He was an archetypal romantic—a born-again Wordsworth, as I would remark—and I was a realist—an intellectual descendant of Victor Hugo. Where he found virtue I found flaw. High school romance was and remained utter bullshit; it was simply needless stress and worry and agony, and even the happy relationships ended in rubble and debris, leaving only bitterness and woe once graduation season rolled around. That being said, I was admittedly Ambrose’s resident it-girl, and Aaron was not-so-admittedly a hopeless virgin. That was the price of being a nerd in Ambrose: in the uncontained assembly of restless, depressed, sexually-frustrated teenagers that was James M. Barnwell High School, no one really sought genuine intellectual interactions as much as fleeting physical connections. I would’ve dated him if I weren’t so convinced he couldn’t handle me.

“So you went to Virginia, right?” he said. I’d almost forgotten how silent the conversation had become. The cracked roof of the Main Street Speedway was visible in the distance.

“Yeah. Full ride.” I added: “Obviously.”

“Same here,” he said, nodding his head. “Not that I went to Virginia, jus’ the full ride part.”

I laughed. “Did your mom not want to pay for it too?”

“She di’n’t want me to go at all. Every time I’d even mention college she’d jus’ roll ‘er eyes and mumble somethin’ ‘bout abandoning our family. My sister went to college too—Shawnee State, down at the very very bottom of Ohio. She’s a junior now. I think my momma’s still bitter she left. They barely talk at all anymore.”

“My mother’s like that too,” I said. “Remember Grace?” “‘Course I do!” he exclaimed. It was a little too exuberant for my liking, but I would imagine Grace—a quiet, less callous, and more reserved version of myself—would appeal to a guy like Aaron, so I didn’t shame him for it.

“She’s not going to college.” He seemed somewhat surprised.

“Decided that she’d rather stay here with my mother. Works better 35

Alex McCullough for me, since I’d rather be as far away from this place as possible.”

“She was smart, too,” he said, his head pointed at his feet. “A diff’rent kinda smart than you. More studious, less intellectual. I admired it.”

“That was part of her problem, I think.” I paused until he met my eye contact. “See, I was smart and so it was really my test scores and personal essays that got me all the way to Virginia. God, were my essays brutal. But Grace was more of a workaholic, and that didn’t really translate as effectively on her applications. Trust me, she was dying to get out just as much as me. This town does bad things to kids like Grace.”

“I’on know about that.” Aaron pursed his lips, while I cocked my head inquisitively. “I mean, there are certainly things ‘bout this town I don’t miss. But whattabout the things I do? I miss when we’d all ditch school to go drive ‘round in Hope Taylor’s poppa’s Rolls Royce. I miss watchin’ all the buildings pass by—the Walmart, the Speedway on Main, the boarded-up Target on Hanscom, the small neighborhoods with all the ol’ houses, the excessive number a’ pharmacies, all our friends’ houses… There were parts a’ high school I di’n’t hate.”

“I guess,” I said. “It’s that ‘diamond in the rough’ mentality. You live in Ambrose—an objectively horrible place—and suddenly find all these silver linings everywhere you look. No one in New York goes to Speedway for fun, I’m assuming. It’s just the idea that when there’s not a lot to do, you just naturally lower your standards for what’s ‘fun’ and forget about the bad.”

“Maybe you’re jus’ bitter.”

“I am not bitter!” I shouted, half-laughing. “I’m just right. You never liked when I was right.”

“Okay, well tha’s because you ‘ere wrong a lot of the time.”

“Wow. Tell me how I’m wrong.”

He drew a deep breath. “I’m a freelance graphic designer in New York, okay? My wife’s a starvin’ actress and part-time club singer.

Not to say I’on love my life right now, but we ain’t Upper East-Side Manhattanites. We live in a cramped one-bed, one-bath apartment with a rat problem and a shower that leaks like a motherfucker. Do I look like the kinda person who cries tears of joy when I find a penny on the street? Jus’ because I like to see the good in things don’t mean I ‘forget about the bad.’ You can’t ‘forget about the bad’; it’s stuck there forever, like food in the sink or shit on the walls. You think jus’ because I have some good memories a’ this town that I don’ also remember watchin’ my neighbor kill his girlfriend on the front porch of his house? Or watchin’ my aunt overdose on Percocets in the bathroom at my fifth birthday party? I served my fuckin’ 36

Nosedive nickel in this town. I got a lot a’ memories here. Forgive me for wantin’ to keep some of ‘em clean.”

I didn’t respond immediately. We walked for five-ish minutes in total silence, having reached the precipice of the downtown and migrated from the gravel roads to the cracked sidewalks. Above us, the once mildly peaceful clouds had darkened into a nebulous hue, and I knew a storm was imminent. Meanwhile, his words rang like wind chimes in a hurricane through my head.

(You can’t forget the bad; it’s stuck there forever.)

Bullshit. Utter bullshit. What did he know?

“How ‘bout you, Bonnie?” I looked at him nervously. The firetruck-red color in his face had disappeared. “What’ve you been doin’ since high school?”

“Stuff.”

He chuckled. “Be specific.”

“I, uh, graduated a couple years ago… well, four years ago. Political philosophy, policy, and law major.”

“Tha’s the real moneymaker,” he commented. I let out a truncated laugh and masked the slight disdain I held for his sarcastic remark.

“No, that’s my husband. We’re a very traditional household, as much as it pains me to say.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a nurse.”

“How… conservative of you.”

“Fuck off,” I laughed.

By then, the Speedway was just a block away, nestled between the busiest intersection in downtown Ambrose and two five-story brick apartment buildings doused in a dense layer of wear-andtear. The gas station itself was unsurprisingly bereft of patrons; the only person there was the cashier, who was leaned against the grimy window and snorting some nondescript24 substance off his index finger. I could only imagine the train of old and irreparably damaged pickup trucks spiraling like grapevines out of the Shell on East Beaufort, each containing one or more stubborn Baby Boomers refusing to take their service to Speedway out of sheer spite.

The voice of my mother was crystalline clear in my head—“Reagan di’n’t use Speedway, so why the hell should I?” It was purely generational; older residents’ restive25 indignance to let go of the traditions and memories of a time gone by was particularly strong in places like my hometown (Segedy para 22). I always found this age division particularly symbolic, if not simply convenient for my group of friends. Time away from this town’s adults was always time well-spent. But looking at this small brick building after a sixyear hiatus, the cracks in the pavement were much deeper; the flick37

Alex McCullough ering of the lights inside were much more eerie; and the whirring of the archaic air conditioning system was much louder. I wondered how deep nostalgia could run.

“What do you want?” Aaron asked.

My head snapped up from its brief sociological rumination to realize we were inside already, with a fantastical selection of snack foods and energy drinks before us, ready to be perforated with childlike greed. The dim fluorescent lighting was not potent enough to detract from the technicolor wonderland of the multicolored sodas, chips, desserts, and gum lining every shelf of the store. Behind the bulletproof pane of glass, the tattoo-clad cashier—having exhausted his supply of nose candy—was puffing cigarette smoke through his tattoo- and metal-clad face into the vent on the ceiling.

“Uh…” I mumbled, scanning the aisles. “Chips. Fritos!”

He meandered off towards the chips while I stared in reflective silence at the large sign above the three beer fridges—“Beer Cave.

Icy. Cold. Enter Here.” There was a piece of paper taped to the center fridge, on which someone had scrawled in messy penmanship:

SHOPLIFTERS WILL BE PROSECUTED! Perhaps it was simply a general announcement, but it came across as a personal attack. In addition to being an irredeemable slut, I was also Ambrose’s most wanted gas station thief of 2012. They might as well have put my yearbook photo under the sign, as if to say, “Her arrest and imprisonment should be law enforcement’s top priority,” when I doubt the police would’ve even responded to a call about a dykeish purple-haired delinquent smuggling Maker’s Mark into a thermos and fleeing into the street, shouting obscenities all the way.

All this running around used to be for my mother only, smuggling copious volumes of alcohol to satiate her consuming addictions, but eventually I yearned for a bit of release as much as she did and took some for myself. I suppose the apple didn’t truly fall that far from the tree (Gil para 2). The sign was yellowed and not very threatening, despite the scribble underlining the word “will.” I almost found that amusing, as if they were saying, “We’ll get around to prosecuting soplifters eventually, but not now. We will.”

When I turned back around, Aaron was approaching me from the register, a bottle of Coke tucked under his right arm and my chips dangling from his outstretched fingers. “You didn’t have to pay for that.”

“My treat,” he said grandly. “Should we toast?”

38

Nosedive “Toast to what?”

“I’on know. It jus’ feels right to toast righ’ now.”

I shrugged. “To Speedway.”

“To Speedway!”

I took the chips and “clinked” them against his Coke. “To escaping this fucking town.”

“Escapin’?”

“What, this town just let you off easy? Don’t kid yourself. It’s a miracle you got out of the state in the first place.”

He nodded affirmatively. “I get that. To escapin’!”

We “clinked” again. “Master escapists!”

He and I both laughed as we approached the door. The storm clouds above had fully consumed the sky, dropping buckets of rain on the roof and in the street, pooling it into puddles and letting it run along the curbs and drain like rivers into the sewers. Thunder rolled in the distance like a powerful foghorn piercing the atmosphere.

“Should we call a cab?” Aaron asked. I stared into the sky. I always liked it better when it rained. “I’on really want to walk back in this.”

“Ambrose cabs are always slow when you need them most,” I responded. “Do you think Clara can give us a ride?”

“Possibly. I’ll call ‘er.”

He pulled out his cell phone and meandered off towards the sidewalk, almost in the rain but not quite. I stood behind him near one of the pumps, eyeing the nozzle, which was dangling out of the holder and leaking gasoline into a large puddle.

(Certainly that’s a hazard, right?)

Something darted in the corner of my eye. I shot my head towards a swarthy26 figure shuffling towards me.

Then I froze.

(What are you doing, Bonnie? Fucking move!)

The figure’s head was tilted slightly downward, not meeting mygze. It was a man, as far as I could tell. His torso and abdomen were a sickening breed of gaunt, with ribs protruding through a stained white tank top and legs shrouded in oppressive baggy jeans. His manic eyes bulged out of his pale skull like glassy tuscan marbles, and darted between my face, his shivering hands, and the register through the window (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse? sec How Heroin Addiction Occurs).

“D’you have any m-money, ma’am?” he stammered, baring a set of crumbling teeth hanging off blood-red gums.

And then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t terrified anymore. I knew this man. He was my mother, my father, my high school English 39

Alex McCullough teacher, my friend Luke from middle school, and the cashier we’d just seen—a junkie. A pitiful, wretched addict that wouldn’t know the difference between gold piss and ricin as long as it’s flowing through a needle and into his veins. I didn’t know whether to feel any particular emotion other than anger, but one thing was for sure: I certainly wasn’t giving him any money.

“I’m not giving you anything,” I spit.

“P-please!”

“Fuck off, asshole!”

His manic eyes narrowed and peered directly into mine, examining me and my weaknesses, likely, and whether or not I would be an easy target to rob in that moment. Suddenly, I was in the danger zone. I instinctively flexed my fingers and extended my arms outward, preparing to defend myself should the junkie strike. One would think, with the mother I had, I would’ve learned how to navigate the psyche of a heroin addict, but I felt totally, completely unprepared. Epinephrine flooded my nerves. It was fight or flight.

“Stop!”

I snapped my head to a voice on my left. Aaron was running from the sidewalk down the hill, his eyes livid and index finger pointed at the junkie.

“Bitch!” the junkie screeched. In that moment, I was distracted and vulnerable. He wrapped his hands around my waist and thrust me backward. My ankles buckled. My heels slid forward, scraping the concrete in a long, grating shriek.

And then I fell.

Snap.

40

“ In the 80s and early 90s, there was so little pain

medicine prescribed… Now, the pendulum has kind of swung the other way.

”

Kathleen Kane-Willis

(Thomas sec Misunderstandings About Prescription Drugs)

Figure 9. Memet. Patient, Computer Icons, Physician, Black and White, Standing. Kiss PNG, www.kisspng.com/png-patient-computer-icons-broken-arm-2533516/. Accessed 20 Mar. 2019.

III

BALLAD OF THE MASON COUNTY HOSPITAL

Figure 10. “Abandoned California Hospital (With Power).” YouTube, uploaded by Exploring With Josh, 11 July 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0s1UGEsNA0. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER THREE Ballad of the Mason County Hospital

My eyes drifted open to the sound of shoes scuffing against clean, clinical linoleum with purposeful haste toward the nearest pertinent emergency and telephones shrieking like undead heralds of the incoming information. Beyond the open doorway, the world ran through cycles. Doctors migrated from room to room, transporting with them the gift of life and donating them with benefaction to the ailing patients strapped to the beds in those rooms. The patients often took the gifts with pious gratitude, but occasionally there would be a cracked sob that pierced the air and I knew one patient rejected the gift and pursued the firmament above instead. The doctors moved to the next room and the cycle persisted. But within the door the air was still. My field of vision was comparable to legal blindness, but I was still able to make out two figures standing caddy-corner to the foot of the bed. The rest of the room was just blurry pastel circles dancing over my eyes.

“Bonnie?” one of the figures said meekly, propelling himself closer to me and looking into my barely-open eyes. The other figure hunched over and began scribbling something on a clipboard.

My immediate surroundings sharpened after a few moments, revealing an assortment of tubes and wires and clips and plastic emerging from my person and traveling up to a conglomerate of machinery arching above the bed. It seemed superfluous27 at the time, but the excess of technological aid was all the more comforting, at least for me. The rhythmic sonar emitting from my heart monitor lulled and quickened as my visibility continued to shift.

“Hello?” the figure spoke, louder this time to ascertain my spiritual whereabouts. “Bonnie, are you awake?”

My hands began to twitch as consciousness flooded ito my fingertips. I bobbed my head to the left, and my hand was resting limply on the bedsheet and bearing no more than a couple decent scrapes along my ulna. The coat of gold-speckled nail polish I’d put on ear45

Alex McCullough lier that day was still mostly intact. I bobbed my head to the right, and my entire forearm was encased in a blue gauze and plaster fortress against which my skin rubbed with rash abrasiveness.

“Where is… my arm?” I murmured with an impaired slur.

“Bonnie, are you awake?” one of the figures inquired, though I couldn’t discern which. “Can’t she hear us?”

“My arm’s gone…”

“Your arm’s not gone, Bonnie, it’s still there.” The statement emerged from the figure on the left, whose voice was significantly deeper than the other’s. “It’s in a cast.”

“Cast…” I mimicked.

“Well, she can obviously hear us.” The figure closest to me stood up and marched toward the other with determined curiosity. “What the hell are you writing?”

“It’s a record of patient responses, Jack, now please walk away.”

“Jack!” I shouted, hearing a familiar name. “Hi!” “What is she on?” Jack’s—the figure on the right—jabs were sharp like caustic chemical cleaner. “Bonnie, can you hear me?”

I didn’t respond.

“Bonnie?” the other man—I assumed he was the doctor—inquired, feigning concern.

I hesitated a moment. “Yes.” “Okay, then let’s begin.”

My vision had nearly been restored to its original caliber. Jack was standing meekly beyond the foot of my bed, tracing his finger along the metal frame and periodically shifting his glance toward the clock above the door. Next to him stood a tall, gruff man adorned with navy blue scrubs. His head and face were completely devoid of hair, and he wore dirty tennis shoes with broken soles that encased two large, wool-sock-clad feet. I followed his hollow eyes as he examined my upper body and gauged my wellness, while likely also staring at my chest.

“I’m Dr. Tom Ward of the orthopedics department here at Mason County,” he said flatly, with a startling absence of the trademark southern twang I’d become acclamated to. One would be hardpressed to find an Ambrose resident who dared identify with the South, but after spending eight years in Virginia the resemblance was clear even if rejected. “Can you move your fingers on your right hand?”

“Fingers,” I mumbled, wiggling each finger consecutively starting with my pinky. Once I reached my ring finger, a sharp pain burst into my hand and started searing up to my elbow, but I remained silent. “Fin. Gers.”

“Good.” He dropped his gaze back to the clipboard and scanned 46

Nosedive through my chart while Jack peered at it from behind. “How are you feeling?”

“My arm’s gone.”

“Your arm is not gone, Mrs. Sutton.”

“It’s gone!”

“You have a closed fracture in your right radius.”

“Peachy!” I groaned. “Peach, peach, peachy…”

“Bonnie…” Jack warned me before redirecting his attention back to Dr. Ward, his tone as sharp as a butterknife. I resented how little he seemed to acknowledge me with any attitude besides disdain, as if I were the sole arbiter of my own condition. “Only the radius?

That’s fortunate.”

“Very fortunate.” Dr. Ward smiled cheekily with artifical flamboyance. “You are currently being supplied morphine to help with the pain of your injury (Adult Forearm Fractures sec Pain Management). Try moving your wrist.”

I swiveled my left wrist with ease and left the other one steady.

“Morphine…”

“Bonnie, please,” Jack urged.

“Yummy, yummy, yummy.”

His face bore the vibrant rose hue of hideous embarrasment at my clearly delusional state, which was a chromatic contrast to the baby blue scrubs he still wore from his shift in the O.R. He must have just recently been out of surgery, for there was some minor blood spatter on his left breast. I recalled part of the conversation we’d had that morning; he had been talking incessantly about a gastric bypass he was assisting on that day, but I was occupied by the more-pertinent vomit stains in my mother’s duvet I was desperately scrubbing at with bleach and a dirty dish rag. Perhaps it was dismissive of me to ignore him—he was always very attentive when I had issues in need of solutions—but I wasn’t in any particular mood to allow him to occupy my sphere of responsibility any more than necessary. That attitude hardly changed from morning to night, from healthy to injured. “I’m sorry, Tom. She’s not really of her best self right now.”

“It’s not an issue. And please call me Dr. Ward, Jack.” I trilled with exaggerated laughter, while he continued: “No signs of nerve damage, extraneous tenderness, or risks of bone infection. Very lucky.”—he looked up from the clipboard—“You will be required to wear a cast for at least several weeks before I may recommend you a physical therapist (Adult Forearm Fractures sec Rehabilitation). I expect that you’ll be returning frequently for x-rays and examinations to make sure the bone sets properly (Adult Forearm Fractures sec Nonsurgical Treatment).”

“Is that the final offer, Doctor?” Jack said with an effeminate 47

Alex McCullough concern hugging his voice. He tapped his feet in quick, successive rhythms on the linoleum and tightened his grasp on the bed frame, rubbing the pole as if he were trying to induce rug burn. “I feel like that’s… uh, just a bit expensive.”

“We have money,” I exclaimed. It was the only coherent statement I’d made since waking up, which meant the morphine’s effects must have begun to wane. “A lot of it, too. Rich bitches take on Detroit!”

“Bonnie, let me take care of it,” Jack said warningly.

“It’s mostly covered by insurance, so you needn’t worry, Mr. Sutton.” Dr. Ward’s cheery tone had reached a point of pure artifice that had begun to sound grating in my ears, as if his job depended on sustaining such a sickeningly broad grin (Robbins para 11). “However, if you opt out of the continual checkups—which is totally at your discretion, by the way!—you risk infection or chronic pain.

But, of course, that’s all a suggestion.”

“All a suggestion, Jack!” I squealed, beaming. Jack pinched the bridge of his nose and turned away as Dr. Sutton wrote quickly on his clipboard. “So what about my arm?”

“Well, it needs time to heal, of course. For a couple weeks, you may be experiencing some pain, but that can all be mediated with over-the-counter pain relievers. Motrin, Tylenol, or, my personal favorite”—he winked salaciously—“ibuprofen!”

He continued discussing extraneous matters with Jack while my attention drifted toward the orange light that had begun soaking the pallid28 room in opulent gold. The storm had passed, and left the sky painted with streaks of tangerine and apricot watercolor weaving between the dissapated clouds. I always adored the sunsets in Ambrose for two primary reasons. Firstly, the mountains of West Virginia, regardless of the misery trapped between them, always struck me as perfectly harmonious with the sun and the sky, and for several minutes spread across the ten hours of daylight per day, the view beyond the city skyline was exquisitely picturesque. The sun’s lonely descent below the horizon was one of these minutes.

Secondly, I had always been a night owl. It always appeared ridiculous to me that anyone would fear the dark as much as I feared the day. Night was comfortable, night was all-consuming, night was timeless. In my youth, the sunset was both an intricately profound painting in the sky and a green light for me to quietly tiptoe through the front door, out of my mother’s sight, and flee. Despite nearly always ending up at Speedway, I never really had a destination in mind each time I felt the cold embrace of the evening air; I more-orless gravitated like a refugee toward the place that crossed my mind whenever I thought “safe.” Speedway was an obvious asylum for kids like me looking for refuge from the domestic apocalypse that 48

Nosedive ravaged our day homes—it had food, shelter from extreme weather, and a warmhearted Jewish manager whose caring demeanor and strict abstinence from drugs comprised everything we could want in a father.

Then, when the sun would rise and the next day would begin, I would retreat home with only shame and despair to carry on my aching back. Perhaps I would arrive home before my cracked-out mother did and crawl into bed as if I’d never left; perhaps she’d greet me at the door with a swift passing of her bony fist into my skull, and, later, an afternoon of cleaning my own blood out of the carpet with a homemade bandage keeping my brain matter from falling out would ensue (Gil para 1).

I looked at the window again. The sky was consumed with darkness, with only a sliver of the remaining golden sunlight resting on the mountaintops and slowly sinking downward. My reprieve was nearly over.

“Only ibuprofen?” Jack said accusatorily, attracting my attention.

“I think her pain is a bit more severe than that.”

Dr. Ward stepped closer to Jack and spoke softly in his ear. I couldn’t discern what he was saying, but a glacial sneer had taken the place of his teeth-baring grin. After a few seconds, Jack pulled away abruptly and stared down Dr. Ward with a scrutinizing glare.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Jack spit, retaining a fairly illegible expression that left me unable to fill in the blanks of their argument.

Instead of making an effort to ascertain such semantics, I stared blankly at the curtains, allowing myself to become rhapsodized29 with childlike stupefaction by the baby-blue velvet material. It was the only distinct splash of color in the otherwise milquetoast pastel room. The curtains whispered to me in a fluid chorus of warm, silky voices.

(Hello, Bonnie.)

“Where am I?” I responded aloud.

Dr. Ward looked at me with arched eyebrows and holstered hands as Jack slowly approached me. “Bonnie, you’re in the hospital.”

(You’re home, of course!)

“This isn’t my home!” I said, trilling with laughter.

“No, hospital.” Jack cocked his head. “Are you okay?”

(This is your home, Bonnie! Aren’t you comfortable?)

“Well, not really.”

“You’re not okay?” Jack looked at Dr. Ward for help, with no concrete response.

(Are you happy?)

“I’m not sure what that means.”

“Maybe she needs to be taken off the morphine,” Dr. Ward said, 49

Alex McCullough marching purposefully to the conglomerate of stringy IV tubes stemming from my left arm.

(These are velvet curtains. Don’t they look soft?)

“Sure, they do.”

(Your mother never had curtains like these, did she?)

“No, she didn’t even have curtains!”

“Bonnie?” Jack whimpered, his voice wavering. “Who are you talking to? What are you talking to?”

(What’s your favorite color?)

“I don’t think I could say.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Jack, Dr. Ward warned, “she’s clearly experiencing delusions.

Do not disturb her. They will pass.”

(Of course you can. You’ve known all along.)

“Fuck her delusions!” Jack cried. “Bonnie!”

“Baby blue!” I shrieked, immediately feeling an immense weight ascend from my chest. “My favorite color is baby blue!”

“Bonnie!”

(Of course, Bonnie. Welcome home.)

“Bonnie!”

“Yes, Jack?”

I was suddenly alert and, oddly, much calmer than Dr. Ward, who was yanking frantically at the IV tube dispensing morphine into my veins, and Jack, whose wild eyes darted between me to the doctor as he searched for answers in my endlessly nodescript expression. For a moment, neither Jack nor Dr. Ward spoke, and the room was cast under a weakly-suspended silence only interrupted by the periodic shriek of a telephone and the distant pulses of monitors and miscellaneous medical machinery.

After thirty seconds, I looked at Jack, and then back at the blue velvet tapestry hanging over the dark, empty window.

“I love those curtains.”

He tried to speak, but only produced a couple guttural noises and paced back toward the door, his hands rubbing against his temples and intertwining with his tattered blond hair. It was clear he wasn’t used to—nor would he ever become used to—this lack of control.

Dr. Ward brushed his hands agitatedly at his scrubs and fumbled around for his clipboard.

“This is likely an atypical30 reaction to the morphine, and nothing more,” he said, though I was sure he knew something neither Jack nor I did, which filled me with unexpressable anger. He continued to lie. “Patients under morphine experience delusional episodes all the time.”

“She’s never done this before,” Jack said with disbelief.

50

“I can assure you that this is completely normal.” Then, with a stark shift in tone from nervous to cheery: “Would you like a complementary pass for custom-order room-service meals for a year, courtesy of Mason County Hospital (Robbins para 10)? For your troubles!”

“I didn’t know we did that,” Jack murmured, plastering his hands on his waist. “Do I have to do that?”

“It’s part of the patient satisfaction program they’ve been implementing,” Dr. Ward said, moving toward the bureau beneath the TV and fishing around in the drawers for a writing medium and utensil.

“Didn’t they tell you this? You’re a nurse.”

“I’m kinda new, so maybe I missed out.”

“You might want to look into that; you wouldn’t want your salary to start depleting because you pissed some patient off.”

“Maybe I will.”

Dr. Ward emerged from the bureau wielding a pen and hospital stationery. He scribbled messily on the paper and, five seconds later, Jack was holding it in his hands while I read it over his shoulder.

MASON COUNTY HOSPITAL 229 E Main St. Ambrose, WV 25550 United States of America +1 (304) 544-9920 help@mchservice.org

Patient: Bonnie Sutton Pass: Cust om Order Room S ervice one year Re deem atreception de sk by main entrance.

Dr. Thom as J. Ward, M.D.

you’re in good hands with us!

“Neat handwriting,” I remarked facetiously. “Thank you!”

“It’s my pleasure! You will be discharged in about an hour.” Dr. Ward beamed, grabbed his clipboard, and strutted out of the room.

51

Alex McCullough Jack and I remained in the sterile area, neither of us able to meet the other’s eye out of embarassment. Jack’s hysteria and my delusional episode were hardly desireable reflections of the normalcy we intended. I used my unbroken hand to adjust the plush duvet, which was close to falling on the floor.

“Hey, are you okay?” he asked, sitting down on the end of the bed.

“You scared me today.”

I smiled weakly. “I’m spectacular.”

• • • The drive home was dark and empty, with only the monotony of cornfield after cornfield and barren trees illuminated in the moonlight to keep my racing mind grounded. My skull vibrated against the window as the wheels of Jack’s yellow pickup truck rolled over the dilapidated asphalt river, catching every crack, fissure, and pothole beneath the sturdy, albeit vocal, tires. Jack’s stoic31 gaze on the road was broken only by frequent concerned glances at me. This was an uninvited energy, I would suppose—as if I were going to use the five-second intervals between each glance to leap out of the window and run into the freedom housed within the corn—but I was much too tired to care. Besides the occasional muffled cough and pothole slam, the ride was consumed in a dead silence that hung aloft in the thin, air-conditioned air.

We were passing through a roundabout when Jack broke the silence.

“Do you trust me?”

I looked at him woundedly, like a dying animal staring down their hunter as they take their terminal breath. The morphine had almost completely worn off, but so did the numbness that cooled the conflagration32 roaring in my arm. Eventually the fire became impossible to ignore, and I ended up using my left hand to manually subjugate33 the blaze until it was merely a dull roar.

“Of course,” I responded.

“I hope so,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road. We exited the turn onto another highway, driving steadfast into the dark infinity.

“I need you to trust me.”

“Fuck off, Jack,” I muttered. I felt his eyes turn to me, and in an unusual moment I was unable to precisely picture his expression. I continued regardless. “‘I need you to trust me.’ What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Bonnie…” he grumbled, swerving the car quickly away from a fissure in the road. “Can’t we have one adult conversation without you swearing at me?”

52

Nosedive “Answer the question.”

“I mean, really? Do you really need to swear at everything I say?

It was a basic question.”

“So is mine. Answer it.”

“I…” I’d never seen him try so hard to win one of our arguments with ration and reason before; usually he would walk away, nose pointed high in the air, when he knew he was going to lose. I never believed I would prefer it that way, but there we were. “What I mean is… I sometimes feel like you… just… don’t have faith in us!”

“What do you mean, ‘have faith in us?’ I’m here, am I not? How do I show more faith than that?”

“No, you don’t understand, you really don’t. Bonnie, you don’t trust me at all. You have no faith in me as a person—as your husband!—as anything! You live in your own fucked-up pity party and don’t let anyone help you but then complain that no one helps you!

You don’t trust anyone, and I was at least hoping you would have faith in me to help you, but apparently not.”

“Make me have faith, then,” I spit, my voice frigid. “Have faith in me. Trust me!”

“Do you trust Dr. Ward?”

I paused a second, baffled by the lack of context for the question posed. “Fuck, Jack, he’s my doctor, I sure hope so.”

“I don’t trust him.” A jolt in the road, a stream of acid up and down my forearm, and a contorted wince. “He’s unprofessional.”

“Jesus…” I groaned, more towards my arm rather than Jack’s asinine comment. My mind was aflutter with hot flashes of the industrial-sized bottle of ibuprofen in the backseat, snug in the folds of the plastic bag bespeckled with blue calligraphy. I imagined the tangerine pills cascading from the mouth of the bottle and falling gently into my hands.

Sting.

(Fuck!)

“I mean, the lack of ethical humility is just… terrifying.”

(Holy fuck!)

“He should be fired.”

Suddenly, the pain disappeared as quickly as it appeared. I looked down at myself. My left arm was plunged four inches into the mouth of my cast and tugging at the plaster while simultaneously squeezing my broken bones. For a harrowing moment, I feared I was the one who was stimulating my own pain. I withdrew my arm and set it beside myself, shaming it for propagating34 its own demise.

“Why do you care?” I said, diverting my attention back to Jack’s tangent.

“I don’t want you to be in the wrong hands. You need the best lev53

Alex McCullough el of care possible, and I don’t think the bald-headed Big Bird-looking twit in that hospital room is a good doctor for you! How could you not see how unprofessional he was acting?”

“Oh, Jack!” I exclaimed farcically. “You see, if you haven’t noticed, Jack, my arm here?”—I held up my right hand, and ignored the brief shot of pain for the sake of the performance—“Yeah, it’s broken. And Dr. Ward—a doctor!—is getting paid with pretty green dollars, yes, to fix it! He could shit on the floor and fling it at the window for all I fucking care! He has a medical degree for a reason, doesn’t he?”

“He was inappropriate, Bonnie,” Jack said, suddenly docile; he clearly foresaw how the conversation was going to end and made a weak attempt to balance brevity with victory. The neon red of the Speedway loomed in the distance. He would have to work fast.

“You shouldn’t have to go through that.”

“Stop treating me like a child, Jack. You know I can’t stand you when you treat me like a child.”

“I’m treating you like my wife. You deserve respect. You deserve the world.”

Then he added: “This town is getting to you.”

(This town is getting to you.)

(This town is getting to me.)

I could have killed him for that.

Two-and-a-half minutes of dead, festering quiet later and we had reached my mother’s driveway. He hadn’t even stopped the car before I threw the passenger door open and slammed it shut, marching steadfast into the house.

“Bonnie, talk to me!” Jack cried as he scrambled audibly to climb out the car door and catch up to me. “I didn’t mean to say that!”

I ignored his futile pleads for clemency35. Frankly, it would be a while before I acknowledged his pathetic apologies, but that wasn’t even the primary focus of my mind in that moment. Wielding the plastic bag containing the bottle of ibuprofen in my left hand, I threw the front door open and stomped loudly into the hallway. In the living room, Emily sang noisily along with Mickey Mouse, who danced entrancingly on the tiny television screen perched in the far corner of the room. I ignored her. My mother yelled from her bedroom for me to bring her her soup and promptly began lamenting how late I was returning home. I ignored her, too. All that mattered to me was the door into the hall bathroom, centered between two four-foot flanks of crumbling wall and another two ten-foot egresses leading into the living room—right—and the kitchen—left. They all faded into nothing as the bathroom door beckoned me into submission. In that moment, I bowed to no master but the bathroom 54

Nosedive door.

Inside the bathroom, a new set of objects lost their place in my mindâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the mucky shower, the piss-stained toilet, the dirty medicine cabinet, the peeling wallsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and all that remained was the sink, and, more specifically, the faucet.

I flung my hand at the nozzle and water gushed out. Despite knowing in some recess of my mind that the tap water in Ambrose was historically unhealthy for civilian consumption, the water appeared pristine in my delusional fog, and sparkled like wild dandelions soaring through a sprawling prairie in the crux of a summer sunset, the sky bathed in broad strokes of butterscotch and lavender.

(Oh, what a gorgeous sunset!)

I held the bottle loosely in my right hand and let a couple capsules fall into my left. With the water faucet on and rushing, I dumped the pills into my throat and bent down to take a few copious sips.

I felt the pain lift from my arm and soar far, far away before the pills even descended my throat, like an evil-doing crow fleeing a crime scene before the media hurricane begins to spin.

(Hello, old friend!)

55

“ In the United States today, [poverty] doesn’t

necessarily mean children starving in the streets and homeless people, although they are a small part of the poverty story… It is more about struggling, and running up debts, and cutting corners and all sorts of those things because of economic pressure.

”

Shawn Fremstad (Bingham para 12)

Figure 11. Assorted Pill Bottles. Etsy, www.etsy.com/hk-en/listing/509908579/pill-bottle-svgpill-bottle-clipartpills. Accessed 20 Mar. 2019.

IV

WE CAN NEVER TRULY CHANGE

Figure 12. Russell, Jim. “What the Rust Belt Can Teach Us about White Flight, Gentrification, and Brain Drain.” Pacific Standard, Social Justice Foundation, 6 Oct. 2015, psmag.com/economics/what-the-rust-belt-can-teach-us-about-white-flight-gentrificationand-brain-drain. Accessed 6 Mar. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER FOUR We Can Never Truly Change

It had been seven weeks since I broke my arm when I saw Grace for the first time in eight years.

At my mother’s behest, I was to mend the cracks in our family which I had so ingraciously caused—she put it more colloquially— and the first step of this process was to reconcile with my sister. The summer was beginning to approach that muggy, melancholy phase in which the heat waves were visible against the buildings and the hoods of cars were scorching enough to fry eggs and unfortunate forest rodents. I left on an early August afternoon, on Saturday so Jack could stay and watch Emily, with extra sunscreen, my wallet, an inconspicuous wad of cash, and my jumbo-sized bottle of ibuprofen in my embroidered “B.S.” purse—a very appropriate purchase.

I needed a new cast. The novelty of having it signed by friends and sanctimonious36 acquaintances pretending to care about your injury wears off the older you get, and casts, for the uneducated, are very bland and dull without the multicolor signatures. It was beginning to itch, too, and the pain had become more amorphous37 in consistency. Now I would be in public, fine one moment and chugging three or four ibuprofen in the middle of the street as terrified civilians watched on the next. Thankfully, Ambrose was one of those cities where no one is so pristine a soul they can safely judge another, so I didn’t pay it much mind. I could foresee the pain getting worse, but at that moment, it was still fairly mild. When Jack advised that I call Dr. Ward to schedule an appointment, I rejected his advice. Dr. Ward needn’t waste his invaluable time on a whiny suburban mom with practically nonexistent symptoms.

However, in those seven weeks, I did go to one checkup. About a week after the injury, I asked Dr. Ward if it was normal to still feel intense pain in my arm even after taking ibuprofen, and he dismissed it as “quite, quite normal” and immediately discharged me. I left the hospital in a giddy mood that day, unable to help but admire 59

Alex McCullough the beautiful daisies they had planted in the beds dicing the parking lot—pure white, innocent, and forgiving—and the faint glimmering of sun peeking from behind the inevitable storm clouds resting on the West Virginia mountaintops. There was a very purposeful beauty about that hospital; it wasn’t so sterile as it was homely, and not so clinical as it was welcoming. It felt like bathing in the light of a warm hearth as it rocked me into tranquility and whispered sweet nothings into my ear. I had never felt so at home than when I was lying in that plush, fertile bed (Robbins para 1).

“Make sure you give ‘er the cash, Bonnie,” my mother hollered after me as I exited the front door. “Her boyfriend needs it!”

“Will do, Momma!” I hollered back.

(Fucking bitch.)

As I drove along the desolate avenue into downtown, the mid-summer stench of manure was particularly rancid38. Along every corner flanked a solid group of two or three homeless veterans, schoolteachers, or other assorted people-of-need with signs and tins that all read the same trite plea for money, money, and more money. To a non-resident, this was a depressing tableau that elicited a drop of a quarter or a dollar or five dollars—depending on how benevolent39 the donor would have felt at the moment—but I knew better.

Filthy drug addicts desperate for a fix, they all were. No veteran or schoolteacher would ever let heroin consume them inside out like that; they were dopesick, wretched liars and nothing more. I felt so little sympathy for them it almost seemed cruel. My favorite aspect of these displays was that every single person was, like me, unmistakably, unforgivingly, unapologetically white (Achenbach para 9).

Go figure.

I breezed past every intersection in my mother’s ancient and nearly dead jalopy while peering at the numbers perched above every building’s door. Grace lived on the corner of Jefferson Street and Portsmouth Avenue in an apartment above the local white-hair eatery Chez Laverne, which had been established at a particularly rough point in the Ambrose economy and was perpetually stuck in the rut of being too expensive for millennials and too chic for my mother’s generation. The inside was almost always empty, yet the place remained open on the basis of “future prospect,” according to my mother—”What fuckin’ ‘future prospect’ they think they’re pullin’? They tryin’ to bring the fancy from New York into my town?

Nobody from New York comin’ to goddamned Ambrose, West Virginia. They wouldn’t last a damn day. You born here, you die here.

Tha’s just the way it goes (Segedy para 29).” I didn’t fight that battle. I knew better.

The inside of Chez Laverne struck me initially as plainly, simply, 60

Nosedive undisputably perfect. It was starkly immaculate compared to the litter-stricken streets and old, unkempt buildings surrounding it; so clean and so undisturbed it unnerved me, making me feel the need to take my shoes off or brush the dirt off my overcoat. Not a single soul inhabited the room, save for an employee standing on a stool in the corner, navigating cigarette smoke into the air vent. I could see a low-budget director shooting a survivalist film there, with someone like Katherine Heigl or Christina Hendricks playing the impossibly attractive and unforgivingly demure female lead with an inferiority complex, who is forced to overcome her abnormally large breasts to fight the invading alien race. Ambrose would be the perfect setting—surely no extensive CGI budget would be needed to create the illusion of a small town ravaged by the apocalypse. I bid the thought farewell and directed myself towards the narrow staircase behind the dining area.

Up the stairs I climbed, feeling along the peeling, tattered walls to keep myself grounded in the space. I couldn’t imagine anyone above two hundred pounds being able to safely navigate the staircase without putting more holes and dents in the plaster. Above me, a single lightbulb dangled four feet below the ceiling and five feet above my head, swinging lightly and spreading its dim glow along the tall, dark staircase.

“Bonnie?” a voice squeaked from above. “That you?”

Grace’s head appeared from an open doorway perched upon a small landing connecting another narrow flight of stairs leading up to the third floor. I maneuvered past the chipped walls quickly, narrowly escaping the feeling that they were about to collapse inwards and suffocate me in a heap of wood, paint flakes, and dead rodents.

Grace nervously motioned for me to enter the apartment. “Sorry it’s such a mess righ’ now.”

The space was unforgivably small and likely should not have been humanely considered an apartment. The living room was about as wide as a moderately large walk-in closet, with nothing but a small television, a plaid couch covered in knife slashes and bullet holes, and a Polaroid photo of Grace and her boyfriend—I assumed—to occupy the space. Beyond that, all that remained to be looked at was the piles and piles of dirty clothes, shoes, takeout bags, and miscellaneous trash immersing the carpeted floor in a plastic sea. Behind the living room was a barren kitchenette with numerous food stains on the cabinets and linoleum floor and even remnants of broken glass strewn about the counters. There was a bedroom somewhere I couldn’t locate, and a bathroom off the kitchen with the lights on and door locked. Everywhere I looked was another layer of dirt and trash and clothes and grime and despair, as if a dumpster had been 61

Alex McCullough unloaded and shot through a confetti gun.

“Yeah. It’s really not good. I been cleanin’ it this weekend, I swear.”

I looked at Grace woundedly. She was standing in the doorway, crossing her arms tight over her chest. Her figure had seldom changed since she was twelve; she still had the same gaunt, sickly figure and empty eyes, except now with smudged pink lipstick and viscous40 eyeliner masking the wrinkles of her wounded soul. I took special notice of the sangria bruise on her temple. She still had the same modest, reserved aura about her, but now it seemed even more broken and tormented than it used to; I was acutely aware that she hadn’t made the same effort to dissemble41 her accent as I had.

“Chris’s in the bathroom,” she said as she paced across the living room, nudging clothes with her foot and keeping a fastidious eye on the couch.

“Is he your boyfriend?” I asked.

“Jus’ a guy I know,” she said quickly. It was clear she was desperate to reject such a committment-oriented label. In the kitchen, a large cloud of black smoke billowed above a pot on the stove. “Shit, my landlord’s gonna kill me if I set off the alarm again!”

“You’ve burned your food multiple times?” I smirked. She shuffled toward the stove and started fanning the smoke away with her tight yarn shawl before it could reach the alarm near the ceiling.

“Maybe cooking isn’t your venue.”

“Why do you think we get takeout so much?” she remarked callously, gesturing to the oyster boxes scattered throughout the room.

“What’s with the cast?”

“Oh, I, uh… got in a fight.” It was at least a partially true answer.

“Some junkie attacked me at the Speedway on Main.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Bon.” She put the lid on the pot and migrated back toward me, rubbing her hands along her slender forearms. “Don’ even get me started on the addicts in this town. It’s gotten even worse, somehow, since you left (Thomas para 7). Everyone’s an addict now, to some extent. And if you ain’t one now, jus’ give it a couple months. Soon we’ll all be zombies wand’rin’ through the streets.”

I laughed and sat in a feeble-looking dining chair, measuring its weight capacity by how loud it creaked. Grace took a bottle of white wine out of the fridge and poured two glasses for herself and me, set mine on the table, and downed hers in one whole swig. As I looked around, familiar sights came back to me in staggering increments42.

A yearbook in the corner, old and worn; a photo album opened to pictures of Grace and my mother; numerous empty prescription bottles littered among the other trash. I shivered nervously in my seat 62

Nosedive as Grace sat across from me.

“So what’s been goin’ on with you, Bon?” she asked warmly. “I haven’t seen you in forever!”

“Well, you know Jack, right?”

“Jack?” She cocked her head. “Like, Jack Carranor, our quarterback?”

I cocked my head back. “No.” “I don’ think you mean John Raster? He might’ve gone by Jack in, like, elementary school, but he’s John now. I think he moved to Illinois, but I ain’t quite sure–” “No, Grace, I mean Jack, my husband.”

“Husband?” She frowned slightly. “You got married?”

“Yes?” “When?!”

“Like, four years ago!” I shouted, my jaw slightly ajar. “Did you really not know? I swore I invited you.”

“No, I never received no invitation! You really got married and di’n’t even invite me to the weddin’!”

“Okay, Grace, I did invite you, you just never showed up.”

“Don’ lie to me, I’m sure I got no invitation.”

“Alright, well… regardless!” I stammered, realizing we had both been practically screaming at each other. “I got married. His name’s Jack Sutton, and we went to college together. Virginia, if you weren’t privy.”

“I know you went to Virginia, Bonnie,” she spit. “You told me already.”

“Well, I don’t know what I have and haven’t told you apparently, so forgive me!” I took a hefty sip of the wine and tapped my fingernails against the table, while Grace brushed her fingers through her auburn hair. “So you’re doing…?”

“Oh! I work at the, uh… the Old Navy on the corner of Shindle and Main. It’s kinda a step in the righ’ direction. I wanna go into sales.”

“Do you now?” I inquired, genuinely intrigued.

“Yeah. It’s kinda a dyin’ industry, but I’ve been takin’ classes at the community college—Mountwest, down by Buffalo Creek. It’s, like, an hour drive, but I think it’s worth it. I’m gonna take some classes in sales there, work my way up to manager at Old Navy, and then I’ll be able to move out. Eventually I wanna go to Cincinnati— the college college. I’ll major in somethin’ like marketin’ and then I’ll be gone. I’on really know what I’ll do after that, but that’s kinda jus’, like, my short-term plan.”

A sincere smile formed on my lips. “Grace, that’s really cool.

That’s much more ambition than I ever had at Virginia.”

63

Alex McCullough “Yeah, but you made it out the easy way.” She poured another glass of wine and swung it down in one shot. I was only mildly offended that she found my escape easy. “I gotta move outta this place first. I can’t do much here.”

“Grace, I believe in you.” I wrapped my fingers around hers and stared directly into her eyes, crystal like ice—they were her father’s.

“I know you! You can do this!”

“I hope so. I’m already twenty, and I’d really like to make it out in a year, but that’s jus’ wishful thinkin’. I turn twenty-one in January!”

Before I could remark with incredulity at how old she’d become since I last saw her, the bathroom door swung open and slammed into the cabinet, rattling the glassware in the cupboards and the dishes in the sink. From the doorway emerged a tall, grotesque, burly man, with greasy hair that fell in spruce-brown tangles onto his shoulder and an ample torso that threatened to chip holes in the doorframe as he stomped into the kitchen. He towered over the counters, sporting a gruff and angry face with wild caterpillars for eyebrows and a thick, patchy beard. As soon as Grace saw—or heard—him come out, she jumped from the table and rushed to his side, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her left hand amorously against his chest.

“Chris, come here,” Grace said, gesturing to me. Her voice had ascended four octaves and settled in a piercing, demure tone. “This is Bonnie, my sister. I don’t think you’ve met before?”

“Where’s my soup?” he grumbled, ignoring her.

“It’s on its way!” she exclaimed, rushing to the stove to pour another can into the pot. “It’ll be here soon, jus’ you wait!”

“I asked for soup an hour ago.”

“I’m sorry, Chris, I, uh… might’ve burned it.”

He snarled darkly and took Grace’s place at the table, swinging the open wine bottle above his throat, letting it drain like a sink faucet into his throat. He was wearing the signature purple shirt for James M. Barnwell High School, with the insignia of a ferocious orange tiger tearing through the center stretched across his wideberthed chest; from his receding hairline and distinct leathery face, though, it was evident he hadn’t been to that high school in quite a while. As Grace nervously prepared his soup in the kitchen, I folded my hands together and stood my arms up by my elbows, scratching absentmindedly at my cast while Chris examined my breasts with a pair of beady yellow eyes. I would have slapped him across the skull if I weren’t so deathly afraid he would kill me if I did.

“Are you done?” he growled at Grace. His voice reverberated off the walls and shook the floor; I couldn’t have imagined what he 64

Nosedive sounded like when he screamed. “I have to leave.”

“Almost, Chris, I promise!” she chirped weakly.

I oscillated between looking nervously around my immediate vicinity—anywhere but Chris’ gaze—and shooting glances of empathy at Grace in the kitchen. Eventually I remembered my secondary purpose for visiting the apartment that day and began digging around in my purse. Once I felt the familiar touch of cotton paper, I withdrew my arm wielding the wad of cash my mother had given to me and threw it onto the table.

“My mother asked that I give you this,” I said plainly, in a way that couldn’t possibly be interpreted as overtly inviting or aggressive.

“Mother?” He turned his chin to the ceiling as he probed his memories. “Wha’s her name?”

“Mary Lambdin?”

“Oh, right!” His hand shot across the table and snatched the money, dragging it back to his person like a snake transporting an unfortunate mouse back to its hole in the ground to ravage with its blade-like teeth. “Grace, I’m leavin’.”

“Wait, Chris!” she called, leaving her station at the stove and chasing after him as he rose from the chair and marched to the door.

“Don’t you want your soup?”

“There’s no point in it now, I’m goin’ out.”

“But I made your–” “I SAID I’M FUCKIN’ LEAVIN’!” he hollered. The chinaware in the kitchen and sparse decor items in the living room rattled loudly as his voice bounced off the walls. Grace stood petrified in front of him, unable to move her arms and legs.

With that, Chris left through the door and slammed it behind him, muttering horrifically profane insults along the way.

“Grace…” I whispered, treading from the table to her. I wrapped my arms around her waist from behind and burrowed my face in her shoulders; her torso was cold to the touch and very tightly wound.

She squirmed slightly, but eventually discovered the comfort in genuine physical connection—something she must’ve never experienced before.

“Grace, I’m sorry.”

“It’s… fine.”

She removed herself from my grasp and walked back into the kitchen. The pot was emitting another cloud of black smoke that rose toward the ceiling with gusto and dissapated along the stucco.

The alarm in the corner of the wall remained silent.

“Guess my alarm’s broken.” She let out a frail, abridged43 laugh.

Her voice wavered as tears welled in her eyes. “My landlord’s gon65

Alex McCullough na freak.”

“Grace.”

“And the rent’s due next week, and I don’t know that Chris is gonna remember to pay it this time and I might have to do it outta pocket like last month, and–” “Grace!” I shouted.

She stopped talking and looked at me, her physiognomy four shades darker than usual and consumed with the strain of an eightyyear-old woman on her deathbed. I was almost afraid she’d start crying out of fear that I, too, would scream at her like Chris had.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Her tender face twitched as tears began to drip like blood from her puffy eyes. “Why do you live with him?”

“He… oh, Jesus.” She fanned at her face, trying desperately to stop crying. “He was this guy I met at Mountwest, he… he thought I was real pretty, and… I’on know… I needed a place to stay and he let me stay here rent-free as long as I… did stuff with him.” “‘Did stuff?’”

“Y’know…” she murmured, suddenly very ashamed. “Like… sex… stuff.”

I tilted my head, almost laughing. “So you’re letting this guy rape you so you can have a place to live?”

“Well…” Grace protested, suddenly meek and ashamed. “When you put it that way… it sounds bad. And it’s not rape if I let him!”

“Christ, Grace, why don’t you live with me and Momma?”

“I’m not gonna live with Momma!” Grace cried. “I can’t live with her, she… she won’t let me!”

“Why–” “Bon, when you left she… she got worse. So much worse! She’d start screamin’ at– at nothin’! And she’d throw things and… and I couldn’t bear it! I left as soon as I could, and I…”—she paced across the room toward the bedroom, gesturing wildly at the walls as if they housed the answers to all her problems—“I’on know how I managed before I met Chris but I did! And it’s not his fault he’s got anger issues ‘n such! He just has little episodes now and then, but he’s actually really nice! I jus’ can’t trust the man, tha’s all!”

(I can’t trust the man.)

“Tha’s all I’d change about him, anywho! His lies… all I want’s a man I can trust.”

(I need you to trust me, Bonnie.)

I saw Jack in my periphery, but I didn’t dare look him in the eyes.

From what I could discern, though, he was much larger than I remember; much taller, and with longer, darker hair.

“All men are really the same, once you get down to it!”

66

Nosedive (This town is getting to you.)

“Can I use your bathroom?” I asked abruptly, smiling sweetly. My palms had begun to sweat and were sticking to my thighs.

“Yeah, of course. You know where it is.” Grace pursed her lips and fell onto the couch, sinking into the cushions as she rubbed her temples. I turned on my heel and stumbled toward the bathroom as sharp jolt of fire shot up my arm.

(This town is getting to me.)

I shut the door softly. The bathroom was only marginally cleaner than my mother’s, with a single fluorescent beam bathing the sink in a pool of light and everything else shrouded in dense darkness. On the counter was a single orange vial onto which the industrial glow cast a sort of spotlight. The vial danced in its station of fame and glory, presenting itself with all the visibility and vulnerability of an opera singer. Or was I the singer? I approached the sink, listening as the symphony swelled with the turgid44 chords of a violent piano and the saccharide shrieks of a lofty viola, and suddenly I could see the performer in the mirror. I admired her grace and poise and her presence upon the sweeping stage, wondering how her set would conclude. Would she belt that final note with all her might, completing her journey with dignity and accolade45? Or would she slip between the cracks? Would she get lost in the cacophony of discordant cries from the symphony and never reach the resolution? Would she be resilient46 enough to see the skies part, or would she stay trapped in the storm forever and ever?

And ever…

(Hello, Bonnie!)

And then there was the vial. Within it, at least a hundred gleaming pills. I knew in my heart they were white, but oh, how they shone so blue in the fluorescent light!

How the baby blue so shone through.

“Who are you?” I asked aloud.

(Why, I’m you! And you are me! And together, we are the universe.)

“That doesn’t make sense. I’m here!”

(Oh, but are you so?)

“I’d like to believe that I’m here, and not wherever you are, if that’s what you’re asking.”

(If you are so human, then answer my question.)

“You didn’t ask a question.”

(Can mankind ever truly change?)

“Is that the question?”

(Can mankind ever truly change?)

“That’s a dumb question. I’d like another, please.”

67

Alex McCullough (Answer mine first.)

“No, it’s a stupid question!”

(It is not a stupid question. Stupid people ask stupid questions, and you are not stupid, Bonnie.)

“I beg to differ.”

(My question is the question. The question of the universe itself. It is not stupid; it is eternal.)

“I’ve literally no idea what you’re talking about.”

(That is okay. You are human; you shouldn’t know all the answers.)

“I would like to, though. Can’t you tell me all the answers?”

(No, I cannot. For I am you; I don’t know the answers, but I do know the questions.)

“I’m still not following you.”

(Let me paint you a picture. Humanity—civilization—is a million-year pet project of He whom you call God. We were intended to be the pioneers of the new world, but how have we achieved this intention? The answer is that we haven’t.)

“I disagree.”

(I do not disagree. All of human history has been the same recycling of the same primitive characteristics our ancestors had. War, genocide, disease, prejudice—nothing has changed from the dawn of the Neanderthals to now. We still act the same; we are still naïve; we are still so very flawed, no matter how advanced we think we are.)

“That’s not true at all. You’re speaking English, aren’t you?”

(Language is not an advancement of the human intellect; it is only a temporary solution to our divisions—our man-made divisions.

Maybe we found new ways to say “Hello,” but we have not found new ways to greet each other. We are still as divided as we have always been. All communication does is perpetuate what we’ve tried so hard to escape.)

“No… you’re wrong.”

(You are disillusioned, Bonnie. You live in a fantasy world, where your life is perfect and nothing is real. When will you get a grip on your reality?)

“My life is so far from perfect.”

(You are sick. You are diseased. You are flawed.)

“Stop it. Stop it now!”

(We are but a cycle of the same primitive characteristics. That is mankind, now and forever.)

“That means nothing to me!”

(We will forever remain static. We can never truly change.)

The vial tipped over and fell into the sink. I watched as it rolled along the ceramic walls, circling the drain.

68

Nosedive Could the singer ever brave the storm?

(We can never break the cycle.)

Or was she destined to succumb to the thunder?

(We can never truly change. We can never break the cycle.)

I grasped at the vial, squeezing it tight between my fingers. Inside, the pills jingled against the plastic walls.

(We can never truly change. We can never break the cycle.)

I never liked to admit how much I truly loved that sound.

(We can never truly change. We can never break the cycle.)

I took a single pill and held it up to the light. Baby blue. Such a beautiful, bright baby blue.

(We can never truly change. We can never break the cycle.)

I placed the pill meticulously on my tongue, but hesitated to swallow. Surely I could offer myself the reprieve and comfort of a painless few hours. Lightning struck in my arm. Time was running out.

Only once couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really hurt, right?

(We can never truly change. We can never break the cycle.)

The label on the side of the vial was printed clearly in serif type, the letters dancing crisply in single-file order, begging to be noticed; to be heard; to be read; to be loved.

OXYCODONE-ACETAMINOPHEN (We can never truly change. We can never break the cycle.)

I swallowed (Szabo para 1â&#x20AC;&#x201C;4).

(This town is getting to you.)

69

“ It’s to the point where you can get pain

medication as easily as you can get liquor. All you have to do is say, ‘I’m experiencing pain,’ and automatically, they’re going to give you pain medication to control that. You can use that doctor for probably a month or two before they catch on.

”

Thomas sec It’s Too Easy to Obtain Pain Medications

Figure 13. Hooton, Christopher. “Delivery Man Stumbles upon Abandoned Hospital, Fears Zombie Apocalypse.” Independent, 17 Jan. 2014, www.independent.co.uk/news/weird-news/delivery-man-stumbles-upon-abandoned-hospital-fears-zombie-apocalypse-9066765.html. Accessed 21 Mar. 2019.

V

WISHFUL THINKING

Figure 14. Hospital Silhouette. PNG Image, pngimage.net/hospital-silhouette-png-1/. Accessed 20 Mar. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER FIVE Wishful Thinking

I woke up screaming at the ceiling.

Around me, the bedroom was consumed by an even darker unknown than usual, with only the faint murberry glimmer of the impending sunrise to act as my weakening grasp on the tangible world.

My chest was hot as bile sizzled in my throat, and my head shivered with hot-cold flashes. But the most alarming sensation was that of a searing, billowing, merciless fire scorching my arm layer by layer.

“Jack!” I wailed after four seconds of writhing. “Jack, help!”

He wasn’t there. I would’ve become angry at this fact had my body not entered its fight-or-flight response—all emotions besides pain were completely obsolete. A sharp surge of pain swam from my fingertips up to my right shoulder, forcing me into a contorted pretzel-like shape on the bed. The bedsheets soared like vultures around me as my legs flailed uncontrollably.

“Momma!” It was worth a shot. “Momma, please, I need help!”

After a few seconds of screaming, my mother replied.

“Bonnie Elizabeth, what kind a’ nonsense are you babblin’ ‘bout now?!” she hollered from down the hall. The commotion had awoken Emily, whose screaming from her bedroom tore apart my inner ear like sharp razors on silk tapestry.

“Momma, God, help me, please!”

My arm was completely paralyzed, the fire singing my nerves and browning my skin. I jerked my head only to make sure I wasn’t actually on fire; I had begun to see a medallion glow on the ceiling, which was either an actual fire or just a figment of my wild, hallucinatory imagination. I rolled on my left side, careful to let my right arm hang aloft in the air, away from my body, and threw up over the edge of the bed. Between each retch onto the already stained carpet, I continued to scream, unable to contain the noise any longer. I felt embarrassed and ashamed I’d let my emotions control my actions, but, like I said, my brain had been shut down.

73

Alex McCullough What I was acutely aware of was that I would have to call 911; my mother’s distrust in the municipal government and, subsequently, emergency services ran far deeper than any compassion she could ever harbor for me. My head, dangling over the bed, fixated on the phone, hanging in midair, while my left hand squeezed desperately at my cast, trying to subdue the vicious roar festering in my bones.

Nothing worked. The cord connecting the phone to the wall was stretched taut over the end table, the phone suspended threateningly above the carpet. I pulled my left arm from the mouth of my cast and grasped at the cord, barely able to grasp it between my twitching fingers. It was in of itself a balancing act: whether I would be able to pull the phone up to the bed without snapping the cord was purely up to fate at that point.

I eventually managed to secure the phone in my hand. The buttons glowed beneath my fingers as I feebly flicked at the numbers. My arm continued to scream and writhe.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“I need an ambulance!” I croaked.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m just fixing for a fucking joyride in the wee-yoo wagon,” I spit callously. “Yes, I’m hurt!”

“Please remain calm, ma’am. An ambulance is on its way.”

I didn’t manage to remain entirely conscious after that brief interaction. Frankly, all I was able to retain in my nebulous memory were the paramedics lifting me onto a gurney and wheeling me into the ambulance. My mother stood behind them at the front door, wearing nothing but a sports bra and pink pajama shorts. She was screaming at the paramedics; I could only assume it had something to do with the exorbitant tax dollars she had to pay for their mediocre level of care, but my mind was a smidge too preoccupied to focus on the semantics of the scene she was making. Our neighbors were indubitably holed up in their homes, feigning polite concern but altogether choosing to mind their own business. I did not complain; I preferred it that way anyway.

Jack materialized on the ambulance ceiling as the vehicle began speeding east, toward the hospital. In hindsight, he couldn’t have possibly been there, but my mind was nothing if not an abstruse47 manifestation of the deep recesses of my thoughts. I supposed it was the price I had to pay for being so stubbornly impassive48. The apparition had a murky and gaseous and madly-grinning face that shifted and shook as the ambulance rolled over the bumpy streets with unmistakable realism.

(Bonnie, I’m afraid you’re more vulnerable than you could ever imagine.)

74

Nosedive The apparition spoke in a distinctly inhuman voice that rebounded around the ambulance walls. It words were strangely familiar.

(Don’t be a fool. You are destined to fall to the lightning.)

I laughed aloud. The paramedics glanced nervously at each other, equally vexed49 by their clearly insane patient.

“You are the fool,” I whispered aloud. “And I am the bright and luminous sky.”

Then all I could see was infinite black. It was quite okay; as I said, I’d grown to love the night too strongly to ever fear the dark.

• • • The murmuring of youthful voices lulled me from my comatose state. I was in a different room from my last visit, with the same baby-blue curtains framing the glass panes bespeckled with peach sunlight drizzling onto the floor. In the distance, I listened to the monotone hum of commuter buses and pedestrians traveling to their working-class day jobs. There was a distinct absence of the pungent heat of summertime, and in its place was the trademark early-autumn breeze of the West Virginia mountains; the end of September was on the horizon. But all that felt so nominal50 once I caught a glance of the IV tubes spindling like glass fibers out of my arm.

Before me, at the end of the bed, was a group of assorted interns in mint green scrubs peering studiously at their clipboards, occasionally shooting a quick glance at me before returning to their charts.

In the middle was Dr. Ward, who hunched over his clipboard like a child over an iPad. His mouth was moving, but all I heard was indistinguishable mumbles set against the whine of white noise in my ears.

It took several absentminded glances from the interns before they noticed my eyes were open and darting around the room.

“Mrs. Sutton, we’re glad to see you again,” Dr. Ward said with an empty smile, his lips pressed firmly together.

I produced a tired smirk. “Are you really?”

“No,” he said jokingly. The interns sniggered like immature children. “How does your arm feel?”

“Which one?”

“The broken one.” The farce in his voice was thick like congealed51 syrup. I didn’t mind it; I could’ve used a little humor in my otherwise harrowing day. “How does it feel?”

“Like it’s… being carved out with broken glass… and yet it’s also somehow… filled with concrete.”

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Ward said, referring to the interns, one of which was female and moderately annoyed at the address, “Mrs. Sutton 75

Alex McCullough came in nine weeks ago with a broken arm. Her bones were immediately set with a cast, she was prescribed ibuprofen to mitigate her pain, and she has not complained about any severe pain in those nine weeks… until now. Postulate what has happened to her.”

The intern on the far left, a mousy Japanese boy who had the distinct energy of an honors college graduate, immediately blurted, “Nerve damage (Adult Forearm Fractures sec Complications from Forearm Fractures)?”

“Possibly, but we have yet to take a CT scan, so we cannot know for sure.” Dr. Ward turned to the female intern immediately to his left. “What can we conclude about the progression of Mrs. Sutton’s injury, Miss Laura?”

“Dr. Unrein,” she spit in a scathing tone. I was beginning to like her. “Mrs. Sutton’s bone has likely failed to heal properly, leading to a stage of chronic pain. Given that this is a closed fracture, it’s probable that the bone wasn’t set properly when she switched from a splint to a cast and that it has since become, for lack of a better description, ‘rebroken.’ That, or it’s nerve damage, as Dr. Rhodes said before (Adult Forearm Fractures sec Complications from Forearm Fractures).”

“Well done, Miss Laura!” Dr. Ward exclaimed, feigning pride as Dr. Long rolled her eyes in disdain. “Mrs. Sutton, how long was it before you switched from a splint to a cast?”

“I don’t recall ever having a splint,” I said, my voice light and airy.

“You never received a splint?” Dr. Ward said. His brow arched like a mountaintop towering over his eyes. “So your fracture was immediately treated with a cast?”

“I believe so.” I cocked my head slightly. “You were my doctor, weren’t you? You would know best.”

He seemed a tad bewildered by my remark, but immediately stiffened his head with an iota of hubris and replied, “I’m sure my discretion fit the injury. In that case, I would assume nerve damage is the most probable cause of this resurgence of pain.”

“Shouldn’t you confirm with a CT scan?” I said, remembering all the information I’d gathered from Jack’s various medical anecdotes.

“There’s no need,” he assured. His face reassumed a disgruntled expression. “It takes too much time, and I doubt you would be content with those extravagant costs. I have other patients to see, anyway.”

“Well, is this going to be fixed?” I demanded. My voice, despite my efforts to sound commanding, was lofted in a girlish pitch.

“I’m afraid nerve damage is largely irreparable at this stage.” I felt my expression fill with chagrin. “Chronic pain is lifelong, but can fortunately be treated medicinally. The other option is amputation, 76

but–” “Amputation?!” I hollered. Dr. Long glared at Dr. Ward with disgusted umbrage52 while the other interns turned averted glances toward the walls and floor.

“Well, it is always an option,” he responded. “Most patients choose the medicinal route. Do you have a physical therapist?”

“Yes,” I said. “Dr. Findlay. I see him every two weeks—I suppose three times, now?”

“Heyworth Findlay!” Dr. Ward guffawed, shaking his head. The interns joined him in reluctant disharmony. “What a clown! He couldn’t rehabilitate a damn sandwich if his life depended on it!”

I laughed along with him while trying to discern which tube stemming from my arm was feeding me morphine. It must have been morphine. My vision was clogged with blurry luster, and my normally husky-ish voice was pitchy and girlish like a pan flute. Evidently, nothing out of Dr. Ward’s mouth completely registered with me, so I chose to laugh at whatever had the cadence of a casual quip.

In eighteen years of living under the dominion of my mother, I had become decently adroit53 in masking the emotions pressed against the walls of my skull, pleading for liberation. I had no issues with projecting an amiable facade. Eventually I determined it was the off-white tube with clear fluid residue beading in droplets up the sides which transported the morphine.

“As for medicinal treatment, ibuprofen isn’t going to work well with your kind of pain. Unless you want pills coming out the wazoo for the rest of your life, you’ll need something stronger.”

“What are you talking about?” I chittered. “You mean… like, narcotics?”

“If you will,” he said, coughing into his hand. “Dr. Harrison, what do you recommend as pain treatment for Mrs. Sutton?”

“I, uh, would say OxyContin,” replied the frumpy chocolate-haired intern on the far right next to Dr. Long. “It’s tailored well for chronic pain because of its incremental release of oxycodone to the brain.

So there’s more oxycodone per tablet but the patient only gets a little bit every couple hours or so (Opioid Crisis sec Promotion and Sales). It’s basically foolproof.”

“I’d have to agree with Dr. Harrison here,” Dr. Ward said warmly, his smile strained and forced, as if he hadn’t cracked a genuine grin in years. Dr. Harrison chuckled nervously, while Dr. Long rolled her eyes again. “See, Mrs. Sutton, your pain was very manageable from the start. You would’ve never had to come into this hospital again if you’d just done what I’d asked you. Can you recall?”

“I…” My voice trailed off into defeated silence. “Not exactly.”

“I told you to take ibuprofen as needed!”

77

Alex McCullough “Of course, Dr. Ward, but-” “Aye, dear, you will come to learn that every doctor knows what’s best for his patient!”

“I’m well aware, however-” “Do you promise that, if you are prescribed these tablets, you will take them as needed? As in, whenever you feel even a slight twinge in your frail little arm?”

“Dr. Ward-” “Do you?”

A brief pause ensued.

“Yes, of course.” Then I added: “Whatever the doctor says.”

Dr. Ward smiled again. This time, it seemed genuine, almost relieved. “Whatever the doctor says. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to set foot in this hospital again!”

“Wishful thinking, Doctor!” I laughed gaily.

“Don’t say that!” he chortled. For a brief instant, I’d seen a once curmudgeony man transform into a figure reminiscent of the late Bob Ross, with a panacea54 of a smile that could cure all woe and illness. I almost forgot about the numbed sharpness digging at my forearm, as if the bone were trying to pry free into the light. “A nurse will be by briefly to give you your prescription. You will be discharged in an hour.”

“Thank you, doctors!” I waved regally at the quintet as they departed the room, their shoes squeaking on the polished floor. The haze in my eyes had vanished entirely. I craned my head around the room, absorbing the pastel colors bleached by fluorescent light and the symphony of ringing telephones, heart monitors, and scuffling shoes. How beautiful did the pallid floral wallpaper seem against the old but modest trim on the bathroom door! How positively satisfying did the symphony sound in my ears! And, oh, how lovely did the distant skyline of downtown Ambrose look basking in the eastward sun’s glow, set against the backdrop of the Blue Rudge Mountains! I shouldn’t have been searching for all the beauty of a thousand moons and stars in a hospital of all places, but the Lord knows how loopy I could feel on morphine.

Perhaps it is not such wishful thinking that I never return, for how bad could it be to frequent the diamond in the rough?

I didn’t notice at first when the nurse entered and placed a large white bottle on the table underneath the blinded window into the hall. Its curvaceous shape was unlike what I’d seen in Grace’s bathroom, but certainly it was filled with the same white tablets, yet in a greater abundance I could ever have imagined. The label was clear even from my distance:

78

Nosedive OXYCODONE-ACETAMINOPHEN It must’ve held enough tablets to cure Parkinson’s for a week, so God only knew how long it would last me (Opioid Crisis sec Prescribing Patterns and Access).

I turned my head to the ceiling, grinning ear to ear as I waited for nurses to come and unhook me from the amalgam of tubes punched into my arm, including the morphine. I wasn’t so upset, knowing what I’d have in store for me when I returned home.

79

â&#x20AC;&#x153; One mechanism by which ad-

verse childhood experiences result in long-term health consequences is by engaging in adult health-risk-taking behaviors. These include alcohol and drug abuse, having multiple sex partners, cigarette smoking, and compulsive eating leading to obesity.

â&#x20AC;?

Gil para 3

Figure 15. Grant, Liam. Dark Stormy Sky over Rural Landscape at Sunset. Norfolk, UK. Stocksy, Stocksy United, 3 Sept. 2015, www.stocksy.com/736896/dark-stormy-sky-over-rural-landscape-at-sunset-norfolk-uk. Accessed 21 Mar. 2019.

VI

AVE MARIA

Figure 16. Cross Silhouette. 123RF, www.123rf.com/photo_18305833_cross-silhouette.html. Accessed 21 Mar. 2019.

CHAPTER SIX Ave Maria

“So how’s work going, Bonnie?”

I looked up from the sink where I’d been scraping cold lasagna out of a tupperware container with one arm while the other rested on the counter. “Fine?”

Jack bobbed his head in assent. The room was silent save for Emily’s quiet babbling from the kitchen table as she dragged her hand through her cereal and sucked the milk off her fingers. It was positively disgusting yet I couldn’t help but smile.

“Why do you ask?” I asked.

“You’re feeling okay about it?”

“I’m a college graduate working at fucking Walmart, Jack.”

He sighed a breathless sigh, nervously tapping his fingers against the counter. “You getting paid okay?”

“Not for long,” I muttered. “Graham’s being a douche right now.

I’ll be lucky to keep my job.”

“What do you mean?” Jack said, his voice rising slightly. “What does he want from you? You can’t lose this job!”

“Jack, I don’t fucking know what he wants.” I threw the container against down in the sink and clasped my soapy hand on my head. A muted twinge of pain singed the hairs on my forearm. “He’s been trying to seduce me for weeks, and isn’t happy that I’ve been rejecting him.”

“You’ve been rejecting him?”

“No!” I groaned sarcastically. “We fuck in the backseat of his Kia Royale every day. His receding hairline and erectile dysfunction just do things for my withering clit! Jesus, Jack, get a grip.”

“So you haven’t… done anything?”

“No, Jack. I would never settle for his ugly ass.”

“Oh, so you’d settle if he weren’t ugly?” Jack said, suddenly livid.

“Is that what you’re saying?”

“Jack, you know that’s not what I meant.”

83

Alex McCullough “I don’t know what you mean anymore.” He pushed himself away from the counter and marched into the hallway, procuring his overcoat from the wall hanger beside the back door. “You’ve been all over the place since you broke your damn arm.”

“Jack, are you actually trying to start a fight right now?” I called after him. “Why are you suddenly so very interested in my job?”

“Don’t I have the right to know what’s going on in your life?”

“Of course you do!” I said, trodding into the hall while wiping my hands on a dish towel. “Why wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know…” he stammered. “I’m just scared, that’s all.”

“Scared of what?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged his shoulders generally. “Scared of losing you. You don’t talk to me as much anymore, not since the accident.”

“Oh, so that’s what this is.” I trilled with a certain brand of laughter that housed a deeper layer of anger within. “You’re sad because your wife isn’t a sweet, demure, say-anything Mary Sue anymore!”

“Bonnie…”

“This cast! Right here!” I held up my arm. “It’s just the first cog in my master plan to never have to touch you again. You’ve figured it out!”

“Jesus, Bonnie, you know–” “Do you think I’m enjoying this?” I screamed. “Do you think it’s fucking fun to have to guzzle pills like Skittles every four hours like so I don’t feel like my fucking arm is being sawed off at the shoulder? It’s not all about you, you know!”

“I’m going to work,” Jack said as he fled down the hall and out the front door, slamming it behind him. Immediately after, Emily began to scream violently in her booster seat, flinging cornflakes angrily at the cupboard and floor. I turned my head toward the wall so I couldn’t see her, feeling the creeping jolt of pain in my arm pulsate.

(Please don’t cry, baby girl.)

Louder, more guttural. She was running out of cornflakes.

(Baby, please!)

Her screams were hoarse and biting and caustic like drain cleaner, not unlike the pain throbbing in my arm. Loud, raspy, searing. My teeth ground against each other.

(Cut the pain out.)

I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.

(Cut it out!)

I stumbled into the bathroom, shaking and sweating uncontrollably as I grabbed weakly at the medicine cabinet. A pool of divine light from some unidentifiable source cast a sublime glow on the white bottle lying on the middle shelf, or was I imagining it? It 84

didn’t matter.

Salvation was near.

Pill in hand. Pill in mouth. Pill in throat.

(Bonnie in the clear.)

When I returned to the kitchen, Emily had stopped crying entirely and was mounding her cornflakes into a formidable pile in the corner of the tray as if nothing had happened. I smiled weakly, feeling my whole body tingle with numbness as oxycodone trickled daintily through my veins. I almost began to laugh at how quickly one pill eased my pain and calmed my nerves. It was almost ethereal, as if God himself had lifted the stabs and jolts with his sacred hand, wicking away my tears and whispering sweet nothings in my ear (Moghe para 3). How truly depressing that I had to turn to religion for comfort rather than my own husband. Knowing him, he’d accuse me of sleeping with God. My eyes drifted toward the window and the brief enclave of oak trees separating my mother’s house from her neighbor’s. I’d always preferred to look out that window in particular, since, if for only a moment every evening, the sunset would plunge through the murky glass, showering the room with golden luster and sudden joy. For only a moment every evening, I felt empowered. In that moment, I believed that life would be better, that I’d make it to the other side.

Whether I ever reached the other side was still unknown, but some part of me was grateful that I’d kept a clear eye and a hopeful heart despite all the debris falling around me. Some part of me still longed to feel that empowered, but alas, the neighbors planted those trees two years ago, and the light that once cascaded in like the waves of a raging tempest had become shattered and shorn like lifeless winter leaves crumbling in the hands of a bright-eyed child.

Was that light ever really there? Or was it just a product of my cruel, cruel imagination?

I turned off the faucet, having let it run continuously for five minutes, and trudged into the hall.

Thump.

Startled by the noise, I yelped and stumbled into the wall.

It had come from my mother’s bedroom.

• • • For the first time since moving to Ambrose, I walked into the Mason County Hospital and wasn’t the patient.

“Mary Lambdin, forty-nine. Found unconscious and not breathing in her home.” The paramedic’s voice was grating and lifeless, whereas I was ensnared in several different genres of emotion at 85

Alex McCullough that point. I stood in the open E.R. bay with my arms folded over my chest as the late-September wind pierced my back and blew my hair delicately over my shoulders. In front of me, a squadron of paramedics wheeled my unconscious mother, strapped to a gurney, into the trauma bay and began rapidly assessing55 her vitals.

One paramedic detached himself from the group and migrated towards me. I quickly adjusted my overcoat.

“Mrs. Lambdin, is it fine if I ask you some questions?” he asked when he reached me.

“Mrs. Sutton,” I corrected “My mistake,” he said politely. “Does your mother have a history of drug abuse and mental illness?”

“Yes, drugs, and very likely, mental illness,” I responded truthfully.

“Could you elaborate?”

“I’m not sure I could.” I pursed my lips and nodded affirmatively.

“My mother had spent her whole life in various throes of addiction to various breeds of drugs—alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, heroin, OxyContin, you name it. I would elaborate more but I think that would be a waste of the time you could be spending saving my mother’s life.”

“What about mental illness?” He spoke softly, countering my slowly rising voice.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“I cannot disclose56 that righ’ now.”

“What the fuck is wrong with her?” I spat ferociously. “I’d expect her not to tell me why she has the energy and mobility of an eightyyear-old gimp when she’s forty-nine, but I think it’s time I know what the hell I’m dealing with here.”

“The answer is that we’on know!” he shouted, and immediately dropped his voice to a quieter, more polite register. “What we suspect at the moment is a weak’nin’ of the body due to suppressed long-term effects of substance abuse. We see it all the time. Your mother ain’t alone, Mrs. Sutton. Life expectancy is in the crapper right now all over the Midwest (Achenbach para 7).”

“She’s not going to die,” I said, fully aware I was wrong.

“Hopefully not, I can’t make any guarantees.”

I chuckled anxiously as the paramedic walked back into the trauma bay. Almost immediately, he was replaced by Jack, who was pulling baby-blue scrubs over his white undershirt. He came over to me in a rush, panic in his eyes.

“Hey, what’s going on? Someone told me you were here.”

“My mother… she’s…” I trailed off, not necessarily in the direction of sadness. “She passed out. They think she’s dying.”

86

Nosedive “Oh…” Jack murmured. He didn’t seem as shocked or upset or even gleeful as I would’ve predicted, just confused and pensive. “Is that good?”

“I don’t know.” My arm began to throb at a low and unsteady pulse. “I really don’t know what to make of this.”

“Isn’t this what you were waiting for? For her to… die?”

“I guess.” The pain began to quicken as a symphony hummed quietly in my ears, playing a tune I’d been waiting to hear for much too long. “We can leave, now, I suppose. Surely the mortgage is almost through, so…”

“Possibly. But more than that, Bonnie…”

“What?”

“Your mother. Gone. You’ve dreamed of this moment!”

An impassioned strike of the conductor’s wand, and the ebullient orchestra screamed. My left hand clutched at my other, independent from my brain’s control. Jack’s comment elicited nothing but discomfort, but I was not yet sure whether it was because of its morbidity or its truthfulness.

Thankfully, I wasn’t to ponder such implications much longer. A young, perky doctor with golden-blonde hair poked her head from around the corner and began scanning the E.R. bay.

“Mrs. Lambdin?” she promulgated57.

My eye twitched in annoyance.

“Yes?” “Please follow me.”

• • • My mother lay like a spider on the barren hospital bed, her numerous legs being the assorted tubes spiraling out of her body. The only indication she was even alive was her eyes, which were wide open and darting around the room in a panic. Once my presence caught her gaze, her mouth began emitting a series of muttered, incoherent swears.

“Momma, what’ve you done now?” I said, almost laughing. She looked so disturbingly out-of-place in a hospital bed, possibly because it was the only clean environment I’d ever seen her in. To think that could’ve been me in twenty-five years… “Are you trying to die early?”

“Don’t get smart with me, Bonnie Elizabeth,” she murmured. “I ain’t nowhere near dyin’. Last thing on my mind.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it if I were you.”

“I should slap the shit outta you for backtalkin’ me like that.”

I giggled, knowing she couldn’t do anything to hurt me even if she 87

Alex McCullough wanted to, but there still remained a slight strain in my voice.

“You shouldn’t be dying this early,” I said, migrating toward an enclave of chairs in the corner of the room, fresh with imprints from the bereaved relative who was clinging to the last iota of the patient’s life mere minutes before my mother was wheeled in here.

Soon I would be that relative, but I wouldn’t be bereaved. Maybe disgruntled, I would imagine, but certainly not devastated. I wouldn’t shed a single tear.

“Bonnie, I’m gonna die when I’m gonna die.” Her expression was sickeningly pleasant.

“You could’ve lived a full life!” I said, sinking into the chair. “I never took you for someone who gives up so easily.”

“I ain’t givin’ up, Bonnie, I’m jus’ tired.”

“Tired?” I chuckled. My cheeks burned. “Tired of what? Tired of treating your whole family like shit? Tired of the weight of that ten-ton chip on your shoulder? Momma, you’ve got nothing to be tired of!”

“Is this how you wanna see your momma go?” she groaned.

There was a repentant58 sadness in the deepest brown of her eyes, pleading to me for forgiveness. I became suddenly uncomfortable, watching the once falsified expression of anguish she would use to beg for money or help or drugs morph into one of genuine longing.

It was too foreign, too unfamiliar to watch my mother express true emotion. I shifted in the chair.

“What are you tired of?” I asked.

“I’on know,” she said. Her voice was distant and faint. “I’m tired of… waitin’ around for good things to happen. I been waitin’ my whole life for things to change but nothin’ ever does.”

“Things change.”

“Things don’t change. Not here.” She shook her head rapidly, her thin, dying hair bouncing slightly along. “I’m tired of regret, Bonnie Elizabeth. I’ve made too many mistakes in this life. You don’t get fresh starts. You don’t get happy li’l miracles.”

“I can’t imagine—” “Did I ever tell you how I met your daddy, Bonnie?”

Her words were cold and sickly like muddy, sinewy snow flowing through a sewer drain, leaving behind the sludge of a winter wonderland melted away. For a split second I thought she would cry, but I knew my mother hadn’t shed a genuine tear since 1997.

(There will be no tears shed tonight.)

All I could manage to say was, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, there wasn’t much to it. Michael Linklater—or his friends called him ‘Mickey,’ I s’pose… his daddy owned a fact’ry somewhere near Middletown of Ohio back in the sixties when it was 88

basically the Holy fuckin’ Grail to own somethin’ like that here in these middle parts. I ain’t sure what they produced, but I’d venture to say copper products if I had’ta guess. Anywho, he was startin’ to get tired of the day in, day out of fact’ry life, I guess. He was one of the workers, naturally—it was a fully-paid job, wa’n’t it?—but he ain’t go to high school or anythin’. He wanted somethin’ more outta life that stampin’ pennies or whatever other shit they make with copper.

“Then in 1977, when he’s eighteen, his daddy’s factory gets shut down. Nothin’ special, no big reason; lots a’ fact’ries got shut down in the seventies. Ev’ryone decided they’d rather sit nude on some beach in California than do some real work here (Segedy para 20)!

But, a’ course, that was Mickey’s opportunity righ’ there. He left Middletown an’ ventured off to find the mountains. That was his big thing: the mountains. He loved his mountains.”

I chuckled lightly. A single tear rolled down my cheek.

“Now, nine years later’s when I met him. In that time, he kinda found some place in this town, decidin’ that it was a good fit for him. He liked the mountain scenery, I knew that, an’ I know it’s kinda hard to tell, but we were actually a sorta good town if you ain’t lookin’ too close. But I was seven when he came here, an’ I wa’n’t some tramp, Bonnie Elizabeth. I ain’t some child bride!

“I met him in this bar when I was sixteen—mind you, I was busty as hell in my day, Bonnie! Don’ even tell me you ain’t used your assets when you’s my age. Gimme a break. He was a bartender, a’ course, ‘cause tha’s how you made money as a young, poor, han’some man in the eighties. We talked for about five minutes before he took out his… well… y’know. An’ the rest is history!”

“Thank you, Momma,” I said, wiping my mouth with my wrist.

“That’s disgusting.”

“We got married far too young for our own goods. I was twenty, an’ he was thirty-one—well, he di’n’t look his age. We were friends a’ course first, but we were both a little bored with the lonely life.

We didn’t have college to go to an’ worked odd jobs around town—I was a hairdresser at one point, an’ God knew I had no license for that shit, an’ I think he was a pretty successful cobbler59 before someone caught him on his bullshit… so we didn’t have much else commitment! An’ if I’m bein’ honest, Bonnie Elizabeth, I didn’t want it. I was too young. I needed to figure out who I was before I could let someone else in, but whatever he wanted he got. So I let ‘im. I s’pose I never really figured out who I was, but I thought as long as I had ‘im with me, I wouldn’t need to. I was young, I was cute, an’ I was oh, so very dumb.

“When he wanted kids I said no. That went nowhere, an’ after a 89

Alex McCullough while, you was there. I told ‘im that I’d only have kids if I could choose the name, and he agreed with quite a lot of frustration. So I named you Bonnie Elizabeth, after your own Grandmomma Bonnie. Mickey, he… didn’t know how to be a daddy, though, and I didn’t know how to be a momma. We were children tryin’ to raise another child, and just messin’ up over and over… He got inta’ the heroin scene like ev’ryone else, and I turned to pills (Moghe para 25). However we managed to care for you is up to God!” She paused. “Eventually, he got sick a’ me.”

She hacked into her chest, sending her heart monitor into a brief frenzy and dislodging some of the mint green pillows under her neck. The interruption barely dissembled her story.

“But who’s I to tell ‘im what he’s meant to be? He was a wand’rer, like I said, and I couldn’t keep ‘im on a leash forever, so I let ‘im go.

And he wandered right out the door. Month later, he’s dead in some backhoe shithole in Iowa. Farthest north he got.”

“I didn’t know he left you before he died, Momma…” I whispered, afraid to speak louder than she. It was an undisturbed, peaceful soliloquy, and I couldn’t risk disrupting it. After all, it was the most she would ever tell me about herself. For a brief moment, my mother was human. “You just said he died.”

“It’s embarrassing, Bonnie Elizabeth.” A flux of tears burst frromm her eyes a trickled down her withered cheek. “It’s easier to think he was some druggie that died early than a man so disgusted with his wife and child he left! For Iowa!”

“Momma…” I began.

“But he did leave me!” Her chest billowed and heaved. The ticking from her heart monitor accelerated. “I can’t change it. I’on know why I’m gettin’ so upset over it.”

“Momma, it’s okay!” I said, feeling myself begin cry as well despite my previous self-assurance. “He didn’t deserve you!”

She took a moment to breathe. Her eyes sparkled like the moon reflected in puddles on the street, late at night when the world is lit by city lights and starshine. There was an intimate beauty in her tears I had yet to discover.

“He didn’t deserve me,” she repeated, though I know it was an empty statement. “I hated him. I hated him ev’ry day, and I hated ev’ry fuckin’ reminder of his kind words and freewheelin’ spirit.”

Something stung deep in my mind, and in my arm too.

(She’s talking about me.)

“What are you talking about?” I said, almost whispering.

“Don’ play dumb with me, Bonnie, it’s you!” she wailed. “I couldn’t bear it! It was like he never left ev’ry time I looked into your daring, b’ligerent eyes!”

90

Nosedive “Momma…” I whimpered.

“It wasn’t right, Bonnie, I was sick!” Her tears were hot and her face was flushed with fire. “I couldn’t look at you without seein’ that damn smirk… that stupid, han’some smirk… that darin’, childish jerk!”

“Momma, I can’t—” “How could I ever forgive myself, Bonnie?!” She was hysterical.

The floodgates had swung open, and every emotion, every memory, every sentiment she ever repressed sprung into the air like fireworks illuminating the obsidion night. “It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and I’m sorry!”

I sat agape in the chair, my hands grasping at my knees and eyes searching for hidden answers in hers. The ticking lulled suddenly, like a clock slowly grinding into a cool stasis.

“For ev’ry time I hit you or screamed…” she sniffled. I heaved and clasped my hand over my mouth, suppressing a whimper. “For ev’ry time I said you’d never make it—I di’n’t know what it meant to make it! God knows I could never! Nothin’s changed, oh, God!” The ticking had slowed so much it had nearly stopped, like the dull rolling of thunder traversing the horizon after the storm. I rushed to the bed as her eyes began to flutter.

“Bonnie, I loved you. I love you still.”

“Momma, you’re going to live!” I cried, letting my tears fall unashamed.

“I will always love you…”

Her voice faded to a hoarse whisper before her eyes fell shut.

“Stop!”

“Bonnie?” Jack’s voice emerged from the hall.

“I need help!” I screamed, hysterical. “Get the fucking doctor!”

Jack burst into the room, rolling his sleeves us and clasping his hands into a tight ball and hollering, “Code blue!” He pushed into her chest once, and then again, repeating in a steady rhythm, trying to engender60 a heartbeat. I stared at the heart monitor, waiting for a pulse in the haunting, monotonous drone of the flat, bitter green line.

“Momma, wake up!” I shrieked, feeling a jump of pain soar up my arm. “You can’t die! You’re forty-nine!”

The monitor prevailed, supreme over all else. I collapsed on the linoleum, listening as the drone swelled in volume until it roared in my ears and I couldn’t hear the swarm of doctors circling the bed, nor the pound of the defibrillator into my mother’s chest, nor the disgruntled sigh hung aloft in the room and the fateful, “Time of death: 5:33 P.M.” “I love you too, Momma,” I whispered, though I knew she couldn’t 91

Alex McCullough hear me.

I felt the pitied gaze of the doctors on me, the bereaved relative with a face full of tears and smeared eye makeup. I felt the confidence I’d worn into the ER atrophy61 as I turned my gaze between my still, cold mother and Jack, whose penitent62 expression masked what could only have been utter confusion. I let him be confused, if only because I wasn’t too grappled with my own emotions myself.

I bowed my head to the floor and allowed myself to sob in a quiet, well-deserved moment of devastation and confusion all the same, as the subdued hum of the pain in my arm continued to sing, carefree and insolent63, like a child unable to quite yet understand the context of the world around him. Surely he would be there in the morning to sing me awake, but my mother wouldn’t. Jack wouldn’t. My pain was the only constant in my life, I had decided, and for some reason that eluded me at the moment, that was completely fine.

• • • “How do you feel?”

The air had been silent for close to half an hour. Jack and I were sitting on a bench outside the hospital as the golden sun crawled below the mountaintops, peeking between the multistory buildings downtown and painting the sky with streaks of tangerine blood.

My feelings were still in an inchoate64 state, not yet trenchant65 or even comprehensible, but I’d managed to distill my hysteria into a hypnotic gaze at the pavement, bereft of outward emotion. Jack sat staring at the sunset and eating a banana, unsure how to approach me; after all, he barely knew how to communicate with me when I was in a good mood. He eventually was the one to break the silence.

“What are you, my fucking therapist?” I didn’t mean to sound so bitter, but there wasn’t much room for Jack in my brain. I was occupied with trying to figure out how to feel about my mother’s death.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, shielding his eyes from the sunlight.

“It’s not my place.”

“I don’t know how I feel.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Yeah, I think so.” I craned my neck up to look at Jack. “Who’s watching Emily?”

“Grace.” I raised an eyebrow. “I called her after I saw you show up. I figured you didn’t arrange a babysitter situation, so I asked her to pick her up. They’re both at her apartment.”

“I don’t like the idea of Emily being at that apartment.” It was his turn to raise an eyebrow. “It’s disgusting. Do you know if Chris is 92

Nosedive there?”

“I don’t know who that is.”

I laughed. It was a brief but necessary breath of fresh ecstasy in the otherwise bleak past three hours. Jack took a firm bite from the banana and chuckled in return.

“This is all such a mess.”

“Hmm?” Jack said, his mouth full of banana.

“I cried for her, Jack. I sobbed like a baby while she drew her terminal breath, and now I’m sitting outside the hospital unsure whether there are too many emotions swimming in my mind or none at all.”

“Grief is challenging,” he said. “I see it every day. Not everyone cries, and sometimes people cry when they shouldn’t. It’s never so clear-cut.”

“I didn’t want to cry. I wasn’t supposed to cry.”

“It’s okay that you did, though. She was your mother.”

“She was no mother,” I spat, acid dripping off my tongue. “My life would have gone on just fine without her. I could’ve thrived above the water’s surface, but she chained me to the ocean floor, and I said I’d never forgive her for that.”

“Have you?”

I hesitated to answer. “I don’t know.”

Jack didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. I was still attempting to make sense of the thoughts in my head, not knowing what shape they would come to take and resigning myself to the possibility that I would never know; they could forever be in an amorphous blob, swimming like an amoeba through my mind until I die.

“We could leave now,” I said after a minute-long silence.

“Like the hospital?” he asked.

“No. Ambrose.” He nodded his head at the ground. “I mean, the only reason we were here was to take care of her, but now”—I let out an inappropriate giggle—”there’s nothing keeping us here. We could leave tomorrow.”

“I mean, not tomorrow,” he said, preparing to investigate the logistics. “It’d have to be in at least two weeks since that’s how much notice I should probably give the hospital, and we have to deal with Mary’s house—she probably doesn’t qualify for an estate sale, right? An auction might be better, if we can even pay off the mortgage—and I don’t even wanna think about–” “Jack,” I interrupted. He often loved to ramble about logistics; it was part of the clinical, semantics-obsessed male complex he had that drew me in the first day I met him. We were freshmen at Virginia, he was a pretty face I liked to gaze at in my five-hundred-person economics lecture, and I once made an offhanded comment to him 93

Alex McCullough about how I was considering switching majors to chemistry. Before I could say another word, he launched into an examination of the logistics of switching from a liberal arts major—political philosophy, policy, and law—to a science major, and concluded that only if I was truly passionate about chemistry should I major in it. I didn’t have the heart to say the chemistry-themed pickup line I’d prepared, so I waited another week before asking him to eat a picnic lunch on the lawn with me. He acquiesced66, though he joked that he would wear his stain-resistant khakis. Four days later, I fell in love.

“We can think about that stuff later.”

He smiled and extended his open palm onto my leg, awaiting a union with my unbroken hand. I accepted the invitation, and together we walked to the car, my head resting on his shoulder and my fingers laced in his. I’d missed Jack’s ramblings; he’d been pretty reclusive67 since the move, and it warmed my heart to hear the life return to his voice. It was a pleasant moment in the midst of an otherwise unpleasant day, and despite being such a devoted pessimist, I found some solace in the occasional search for the diamond in the rough.

94

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Though historically associated disproportionately with poor and

black inner-city teenagers, today the average heroin user is a white, middleclass suburbanite in his or her mid-20s who moved to the drug after getting hooked on prescription painkillers.

â&#x20AC;?

New Face of Heroin Abuse para 2

Figure 17. The Collector. Last of Us. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/510314201508256607/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2019.

VII

NEEDLEPOINT

Figure 18. Syringe Drawing Silhouette. Ayoqq.org, ayoqq.org/explore/syringe-drawing-silhouette/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER SEVEN Needlepoint

It stung in my nose (Opioid Crisis para 3).

At first, it was like my nostrils had been swabbed with a cast-iron rod, singing my nose hairs and frying my sinuses. It burned, yes, but it was a quick and scintillating burn, like the brief rush of adrenaline you get from extinguishing a candle between your fingers.

Then, when the ashes cooled and drifted off, it was a warm, slow, intimate hug. It was a loving, caring embrace; nothing seemed shallow and nothing seemed strained. Above me, the ceiling parted to reveal a whirlwind of warming cirrus clouds, with birds and butterflies soaring around in a technicolor kaleidescope. I felt more loved than I had in years.

“Feels good, huh?” a voice said from my right.

I turned and looked at Whitney with bugged eyes and a cartoonish, crooked smile. “Ingenious68.” “‘Thank you, Whitney,’” she said, rising from the table with a cheeky grin. She had bleach-blonde hair that fell in loose, tattered curls onto her shoulders, and a hole in her throat that dilated as she spoke—the distinct mark of a chainsmoker. “I’m surprised that worked. They’re usually abuse-deterr’nt nowadays.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You usually can’t crush ‘em or anythin’ like that anymore.

S’cause ev’ryone was doin’ it, and I guess it didn’t really look good for the distributors so they made it so you can’t do that shit anymore.

But then everyone started doin’ heroin instead, ‘cause it’s cheaper (Moghe para 37-39). You musta’ got a weird batch, ‘cause that shit cracked like an egg.”

“Odd,” I replied. My voice was different; it had a Stepford squeak to it, and all my vowels came out shrill and mousey. My skin felt loose and fluid on my face.

Graham appeared in the doorway. I grabbed the open bottle of pills and plunged it into my purse in one swift move. He didn’t see 99

Alex McCullough them—fortunately—likely because he was more concerned with tracing my breasts through my wool sweater with his beady little eyes—unfortunately. My efforts to deter69 the male gaze with a more modest fashion choice was completely obliterated.

“Whitney,” he murmured with disinterest as she squeezed past his portly figure into the store. Her chest was as flat as they come, but I hardly think she was jealous; there wasn’t much desirable male attention to fish for in Ambrose as it was. “Bonnie, why aren’t you wearin’ your smock?”

“I, um, put it over there,” I responded, gesturing toward the cubbies where the other employees kept their personal possessions. I always wondered how fun it would be to steal their belongings: phone chargers, house keys, wallets; it would be so simple and quick as to pluck a pair of sunglasses and shove it into my pocket just for the brief rush of euphoria. “Sorry.”

I’d begun to crave that rush more and more over the past couple weeks. I couldn’t have imagined why.

Graham chuckled and cracked his neck, letting his hands fold rhythmically in an absentminded, nervous dance. “It’s fine. Break’s over in five minutes.”

“Will do.” I produced a strained grin, trying to repress the facetious remarks brewing in my mind. As Graham disappeared out the doorway as fast as he entered, my purse began to ring with a marimba jingle. I plunged my hand into the assorted personal items, garbage, and, of course, the rattling pill bottle, before I withdrew with my phone in my hand.

It was Jack. I answered immediately.

“Hi, baby!” I said with uncharacteristic exuberance.

“Hi, Bon.” His voice crackled like aluminum. “How’s everything going?”

“It’s great. I’m on break, so don’t worry about disrupting me while I’m trying to work.”

“Oh, uh…” He let out a timid chuckle. “Honestly, I didn’t even think about that. I just wanted to talk.”

“Well, if we’re being honest, I’d pick up either way.”

“You sound different. You sure everything’s all right?”

I shrieked with laughter. “I’m fine.”

“You’re not high, are you?”

“Why would I be high?”

“I don’t know. I’ve just heard your high voice, and… oh, forget it!

Why am I harping on you for being happy?”

“Well, I am happy!” I tittered, trying desperately to dampen the shrillness of my voice, but to no avail. “I guess it’s ‘cause I can quit soon.”

100

Nosedive “Oh, uh…”

“God, I really can’t wait to shove my two weeks’ notice right in Graham’s fat face and tell him to suck my dick. I can picture his expression now, but it’d be real fun to see it in the flesh.”

“Bonnie…”

“What?” I asked. “Is that too aggressive? I figured, you know–” “Bonnie, Mary didn’t have life insurance.”

I paused. “Is that bad?”

“Well…”

“Oh, fuck, of course it’s bad…” I murmured, wiping the sweat on my forehead away with my palm. “But what… does that mean?”

“It means we can’t sell the house right now.”

“Wh– why not?” I stammered. My euphoria was beginning to morph into nervous jitters, and soon I would barely be able to speak without stumbling over every other consonant. “Why is that an issue?”

“Well, I was hoping we’d be able to use the life insurance money to pay off the rest of the mortgage, but all I’ve been able to scrape together is three hundred dollars stashed in a mason jar at the bottom of her closet.”

“Yeah, that’s her savings account,” I chuckled angrily. “But… why can’t we go back to Chincoteague and pay it off when we get there?”

“It’s too risky.” Jack let out a shaky sigh. “We can’t be paying out the ass for this house while we’re trying to buy… we’ve already missed the buyer’s market and I don’t… We’re already stretched thin as it is…”

“Jack…”

“We’ll be okay, Bonnie, it’s just–” “Do we have any money at all?”

Jack didn’t respond. I already knew the answer anyway.

“Oh, my God…” “I’m sorry, Bon. They pay me next to nothing at that hospital.”

“Will we even be able to sell it?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t exactly have curb appeal, and I doubt the Homeowner’s Association is going to be pleased with the mysterious green fuzz growing in the bathroom. God… we’re going to have to get money for that, too…”

“Jesus…”

“Bonnie, don’t worry, it’ll all work itself out within a couple of months. We’ll just have to cut a couple corners, that’s all (Bingham para 12)!”

“Jack, I don’t think I can bear to live here much longer!”

“Look, I need to go. Please trust me that it will all work out.”

101

Alex McCullough “Don’t hang up.”

“They’re calling me.”

“Jack, wait!” I cried into the phone. “What about my prescription?

We can afford that, right? Can’t we?”

He didn’t respond.

“Jack?”

The line went dead.

“Fuck!” I screamed, and dropped my forehead on the table.

A sudden injection of acid into my wrist, and a fervent70 inferno began consuming my arm, smoldering my bones all the way up to my shoulder blade. I scratched at my cast and squinted my eyes shut, doing anything I could to make the pain subside. Nothing was off the table. Nothing was out of line.

(The pills (Szabo para 16-17).)

I delved my left hand deep into my purse and rifled around before I felt the familiar shape of the bottle and withdrew. I’d come to fall in love with the words printed neatly on the front.

OXYCODONE-ACETAMINOPHEN I unscrewed the cap and let four capsules fall out, colliding with each other in the race to my clammy palm. I set them on the table in a compact, geometric arrangement before slamming the bottle onto the table, crushing the tiny white pills into flaky, dust-like particles.

My arm continued to throb, screaming and pounding against the walls of my cast, begging to be liberated from its own self-inflicted anguish. I used my hand to form a hasty line out of the dust parallel the edge of the table and leaned forward, pressing my right nostril shut with my index finger.

Then I inhaled.

My head swung across the table like a heavy pendulum. I felt the dust rush into my nostrils, and the familiar sear of lava as it blazed the path it traveled, straight into my brain.

And then the pain vanished.

I heard birds whistle sweet melodies above my head, somewhere deep in the ceiling.

(Bonnie in the clear.)

“What the fuck are you doing?”

I shot up from my hunched posture with bulging, bloodshot eyes and white pill particles covering my upper lip like prepubescent peachfuzz. Graham was standing in the doorway, his mouth hung ajar. In a moment of suspended silence, the image of a rabbit staring down the barrell of a musket, screaming one final time before being eviscerated by the bullet of an unforgiving hunter, flashed before 102

Nosedive my eyes. Graham remained silent for this short few moments, unable to cope with the realization that the propriety71 I had so ardently projected to the outside world was merely a veneer72.

“I can explain,” I said, wondering how I could ever explain the scene painted before him.

Graham raised a disheveled eyebrow.

“I guess you ain’t the girl I thought you were,” he smirked.

Somehow, those ten words were worse punishment than anything I could’ve ever conceived. Silently, I gathered my possessions and left the building. If I returned, it would not be as a member of the workforce, but as an ex-employee-turned-druggie; that was all I would ever be seen as, regardless of what I knew was true.

• • • “Do you think Grace has money?” Jack asked, looking up from his fixed gaze on his laptop. I was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the wall with a mug of coffee shaking in my clammy hand. It had only been an hour since my last tablet, but I was already feeling its effects wane (Opioid Crisis para 3). “Bonnie?”

“No,” I responded through gritted teeth.

“None at all?”

“None at all.”

He didn’t pay any mind to my attitude, which was a special breed of bitchy. I couldn’t tell him. He couldn’t know. I’d find the money somehow. I’d cut corners. I’d pick dirt out of the fucking carpet to eat if I had to. Jack’s fingers cracked like cackling bones on the computer keyboard as he typed nonsense into a spreadsheet.

“Okay,” he said after a minute, “I’ve been trying to figure out a budget for us to manage for the next couple months so we don’t get off track, but I need some input.”

“Fine,” I said, and shifted in my seat to face him.

“Our two biggest monthly expenditures currently are your arm expenses and Emily’s preschool—” “Wait, what the fuck?” I hollered, slamming my fist on the table.

“I thought we agreed we wouldn’t send her to preschool here!”

“Yeah, well, in your words, ‘the fucking crack whore in that bedroom will’ve croaked by then.’” He gestured to my mother’s bedroom. I winced, somewhat miffed that Jack said those words aloud but more mortified they originated from my mouth. “She’s been going to Moriarty for a month. How haven’t you noticed?”

“I- I don’t know!” I cried. “I’ve been… busy.”

“You’ve been busy. Of course.” He pursed his lips and turned back to his computer. From his agitated tone, it became clear he 103

Alex McCullough didn’t pity me whatsoever. “We need to cut one of them.”

“Well, we can’t cut preschool,” I said resignedly. “She needs the two years.”

“That leaves your arm.”

The throbbing pulse in my bones accelerated, filling my arm with a low and groaning fire.

“That’s not an option.”

“Do you want to starve?”

I rolled my eyes. “There’s always another solution.”

“Not to burst your fucking bubble, Bonnie, but we’re skidding very close to the brink of bankruptcy.” I recoiled at how sharp his words stung. “And I’m looking at the numbers right now. If you canceled your ibuprofen subscription, we would have enough money to pay off the mortgage by Christmas. Otherwise, we’re stuck here until at least May. Are you sure you need all that ibuprofen?”

“No!” I wailed, clutching my cast and pressing my fingernails into the plaster, suddenly very aware I would have to lie. “They don’t… they don’t give me enough as it is!”

“How?!” he shrieked. “How is a two-hundred-fucking-dollar prescription not enough for you?”

“I- I don’t know!” I stammered, feeling sweat bead on my forehead and my hands chatter. I couldn’t imagine such a small, insignificant little white lie would do him much more harm than good.

He didn’t need to know. There was a desperate benevolence glinting behind Jack’s wounded, exhausted eyes. I had to lie. There was no other option. “They’re scamming us.”

“Hospitals don’t scam people,” he said with a despicable matter-of-factness.

“Oh, yes they do!” There was a fleeting moment where I almost laughed at how much I was pulling from my ass. “How else are they getting paid? All the welfare queens, they- they- they get all this shit for free! It’s highway robbery! They scam you so you keep coming back and paying their fuck-in-the-sky-high bills!”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I laughed, my voice rocking with mania. It began as a pulsating chortle, staccato like strings on a cello plucked by meticulous, calloused hands, before swelling into four-second undulations as the bow struck the fibers, flying across the strings with reckless abandon. Soon, I was hysterical, screaming with laughter like a child being swung into a pool, anticipating the cool reprieve from the roaring sun’s heat. Trilling, scintillating laughter.

And, suddenly, Jack was laughing with me, and I knew I would make it work. I would cut my prescriptions, I’d fire my physical therapist, and I’d rip the cast off piece by piece until the sweet, 104

Nosedive supple honey of liberation warmed my lips and kissed my tongue. I would be strong and I wouldn’t cry. I would brave the vast abyss. I would be a vagabond.

And Jack would be there, by my side. He had more resilience than I could have ever conceived.

I stopped laughing suddenly, beaming like a sunflower sprouting from the barren dirt patch, and in a striking about-face, marched out the back door. The late-afternoon clouds in the sky converged into an amalgam of nebulous shapes and gravelly colors, indicating the coming of another storm. I let the bitter wind pass through the leaves and brush against my skin like the firm, protective grip Jack would hold me with when I would cry myself to sleep, terrified of the darkness.

How naïve was I to fear the dark when the light held much more to be afraid of!

• • • It was called Brittany Park—a green oasis toward the eastern outskirts of downtown Ambrose encircled by crumbling pavement and abandoned construction vehicles; a gentle haven of well-tended grass, shiny concrete benches, small botanical arrangements, and rich autumn foliage. I did not come without research. Slung over my shoulder was an old leopard-print purse, empty except for my wallet and a plastic bag I’d retrieved from my mother’s closet, and the name “Whizzer Khaled” scrawled in Sharpie on my palm. The apricot glow of the setting sun peeked from behind the obscure, enraged clouds filling the sky, and I winced as a raindrop plummeted onto my broken hand. Examining my surroundings, I took notice of the lack of undercover police lurking in the shadows. I was in the right place.

All I could remember of that park when I was in high school was the slew of construction equipment bordering the one-square-mile patch of land, and the near-six months it took just to fill what was a two-hundred-foot-deep crevice with dirt. Ambrose construction projects were notorious73 for their inefficiency; my mother complained every day about this park—“They’ll kiss my fuckin’ ass before they start gentrifyin’ my town, oh they will!”—as if it were unpopular to hear such disdain from her generation, who wouldn’t know the value of economic revitalization if it were push-popped up their asses and out their mouths (Segedy para 15). But given that I was standing in Brittany Park, watching the rain wash over the quaint cobblestone paths, I took solace in knowing they must have abjured74 some of this stubborn opposition long enough for 105

Alex McCullough someone to build it. I would have marvelled more, but a silhouette had begun shuffling toward me with the uncanny75 gait of someone who didn’t fuck around with picturesque sceneries and nostalgic anecdotes. Then I remembered what I came to Brittany Park for.

“Can I help you?” he murmured in a scratchy voice. He wore all black from his baseball cap to his massive combat boots, and sported tattoos across every inch of his exposed, milk-chocolatey skin; some of them were more cliché—a flower, a date, a short quote— and some were more… unnerving.

“You’re Whizzer?” I said, feeling a dangerous mixture of intimidation and déja vu.

(Where have I seen this before?)

“Yeah…” He spoke with unbashed apprehension. “What’chu need?”

“You know what I need, ‘cause I know what you got.”

His eyes widened suddenly and his skin flushed with verdigris.

“Look, I ain’t got what you think I got.”

“I’m not a cop, dumbass.”

(Don’t be cavalier. It all depends on him.)

“I’on believe you.” He cocked his head. “Wha’s a pretty woman like you doin’ out in Britt’ney park on a Thursday evenin’ like this?

Don’ you got to, like, make your husband’s dinner?”

“Maybe he makes my dinner.” It was so startlingly apparent to me in that moment how out of my element I was. “Do you want money or not?”

He nodded. “What’chu have?”

I pulled a wad of five-hundred dollars out of my purse. It was all I had accumulated for my personal cash savings in the past year, and yet I allowed him, without hesitation, to snag it quickly from my hand and flip through the bills with fastidious examination. One year’s work flushed away.

(To save your family. To save yourself.)

“Forty for a gram,” he said after flipping meticulously through every last bill.

“Fuck you. Twenty-five.”

“Are you playin’ smart with me?” he said, contorting his thin, pale lips into a smirk. “First-timers get forty. This is strong shit.”

“I looked it up and stuff like this goes for twenty-five.” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word. It was better if I forgot, if only for a moment, what I was doing. “Don’t try to scam me.”

He erupted with a loud, brazen guffaw. “You bitches. Thinkin’ just because you found some bullshit on WebMD you know the games we play. Well, whoop-dee-doo, sweetheart, but I ain’t fuckin’ around with some bored moms at Walgreens. Forty or I’m out.”

106

Nosedive I paused a moment, pursing my lips over gritted teeth. “Fine.”

He smiled the least pleasant smile he could muster, plucked two twenty-dollar bills from the wad, and shoved the rest into my chest.

I stuffed it back into my purse as he fished through his backpack, and wondered if he might choose to run away with my money and leave me standing in the dark. It would be smart of him; But then, after a harrowing few seconds, he handed me a Ziploc sandwich bag. Inside, it contained an dark, silky chunk of what looked like a jagged rock the size of a jawbreaker. I took the bag by the zipper, holding it timidly between my fingertips as if the contents were going to leap out and choke me if I disturbed them in any way, while Whizzer shuffled away with the same determined pace with which he’d approached me before before melting into a cluster of trees. It was only then that I saw the glock strapped in the waistband of his track pants.

(I’m saving my family. I’m saving myself.)

I blinked once and suddenly I was at home again, with no recollection of driving home. I was in the bathroom. My mother’s jalopy hummed loudly from the driveway, the engine still running, and my visibility had been restricted to the glow of a coconut-scented candle on the sink and my dim reflection in the mirror behind it.

My face was covered with black streaks of mascara drooling from two puffy red eyes, bloodshot and exhausted and darting nervously around the cramped space. Between my legs, on the closed toilet lid, was the sandwich bag Whizzer gave me, and in my left hand was a clean metal spoon from the kitchen. All that was missing from the tableau I had orchestrated was the plastic bag I had put in my purse beside the money, which lay on the floor between my feet and glared at me through one sharp eye.

I picked up the bag and removed the needle.

For the ensuing minute of my life, I was beyond my physical body.

My soul ascended into the air and watched in disbelief as her host used the needle to sequester a small piece of the shiny black rock into the concave of the spoon, caring very little when some residue crumbled off and sprinkled onto the floor. I watched myself lean forward and hold the spoon to the candle’s tiny flame, allowing the rock to melt into a smooth, sinewy syrup before resting the spoon on my knee and returning the needle to my left hand. I watched myself hurl obscenities at my own broken arm for being broken, and then immediately beam with a strange, frenetic joy at the prospect of never having to worry about that fiendish, wretched arm ever again. I watched myself, in all my licentious76 glory, dip the needle into the hot, black syrup and protract it into the slender tube. And I watched myself…

107

Alex McCullough My mother once told me that Grace would die for her. In that moment, I became furious. I was not sure, at the time, for whom this hot, festering anger was intended, but I eventually came to realize I was furious at myself. Because she was right. Grace would die for my mother, but I sure as hell wouldn’t. For my mother did love me as much as I believed she hated me, but I was selfish. I found it easier to be hated than to be loved. I wouldn’t have begun to imagine the pain, the depravity, the misery I would have felt if Emily grew up to hate me as I hated my mother.

(For you, Emily.)

I needed to teach her how to be loved despite not loving myself. I needed to make sacrifices.

(For you, Jack.) …plunge the needle into my left arm (New Face of Heroin Abuse para 2).

The only thing I had left to offer my family was myself.

Maybe then that would finally be enough.

108

“ When you first shoot up, you will

most likely puke and feel repelled, but soon you’ll try it again. It will cling to you like an obsessed lover. The rush of the hit and the way you’ll want more, as if you were being deprived of air—that’s how it will trap you.

”

Sam, 15

(The Truth about Heroin para 2)

Figure 19. Harvey, Mike. “Interview: Mike Harvey.” Interview by Sydney Cohen. Midwestern Gothic, Midwestern Gothic - A Literary Journal, 25 Jan. 2018, midwestgothic.com/page/14/?__hstc=53819831.52a78a012910dd33c2780dbfeebdff3b.1475107200054.1475107200056.1475107200057.2&__hssc=53819831.1.1475107200057&__hsfp=1773666937. Accessed 9 Apr. 2019.

VIII

FREEFALL

Figure 20. Mountain Range SIlhouette Ridge. PNG Kit, https://www.pngkit.com/view/u2q8r5q8w7t4i1w7_drawing-mountain-range-silhouette-ridge-mountain-range-transparent/. Accessed 28 May 2019.

CHAPTER EIGHT Freefall

The hum of Jack’s truch rang outside the house at around fouro’clock in the afternoon. At around three-forty-five, I entered the bathroom, procuring my paraphernalia from the toilet tank and humming Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun” to myself. At three-fifty, I was seated on the closed toilet lid, having laid my suspicious objects in a neat, ordered arrangement on the floor between my feet.

“When I’m out walking I strut my stuff, and I’m so strung out…”

(All for you, Jack.)

“I’m high as a kite, I just might stop to check you out…”

(All for you, Emily.)

“Let me go on… like a blister in the sun… Let me go o-o-on…”

Squeeze. Release. Plunge. Shiver (The Truth About Heroin para 2).

(Bonnie in the clear.)

It’d been a week since I first visited Brittany Park. To my relief, Whizzer remained a regular inhabitant and was able to give me product whenever I needed it, even for a reduced price after my third visit. “Regular customers get regular prices,” he’d said to me. I’d begun to buy less groceries so that, on my way home from the Costco on Main, when I passed the park, I’d be able to pop in, buy what I needed, and head home at the same time as always. I’d also begun to align my “appointments,” as I preferred to call them, with the rhythm of Jack’s work schedule. Every day, he would leave sometime between eleven and twelve in the morning and would return at around four in the afternoon every day—assuming he wasn’t called in the middle of the night—which left me with a semi-rigid schedule to adhere to. Every morning, I took Emily to preschool, went to get groceries for that day, stopped at Brittany Park, and by the time I came home, Jack would have gone to the hospital. Then, just before four o’clock, I’d take what I needed so that when he came home, I was in the prime of my euphoria (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be 113

Alex McCullough More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 2).

It was very little true sacrifice on my part, if I was being honest.

The first time I took it, I immediately threw up on the floor. It was utterly repulsive, like the rock-like substance had turned into a mixture of old sewage and calcified semen just before I had injected it.

But then, suddenly, I was obsessed. The rush quickly became less repulsive and more necessary. When I hadn’t done it in a while, it would feel like I was trapped underwater, suffocating without the commodity of oxygen to keep me afloat. I would feel sick, detained by my own body. That rock-like substance turned into an antidote of sorts; each injection was like a shot of fresh air into my lungs, and the feeling of sickness would vanish and be replaced by the feeling of a warm, affectionate hug (The Truth About Heroin para 2). But then a couple hours later, I would start to feel sick again.

My body would shut down organ by organ until I was able to reapply the antidote. Unsurprisingly, Whizzer made it to my most-called phone number within four days (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? sec How Heroin Addiction Occurs).

“You’re in a good mood,” Jack said as he walked in the door and set his overcoat on the wooden pegs punched into the door. I had been knocking on the bay window in the living room to attract his attention like a dog greeting its owner with his tongue hanging out.

“Oh, yes!” I chitterd shrilly. Then, in a cockney accent,:“I’m properly giddy!”

“Properly, properly,” he said, a mild grin forming on the corners of his lips. “Where’s Emily?”

“She’s with Grace!” I galloped into the kitchen with whimsical77 grandeur. “I asked her to pick Emily up from Moriarty. They’re geeeeeeeetting… ice cream! Downtown, at this cute little shop we used to go to when we were kids. Grace is really good with her!”

“I thought you didn’t like them being together,” Jack remarked.

“That’s what you said a couple weeks ago when I asked Grace to babysit.”

“Well, people change, Jack!” I exclaimed, reaching up to adjust the potted orchids on the windowsill above the sink. “Who am I to say that Grace can’t take care of Emily for an hour? She’s my sister, and I trust her. We should make her our emergency contact!”

“Wow, Bonnie…” Jack said, shaking his head and chuckling to himself. “That’s really… mature of you. I mean, not to say you’re not usually mature, you can just–” “Jack, it’s okay,” I purred, feeling the words drip like honey down my chin. “It’s about time I stop… worrying about things beyond my control. So we don’t have money? We’ll wait until we get some! So 114

Nosedive Emily spends her first year of preschool in Ambrose? She’ll survive! I’ve been such a pessimist lately, Jack, and I’m sorry. All of the negative things I’ve said… all of that gone. All that being a Negative Nancy does is make everyone—including me—upset. I choose happiness.”

“Well… you choose right,” he snickered casually, leaning against the wall as he pulled off his sneakers. “How does your arm feel?”

“I’ll save you the worry,” I chirped, scratching asbentmindedly at a slight itch on my neck. “I canceled my prescription and my physical therapy appointment for Monday. We won’t have to worry about that ever again!”

“You canceled your prescription?” He dropped his left foot on the floor and gave me an odd look; I attempted to gauge what emotion he was trying to convey, but ended up lost in the arched eyebrow, nervous smirk, and slanted posture. “Does… your arm feel okay?”

“Better than ever!”

“But the cast–” “We’ll worry about it later!” I waved my right hand dismissively, only somewhat surprised that it didn’t immediately swell with pain.

The itch in my neck crept down toward my upper back, and my fingernails followed with reckless abandon. “I’m managing just fine.”

“And the pain?”

“I just… don’t feel it anymore, I guess.”

“It just… disappeared?” His eyes were searching for answers where he wouldn’t find them. It was better to feign a healed injury than speak the unspeakable truth. “That seems… odd.”

“Odd or a miracle of God, Jack?” I said with a girlish smirk as my fingers inched into the waistband of my jeans, clawing at the underside of my slightly pudgy stomach. The itch crept across my abdomen like a wily78 tarantula chasing mice in an open field, all eight legs stomping into my skin like tiny, microscopic thumbtacks “We should be going to church more often, don’t you think? I will say one thing about this place, and it’s that the religion scene is impeccable and, frankly, unmatched. You walk into a Methodist church and you get a Methodist gospel, not that Presbyterian bullshit they preach at the one down in Chincoteague. This is the real deal. Emily could be baptised there!”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Jack humored.

“Oh, Jack, is it so bad to feel so alive right now? I mean, I have you! And Emily, oh, that girl! She’s been working so hard at her ‘thhh’ sounds, did you know? She can almost perfectly pronounce ‘thirsty’ without diverging into ‘firsty’ territory! And all day on Tuesday, all day she was running like an Olympic racer, just… nyoom! across the living room! Nyoom! into the kitchen. Oh, my 115

Alex McCullough God, Jack, she really is something else!”

“Wait, what day did you say this happened?”

I paused. “Tuesday, I think I said.”

“Tuesday? You mean…” He chuckled apprehensively. “So you didn’t go to work that day?

I felt some color drain from my face. “No?” “Really?” His eyes narrowed. “And why wasn’t Emily at preschool?”

The tarantula on my back scurried up over my shoulders and down my arms. Almost perfectly on-cue, a familiar acid plunged my forearm into a slowly kindling fire that seized up my elbows and suffocated my fingertips.

“It was after I picked her up. After work. B-but before you got home, obviously!”

“You said all day.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You said she was running around all day. You would’ve only been home for two hours before I got back.”

I hesitated. “Both of us felt sick, so we stayed home.”

“Sick kids don’t run around in circles all day.”

“Why are you interrogating me?” I screamed, my face suddenly flush with a crimson inferno. “What is my crime here?”

“I’m not interrogating you, Bonnie,” he refuted79 with hideous arrogance. “I just want to know why you didn’t go to work on Tuesday.”

“I did go to work, Jack!” My voice quavered violently.

“Don’t lie to me, Bonnie…”

“I’m not lying! You have to believe me.” Tears began spouting from my eyes like a leaky faucet spraying water into a dirty sink, with no forewarning nor any conrete reason. I frequently found myself crying just to cry. “Why don’t you believe me, Jack?”

“Why weren’t you at work, Bonnie?!”

“Because I was fucking fired!” I couldn’t hold myself upright any longer. My knees buckled and I dropped like a sack of potatoes on the kitchen floor, sobbing hysterically. Jack looked at me like I was an injured slave, trying to gauge whether I would be spared out of the goodness of his heart or lynched for my lapse in servitude. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“You were fired?”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” I screeched. “With that… that- that voice! ‘You were fired?’ There were budget cuts! New legislation!

Graham just felt like pulling the fucking trigger this time! I don’t know why and I barely even know how, Jack, I don’t know!”

“Bonnie…” he whispered, sinking to the floor and wrapping me 116

in a tight embrace. It should have felt more like a warm blanket than an freezing-hot straightjacket, but I could barely distinguish between the ceiling and the sky at that moment so it registered as nothing but a fleeting thought.

“It’s okay…” he mouthed into my ear. I choked on a sob.

“It’s not okay…”

“We can get another prescription if you’d like,” he said. I hadn’t realized I’d been clawing desperately at my cast like a dog tearing apart furniture upholstery.

“No!” I wailed. “No, we need the money, Jack.”

“I just want you to be happy, Bonnie! Can’t you give me that, at least?”

“I don’t need to be happy,” I sniveled. “I’ve never been happy, and I don’t need to now. I’ll find another job, Jack, it’s not a big deal! I’ll find three fucking jobs if I have to. I can’t let myself be the reason we go bankrupt and end up trapped in this… shithole town until the end of time! It’s already starting to happen… I can see it now. We end up with that hideous Southern twang everyone here has even though we’re barely twenty miles south of the Mason-fucking-Dixon. You’ll start stealing pills from the hospital, or maybe you’ll find your own source—pill mills are pretty popular down here, I’ve been noticing (Opioid Crisis para 11). You and all your friends will get high off the artificial happy and snart snorting and chewing and crushing and, soon enough, you’ll be shooting up, leaned against the side of a French-bakery-turned-crackhouse. You think it doesn’t happen but I can’t count the number of red X-s in my high school yearbook, nor can I even conceive of all the times I turned a blind eye to the dead man with a needle stuck in his diseased arm, sitting in the park I’d play tag in with my friends or next to the school or on the front porch of the nieghbors’ house.

“I’d do anything for this family, Jack. This is a family and that’s what the fuck we’re supposed to do, baby, because I would rather die than let you two go down that road! We’ll see our way out of here no matter how unhappy the journey makes me. It’s seeing you two happy that makes it all okay in the end.”

“Bonnie, I–” “Don’t talk,” I sputtered. My face was sticky to the touch, having been caked in tears and mascara. I stood up and retreated into the bathroom, making sure to lock the door behind me, and ignored Jack’s muffled pleads for interation. I pretended I couldn’t hear him until it became reality. After a minute of preparation—I was beginning to get fast at this—I was on the toilet seat again, the needle in my hand and the almost empty plastic bag between my legs.

Squeeze. Release. Plunge. Squeeze. Shiver.

117

Alex McCullough (Bonnie in the clear. Bonnie in the clear. God helps those who helps others. Bonnie in the clear.)

It was not that I didn’t recognize my own blatant hypocrisy80 in those precious five minutes; I just didn’t care. The greatest of intentions always lead to the greatest of results, I continued to tell myself. I wasn’t selfish and I wasn’t misguided; all of it was for my family. It was my civic duty. Any mother would understand.

Well, besides my own mother. She did it all for herself.

Selfish. Whore.

(Addict.)

My neighbor did it because she wanted to have more fun at social functions (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 10).

Greedy. Unforgivable.

(Addict.)

(Analyze the anatomy of an addict. Dissect their brain, probe their thoughts. Evaluate whether you are an addict.)

I left the bathroom feeling like I’d swallowed a stone. Jack was sitting in the kitchen, his head buried in his hands and eyes concentrated on his computer screen; there was no doubt he was recalibrating his spreadsheet in light of my valiant renunciation81 of oral pain subsidizers. On the surface, I returned to calm, remembering what I said before about pessimism. But underneath my skin lay a scared little girl who only wished to make her family happy. She hoped she could give her family all they deserved, and knew God had failed her so many times before she would be granted at least some divine reprieve in compensation for her repentance.

She awaited the Rapture with anticipation.

• • • It had just struck three o’clock when I knocked on the door to Moriarty Preschool. The building was essentially a forty-by-forty steel coffin with a couple windows and doors slapped haphazardly on the outside. It used to be a smaller storage unit just a mile south of my mother’s house, which I could only imagine was once bustling with the blue-collar populace of Ambrose, day in and day out, to transport various steel products into eighteen-wheelers when the industrialized Midwest was in the crux of its Golden Age. We were the largest city along the underbelly of the Rust Belt at one point, but we’d managed to fall off the map and land directly on our heads.

If I looked close enough, the coat of paint they’d slathered over the metal exterior was starting to visibly chip like veneer off a kitchen table.

118

A woman with bouncy golden curls opened the door twenty-ish seconds later. She had a bright and polished face that attached via a slender neck to a dress so tight it fit like shrink wrap over a frozen turkey, perfectly contouring her tucked waist and wide-berthed posterior. Suddenly acutely cognizant of my more amorphous figure, I folded my arms around my torso.

“Good afternoon’, Bonnie!” she squealed, with an even more exaggerated twang than normal. “You here to pick up Emily already?”

“Sure am!” I chirped, feigning Southern charm.

“Cold out, ain’t it?” She was looking at my arms. I didn’t even realize my teeth were chattering. “I’m fixin’ to see some snow come soon, I swear… This heat ain’t doin’ me or my body any favors!”— she let out a shrill cackle—“But I’m managin’. How’s life been treatin’ you, Bonnie?”

“Well…” I began, feeling my hands migrate toward my thighs. I debated which facet of my persona to present. “It’s been treating me, all right.”

“I’m glad to hear that, sweetie.”—(I’m older than you.)—“Emily’ll be out in a minute, but I do need to talk about somethin’ with you for jus’ a moment before we le her go.”

“Oh! No, I’m so sorry, I know we missed the payment this month, but I promise it’ll be in by the end of the week! We’ve been having some, uh… problems paying the tuition.”

“Well, I’m well aware we got some choice prices here at Moriarty—after all, we are the only preschool in the city limits and within a six-mile radius—but tha’s not what I wanna talk to you about.”

I tilted my head slightly.

“Emily’s been a bit aggressive lately,” she said, folding her hands in each other and refusing to meet my eyes. “I wouldn’t worry too much, but there was an incident today. It’s kinda serious.”

My head spun on a blazing axis. “What did she do?”

“She, um… hit another boy. Kinda hard and in the head.”

“Oh,” I said, marginally relieved. “Well, I’m sure it was an accident. You know how kids can be! And I’ve noticed she’s become very rambunctious, so I’m sure it’s nothing–” “He’s in the NICU.” Her voice was grave. “They think he might have brain damage.”

“Are you joking?” My chest began to heave and fall while my head continued to swivel in place.

(There’s no way. Not my Emily.)

“I’m sure you can understand we’d be a tad concerned about this.

He was bleedin’ quite a bit after all.”

(Not my sweet, sweet Emily. She would never…)

“She–” 119

Alex McCullough “She kept hittin’ him, over and over, screaming for him to stop.

The oddest thing…”

(Not my Emily. No, no, no, no.)

“The kid’s name was Andrew, poor baby.”

(No, no, no, no, no.)

“She called him Jack.”

(NO!) “So very strange. So very peculiar.”

“What is your name?” I asked politely, trying to mask my inability to breathe with a dimpled smile. The wretched pounding of my heart on my chest beat in tandem with the throbbing in my arm.

(Absolutely not. She doesn’t even know his name, yet!)

“Elaine,” she responded. Sweat beaded on her hairline and plastic nose. “Elaine Rinnier.”

(It’s all strange happenings. Mere vicissitudes! Nothing more, nothing less…)

“Elaine, my daughter is four years old,” I said coldly. “There is no reason she would ever hit another boy on purpose like that. Maybe Andrew needs to learn how to roughhouse a bit and live life on the edge a little more.”

“Mrs. Sutton, he was bleeding more than I’ve ever seen a child bleed before. If his family presses charges–” “Emily did not hit him!” I shrieked. Elaine recoiled in terror. “Not on purpose, not at all!”

“Mrs. Sutton, please–” “I need to go. Where is she?”

“I’ll get her.” Her hands trembled as she shufled back into the building. I let out one shaky breath, but rather than yield to the impending tears, I let myself continue to breathe, each inhale and exhale more labored than the last until I was circulating nothing but dust and debris through my lungs and back up my airways. After a minute, Elaine hadn’t returned with Emily, and my phone began to ring.

It was Jack. I answered.

“Hello?” My voice felt small.

“Bonnie…” he whispered. He had the snively, viscous voice of someone who had been crying. “Bonnie, where are you?”

“I’m picking up Emily,” I said quietly. “What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

“Bonnie, please come home.”

“Jack, you’re scaring me.”

“Please come soon.”

“Jack!”

The phone emitted a screeching dial tone, and I was plunged 120

back into silence. I stared at the blank screen, wondering how he found out about Emily so fast. That must have been it, right? The scum-sucking bitch Elaine told Jack about the situation before telling me, as if Jack had more a right to be privy to our daughter’s issues than I did! I was so civil to her, too, and for what? For her to blindly corroborate every cockamaie allegation set upon my clearly innocent child? I made note to schedule a day to exert my wrath onto Elaine, for she fully deserved every single threat that my sick, twisted mind could conjure in that moment, but I had other battles for that day. Once Emily emerged from the building, clutching her lunchbox with a shit-eating grin on her face, I scooped her into the car and sped home, my brow furrowed and eyes fixated on each dashed line on the asphalt river, one after the other into the great infinity of cold, dormant, vacant mountain ranges.

As my mother’s neighborhood loomed in the distance like a lighthouse in a dense fog, a light flurry of snow drifted down from the sky, falling like gentle dust and settling onto my windshield. Each snowflake fell in graceful swoops around the car, accelerating as the wind picked up, and soon, the whole sky was white with snowflakes dancing recklessly above and around the car, hurtling at inexorable82 velocities through the atmosphere.

“Look, Mommy!” Emily squealed from the backseat. “It’s snowing!”

I beamed as my foot lifted slowly from the gas, tears welling in my eyes.

“Yes, it is, Emily. It sure is.”

• • • When I opened the front door, hurrying to escape the quickly-approaching snowstorm, Jack was standing in the middle of the hall.

All the lights had been turned off with the exception of the fluorescent wall lamp in the bathroom, which blinked in five-second intervals and cast Jack in a stolid silhouette. The curtains were all closed, with only the pallid light of the snowfall outside to provide any external light.

“What’s Daddy doing, Mommy?” Emily murmured.

“He’s waiting for us, honey,” I whispered sweetly. She let go of my hand and ran down the hall and into the kitchen, babbling to herself about fruits and vegetables. Jack did not turn his neck to watch her run, instead keeping his gaze densely focused on me. For about thirty seconds, we both stood facing each other in the dark hallway, neither of us daring to move a single muscle or utter a single word.

Jack was the first to interrupt the silence.

121

Alex McCullough “We need to talk about something.”

I coughed lightly, and immediately began to spill. “I don’t know what happened, really! Elaine—the preschool teacher—said Emily hit this kid, but I don’t think… she– she wouldn’t hit him unless it were self-defense! It– it was… roughhousing! Just kids! I know she’s probably not learning from the best people how to handle their problems effectively, but I hardly think–” “I don’t want to talk about that, Bonnie.” I cocked my head in perplexion until I saw his hand.

Laced between his fingers was a single hypodermic needle, soaked in toilet water and dripping onto the carpet.

(No…) “Jack…” I began.

“Why?” he croaked as more tears leaked from his bloodshot eyes.

“Why, after all these years? Why is it you never learn?”

“No, Jack, wait…” I protested. My knees buckled as I stumbled forward, catching myself on his shoulders. “Please, I can… I can explain everything!”

“I was wondering why the toilet wouldn’t flush.”

“Jack, I…” I latched my fingers onto his shoulders and tried to meet his eyes, but he kept them fixated on the door. Tired, puffy eyes that begged to be relieved from their crimson prison. “Jack–” “Imagine…” He laughed incredulously. “Imagine my surprise…”

“Stop…” I moaned.

(No, no, no, no.)

“You just never learn, do you?”

“Jack!” I shrieked suddenly “Stop!”

“Your mother, your father, your sister, her boyfriend, your neighbors, our neighbors, and, God, how could I ever forget you?”

“Stop it!” I wailed, feeling my skin shrink against my bones.

“Stop it, Jack! Stop it now!”

“Stop what, Bonnie?” he cried. “Do you really think this is a fight you’ll win? Do you really think you’re in the right here?”

“Jack…” I crumbled, releasing myself from the balance of his torso and collapsing onto the floor, feeling the shaggy, dirty carpet burn and scar my knees.

(Catch me!)

“What are you going to do? Hit me?” I looked up, saltwater pooling under my eyelids. “That seems to be how you solve all your problems now. Emily’s four years old and even she can see how hysterical you are.”

“That’s not fair!”

“Not fair?” He rocked with sudden laughter. “Not fucking fair?!

You know what’s not fair, Bonnie? It’s not faaaair that you drag me 122

to the armpit of this country, force me into a job filled with nitwits, and then decide you’re going to become an addict! Just for funzies!

It’s all in good fun, isn’t it, Bonnie?!”

“I’m not an addict!” I screeched. The room went dead silent, save for Emily’s mindless babbling from the kitchen. My head stung, sending acid coursing down into my arm. It was soon clear exactly where the conversation was going.

(Please don’t take my baby…)

Hurtling at inexorable velocities into the infinite white abyss.

(Catch me, Jack!)

“Oh?” Jack said in a lighter voice. “Oh, you’re not an addict?

Would you care to elaborate?”

“Don’t… don’t–” I sputtered as tears rolled down my cheeks. I was crying. Why was I crying? “Addicts are sick, and I’m not sick!

I– I– I– I’m all here! It’s all for… for you! For you, Jack, can’t you see?!”

I slumped over and fell on my side, tucking my knees against my chest as my body shook with tears. The putrid stench of dirt and mold poured into my nose. “I did it all for you…”

“Don’t lie to me, Bonnie.” He sniffled. I couldn’t bear to see his eyes. “You’re sick. And you’re so, so, so delusional.”

“I did it for us, Jack! We wouldn’t have survived the year… I– I couldn’t handle it! Being here… it does things to me! I couldn’t put you through that. You saw me! I was… agitated! I would scream and bitch and moan, and you would get upset and walk away. I can’t believe it took so long, Jack, but I finally figured it all out! I’m happy now, can’t you see? Why can’t I be happy, Jack? Why won’t you let me be happy?”

“Jesus, Bonnie! It’s heroin!”

“Don’t say that word!” I hissed.

He stormed into the bathroom and emerged holding the plastic bag filled with the silky black rock by the clasp. I threw my hands up in defense as he chucked the bag at me, and yelped when it scraped past my ear and landed in the corner. Maybe it was the dim lighting, but the rock had lost its signature glimmer.

“Say it, Bonnie! It’s heroin! You’re a heroin addict!”

“STOP!” I shrieked, turning back to stare him in the eyes. “NO I AM NOT!” “Yes you are!” he screamed. “Own up to it! It’s your life now, isn’t it? All that stuff you said earlier… about self-sacrifice to help your family… You even fucking had the nerve to tell me I was going to be the one shooting up heroin! H– how could you… say that to me knowing what you had hiding in the fucking toilet tank?!

Heroin, Bonnie! Jesus…”

123

Alex McCullough Suddenly the room was quiet. Neither of us drew a single breath as we stared at each other in total, all-consuming silence. Emily bounded into the room, consumed in oblivious glee at a spoon she found on the bathroom floor.

(No… dear God!) “I gave you everything, Bonnie.” His words were suddenly cold.

So very cold. The snow outside thickened into dense crystals, pounding like gunfire against the side of the house. “I gave you everything, and you took it all away.”

“Don’t act like I didn’t give you anything,” I uttered callously.

“How did this happen?”

“Don’t change the subject, Jack.”

“You’re right, Bonnie, you are agitated. Every day, you walk around like you’re carrying this massive… burden on your back.

And you complain and complain and complain but then don’t let anyone help you. You don’t think I see how tense you are?”

“This move has–” “Fuck the move, Bonnie!” He was shouting again. Emily had moved into the living room and was obliviously watching Sesame Street characters jump around on the television screen. “You don’t think we had problems before? You don’t think we fought before coming here? If I’m being honest, your piss-poor attitude lasted about two months into the relationship before I didn’t find it so endearing anymore. Face the facts, Bonnie: you’re selfish. You really wanted to make it all better? I’m really happy you settled on heroin!

It’s such a peachy solution I’m solidly fucked over I didn’t think of it before! How resourceful, Bonnie!”

“Jack, please don’t.” I had lost the soul in my voice, leaving it hollow and nearly dead. I truly didn’t have much left to give him.

“You know that’s not how it is.”

“But it is, isn’t it?” He bobbed his head in assent. “You wanted to make yourself happy, didn’t you?”

“Jack, I wanted to make you happy!” I was beginning to sink. “It was all for you!”

(Catch me, Jack!)

(I’m falling, Jack!)

(Won’t you be there to catch me, Jack?)

“Yeah, well look how that turned out.”

Emily jumped up from her position on the living room floor and bounded up to Jack, pulling on his waistband and stretching her arms up to his forearms. He turned to look at her, while I desperately tried to get her attention.

“Daddy, I want up!” she babbled.

“Emily!” I whispershouted, cracking a feeble, shaky smile. “Come 124

Nosedive to Mommy! Come to Mommy, baby!”

“No.” That one word cut deeper than a thousand shards of broken glass.

“No?” I croaked. “Come here, baby. Mommy will pick you up!”

“No!” she screamed. Jack grabbed her by her waist and lifted her into his arms, while she pointed at me and kept screaming “no!” over and over and over.

(Oh, God, Jack, what if I fall?)

“I think it’s best if you stay here alone,” Jack murmured, his face still holding a silent, screaming desperation beneath his skin. “Emily and I will find a motel room or something… We need some time apart. I’m sure you can agree.”

“No, Jack,” I whimpered. “Please, don’t leave.”

“I wish I didn’t have to.” He inhaled sharply. “I wish, don’t I? All I do anymore is wish…”

“Jack, don’t take her…” My voice rose. I clawed at his legs, grasping at the folds of his jeans as he marched slowly to the door.

“Don’t take my baby, please!”

“I wish you were strong enough, Bonnie, I truly do,” he said. I hung onto his jeans as he dragged me to the door, like I was a child throwing a temper tantrum. “I wish things were different.”

(I was always falling, wasn’t I?) “Things can be different!” I protested. The lump in my throat swelled until I could hardly breathe. “I can change! I’ll– I’ll– I’ll stop it all! Stop doing… the stuff I do, and I’ll be nicer! I won’t scream! I can be the perfect wife for you, Jack, and the perfect mother for Emily, but please don’t leave! Please… please give me a chance!”

Jack turned to look at me, with pity and disgust and anger burning in his eyes like hot coals over a crackling fire.

“I gave you far too many chances for my own good.”

The door slammed shut. He was gone.

(All I do is wish.)

He was gone.

(All I do is wish.)

She was gone.

(All I do is wish.)

I screamed.

Loud enough to shake the walls, and strong enough to kill whatever vitriol remained in my voice. I heaved and heaved as air continued to elude me, taunting my lungs as I clung desperately to life from one second to the next. And the tears, God, how they poured like melted steel dribbling from the brink of my eyelids, torching my face with their caustic fire! My arm burned, but, then again, so 125

Alex McCullough did my legs and my skull and my throat. The carpet repelled me with resolute83 disgust, as if it couldn’t sympathize with the shattered child trying to keep her balance on the shifting floor.

And then I was falling.

Falling… falling… falling…

The plastic bag lay tucked in the corner of the wall, as did the needle Jack had been holding. Bile churned and bubbled in my throat like molten lava creeping over the brim of a furious volcano.

I couldn’t escape the scent of my own rotting skin, begging and screaming to be relieved of its inescapable demise.

I sympathized with the skin, though death did not repulse84 me as much as it once did, for I would roll into my own grave before I let my family go.

(All for you, Jack. All for you, Emily.)

He was gone. She was gone.

(I was gone.)

I wrapped the needle between my fingers, thumb ready to squeeze.

The bag was wide open, with molten residue pooling at the bottom like a small, ebony pond. The tip of the needle shook in my hands as I dipped it down, fishing for whatever liquid I could. Time was of the essence and haste was my accomplice, and she didn’t fuck around. The veins in my arm were so very prominent, even in the dark. They called out to me, like sirens beckoning sailors into their trap with their glamorous melodies and salacious allure.

I punched the needle into my arm.

• • • “Does this mountain ever end?” I called out. Jack laughed with childlike gaiety as his foot found a hold between two massive boulders. “I feel like it’s not even worth it.”

“It’s worth it, Bon, just trust me.”

I secured my fingers on a part of the jagged rock next to my face and swung my legs up, briefly catching a glimpse of the dense sandstone canopy fifty feet below. My boots dug into a crevice, and I pulled my torso up, reaching a small plateau and landing on my back, my face tilted up at the sky. The clouds were sparse that day, leaving just a pure, creamy blue ether, but of the small and few cirrus clouds I was able to capture with my eye, there was one that resembled the wing of a dauntless phoenix detached from its owner.

Poor phoenix, I thought, for how dauntless could a bird like you be without its fearless wings? The phoenix must have fallen from the sky, landing somewhere in the canopy and sinking into the forest below, unable to rescue himself without the aid of his wings and be126

Nosedive coming the helpless prey of the various wildlife rather than the ruthless predator it once was. I turned my head, and Jack was staring in the other direction over another rock with his hands on his hips.

“What are you looking at there, Jack?”

“The view,” he said, smiling as he turned to me. “We’re here!”

I stood up and approached the precipice85 of the rock. Below was a golden sea, spanning miles in every direction with trees and rivers and meadows and more mountains, but none quite so high as the one upon which we were perched. Northward, there was Charlottesville, with the colonial brick buildings spangling the revolutionary valley—I imagined who may have been standing in our place two hundred years ago. Jefferson? Madison? Eastward and westward, there were farms and highlands abound, with the apple orchard sprawling across the hills and attracting hordes of people for the impending fall season. Apples were falling in bushels and tourists from Maryland, Delaware, the Carolinas, and, of course, West Virginia came flocking to experience Virginia’s rich and vibrant autumn, where the trees and apples were like gold ingots dotting the landscape and the patriotic spirit of the colonial ages could be tasted in the buildings and roads alike. And southward, well, there he was: Jack Sutton. I wouldn’t dare say he was the man of my dreams, for I didn’t really have much more than harrowing nightmares when my eyes shut at night, but I certainly wouldn’t want anyone else to wake up next to.

“Jack, it’s beautiful!” I exclaimed as loud as I could, listening as my voice reverberated off the descending mountainside and shrieking with laughter.

“You want to see something just as beautiful?” he said from beyond my periphery.

“I don’t know how you top this, but–” I said, turning my head.

He was on one knee. His index finger and thumb held between them a small diamond ring that reflected the blazing sun in fractals of sparkling light. I clasped my hands over my mouth, my eyes filling with tears.

“Jack, what are you doing?”

“I’m thinking about my future,” he said. I choked on air, which was at least partially attributable to the high altitude. “Bonnie Elizabeth Linklater, will you marry me?”

“Oh, my God…” I sobbed.

“We can wait ‘til we graduate, over the summer, and it will be beautiful. I’ll invite my family, and you can… do the same if you want, but no one’s forcing you.”—I let out a breathless giggle—“I know we’re young but why wait until we’re old and filled with regret when we have something so magical right now?”

“Oh, Jack–” 127

Alex McCullough My foot slipped under me, giving into the suddenly sloping rock.

I collapsed onto my stomach and began sliding downward, clawing with futile desperation at any crevice I could find, but unable to secure myself on any of them.

“Jack! Help!”

He jumped up and started sprinting after me as I continued to slide down the slope, approaching a perilous drop twenty feet away.

Fifteen feet away.

“Catch me, Jack! I’m falling, Jack!”

And just before I dropped over the edge, he was grabbing my hands, his boots firmly secured in a notch in the boulder. His eyes were wild and his breath was labored, as was mine. I got so lost in the silvery blue of his eyes I almost forgot I had been falling in the first place.

“You caught me,” I said, breathless and laughing like a maniac.

“I– I don’t know what to say…”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, smiling as he pulled me back onto solid ground. “Don’t worry, because I’ll always be there to catch you when you fall. No matter what, I will not leave your side.”

“Oh, my…” I said, my chest heaving and falling. Then I added a belated86: “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

We both smiled, and in harmonious serenity we descended Carter Mountain together just as we had climbed it two hours before: giggling like schoolchildren who think they know what love is. On the walk back, we began adumbrating87 a five-year plan starting with our wedding. Early June was a time we settled on, so it wouldn’t be too muggy and hot, and preferably on a beach—not Virginia Beach, since that would be packed with summer vacationers from the Midwest, but somewhere more cozy like Chincoteague. Then we’d buy a house somewhere around there; Jack’s parents would pay for the rent for at least a year so we could get settled without worrying about the finances.

Naturally, Jack was more inclined to delve into semantics, while I remained silent, unable to take my eyes off him for longer than ten seconds the whole way down the mountainside.

• • • The needle dangled limp from my arm as I dropped backwards, my head hitting the floor like a sack of rocks. Above me, the ceiling was swallowed by an all-consuming blackness as if my pupils were shrinking and shrinking until nothing remained. Vomit churned in my throat like melting butter. My breath, once labored, began to slow until it was a low, spacious, and unsteady pulse (Why Can 128

Nosedive Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 3).

Jack let go of my arms and I fell. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Goodbye, Bonnie,â&#x20AC;? he whispered with a voice like sour licorice.

Down the mountainside and into the golden canopy, through the branches and onto the forest floor. He waved at me from above, baring his teeth in a wicked grin as I fell further and further.

A dark and neverending freefall.

(Goodbye, Bonnie.)

129

Part twO

JACK

Figure 21. The Collector. Gravity Falls. Pinterest, www.pinterest.nz/pin/3729612177353624/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2019.

“Adult health-risk-taking behaviors… are

often an individual’s attempt at coping and self-regulating the experiences of emotional pain, anxiety, anger and/or depression related to unresolved adverse childhood

”

experiences.

Gil para 3

Figure 22. Estrella, Joel. Broken Glass Gun Hole. PNG Tree, pngtree.com/freepng/broken-glass-gun-hole_2877865.html. Accessed 16 Apr. 2019.

IX

I REMEMBER HOW SHE USED TO DANCE

Figure 23. Vachon, John. Residential street, Elgin, Illinois. Aug. 1941. Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/exhibits/land/landmidw.html. Accessed 15 Apr. 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER NINE I Remember How She Used to Dance

(John?)

“Mom?” (John, can you hear me?)

“Yeah, I can hear you.”

(I sent you a message and you didn’t answer.)

“You mean a voicemail?”

(No, like a… Daniel, how do you say it… a text! A text message.

I sent you something yesterday and it doesn’t say you’ve read it. Is everything okay?)

“Oh, no, yeah… I’ve been busy.”

(Oh.) “Yeah…”

(Okay… but you’re going to make Christmas this year, right?)

“I’m, uh… not sure.”

(Oh, dear, it’ll be absolutely wonderful! Luke is coming down from New Hampshire with his fiancée—Amelia, I think her name is. Have you met?)

I paused a moment, probing my memory for an Amelia. “No, I don’t believe so.”

(Your father has decorated the house. We went full-on this year.

Wreaths on all the doors, lights in the hallways… a life-sized Santa figure in the front hall right by the door! You wouldn’t believe it, John.)

“I don’t think I can come, Mom.” (I beg your pardon, young man?)

“I’m sorry.”

(John, you can’t miss Christmas!)

“I really don’t want to but I have to. I just can’t come to Richmond right now… there’s stuff going on that I just can’t leave.”

(I’m sure it can wait until after the New Year.)

“No, it… can’t. It’s, uh… it’s Bonnie.”

135

Alex McCullough (Oh. Well, if Bonnie can’t do it, then–) “Mom, she’s… she’s sick.”

(Cut the crap, John. She’s never liked us. If she doesn’t want to come she doesn’t have to, but–) “I’m not lying to you, Mom!” The line went silent.

(Come on. You don’t seriously–) “She’s… she’s in the hospital.” (…John, I–) “Forget it. Tell Dad I won’t be there.”

(John! Don’t hang up the phone! Don’t you–) I hung up the phone and set it neatly on the table, parallel to the other forward-facing objects that had been strewn about in haphazard disarray when I had entered an hour earlier. Across the room, I had also rearranged the magazines and remote on the bureau beneath the TV, swept the floor with the broom I found in the bathroom and left the dustpan by the door for the janitor to pick up, and scrubbed the grime and grease off the mirrors, sink, and toilet. The hospital was so painfully understaffed and at the same time so very emphatic on patient satisfaction one would be surprised to discover that patients were actually admitted and, God forbid, treated for their many ailments. I had recently heard from an attending with whom I’d worked on an appendectomy the week prior—Dr. Charlotte Perry—that the administration was considering implementing valet parking, of all things (Robbins para 10). She said that patient satisfaction had dropped recently and the government was threatening to reapportion the hospital’s budget unless they turned it around, to which I replied something along the lines of, “This is why we get such bullshit salaries,” and was reprimanded accordingly (Robbins para 3). I leaned against the wall and rubbed the baby-blue felt curtains between my fingers.

When Bonnie arrived at the hospital a week prior, she was immediately encased in cords and tubes spiraling out of her body like the legs of a plastic arachnid. Even in the golden sunrise climbing atop the eastern mountain ranges and pouring through the blinds, her body looked like a porcelain bed sheet had been draped over a brittle mannequin—empty and vast and devoid of vitriol. The shrill pulse of her heart monitor served as the only apparent indication she was even alive.

I would’ve given anything for her tableau on the hospital bed to confound88 me, but I was miles beyond surprise.

We never had the most orthodox89 marriage, as I told the inexorably nosy patients who would wander into Bonnie’s room when I appeared, imploring the story of the man on the curb who watched as his wife stepped in front of oncoming traffic, tired of trying to pull 136

Nosedive her to safety. She was wild and restless and had a petulance90 that redefined petulance, whereas I was uptight and wealthy and a chemistry major who hoped the “opposites attract” principle translated well in the world of love. Together, our octet was complete. Friends and family and the occasional passers-by gawked at the unfathomable idea of a durable millennial relationship founded on our mutual social interests and not a simple finger swipe on our digital artifices.

Rather than resort to clichés, we superseded the Tinder wave with facetious rectitude91 and pretended we knew what we were doing while knowing nothing at all. “Marriage is about sacrifice,” I would say to myself after every fight, every shout, every shattered bottle and every torn duvet. “It’s about compromise.”

(Opposites attract because the cation donates its electrons to the anion, thus completing the anion’s octet and leaving the cation attached and completely codependent on the anion.)

I remember how she used to dance.

Our wedding was a sight to be seen. The sun that day roared louder and louder as the heat—in-character for a midsummer morning on the island—mounted into the late eighties as noon approached, yet when compounded92 with the breeze soaring in from the ocean blue was more than tolerable. I didn’t need to be reminded to avoid seeing Bonnie in her dress, since I was already preoccupied with the minor details of the wedding that I’d failed to account for—the hydrangeas were several shades of purple brighter than the royal carpet rolled down the length of the pier; my mother had left her keys in the locked car and my parents thus needed to carpool with the caterer back home; and one of the groomsmen’s ties had a mysterious brown stain on the front that I was unable to scrub out with five different brands of chemical cleaner. My biggest mistake, which my officious93 father frequently made apparent to me, was acting as both the wedding planner and the groom.

I wanted very much to ignore him, but I couldn’t help but suppress a childish giggle of pure, unplanned ecstasy when my bride walked down the aisle.

Her dress swooned and swelled in time with the woodwind quartet seated on an enclave jutting off the pier, and one of the many shaky breaths I took as she approached the arch was of relief knowing that my faith in her to pick out an appropriate dress to suit the event had paid off handsomely and above all expectations. Per her request, she was to walk down the aisle alone, which was met with moderately disgusted expressions from my extended family, and nervous finger play and averted glances from my parents. Her smile, though, lit her face with golden light, and by the time I dipped her downward as the ceremony waned, the audience was hysterical with tears of 137

Alex McCullough envious joy.

And then I lifted her back up, and our feet sprung upon the floor in time with Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun”—our wedding song.

She spun like a dreidel in the ballroom, her alabaster-white shoes slamming and turning and grinding into the wood as she danced, while my hand tried desperately to keep up. I was a frightfully timid dancer, yet I allowed her to guide me through as she laughed at my arrhythmic footsteps and paled, nervous eyes. Eventually, my efforts fell short of adequate and she kept turning, with a gums-bearing, primal shriek of laughter and a wild wilderness gleaming in her eyes.

“She’s radiant,” I had remarked quietly to my older brother. Luke was holding a multicolored alcoholic drink that was dangerously close to being infected by his chest-length, sandy blond hair. His presence at the wedding was merely a two-hour portion of a twentyfour-hour lapse in his year-long spiritual journey through northern Canada. “I can’t believe she’s mine.”

“You’d better not lose her, Jackass,” he sniggered before meandering back to the bar.

(Had I even really found her?)

That may have been the last time I saw her dance like that, with her nose jutting high into the air and her arms and legs swinging like helicopter blades as she navigated the ballroom. While the afternoon trickled into evening, I watched my relatives and friends, old and new, suck down gallons of alcohol like they had been deprived of air and were itching for that artificial feel-good to endure the rest of the event, but I couldn’t fathom drinking a single drop at the risk of forgetting how imperfectly perfect the day had been.

June 1st, 2015. I circled the day on every calendar.

My biggest weakness used to be my lack of faith, for I was so overwhelmed by every small detail of every facet of my life I could never begin to imagine a clear and well-composed final picture. Life was never a blur for me. A typical, average, American middle-class family was the given for so long that I never considered my life could diverge from that straight and narrow. “Marry young,” my mother once said. “Don’t wait for children. Grow up with them, and be the best parent they could ever know.” It was all so confusing yet all so clear. My life was before me, and I only had to take the daring step forward, braving the dim abyss of the unknown before reaching the other side.

But maybe that was too much faith.

“Hold to the ground,” I would tell myself. “Life is full of surprises you cannot understand, but you mustn’t let yourself fall from the face of the Earth. Hold to the ground.”

138

Nosedive Bonnieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoes stomped and slammed onto the wood floor. The ground kept shifting.

I had been peering through the blinds of the hospital room window at the vacant, broken street below. The sun had reached the firmament and was glaring at me through blank cumulus clouds filling the sky with upset color, and the bitter sharpness of the morning dew carried with it a deep, dry winter cold. The wretched pulse of Bonnieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heart monitor prevailed.

I remember how she used to dance, with the intrepid94 vigor of a renowned bullfighter. She stomped on the ground and the ground kept shifting.

I was beginning to lose my balance.

139

â&#x20AC;&#x153; There are some people who en-

joy being miserable, and they live in a self-made prison with a door that locks on the inside.

â&#x20AC;?

Segedy para 4

Figure 24. Nyttend. Midwest Block, Downtown Laramie. 6 Apr. 2009. Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Midwest_Block,_downtown_Laramie.jpg. Accessed 11 May 2019.

X

CULTURE SHOCK

Figure 25. Headstone Silhouette at Getdrawings - Tombstone Silhouette. Seek PNG, www.seekpng.com/ipng/u2q8q8i1q8r5u2w7_headstone-silhouette-at-getdrawings-tombstone-silhouette/. Accessed 11 May 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER TEN Culture Shock

The snow was particularly heavy the morning Bonnie was discharged from Mason County Hospital. It fell in billowing blankets around the hospital as the culmination of my sixteen-hour shift at eleven o’clock in the morning inched closer, illuminated by the slowly rising sun and the floodlights outside. I always admired how intractable95 snowstorms could be. Maybe it was the fact that Virginia had more bitter cold and choking frost than actual snow in its winters, but on the occasional chance that snow would fall, I would sit on the window bench in my childhood bedroom and admire each unique snowflake, giving them the individual recognition they deserved, and watch as they began to accumulate in the yard.

The snow took no hostages, showed no mercy, and certainly exhibited no restraint; it canceled classes, suffocated plants, and froze car doors, and yet there was something so majestic about the method to its madness. Even when it wasn’t snowing, the residue remained for days and fought with warlike valiance against the beating sun.

And when the final remnants of the previous snowstorm vanished, the clouds converged and prepared for another. Six-year-old Jack was likely more enthralled96 by this phenomenon than he should’ve been, but both my parents and I were satisfied with the very existence of a personal interest regardless of how absurd it must’ve seemed.

However, the snow in Ambrose was much more sinewy; it didn’t have the fluffy texture like it did in Virginia, but more closely resembled melting butter trickling from a rusty spoon. So I did not admire the storm outside the hospital, spellbound by the individuality of he snowflakes, but instead sat up straight on the cot in the break room, my back leaning against the frosted window, and stared emptily at the door. I had been previously been submerged in a pile of sheets on the bed, and my whole body was sticky with sweat as I rose to my feet. Outside the door was the familiar cadence of quiet, somber 143

Alex McCullough conversation and ringing telephones. I stumbled into the bathroom in a fresh daze, hosed myself off in the shower, threw on my Avett Brothers t-shirt and a pair of track pants, and carried myself out of the hospital with extrusive bags hanging under my puffy eyes and a distinctly callous resting bitch face that elicited odd glances from every hospital patron I passed. Twelve seconds later, I was in the driver’s seat of my truck, my head drooped over the steering wheel and arms hanging lifelessly at my sides. I was simultaneously repulsed by the idea of staying at the hospital and unable to force myself to drive back to the house, so I instead sat in the car, gazing wistfully at the driver’s side mirror and meditated over the distinct possibility of simply living in my truck for the rest of my life.

Five hours earlier, at six o’clock sharp, my wife was unloaded from her hospital bed into a slate-gray Kia parked in the ambulance bay. In the driver’s seat, a Vietnamese man was being paid a thousand dollars to transport her to Cincinnati for a six-month sentence at a facility I’d never heard of with people I’d never meet. All I could gather from this mystery nuthouse was that, judging from the exorbitant bill that appeared in the mailbox a month later, my random choice of treatment center was likely the most expensive one (Methamphetamine and Other Drugs Are Not as Dangerous as Alleged para 31).

I was hoping Bonnie’s sentence would alleviate some of the financial pressures, but it seemed to do quite the opposite. She was off absorbing thousands of dollars a month to learn how to put down a goddamned needle while I, in the interim, worked double the amount of hours than before the incident just to make enough money to meet the mortgage, the fees, and dinner for Emily. I cut out my own personal luxuries, which eventually extended to proper dinners. My own daily meals relied on one of two factors: one being the chance that there was extra leftover food in the hospital break room, and the other being pure serendipity97. Otherwise, I merely withstood the hunger when I could. On the bright side, the stress weight I’d been gaining in the past couple months was quickly reversing itself.

It soon became apparent that, without Bonnie, I was a very, very lonely person. Never would I have anticipated that my social depravity could be alleviated by such an antisocial function, but the next morning—over twenty-four hours since Bonnie’s departure—I sat in front of my wardrobe and mused through my assortment of dress shirts with fastidious scrutiny. Some of them were so old they hung like moss on a willow tree off my bony shoulders, whereas some still had the tags on. I invested in the brand-new, untouched iron I’d bought Bonnie for Christmas—still wrapped—to smooth 144

Nosedive out the wrinkles, carefully removed my universal Joseph A. Bank sportcoat and the matching pants from their shared wooden hanger, and I magically had an outfit. The next twenty minutes were spent with me, dolled up like a child taking his First Communion, toying with my hair and acne in the bathroom mirror and humming a song reminiscent of a middle school formal dance, when love was free and unbridled. I would tear up the dance floor with some cheeky, dimpled brunette, both of us in the crosshairs of puberty, and stuff my face with cookies decorated like disco balls. In my prime, I was the beau of every birthday bash.

I chuckled jauntily in the mirror, swaggered to the truck, and entered “Holloway Funeral Home” in the GPS. • • • The drive was about twenty minutes long. In my time at Ambrose, I chose certain streets with meticulous attention to the safest, most secure, and most universal route possible to get me wherever I needed to go. Soon, I became adept98 at this personal route. I understood each curve and crack there was to understand. But Holloway was in a different part of town, and I suddenly found myself inching along, twenty below the speed limit, with no clue of what I was getting myself into. Streets so damaged you feared for the safety of your tires more than yourself; buildings decorated with banners of “condemned” and “crime scene”; and a nebulous canopy of smog that hung so low to the ground I accidentally got a moutful when I made the mistake of cracking the window. Eventually, the graveyard—a thousand-square-foot notch in the desolate concrete jungle surrounding it—appeared from around the corner. I quickly swiveled the car against the curb and made sure it was locked before walking in.

The area was so cramped with headstones it was obscene, with some nearly on top of each other and some creeping over onto the gravel path leading from the cobblestone gate to a grimy glass egress into the building. I could only imagine as I inched nervously down the path what kind of contortionist brujaja these bodies must have endured to fit in their tiny plots, or whether or not there were any beneath my feet. Most of the headstones had epitaphs, but a lot were mostly or completely obscured by mud and moss and in desperate need of a cleaning. From what I could read, very few of the deceased in Ambrose had family members who cared to submit a custom message, so a lot of the epitaphs simply read the name of the corpse buried below without even a hint of a birth or death day.

I shuddered and quickened my gait until I reached the door.

145

Alex McCullough “—on this day we do not lament the death of Mary Elizabeth Lambdin, but celebrate her life!”

“Amen!” the pews cried.

The inside of the building was sequestered into two identical halls on the right and left, with a central lobby and several doors leading to what I assumed was the kitchen, two dining halls, a storage space, and the broken elevator. I turned on my heel and walked into the hall on the right, the entrance of which was occupied by an enormous portrait of Bonnie’s mother, propped up by a frail iron easel.

I scanned the pews for but a moment before I saw Grace.

“Grace!” I hissed.

She snapped her head back, and I motioned for her to come join me in the latecomers’ wing behind the pews.

“God does not discriminate and he does not hold a grudge to the sick and the deceased!” the minister cried.

“Amen!” the pews shouted in chorus.

“I’m glad you could come,” she said after navigating the pews to join me in the back. “It’d mean a lot t’her.”

“Would it really?”

“Nah.” I sniggered softly while Grace pushed playfully at my arm. A plump woman with ragged white hair spun around in her seat and shot a disgusted glare at us for having dared interrupted the service.

Not to say she was unjustified in her annoyance, but in my own defense, I would feel wildly uncomfortable bowing my head to pray for the easy rest of a woman who threw glass at her children for fun. Grace motioned for me to walk with her toward the center of the building, equidistant between both ongoing services so as to not disturb either. Meanwhile, the minister, unfazed by our brief disruption, continued.

“Our fallen soul in Heaven will be forever with God’s glory!” he cried with evangelical conviction. A murmur of accord rose from the pews.

“Do we know exactly how she died?” I asked. “I mean, like died died?”

“Well, what she had was pretty much your standard heart attack— tha’s why she collapsed the first time—but her heart was so weak as it was she jus’ went into cardiac arrest lit’rally an hour later.” Grace spoke in a quiet murmur that made it clear she was slightly socially dehydrated. “But she was on ‘er way out, anyway.”

“Well, I figured.”

I turned my head and looked painfully at the portrait of Mary. In the photo, she was at the beach on Lake Erie near Port Clinton in Ohio—I remember Bonnie explaining that one photo with deliberate 146

Nosedive detail—and she had just recently gotten engaged to Grace’s father, Walter Lambdin. It was hard to tell from the way it was cropped for the service, but in the original she was flashing her wedding ring at the camera with the biggest shit-eating grin on her face. I tried not to look at it for too long. In the photo, the pair of wide-circled sunglasses she wore obscured her face just enough so that she looked exactly like Bonnie.

“Did you arrange this service?” I asked.

“Well, yeah, most of it.” She turned her gaze to the pews, scanning the backs of everyone’s heads before extending her finger to point at one particular guest sitting in the second row on the very end.

“That woman righ’ there, with the dark hair and the long skirt… tha’s my mother’s sister, Auntie Ruth. She also helped. But it was mainly me.”

“Did Aunt Ruth—or just Ruth, I guess—like Mary?”

“No,” Grace said, point-blank. “They were ‘stranged.”

“Ahhh.” I scanned the pews as the minister concluded the service and people began to stand up and migrate toward the dining hall in the back where Grace and I were standing. As I looked at every passing face, I couldn’t help but notice not only the peculiar structures and cosmetic choices of some of the guests, but their clothing as well. At least three men who passed me were not wearing shirts, and even more were only wearing wife-beaters and khaki pants.

The women were not much better; every color of the rainbow was accounted for in these guests’ hair, and I swore I saw one woman wearing nothing but a bra and sweatpants. Of course, there were a substantial amount of people dressed appropriately for the occasion, but it’s always the sore thumb that sticks out.

In the swarm of people, I lost Grace to the crowd. Just before entering the dining hall, a booming voice erupted in my left ear.

“Who are you?” the voice roared.

I spun on my heals, searching for the voice’s owner. “Hello?”

Eventually I’d spun nearly two hundred degrees to the right before landing on a gruff, burly man with long, tangled peach hair and was approximately six inches below the tip of my skull. His apparell was somewhere in the moral gray area of funeral attire, with an eggshell button-down shirt, untucked, and a pair of green dress pants that fit snug around his waist but tapered out in the legs like bell-bottom jeans.

“You know a Bonnie Linklater?” His voice was guttural and, admittedly, terrifying “…Yes?” “Friend? Brother?”

“Husband.”

147

Alex McCullough “Husband!” He paused for a couple harrowing seconds before extending an open palm into my chest. “How the fuck’re ya?”

“What?!”

It quickly registered in my brain that he was proposing a handshake. I nervously draped my dainty fingers over his beefy ones and engaged in what must’ve been the most uncomfortable physical exchange I’d ever had with another human being. He had a pudgy head, decorated with an unruly beard and yellowed eyes hidden behind his unkempt hair, and had a pungent odor that perforated my sinuses and singed my nose hairs.

“Aw, come on ya fuckin’ puss. Shake my hand like a man!”

I complied, with only marginally more masculinity, and discreetly slathered the sweat and grease residue on my pants while he continued talking.

“Lars Chatham. Friend a’ Bonnie’s.”

“Jack Sutton. It’s a pleasure,” I responded meekly. “Are you looking for her? She’s not here.”

“I figured. Bonnie Linklater never was one to fawn over her momma like that. I’d be surprised to see her here.”

“Really?” I cocked my head. “I think no matter how much I hated my mom I would still at least come to her funeral. I mean, Grace managed to show up. The only reason she didn’t come is because she’s sick.”

“Overdose?” he said immediately.

“No!” I lied.

“Coma?”

“Okay–” “Naw, she’s definitely in rehab!” He let out a booming guffaw. “I can see it on your li’l face! She’s in the druggie barn!”

“The ‘druggie barn?’” I retorted, trying to play the conversation away from the charades Lars was trying to engage in.

“That’d be her, I’m jus’ sayin’.”

“Well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but she has a fever.” I paused a moment, narrowing my eyes. “Wait, what do you mean ‘that’d be her?’”

“Well, y’know…” He raised his eyebrow as if he expected me to finish his sentences. “Most people like her do…” “‘People like her?’ She’s not an alien. She would never–” “Don’t kid yourself, Jack. I saw what she lived with. That momma a’ hers was a real piece of work. Physical, verbal, maybe even sexual… kids with mommas like that don’ even graduate high school, much less go to college. An’ when they do, it’s never clean. They always end up gettin’ dragged back into the same shit they dragged themselves outta. You look smart, Jack. What’re you, a lawyer?”

148

Nosedive “Nurse,” I said through gritted teeth.

“So you know what it’s like dealin’ with kids? You seen what kinda trauma kids can have? Maybe you got some patients whose poppa beat the shit outta them when they were young, and now they have daddy issues because they ain’t know nothin’ else.”

“Okay, Lars,” I said, almost laughing, “Bonnie doesn’t have daddy issues.”

Kids like that grow up to be outcasts,” he said, ignoring my statement. “They’re never normal. They’re fucked up (Gil para 2).”

I widened my eyes and pointed them directly at Lars’, mustering he most intimidating expression I could. “Don’t talk about my wife like that.”

“Listen, Jack, it’s not always gonna be fun for you. My momma was a speed whore, and my pops was locked up for a long time. My siblings is all kinds of fucked up now, and Bonnie is too. And Grace, and her boyfriend, and every other kid we knew. Fucked in the head.

All of them.”

Less than a second later, both Lars and a nearby pedestal holding a bouquet of lavender were on the floor, surrounded by shattered porcelain and blood spatter. He had his fists balled over his nose and wailed like a tornado siren as a crowd began to form, and I became acutely aware of how very liable I looked standing over a bleeding, helpless funeralgoer with my hands balled into fists and eyes full of unjustifiable anger. A swarm of piercing eyes and ajar mouths glared at me. I had transgressed99 the proper funeral decorum, and would soon pay the price. “What the fuck?” a voice called from the crowd, and the quiet, shocked murmuring rapidly swelled into a cacophony of bitter rancor100. Lars mumbled a slew of swear words as he crawled back into the crowd. Suddenly, I was at the center of a circle of angry funeral guests who were all wildly distressed at this frightful display at an otherwise reverent service. I felt like I was being shoved into a crucible, awaiting the match that would send me into my blazing glory.

The worst part was that he was undoubtedly, unquestionably correct.

• • • I must’ve blacked out for some period of time, for when I opened my eyes next I was sprawled against the tattered floral couch in Mary’s living room, with my cell phone screaming in vibrations beside me and the TV set to static. The room was basked in a deep marigold glow as the floor lamp in the opposite corner of the room illuminated the oak wood panels spanning all four walls. The door 149

Alex McCullough to Emily’s room was slightly ajar and the lights were off. The clock on the cable box blinked at me: 12:00.

My arm trembled as I held the phone against my ear.

“What was that, Jack?” Grace’s voice spit at me through the speaker. “You jus’ come to a funeral and punch people in the face for no reason?”

My eyes began to ache. “He was mean.”

“I’on give a fuck! Jesus, I…” A series of muffled noises. “I was jus’ tryin’ to host a simple-ass funeral and you made it all about yourself! What did I expect…”

“He was… mean,” I repeated.

“Really?”

“To Bonnie.”

“Color me shocked. You do know that not ev’ryone in this town loves Bonnie as much as you do, don’ you?”

“He called her fucked up.”

“She was fucked up!” I recoiled at her scurrilous101 tone. “Give me a break, Jack!”

The line went dead for a few seconds. The floor lamp flickered.

“I’ve nothin’ left to say to you.”

“Hang up the phone.”

She complied, and the room fell silent. All I could hear was the hum of the ceiling fan in Emily’s room, spinning wickedly into the open air.

150

“ But the reason so few painkillers are prescribed by pain specialists is likely that after a decade of policies targeting doctors with costly investigations and criminal charges, there simply aren’t many conscientious pain specialists left.

”

Balko sec Abuse and Undertreatment

Figure 26. “Hospitals.” Zombiepedia, Fandom Books, zombie.fandom.com/wiki/Hospitals. Accessed 13 May 2019.

XI

ALMOST NORMAL

Figure 27. Black-and-White Birthday Cake 5 Candles Silhouette. VectorStock, https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/black-and-white-birthday-cake-5-candles-silhouette-vector-21081126. Accessed 21 May 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER ELEVEN Almost Normal

“It’s someone’s birthday!” I chirped as I pressed my finger down on the dimmer until the lights in the kitchen were demoted to a faint, dying glow. My hands wrapped around the large glass dish holding the neatly frosted cylindrical cake.

“Mine?” a voice said.

“It sure is!” I emerged from around the corner and approached the kitchen table. The room filled with a melancholy luster as the twenty-seven little fires from the candles cast steep shadows against the walls. The strawberries dotting the circumference of the cake were fresher than usual, having been bought from a farmer’s market in Charleston that very morning, and the frosting was homemade courtesy of a fellow nurse with an all-consuming obsession with baking.

It took me about an hour to find the glass platter upon which I’d set the cake, culminating in a spider-ridden quest into the cramped, musty attic, but I was able to retrieve it with limited bites and scrub the cobwebs off before six o’clock.

At six fifteen, the stage was set. I set the cake on the table.

“Make a wish!” I said. Emily shrieked with laughter in her booster seat.

“What do I even wish for?”

“Anything!” My eyes watered. “Anything at all!”

Bonnie leaned forward and blew weakly on the candles. Half of them were extinguished, while the others remained ablaze.

“Fire!” Emily screeched. I released a hearty laugh, while Bonnie barely cracked a grin.

Outside, the humid air married the sharp sting of wind as the clouds prepared for a midsummer storm. A week prior, I had set out numerous Fourth of July decorations—assorted pinwheels, a couple of wall decals, and a star-spangled tablecloth—which all still remained in the backyard and were swaying in the wind with more and more displacement as the storm neared. Every couple minutes, 155

Alex McCullough the onslaught of rain accelerated and decelerated with mercurial102 intensity, and my attention oscillated between the window and the birthday party I had arranged for Bonnie. She was turning twenty-seven years old, and I’d never felt more helpless in my life.

“Do you want some cake?” I asked, gesturing toward Bonnie with the knife. She responded with an affirmative grunt, and otherwise her eyes were fixated on the wall opposite her. I supposed it was a better alternative to her old habit of yelling at whatever displeased her at the moment—likely the cake being slightly misshapen or the lights being too dim for her to see—but I didn’t feel much better than I expected I would. I ascribed103 her indifferent tranquility to the difficult reacclimation to the life she abandoned seven months ago and let my thoughts wander elsewhere. “What about you, Emily?”

“Cake!” she squealed. I severed a thin slice and let it fall onto the hot pink paper plate while she scooted closer to the table, and for a brief moment, I felt more relaxed than I had in months.

I smiled and sectioned off a moderately-sized slice of cake for myself, grinning as my fork plundered the frosting barricade.

• • • I had been talking to Grace more since the incident at Mary’s funeral. As I would come to discover, misery loves company, and she and I were both equally miserable if in different areas of our lives. The night of Bonnie’s birthday party, she and Emily had lulled themselves into deep, coma-like sleep, and I took to the couch for a couple hours after for my nightly breathing period. During this time, I often let the TV run through old episodes of “I Love Lucy” or “The West Wing,” put my feet up on the coffee table, and opened my computer. The desktop was permanently trapped in a cycle between Google Drive—where I reapportioned our limited, albeit not as far into the toilet as several months prior, family budget—and GoFundMe—which has currently raised three hundred eighty-four dollars to pay for Bonnie’s treatment. This was the time when I’d talk to Grace most, for we both had relationship impositions that made it inconvenient for any other time of day, so for about three hours a night—between ten and one o’clock approximately—we entertained each other with profound conversations about the complications of our own lives. It was our little “affair,” we would joke, though we both knew nothing lascivious could arise from such an intricate friendship. I was simply the ear most accessible104 to her, and likewise to me.

It almost escaped me just how much I longed for genuine conver156

Nosedive sation.

“She’s been… improving,” I responded when Grace asked about Bonnie a few weeks after her return from Cincinnati. “As much as she can.”

“As much as she can?”

“It’s been hard on her. She’s not healing as well as I’d hoped.”

“I’m surprised you’re even there still.” She shuffled in whatever chair-slash-bed-slash-couch she was sitting in. “I don’t think I could handle it.”

I sat up straight, my back hunched and my head hanging down over my lap. “Of course I’m still here. I don’t really have a choice, do I?” “Lord knows what Chris would do if I…” She left the sentence unfinished, probably for the better. “But she’s improving, right?”

“She’s… well, she’s different.”

“Is that better?”

“I guess.”

The drone of the air purifier in Bonnie’s room was suddenly all I could hear. I had sequestered a certain amount of our savings into adding some life into the bedroom before she returned, just to make the transition a bit smoother, but the purifier was likely my greatest investment. She wasn’t much of a talker anymore, so in the deep and wide valleys of our daily interaction, she would retreat to the bed, turn on the air purifier, and repose105 in the sprawled, jumbled sheets for hours at a time. Never sleeping, never really awake, but somewhere in between.

“She’s seeing a therapist now,” I added (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 8).

“Is that good?” The phone rang with muffled movements as Grace shifted positions again.

“What’s with all the questions?” I laughed, and she returned the favor. “And yes, that is good. She needs it. We all do.”

More muffled noises, and some obscure but distinct voices in the background. Grace said something I couldn’t quite understand and quickly hung up, leaving the conversation up in the air. The room fell back into its previous silence, with nothing but the electronic hums all around to accompany me. I looked at the clock on the cable box once more—1:43 A.M.—and retreated to the bedroom. Bonnie was buried under the duvet with only her head visible, snoring softly in a charming little melody. Though it was only a faint, trembling murmur, I loved her snoring. It was one of the few times I could hear her voice anymore.

I shrouded myself in the duvet and led my face crash against the pillow, facing hers. For a brief moment, I thought she could be smil157

Alex McCullough ing at me. So I smiled back and let my eyes flutter shut, awaiting to reopen them when the morning came again.

• • • On better days, my new routine worked the best. Part of the benefits of Bonnie being a much more docile member of the household was that structure was all the more attainable the less she objected, which made life simpler and happier for everyone. I woke up at six promptly every morning, showered, threw on clothes, and slathered some pancake batter into a pan and let the stove run for about five minutes at a low temperature before returning to flip. This gave me ample time to wake up Bonnie and Emily and get them both up and moving. Then I’d flip the pancakes. For the remaining five minutes, I would throw together two cereal arrangements in kitschy plastic bowls and set them on the table. By the time both Bonnie and Emily managed to reach the kitchen, breakfast was served. Kiss on the forehead, kiss on the mouth—again, only on good days—and out the door. I made it to the hospital by six forty-five just in time for rounds. My routine was solidly impregnable106 in all respects, barring minor complications, which meant I had more energy to focus on broadening my inner circle.

“I have rounds and general miscellaneous duties all morning,” I described to Dr. Vance Haudan over a mediocre cheeseburger at the Junior Board Shop. “Lunch from twelve to one”—I glanced at my watch: 12:29—“an appendectomy to scrub in for at one fifteen, a brief union meeting at three, nurse training session at three thirty (Robbins para 11), and more rounds until five.”

“Sounds hectic,” Dr. Haudan said through a mouthful of french fries. “How d’you manage it all?”

“I don’t have a choice.” I twirled my finger absentmindedly in circular motions. “I’ve been working extra every week to scrape the money I can. Administration’s not been very good at concealing their penurious107 ways.”

Dr. Haudan chuckled politely. “It’s all the Affordable Care Act fuckery. You ain’t been here since 2012 like I have, but that’s when they got all stingy with our salaries unless we started actin’ like maids ‘n shit (Robbins para 3). You’d be hard-pressed to find someone around here who’s makin’ what they should be anymore.”

“I figured.” I shoveled a couple more french fries into my mouth and began compiling all my trash into the plastic box. “I should be heading back up.”

“All right, you take care, Jack,” Dr. Haudan said, remaining seated as I left the table in search of a trash can. “Give the surgeons a 158

Nosedive big ol’ ‘fuck you’ courtesy of Vance Ulysses Haudan for takin’ all our money!”

“I’ll do that,” I laughed. “Take care, Vance.”

I silently evaluated our thirty minutes of lunchtime as I traveled toward the elevator, concluded that our general mutual amity had elevated us to a “beer-by-the-pool” level of friendship, and added him to my mental Rolodex. Perhaps he would be a good invite to a Labor Day celebration, I thought, or at least some kind of end-ofthe-summer bonanza. I didn’t forecast leaving Ambrose for a while, at least until Bonnie was more mentally independent to hold her own back in Chincoteague. Certainly, though, I could’ve made the effort to secure at least somewhat of a foothold in the community before checking out.

The elevator opened onto the fourth floor, where the telephones and hushed whispers of decorous patients and doctors harmonized like an above-average children’s church choir. I ambled giddily over to the reception desk, which was occupied by an ample, amber-haired woman with a lethargic sneer molded onto her face.

“Any updates on Dr. Perry’s appendectomy at one fifteen?” I asked. She jerked her head negatorily with a hardly discreet scoff, and I subsequently took the message. “‘Kay.” Behind me, a grating scream cut through the melody with jarring discord. I spun on my heel and watched a navy-blue-scrubs-clad doctor calmly enter the room, hands in pockets, while a very hairy, very obese man thrashed in his bed, sending the sheets and IV tubes soaring into the air. As I got closer, I recognized the familiar tightlipped, thin-eyebrowed physiognomy of Dr. Perry.

“My arm!” he wailed, clutching his unmarred forearm. “My fuckin’ arm is off!”

“Your arm is not off,” Dr. Perry said.

“It’s gone! It’s gone!”

She sighed, obviously annoyed. “How would you rate your pain on a scale of one to ten?” (Robbins para 4).

“Ten!” he cried. “I– I need… medication!”

Dr. Perry rolled her eyes. The man must have been dumb enough to believe that we’d all forgotten when he came in the day before, holding a sandwich in one hand, a Coke can in the other, and whining that his arm pain was a “twelve out of ten” and he needed Percocets or he would sue for malpractice. Fortunately—or rather unfortunately, depending on the perspective—there was a motorcycle crash that occupied most of the trauma bay’s attention, so the man was never accounted for. He clearly didn’t sue, but was not leaving without a fight.

“Dr. Perry,” I called from outside the patient’s room, “I was–” 159

Alex McCullough “What medication would you prefer?” (Balko para 21) I stopped dead in my tracks. That was an unforeseen response.

“Dilaudid,” the patient replied immediately, relieving some of the farcical display he’d been projecting. “And Percocets. Lots and lots of Percocets!”

“We do have to warn you that–” “I’ve heard your shhhhpiel already!” he spit. Then, in a faux-female voice: “‘Dilaudid and Percocet are highly addictive medications that can cause addiction, dependence, and tolerance if misused! Please bleh bleh bleh bleh!’ I know you have to give it to me if I ask, so just do it and stop jabbering! Can’t you see my arm hurts, you daft bitch?!”

“Certainly.” She turned to me, lips pursed. “Dr. Sutton, could you administer the medication for Mr. Scott please?”

“Are you sure?” I asked quietly.

She smiled. “Of course.”

I stalled a moment before entering the room and began reluctantly preparing to administer Dilaudid through the IV to his forearm. His plump, malleable face contorted itself into an odd smile.

“A male nurse,” he remarked haughtily. “Never seen one a’ those before.”

“It’s a day of firsts, I guess,” I said, my voice concentrated with scorn at his hackneyed108, albeit successful, means of manipulating Dr. Perry. But my authority didn’t extend nearly as far as I desired, or I would’ve told Mr. Scott to eat shit and suffer, so I shot a regular dose of Dilaudid into his arm and left the room as he began to drift away into a euphoric state.

Five minutes later, just before Dr. Perry went to scrub in for the appendectomy, I confronted her in the break room.

“Not to be crass, but what the fuck was that about?”

She looked up from her Activia and vitamin water lunch and squinted her already narrow eyes. “What, Mr. Scott?”

“Yeah!” I sat down across from her at the table. “You know he was faking, right?”

“Mmmhmm,” she murmured affirmatively.

“Why did you give him what he wanted anyway? What if he becomes addicted?”

“Oh, Jack, he’s already addicted.” She shoved a spoonful of yogurt between her lips. “That’s not our problem, though.”

“I disagree.” I stood back up and crossed to the fridge, rifling through the assorted tupperware until I uncovered the apple I’d left in there the day before. “I think it’s our responsibility to provide patients with the highest level of care possible, but apparently that’s not a popular opinion.”

160

Nosedive “It’s not for those of us who want to get paid.”

“They pay us to fuel patients’ addictions?” I laughed.

“Yes.” “That’s ridiculous.”

“It is.” Her face tightened into a grim, caustic expression. “Do you know why you’re always at those training sessions every day with all the other nurses?”

“I mean—” “In case you haven’t noticed, Jack, the administration at this hospital is so fucking far up their own asses they don’t know which way to walk. It’s a dog-eat-dog world in this linoleum prison, and we’re all trying to survive.”

“I—” “They’re docking my pay, did you know that?” Her lips thinned into a taut smirk. “Apparently, one of my appendectomy patients complained that I didn’t prescribe enough medication for her surgery. Her life was, quote unquote, ‘hell.’ So, because she was ‘unsatisfied with her stay,’ the administration carved out a hefty three thousand from my salary to compensate. As if this is a fucking Holiday Inn. She was addicted, he was addicted”—she gestured at the door—“and we’re being screwed (Robbins para 8).”

“I don’t believe that.” I chuckled abruptly. “There’s no way. They can’t do that.”

“Of course they can.” She traced my height with her scornful eyes.

“But you’re young, I’ll give you that. What are you, like, twenty?

Any neophyte109 in the healthcare industry like you would disagree.

Hospitals protect people, don’t they? They’re supposed to. Now they’re protecting everyone but the people who work for them.”

“So you just overprescribe?” I asked, itching the back of my head with my index finger.

“Oh, God, no.” She let out a hearty, masculine laugh. “Patients are so stupid they barely know what they’re putting in their body. I prescribe a normal amount and throw a bunch of numbers at them until they don’t know the difference between me and their Nurse Jackie friend who runs a pill mill up in Morganstown and huffs Sharpies to forget her tragic, tragic divorce.

“Besides, the repercussions for overprescribing are far worse than under. You heard of Dean Hathaway?”

I paused a moment. “Sounds familiar.”

“Bet it does.” She took another spoonful of yogurt. “Lost his license about a year ago. Some guy wanted an Oxy prescription and was giving very specific dosages and some expert shit like that.

Poor guy didn’t know what to do with that so he just gave him what he wanted. He wasn’t so hot financially; just got divorced and 161

Alex McCullough was in between houses. Couldn’t afford the salary cut. Guy ended up overdosing and dying, and his girlfriend sued Dr. Hathaway for malpractice and, well, won. Now he lives in eternal disrepute110.

Manages a Rite Aid somewhere in Missouri.”

She downed a swig of water, her throat undulating as she tried to speak and swallow simultaneously. “You’d be hard-pressed to find someone now who does that anymore. Too much risk.” (Balko sec Abuse and Undertreatment) “That’s ridiculous.” I took a hefty bite out of the apple and chewed it quietly. “So what are we supposed to do?”

“You’re a nurse, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm hm,” she muttered. “You got the easy job. You just kiss the patient’s asses until you’re basically their fucking grandmother and you keep your salaries (Robbins para 11). We don’t get a script. The doctors like me? We just figure it out.” (“Figure it out.”) “‘Figure it out?’”

“Pretty much. It’s a fine line, Jack. Overprescribing versus underprescribing. Of course, some doctors take the overprescribing route.”

“What?” My voice felt brittle in my throat.

“Men are not angels, Jack.” She smiled briefly, but it was fairly hollow so I took it with a grain of salt “James Madison. We do what we need to get by. Some people who work here care more about the salary than the patients; it’s shitty, but that’s life.”

(Life or death. We are so goddamn selfish.)

“Like they always tell us, ‘the patient is always right.’”

(I must’ve forgot that the patient went to medical school.)

She took another sip of the water like a parched camel stopped at a creek. The faintest smirk on her face grew by the second and exasperated111 me until I couldn’t bear to restrain myself any longer.

I stood up and slammed the chair into the table, my eyes and mouth tinged with acid. She barely regarded my outburst until I began to scream.

“That’s fucking insane!”

“Lower your voice, Dr. Sutton.”

“Fuck you!” I spat. Her pale eyes flashed like a rattlesnake poised for attack. “This is a hospital, not a fucking Bed, Bath, and Beyond!

The patient is not always right!”

“Dr. Sutton, please calm down.”

I lunged forward, grasped the half-eaten apple between my fingers, and chucked it at the metal lockers on the far wall with a loud crash. The room’s other occupants had all turned to stare at me with 162

Nosedive arched eyebrows and judgemental smirks, evaluating my demeanor through their narrow, rose-colored glasses. Their conclusion was unanimous, and the scene was all too familiar. I could practically feel the icy air of death looming like an undead cadaver over my shoulder, yet nothing was there but the door.

And the door I pursued, my reputation likely in shambles at that point. I would be the talk of the O.R. the next day, and the next as well. Provided I retained employment for much longer, of course.

I did not cry in the car, though I couldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve attributed that to the many different thoughts swarming through my head like vultures circling an unsuspecting chinchilla. Through it all, I could not manage to figure out what compelled me to such an impassioned degree to bring patients their well-deserved justice. When did hospitals become a service industry? The corruption, the fraud, the deceit; it all was too blatant to ignore.

(The patient is always right.)

I looked up and read the words stamped above the glass atrium at the front of the building in turquoise wood letters.

MASON COUNTY HOSPITAL Most Reputable112 Medical Facility in West Virginia est. 1940

With all the disgust that comes with being taken advantage of, I let my foot drop like a solid lead block on the gas and didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let go until I was home, two hours earlier than my schedule accounted for.

I did not lament this divergence; I could make use of a little disorder in this chaotic, chaotic world.

163

â&#x20AC;&#x153; Withdrawal from heroin can range from discomfort to agonizing. A person experi-

encing withdrawal will seek out more heroin in order to stop the negative effects of withdrawal.

â&#x20AC;?

Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 5

Figure 28. Black Broken Bottle Vector. Vecteezy, Eezy, www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/144336-black-broken-bottle-vector. Accessed 12 May 2019.

XII

THE LAST TRAIN TO VALHALLA

Figure 29. Graham, Billy. “Where Is Heaven?” Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, billygraham.org/devotion/where-is-heaven/. Accessed 12 May 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER TWELVE The Last Train to Valhalla

Huntington Psychiatric Clinic 401 S Kyrie St Ambrose, WV 25550 United States of America +1 (304) 544-2202 huntingtonpsychiatry.org SESSION TRANSCRIPT 10227 14 July 2020; 12:30 PM Doctor: Linda P. Sendroff, M.D. Patient: Sutton, Bonnie H Indicated Reason(s) for Visitation: trauma mitigation; withdrawal-induced erratic behavior; symptoms of clinical depression and anxiety; possible BPD Number Visit: 4 Transcribed by: Harley, James (via audio recording) [BEGIN TRANSCRIPT] SENDROFF: Good afternoon, Bonnie. [extended pause; patient shuffles on couch] It’s a beautiful day today. Don’t you think?

SUTTON: Sure.

167

Alex McCullough SENDROFF: Have you had lunch?

SUTTON: Yes. [brief pause] A sandwich.

SENDROFF: Was it good? Did it meet your expectations?

SUTTON: [audible scoff] Yeah.

SENDROFF: I’m glad. The baby steps to recovery are learning to enjoy life bit by bit, minute to minute. Even something as trivial as a sandwich, or a pretty bird or flower, or a kind wave from a stranger can help you reconstruct a positive outlook on life. [brief pause] You don’t mind that this session is recorded, do you?

SUTTON: [sigh] I suppose not.

SENDROFF: Fantastic. [brief pause] Could you remind me what we discussed last time? [brief pause; checks patient file] Last Tuesday, I believe.

SUTTON: Uh… you asked about my relationship with… Jack.

SENDROFF: Thank you. We covered a lot of ground that day, wouldn’t you agree?

SUTTON: Yes. SENDROFF: Tell me, how have you applied what you learned to your interactions with him?

SUTTON: [extended pause] I haven’t yelled at him recently.

SENDROFF: Would you say that this has improved your marriage?

SUTTON: [laughs] Maybe. He’s happier.

168

Nosedive SENDROFF: That’s great. Are you?

SUTTON: I’m tired.

SENDROFF: That’s all right, too. Remember to find ways to make yourself happy. Positive, productive ways. Screaming does nothing but aggravate. Have you tried meditation?

SUTTON: Fuck no.

SENDROFF: Evidently.

SUTTON: Sorry… I didn’t mean to swear.

SENDROFF: That’s all right. You’re still recovering, Bonnie. Think of your illness as a way to wipe the slate clean and create something beautiful out of the ashes. This could be the best time of your life if you put in a concerted effort to better yourself.

SUTTON: I think my “illness” is the worst thing to ever happen to me.

SENDROFF: You’ve said that before. What makes you think that?

SUTTON: Are you joking?

SENDROFF: No, Bonnie. [brief pause] What happened to you will never be reversed. You experienced life-altering trauma that exacerbated113 untreated mental afflictions and survived.

Statistically, you’re a miracle (Thomas sec Some Think Recreational Painkiller User is Harmless). So stop thinking so poorly of yourself when you are so brave, so… so… valiant.

To overcome addiction is the bravest feat a person can accomplish.

SUTTON: Braver than never being addicted at all?

169

Alex McCullough SENDROFF: I’m not saying this made your life any better, because I’m sure it didn’t and it likely never will. But try to look for the silver linings. They’re always there.

SUTTON: [extended pause] Okay.

SENDROFF: Good. Today I’d like to address something new.

SUTTON: Fire away.

SENDROFF: On your first day here, I asked you to tell me why you decided to receive psychiatric help, and you told me your husband forced you. But then you said something very specific about your mother.

SUTTON: My mother?

SENDROFF: Could you possibly remember what you said?

SUTTON: [brief pause] No, I don’t think so.

SENDROFF: [shuffling papers] We were discussing why you left Ambrose, I believe. I had asked what compelled you to go to college so far away—comparatively speaking—and you indicated that it was because of your mother.

I asked you to tease that out, and you said, and I quote, “That bitch nearly killed me.” [brief pause] I didn’t probe any further; it was really something to look at another day, and I wanted to get a more comprehensive look at your experiences.

SUTTON: Okay?

SENDROFF: Today’s that day, Bonnie.

SUTTON: What do you mean?

SENDROFF: I would like to know what you meant 170

Nosedive when you said that. About your mother. [brief pause] Talk to me about her. What was she like?

SUTTON: [extended pause; stuttered murmurs] She… she was, um…

SENDROFF: Take your time.

SUTTON: I– I don’t know where to start.

SENDROFF: What is your earliest memory of her?

SUTTON: [extended pause] We were in the car. [brief pause] I must’ve been about seven years old, sitting in the passenger seat… Grace was around a year old, and she was in the backseat strapped in a brand-new car seat. My mother had recently got a perm, ‘cause those were in at the time. Looked a lot like Chutney from Legally Blonde—one of my favorite movies—but with more felonies under her belt. [extended pause] We had pulled into the Walmart parking lot, and we were just sitting in the car for what felt like hours… but was only, like, three minutes. It was really hot—oh! I had just turned seven, actually, because it was late July, I remember now. Anyways, I… [breaks off] SENDROFF: Bonnie?

SUTTON: I asked her when we could go in. It was hot, you know? She… SENDROFF: It’s okay.

SUTTON: She hit me. Hard. On the back of my head with her rings hand, so it stung.

SENDROFF: Okay…

SUTTON: It’s not a big deal. I don’t really remember what happened after.

171

Alex McCullough

SENDROFF: So your mother… was this typical of her?

SUTTON: I mean, yeah. She wasn’t good with words as much as her hands. She’d hit my stepdad when he was around, too, so it’s not like she was personally out for my blood. I didn’t mind the hitting.

SENDROFF: So what made you leave? [extended pause] Bonnie?

SUTTON: That day was also hot. I remember it much more clearly.

SENDROFF: Dig in. Tell me everything, and remember that you’re healing. It’s good to get it out there.

SUTTON: Really hot. Dramatic, almost, for May. And it was Sunday—I remember very specifically going to church that morning. My mother made us both go to church, but especially me. Grace got to skip if she had something else to do, but church was my top priority according to my mother, who said I “had the Devil’s work in my blood” or something ridiculous like that. In hindsight, I don’t blame her. I was an awful child.

SENDROFF: Don’t make excuses for how she treated you. Learn to value yourself.

SUTTON: Right, right. [brief pause] It was Sunday. I graduated high school two days earlier; I believe I would’ve qualified for summa cum laude if the school actually did that—do they do it now? Anyway, they only had valedictorian, which I could’ve easily achieved had I done any of my homework. I found high school unbearable in the most overt ways. But I graduated. [extended pause] My mother did not know I was going to college.

172

Nosedive

SENDROFF: Why? SUTTON: I couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t know.

SENDROFF: Why not? Why could she not know?

SUTTON: It’s a cultural thing… I don’t know.

She just– she always talked about what I’d be doing after graduating, and it was never college. I’d get a job immediately, and contribute to the family income. Stop being a freeloader, do the errands. Get my driver’s license, take Grace to school… College was off the market.

SENDROFF: [brief pause] And? SUTTON: The following Sunday night. I left that night. I walked downtown and waited two hours for a taxi—the last train to Valhalla—and fled, watching the skyline disappear behind the mountains. The driver took me to Charleston for an exorbitant five-hundred dollars, but I was equipped with half my mother’s savings, which she kept in cash in her closet, the stupid whore. From there, it was a string of different taxis all the way to Charlottesville. I stayed at a hotel for a couple months, taking odd jobs from Craigslist to make some pocket change, and eventually started going to classes once the year began.

No one knew who I was or how I got there, but that was okay. I was home.

SENDROFF: Why that day? [brief pause] What happened that day that made you leave?

SUTTON: Is this session close to over?

SENDROFF: No. Bonnie, this is important. You have been cruising in your comfort zone for the past three sessions, but I know you’re frightened. If you want to heal, you have to 173

Alex McCullough confront what’s happened to you. Don’t leave your broken bones untreated because you fear the pain. [brief pause] Why did you leave Ambrose that Sunday?

SUTTON: [shakily] She found out.

SENDROFF: Found out what?

SUTTON: About college. My acceptance letter.

I made the mistake of hiding it under my bed, not realizing that she kept… things there.

SENDROFF: Things?

SUTTON: Drugs. Oh, God, fentanyl, OxyContin, Percocet, probably heroin, too; it was all there. I didn’t even know. All my life… I– I slept on top of that shit! Right over… [respirating heavily] SENDROFF: Remember to breathe.

SUTTON: She needed her daily fix. God, I was so stupid! [extended pause, hyperventilating] She saw the letter.

SENDROFF: What happened then?

SUTTON: [calmer] We were eating dinner, Grace and I—the usual: cold soup. My mother slammed the letter on the table so hard she dented it.

Granted, it was a fold-out, but still. “What the fuck is this?” she screamed.

SENDROFF: You’re doing great. Keep going.

SUTTON: “I can explain,” I said. And then she slapped me. Again with her rings hand. I still have the scar on my cheek from where her wedding ring slashed the skin… she didn’t want to hear it. She started screaming I don’t even remember what, but I do remember she kept repeating the word “traitor” over and over. The 174

Nosedive screaming… so much screaming…

SENDROFF: Do you believe she was on drugs?

SUTTON: No, she was off drugs. That’s the point. Withdrawal did funny things to her.

There was a deep, residual anger behind her eyes. Fury. Wrath. She would’ve shot me four times in the head with a sawed-off shotgun if she believed my skull was caked in black tar heroin (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 5).

SENDROFF: Do you truly believe she would?

SUTTON: I believe she almost did.

SENDROFF: [brief pause] Let’s tease that out.

What happened next?

SUTTON: Well, it wasn’t just her screaming.

It was really all of us. She was hurling insults and swear words at me—“fucking bitch”, “wretched cunt”; the works—and I was throwing them back—“old fuck, “crackhead whore”—while Grace, poor Grace, was only screaming. She had her hands over her ears and eyes squinted shut… she couldn’t take it. Eventually, she ran into her room, but my mother… she wasn’t done with me.

SENDROFF: Keep going.

SUTTON: I threw an empty wine bottle at her.

It missed, unfortunately, and smashed against the fridge into a million pieces. That’s when she lunged at me. Her hands… they… [chokes] SENDROFF: You’re okay.

SUTTON: [sobbing hysterically] She started… strangling me (Gil para 1). Like, really trying to kill me. I had bruises for months! And she kept screaming over and over—“Just like your daddy! Just like your daddy! Just like 175

Alex McCullough your dirty fuckin’ daddy! A goddamn traitor!”— and I… I just lay there. I didn’t do anything to try to stop her… I just let her do her thing… Maybe I really wanted her to kill me.

SENDROFF: Don’t say things you don’t mean.

SUTTON: It would’ve been better for everyone, I’m sure of that.

SENDROFF: Bonnie– SUTTON: So I left. She didn’t kill me, but there were other ways that I could help my family. [brief pause] Maybe I was a traitor.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But I’m sure, for all Grace may have loved me, she did better without me there.

SENDROFF: [extended pause] Bonnie, you are not a burden.

SUTTON: Thank you, but– SENDROFF: Say it back to me. “I am not a burden.” Say it.

SUTTON: [brief [hoarse cough]

pause]

I

am

not

a

burden.

SENDROFF: You are not a burden. [brief pause] Bonnie, you’ve made tremendous strides today.

To heal, you must accept what’s happened to you and move on. I assume you’ve never told anyone about that night?

SUTTON: No. SENDROFF: You have not had an easy life. But you’ll never recover if you don’t accept you were once weak. You have risen out of the ashes of tremendously difficult experiences, and you are alive today. We have a lot of work to do. [brief pause]That’s enough for today.

176

Nosedive

SUTTON: [shaky, relieved laugh] Thank you, Dr. Sendroff.

SENDROFF: Will I see you next Tuesday?

SUTTON: Next Tuesday.

[END TRANSCRIPT]

177

“ At the same time these high-profile investigations and prosecutions have been

going on, the federal government has provided no safe zone for what is and isn’t an acceptable way to treat pain with opioids.

In fact, they’ve deliberately blurred the line between acceptable pain management and felonious criminal behavior.

Balko sec No Safe Harbor

Figure 30. Medicine Bottle with Pill. Dreamstime, https://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-images-medicine-bottle-pill-image11628279. Accessed 20 May 2019.

”

XIII

HOW COULD I BE SO BLIND?

Figure 31. “Blue Ridge Mountains Outdoor Educator.” Outward Bound, www.outwardbound.org/course/blue-ridge-mountains-outdoor-educator/444/. Accessed 20 May 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER THIRTEEN How Could I Be So Blind?

For a while, improvement was marginal and practically undetectable. There were but a few moments in a given week where it was clear to me Bonnie was recuperating, slowly but surely.

“Do you remember Catie Pound?” she asked me one morning. I practically dropped my spoon in the cereal bowl. “Bleach blonde, kinda bitchy?”

“I think so.”

“She’s Buddhist now.” Her head bobbed affirmatively, in a “that’s life” sort of way. “I just saw it on Facebook, which has more Evangelical Christian energy to me… maybe she should think about using Twitter, they’ll be more accepting of her… odd religious epiphanies.”

“I’m glad we can have conversations like these now,” I said, beaming.

“Don’t patronize me,” she said, but it was a comment devoid of the usually snarky, caustic tone she used to employ to malign and degrade me. As in, I could tell she was being facetious, and I became very unmistakably pleased with this development. “Not a patient anymore.”

“I know.” I stood up and placed my cereal bowl on the counter.

“I’m just glad that things are changing.”

She grinned. “Me too.”

I looked past the decaying wood table we bought to replace the dented, torched, and barely upright folding table when we first moved to Ambrose. In the living room, Emily was sprawled on the shaggy brown carpet and watching Dora the Explorer traverse the muted technicolor screen. She was wearing a sapphire floral romper and a loose, messy ponytail of tattered auburn hair that bobbed from shoulder to shoulder as her head followed the characters on the screen. The romper was new; one of the many benefits of Bonnie being healthy enough to rejoin the workforce—even if just an 181

Alex McCullough entry-level cashier job at Speedway—was a marginal surplus of income. So we splurged on Emily when we could. She didn’t deserve to grovel in poverty like Bonnie and I did.

But by no stretch of the measure had life returned to normal.

I turned my head swiftly to the sound of metal clattering on the tile.

Bonnie had begun heaving in the chair, her head dropping and jerking like a skittish bull as her breathing began to quicken. Then came the crying—so much crying. Tears like blazing waterfalls cascading over her face and spilling into her lap until her face approached with haste a boiling ruby shade. The chair shook and scraped against the tile loudly as she writhed in pain, until finally she doubled over and vomited on the floor, bile dribbling from her lips and creating sinewy web-like structures rising three feet above the tile. Emily had fled into her bedroom for her own sake, understanding the game we had to play. I seized Bonnie in my arms, firmly embracing her torso until she stiffened and her breath slowed.

“You’re okay,” I whispered, remembering the recommended dialogue. “You don’t need it. You’re okay.”

After a minute of us sitting still in the dripping, scornful air, she finally calmed down.

One of the doctors at the inpatient facility Bonnie had stayed at indicated that episodes like this could occur. As she phrased it, it was clear Bonnie was having major difficulties with managing withdrawal. “She’s a toughie,” the doctor had remarked. “We were ‘fraid she might kill one of us for a fix a’ heroin, but thankfully it wasn’t so.” Another doctor asked if she had a history of drug abuse in the family out of curiosity, to which I didn’t respond and left in a huff (Szabo para 16). To be fair, it was a genuine question with a genuine answer; I just didn’t care to offer it to the sneering physician with chest acne and a toucan nose.

Besides, I had other issues to handle at the hospital.

• • • On the Friday following my altercation with Dr. Perry, I sat in with Neal Kadens, the CEO of the Mason County Hospital. The first thing I noticed when I entered his office was how startlingly immaculate it was. The room could be considered to have only three walls if the floor to ceiling, corner to corner window facing the vast mountains behind the hospital weren’t acknowledged. The only furniture to occupy the grand space was his desk, two lounge chairs, a slender display table behind the chairs, and a bookcase behind the desk; all of it incredibly minimalist and incredibly white, leaving the room drunk of all color besides the gargantuan bonsai tree nestled 182

Nosedive in the corner left of the window and the birch-wood floors, which boasted a modest cantaloupe hue. I silently acknowledged how very small Mr. Kadens looked in his massive white-leather rolling chair.

“Please sit,” he said coolly. I sat uncomfortably in one of the lounge chairs, terrified that my noxious114, unsterile body would somehow blemish it. “I hear you have an issue with how the hospital is being run.”

“Yeah,” I responded meekly, despite rehearsing a more galvanized tone in the drive over. “I don’t agree with the policies we’ve implemented recently.”

“Jack,” he said, smirking with corporate arrogance, “how long have you been working here?”

I paused. “A little over a year.”

“So you were not employed at this facility in 2012?”

“I don’t see how–” “Were you employed at any hospital in 2012?”

“Yes.” I was becoming annoyed. “Chincoteague Medical Center.

Virginia.”

“Do you recall, in 2012, the Affordable Care Act being incorporated into your hospital? Around October, I believe (Robbins para 3)?”

“Yes.” “So I assumed that by November you had filed a complaint to the administration?” He gestured toward the window, as if this fictional hospital was somewhere hidden in the mountains. “Would I be able to acquire documentation of this complaint?”

I paused again, gritting my teeth. His presumptuous115 attitude nicked at the lump in my throat, and I desperately wanted to say more than simply, “No.” “Then what are you doing talking to me?” He chuckled with polite brevity and readjusted his position in the chair. “I have legitimate affairs to take care of that far exceed the importance of your… gripe. Don’t waste my time.”

“There is a problem with how this hospital is run,” I mumbled.

“Come again?”

“You are killing patients!” I cried loudly and abruptly. Mr. Kadens folded his hands over the desk and squinted at me. “They’re dying!”

“Lower your voice.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, suddenly soft and docile again. Screaming would do me no good. “I just think this is a serious matter that needs to be considered.”

“Look, kid,” Mr. Kadens said, rising from the chair and meandering toward the window. “You’re not the first to complain about this situation. Hell, I know it’s not ideal. But that’s just the world we 183

Alex McCullough live in. Patients are assholes who know how to game the system, and that’s never going to change. But as long as they’re paying us, it’s not our responsibility to tell them how to live their lives. At this point, we’re worrying about ourselves.”

“That’s so wildly selfish it makes me sick.”

“Then quit.” His voice was sharp, and it cut like a rusty razor through leathery skin. “This hospital only functions on those skilled enough to walk the fine, fine line between salary cuts and malpractice suits, and if you can’t handle it we don’t need you here (Balko sec No Safe Harbor).”

“That’s not enough. This is a hospital, not a fucking Walmart.”

“Control your language, Dr. Sutton.” He glared with such immense fury exuding from his eyes I couldn’t help but recoil into subservience. “You’re very bitter, aren’t you?”

“What does that mean?”

“Why now?” He chuckled briefly. “What prompted this? You see something weird?”

I knew what prompted this, but he didn’t deserve to be privy to that knowledge, so I responded, “No.” Then I added: “Just an observation.”

“Recent development. Interesting.” He lurched forward from the glass wall against which he’d been leaning with patronizing casuality, watching me squirm and flail and grovel in submission. “What are you afraid of, Jack?”

I hesitated. Millions of fears roared in my ears, fighting to make themselves known. “It’s a matter of principle. I don’t think this country needs more addicts, especially from our hospitals.”

“Please spare me the propaganda.”

My stare turned from the pensive fixation on the floor to a scornful glare at Mr. Kadens. His eyes were an objectively rhapsodizing stone gray color—the signature mark of someone who wasn’t attached enough to this town to lose that signature glimmer.

“I mean,” he continued, “you don’t honestly believe it’s that severe, do you?”

“I would think so, wouldn’t I?” “You would, wouldn’t you? I would assume so from someone as naïve as you, but it’s time to wake up to realize the world isn’t nearly as fucked up as you think. It’s all the news; they love to make mountains out of molehills with these things, and, of course, then the government’s three feet up our asses thinking they know how hospitals function. You want someone to blame for how you feel?

There they are.”

“That’s interesting, Mr. Kadens, but–” “Fun fact, Jack: only around ten percent of people who use pre184

Nosedive scription pills actually become addicted to them (Methamphetamine and Other Drugs Are Not as Dangerous as Alleged sec The Issue of Addiction). But you would never know because that’s the ten percent everyone likes to whine about. Then the DEA’s knocking on our doors, fucking our wives, and we can’t give someone ibuprofen without a huge-ass investigation… paperwork… so much shit to think about. You know what they’re doing in Florida now? Doctors have to jump through seven billion hoops to get patients their medications and they still can’t do it without the DEA threatening to tear their careers apart (Balko sec Florida’s New Law). They think they’re helping people become less addicted, but they’re not even addicts in the first place… they just want to fucking live a normal, not painful life and no one’s letting ‘em do it.”

“Jesus…”

“Is that your fault, Jack?” It was rhetorical, but I was so intimidated I almost answered. “No, of course not. But now you know.

Patients know what they need—they’re the ones in pain, for fuck’s sake—and it’s your job to give them what they need.”

He paused a second, pinching the corners of his mouth and fixating on the mountain ranges beyond the glass. Then he added: “God, you’d think these legislators would’ve never set foot in a hospital in their lives.”

“Mr. Kadens, what about the people who do become addicted?”

He looked at me, baffled and incredulous. “What do you mean?”

“Ten percent of people who use prescription painkillers become addicted. You just said that.” I cocked my head and folded my legs over. “What about them?”

“They’re, well… you know.” He waved his hand dismissively.

“They were on that track anyway. Maybe this’ll sound a little eugenicist, but if they die then that’s one less addict out of the gene pool.”

The tips of my ears turned bright red, and for a second I could almost hear my own blood boil. “Maybe they didn’t want to die.

Maybe they wanted to be different.”

“Call me a nihilist, but they don’t really have a say.” He stretched his neck and smiled. I forced myself to stay seated and not act on my overwhelming desire to throw my shoe straight at his domineering nose. “Man is his destiny. These are people born into addiction, and they will die addicts. We expedite that inevitable process and save eighty percent of users. That sounds like a bargain to me.”

The future of my medical career depended solely on which impulse I chose to act upon in those ensuing three seconds: would I kick him in the head and flee the scene, or make a heated but civil exit from the office? Perhaps if I jumped through the glass win185

Alex McCullough dow and plummeted a hundred feet into the concrete ocean below I wouldn’t have to put my career on the line, but it’d certainly destroy most if not all of my credibility.

I chose the second. “Go fuck yourself.”

“Excuse me?”

“My apologies.” I cleared my throat. “Please go fuck yourself, Mr. Kadens.

“Get out of my office.”

My voice trilled with feminine laughter.

“Or I’ll make sure you never set foot in a hospital again.”

I pushed my arms in his directions, my middle fingers pointing at the ceiling, and paced backwards toward the door, shrieking with laughter all the way. The last of Neal Kadens’ office I saw was his small figure hunching over the desk, and the sun beginning to descend from its early afternoon position in the sky to a perfect alignment between the mountaintops and the radiant ether.

For the ensuing five minutes, I meandered the sterilized and very gaudy halls of the hospital, unsure of whether I wanted to leave or find some other means of wreaking havoc—I was in a particularly destructive mindset walking out of that office. My head was filled with cries of “Death to Neal Kadens.”

(Neal Kadens, you miserable fucko.)

All along, when I had looked at Bonnie with such scorn and disgust; at how she dared to even consider putting heroin in her body when she watched for so long how it tore her mother apart, how it tore her apart. Maybe she wanted to feel that happiness, I would think to myself. Maybe she needed to chase that high just to get through the day. The strenuous circumstances of being back in this town would turn anyone batshit insane. How selfish of her, I would think to myself.

How could I be so blind?

To my own hypocrisy, for I was too selfish to see what was going on right under my nose. I should have trusted myself. People like Bonnie didn’t deserve to be left to die by their own miscalculated discretion; to kill themselves because no one told them they could choose to live. But I was a child. I couldn’t give that up.

Neal Kadens let people like Bonnie drink poison masqueraded as golden wine—hell, he poured the glass—and never told her there was an antidote. He let her grovel and whimper and squirm and scream until the line’s end was near in sight. Thank God she turned around, but what about what remained of that ten percent?

What would they do?

There were many different rooms down the infinite hall, all with doors wide open and machinery resounding unabashedly along the 186

Nosedive walls. Some may have been occupied, but no indication of human life could be discerned behind the steady but overlapping pulses of the wretched heart monitors. How steadily they ticked like a hundred clocks on a single wall—none correct and none the same.

(Maddening how that could be.)

My immersion in pensive thought vanished as soon as my phone rang. When I picked it up, Bonnie’s face appeared on the screen. I had selected one of her wedding photos as her icon, her opulent, shining face framed by her silk veil and set against the backdrop of the luxuriant foliage flanking the riverside pier.

“Jack?” her hoarse voice said when I answered the call.

“Bonnie?” I responded. “Hi, are you okay? You sound upset.”

A couple seconds passed before she spoke again, her voice lubricated with tears. All around me, the emptiness of the halls felt even emptier as I postulated what she’d done this time.

“It’s Grace.” She took a shaky breath. “She’s… dead.”

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“ Some triggers for heroin relapse include: feelings of stress, fear, depression, anxiety, guilt and loneliness; … big life changes such as a death of a loved one, divorce, or unemployment.

”

Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? sec Triggers and Warning Signs of Heroin Relapse

Figure 32. Rain in Park. The Wallpapers, thewallpapers.org/desktop/45028/rain-in-park. Accessed 20 May 2019.

XIV

GRATIA PLENA

Figure 33. Victorian Urn Silhouettes. VectorStock, https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/victorian-urn-silhouettes-vector-741933. Accessed 20 May 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Gratia Plena

“What?” I said. The incredulous laugh I let out didn’t feel so sickening then, but I was still in denial. Surely her call was some distasteful practical joke.

“She’s dead.”

“Bonnie–” “She…” “Bonnie, calm down. Wh-what do you mean Grace is… dead?”

“She’s dea– dead… oh…” Her words were interrupted with sagging heaves and weak gasps for oxygen.

“What are you talking about?” I laughed again. “She didn’t… die.”

“She’s dead. Th-hey found her… there.”

“Where?”

“Her apartment. In the…”—her breathing was now complemented with shrieking cries—“In the bath!”

“I don’t–” “They can’t find Chris, either… he’s gone.”

“Bonnie…”

“She has…” A cracked sob screamed through the speaker. “She… cuts. Up and down her arm…”

“Bonnie, please calm down.”

“Fucking no, Jack!” she wailed. “I won’t fucking calm… down…”

“I’ll be there soon. Where are you?”

“Hospital. I’m… we’re at the hospital.”

I hung up the phone, my head hot and spinning like a blazing earth on a swiftly turning axis.

(Grace is dead.)

Bonnie’s tone unnerved me deeply. She always took pride in her ability to stay calm and collected in the face of adversity: an assertion that proved valid time and time again. Crying wasn’t her most preferred modus operandi for handling her emotions; she instead chose to keep her face stoic and plain to hide the bustling chaos 191

Alex McCullough below her skin, and for a while it was almost desirable that she show no genuine emotion. I never liked large hysterical displays, turgid lamentations to the most minor mishaps, or a crumbling of the knees to bend forward into the pooling spotlight. She offered this reprieve from a hectic society plagued with Munchaüsen’s-reminiscent displays of petty, attention-seeking emotion. But then we moved. She took pills and shot poison into her veins. She relaxed her grip on her hastily-constructed artifice and, in turn, it collapsed.

Maybe it was best that she covered up the blemishes and scars in her mind with a cool smile and a flick of the hand—the veneer I had fallen in love with.

Was it my job to paint back over the scars in the wood?

She couldn’t cry. Bad things happened when Bonnie Sutton cried (Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous Than Other Types of Drug Relapse? para 10).

So I ordered Thai food. The nearest Thai restaurant was in Charleston, and the two-hour drive seemed to translate appropriately onto the driver’s annoyed expression. Bonnie’s comfort food growing up was this restaurant’s pho soup, which I found bland but she appreciated on bad days. I bought three orders of pho just for her, some pad-thai for myself, and the food showed up in a plastic bag by seven o’clock the day after that harrowing phone call. She’d spent the night at the hospital by her sister’s side, while I looked after Emily.

“You bought Thai food?” Bonnie asked that night, gesturing to the logo on the plastic bag sitting on the table. “For me?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged casually. “I thought you’d like it.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. “Thank you.”

I smiled, unsure of how joyful I was on the inside, and upheld my role as the arbiter of tranquility with steadfast, indignant gusto.

• • • A week later, a funeral had been arranged in Brittany Park. Grace didn’t have a will, but the note she left on the bone-dry bath mat, however succinct, had a vague outline of the funeral. It was to be outdoors, and she was to be cremated and dispersed around the park; from what I could assume, she didn’t care much for Ambrose’s graveyards and she was never a traditionalist person in the first place. “Back to the Earth,” the note said. Bonnie abstained from this portion of the service, choosing to stand on the opposite side of the car and watch the minimal passerby with forced scorn.

I led the organization of the funeral, with officious input from a couple of Chris’ friends, and little allotted time to consolidate all the different logistics. For a decently low-budget funeral, it was more 192

Nosedive intensive to plan than I expected; one caterer who was already annoyed that I hadn’t obeyed his one-week notice rule, a pianist from a community college in Point Pleasant who was only mediocre, and a minister from a church Grace hadn’t gone to in years. All were pains to book, and all were subpar executioners of the very job for which they were paid. And my wife couldn’t even make it past the hood of the car.

However, I was completely content with that fact; she didn’t need the stress of watching her sister’s broiled and incinerated corpse being tossed to the ungrateful flowerbeds, and for some unknown reason she was particularly obstinate to the location choice. But it was nevertheless a painful service. In the hectics of the funeral organization, I’d forgotten to mourn the only true friend I’d made in this lawless fucking wasteland of a city. I was ashamed and mortified when I could barely muster a brief elegy for the girl whose life was cut so short it couldn’t even be celebrated, but simply lamented. The pianist pounded out a messy and rudimentary dirge116 and I returned to the small crowd of strangers and freaks.

“How’d you know ‘er?” asked a gaunt man with hair like overcooked spaghetti.

“Uh, sister-in-law,” I responded politely. “And friend, I guess.”

“Ah. She ain’t had many a’ those.” He folded his lips inward, tracking with them a layer of grime on his golden teeth. “All she had was Chris. I’on even know where he’s gone to.”

I didn’t reply. It felt too unnatural to speak with someone of his breed, as if he were a homeless welfare queen who sprayed mud on an undershirt and begged for spare quarters at the gates of upper-class suburbia. But we were both there trying not to cry at a twenty-one-year-old’s funeral, and carrying a thirty-second conversation about it without any intellectual blockades. Maybe I shouldn’t have condemned the degenerates whom I’d come to resemble.

I turned my head back to the front where guests were exchanging turns at the podium to say a few kind—or unkind—words about the girl in the eggshell urn in the minister’s arms, and there was Bonnie, adjusting the microphone downward to accommodate her short-ish stature.

(Oh no.)

“Hello, everyone.” Her voice was worn like a canvas tent put through a firing squad. “I’m Bonnie, her… um, uh… sister. You may recognize me better as the girl with pink-on-black zebra hair who used to shoplift Busch Lite for, like, half of you.”

There was a brief but roaring symphony of laughter from the crowd. Bonnie even smiled a bit, and I reciprocated.

“And I’m sure some of you have never even seen her in person, 193

Alex McCullough but only heard of her through conversation. Maybe you’re friends with Chris… I don’t know. This picture over there…”—she gestured toward Grace’s senior yearbook photo, blown up to massive proportions and placed in the same frame used at Mary’s funeral—“That may be the only time you’ve ever seen her. And that’s okay, because in all honesty, I haven’t been that… y’know, ‘buddy buddy’ with her either.”

More laughter. At a funeral. I was thoroughly disgusted.

“Which is my fault. Obviously.” She trilled with laughter. “All my fault. Maybe in another life… we could be closer, but that just wasn’t an option. You know… how it can be.”

A murmur of assent from the crowd.

(Could they all be like Bonnie? Did they all have the same life?)

“But I talked to her when I could, and it was… it was like magic.

I mean, we were smart independent of each other, but I swe-a-aar!” Her voice shook with laughter like rocks in a blender, and then I could tell she was beginning to loosen her grasp. “It was like…

Einstein and– and– and Sigmund Freud got together to discuss the news, like… batshit smart. She was too smart for her own good, Grace. I think… I think she almost feared how smart she truly was.

Maybe you wouldn’t know this, but she… she probably has—had— like, a hundred sixty I.Q. I mean, how do you just let that… die?”

The mumbling amongst the crowd grew slightly with her ultimate word. She continued nonetheless.

“And she had pretty hair, too,” she added, beaming with affection.

“Blonde like the sun. I hated it when she dyed it. Pretty hair like that should never be changed. Never, ever, ever…”

A ray of afternoon sunlight emerged from behind a dense cluster of clouds and shone down on the podium, and I could see for the first time the water filling her eyes and the quivering in her throat as she spoke. Her cracked smiles, elucidated in the harsh, hideous light, were so very transparent, hiding a terrified child wailing and begging for mercy. Her smile hardened like candle wax on unblemished skin.

(It’s time to leave.)

“Grace, I can only imagine all that I missed.” Several streams of hot saltwater erupted from her eyes, but her smile remained intact.

“If you can hear me, know that the regret I have… for you! And for all that you did for me… will never go away.”

“Bonnie,” I whispered shortly. She was close enough that she surely heard me, but chose to finish her speech instead. The crowd began to shift uncomfortably on their feet. “Bonnie!”

“You took the fall for me.” Bonnie laughed again. Her eyes were puffy and matched the rouge of the rose bushes towering behind her.

194

Nosedive “You stayed when I ran. You remained calm while Momma and I screamed. You arranged her funeral, and I couldn’t even attend the damn thing… You were selfless when I was selfish, and I can’t forgive myself for the pain you endured on my behalf.”

“Bonnie!” My cry was only loud enough to elicit head turns from the nearest corner of the crowd. She continued to ignore me.

(Bonnie Sutton is under a lot of stress, now. It’s time to leave.)

“I loved you, Grace!” Streams of mascara painted her face with lightning. “I loved you then, and I will always love you!”

I rushed toward the podium just as Bonnie began to turn away.

Her deep chocolate eyes were so pale they seemed almost jaundiced. Just as she took her first step from the podium, she fell facefirst into my arms, her head dangling over my bent forearm and arms wrapped around my waist. Her entire body convulsed with wheezing sobs compounded with shivering, quickening gasps for air. She was no longer smiling, but wild-eyed and consumed by an ethereal obscurity, her face pallid and in chromatic tandem with the lingering clouds above. The guests, unable to pass judgement but also happy they weren’t the center of the hubbub, glared indifferently at us as we stumbled in joint disharmony toward the parking lot.

In the growing distance, Grace’s ownerless eyes peered at us from the portrait, scornful and embarrassed that we’d ruined her funeral. I looked at Bonnie with similar embarrassment, but found it eclipsed by a forlorn sense of impregnable dread.

She sat in the backseat of the car, on her side and breathing into a McDonald’s bag as I sped home, ignoring the ignorable stoplights and creeping the wheels over the precipice of the crosswalks at the unignorable ones. Stop signs barely registered with me. By the time Mary’s house was in sight, the speedometer was pushing sixty-five in a forty, which surely gave some off-duty cop in the area a stress-induced brain hemorrhage.

In the house, all the lights were turned on and the refrigerator was wide open. The living room carpet was submerged in candy wrappers, spoons, and tinfoil; and at the center of the couch, Emily was on her feet, covered in spaghetti sauce and dancing to the “Phineas and Ferb” theme song that blared at a deafening volume through the TV’s poor, limited speakers. I had been so consumed by the chaos of organizing a funeral that I’d forgotten to arrange a babysitting situation.

Yet, somehow, that made its way to the lower end of my list of imminent concerns when Emily watched her mother dry-heave on the carpet, her bile an opaque yellow spangled with chesnut flakes.

Both Bonnie and Emily began to scream; I guided Bonnie into the bathroom while Emily ran to the kitchen and crawled underneath 195

Alex McCullough the table, curled in a fetal position on the dirty tile and using the central leg as protection from the alleged monster ravaging the inside of her poor, desolate mother. Bonnie stumbled over herself as she tried to open the bathroom door, and immediately threw up again, this time—mostly—into the open toilet bowl. Between her intermittent gags and gasps, her crying varied between soft and wailing sobs of “Grace!” Behind her, I filled Dixie cups with tap water and held back her vomit-tainted hair.

We sat in that position for about half an hour before her crying settled into a distinct hum of sniffling and shivering. She had never cried so hard for so long before. It was then I realized I hadn’t cried at all; I didn’t let myself indulge in the safety and comfort of sadness, and allowed myself to embrace the underworld of unclear, nonlinear emotion so as to let Bonnie feel justified in her own carefree expression of emotion. But I did not complain. She had spent so long sustaining an intrepid veneer that I was simply glad she was expressing any emotion at all.

There was no comfort in the artifice I’d created for myself to replace hers. But I never banked on our lives being comfortable. I took a small towelette and wiped the remnants of vomit from individual strands of her stringy, frayed hair.

• • • One of the first things Bonnie said since the funeral episode was said over dinner.

“My arm hurts.”

I looked up, my fork suspended in midair and dangling marinara-soaked noodles over the plate—I figured we might as well finish the container of sauce Emily had previously halved.

“What?” I asked.

“It’s been hurting all day.” She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I just thought you should know.”

“Do you want some ice?”

“Not… that kind of hurt.”

“Like…?”

“I’m fine,” she said. Under the table I could feel the vibrations from her bouncing leg. “Seriously, it’s not a problem.”

“You haven’t touched your spaghetti.”

“I’m not hungry.”

I dropped my fork on the plate and pushed myself up from the table, crossing over to her. “You need to eat, it’s not healthy.”

“I’m. Not. Hungry,” she reiterated, her tone ripe with umbrage117; she must’ve not particularly enjoyed playing the victim that day.

196

Nosedive I could foresee a ten-minute-minimum argument approaching, so I ended the conversation with a sweeping armistice and scooped my and Emily’s plates into my arms, shoving them in the dishwasher, and ordering Emily to her room.

“I want to watch TV!” she yelled.

“No, Emily, you’ve had a long day.” I opened her bedroom door and lightly shoved her inside. She crossed her arms and stomped her feet. “It’s time for bed.”

“No!” she yelled again.

I didn’t argue or initiate a fight with her, but merely shut the door.

From above the frame, I grabbed the thin silver key and shoved it in the doorknob, twisting until I heard a click. As I walked away, Emily began screaming and hurtling her fists at the door with tempered fury.

When I returned to the kitchen, Bonnie was walking the opposite direction to the bedroom.

“Are you going to bed?”

She nodded silently and kept walking.

“You’re not going to eat?”

“No.” I let it slide that time. She’d had a bad day, to put it lightly, and I’m not sure throwing up half the contents of her stomach would’ve bolstered her appetite. I scooped her dinner into a tupperware container along with the leftovers and forced it between two milk jugs in the fridge. Five minutes later, I was in bed, my eyes closed but ears open to the sound of Bonnie twitching and jittering, knowing her arm would never acquiesce to a ceasefire and she would remain awake throughout the night, counting every stab of pain with bitter acceptance of the past’s invasion of the present.

• • • Four hours had passed before I awoke, though the sky outside was still black like fresh tar and the clock on my bedside table blinked in blue flashes of “3:16.” In the next moment, a muffled “Shit!” came from the hallway, and then the distinct scrape of porcelain against linoleum, as if someone were dragging a toilet through a kitchen. My head swung in the direction of the hall and my eyes were greeted with an empty Bonnie-sized space in the bed, surrounded by wrinkled sheets and a discarded duvet.

(Bonnie in the clear.)

I lept from the bed and seized the wooden baseball bat from behind the bureau, feeling its density in my hands and imagining with masochistic glee the sound of solid oak cracking against the skull 197

Alex McCullough of whatever nightcrawler who’d dared to break into our house. A light beneath the bathroom door cast a thin trapezoid of white, lustrous color on the carpeted path. I tiptoed across the hall slowly and methodically, trying to balance my attention to the task at hand and the millions of different fears that cycled through every lobe of my brain.

The bathroom door crept open. A trembling leg bent in a seated position emerged from the right, by the toilet.

The door opened a little further, and a shaking arm.

A little further. Finger on the trigger. The mouth of a gun, but it was the tip of a plastic apparatus.

(Bonnie in the clear.)

A needle.

“Stop!” I screeched.

(This town is getting to you.)

I flung the door outward, slamming it against the wall and casting my wife into the vulnerability of the open air. She was surrounded by empty plastic bags stained with black, forming a circle around the detached toilet cover that lay in the center of the floor.

In one hand, a spoon, hardly clean and decked out with cartoon ladybugs—Emily’s favorite spoon. In the other, a needle so full and so opaque with obsidian tar I could feel bile begin to simmer in my throat. And her face…

“Bonnie…”

Her eyes were so wide and diluted with tears, lips trembling, hands twitching, body convulsing. Fingers poised over the needle, ready to strike. Puffy, tired, beaten and broken. She was not intending to live to see the sun rise again. I was mere seconds away.

“Bonnie…” I repeated, my voice beginning to crack. My knees buckled and suddenly I was doubled over on the tile, grabbing at her pale, palsied thighs. “Bonnie, no…”

She didn’t speak. Her arms gave out and dropped their contents on the floor with an haunting echo, and she began to cry. Real, genuine, relentless tears. Scared, tormented, somber tears. Mortified and humiliated tears.

For the first time in a long while, I saw sincere remorse.

For the first time ever, I allowed myself to join her.

And together we lay, sobbing like two broken, bereaved children on the bathroom floor, unsure of what would follow but knowing in our hearts that we’ve ventured into holes so deep they may never be surmounted. Hope was such an elusive concept to us in that moment; what it meant to have faith in God’s miracles was a lost answer on us, undetermined with no exceptions regardless of how hard we searched. God was dead, and He left us unattended. Fraud198

Nosedive ulent, self-destructive humans. The savior of humanity left us dispelled and untethered in a cold and merciless world.

There was no holiness here. There were no miracles. I was done searching for the diamond in the rough, for diamonds are often mirages fabricated by a disillusioned mind.

I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t let hope take advantage of me any longer. There was something stronger on the horizon.

199

“ But what I do see—not as much here in Akron, but I see it all of the time in Cleveland, is an attitude of:

“What in the world ever made you come HERE?”

“Why in God’s name did you ever leave [insert city here]?

“I know you have a lot of new ideas and good intentions, but you’ll see, this place will grind you down and kill your dreams.”

Some of this is good-natured joking, but it still betrays a real sense of shame and inferiority that people feel about the place. People never said things like that when I lived in North Carolina.

Even worse, when enough people exhibit these attitudes, they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Eventually, many of the newcomers are ground down by the negativity, and they move somewhere that they feel they can actually make a difference.

”

Segedy para 40–45

Figure 34. A Dilapidated Hovel in a Wheat Field. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/pin/ 824018063044939246/. Accessed 17 Jan. 2019.

XV

LUDLOW

Figure 35. Flames on a Burning House. Pin Clipart, https://www.pinclipart.com/pindetail/mhTbhh_flames-on-a-burning-house-comments-clipart/. Accessed 21 May 2019.

Nosedive

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Ludlow

“Four thousand, six hundred eighty-seven dollars and seventy-five cents,” I called from the kitchen computer into the living room, where Bonnie was arranging miscellaneous family treasures into a cardboard box while Emily danced to the music coming from my portable speaker—Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun.” “That’s what I’m worth to these people?” she called back. “Four thousand? I’m filing a lawsuit against this godforsaken country.”

I laughed, genuinely, which surprised me a little.

The figure I’d read aloud was from the GoFundMe page I’d initially set up to pay for Bonnie’s rehab. Though it proved unnecessary in the long run—thanks to a couple generous donations from my parents—it served other potential purposes. The most pertinent at the time was the moving process, which seemed poised to prolong for an unbearably long time unless we started investing more money into a better-equipped moving company.

Outside, the August heat was waning as the calendar neared September with melancholy leisure. In Ambrose—what Bonnie referred to as an “all-season nightmare”—winters were frigid and plagued with frequent and devastating ice storms, but summers were worse.

Randomly-combusting trees, record-setting temperatures, and the ever-present risk of your flip flops melting into the asphalt if you didn’t run fast enoug—these were some of the general givens of an Ambrosian summer. The summer of 2020 was less radical than that of 2019, with a high of merely one-oh-seven on the tenth of August and only one small forest fire—which was less attestable to the heat and more so to the reckless abandon of juvenile delinquents celebrating the eternal summer. Considering Ambrose was likely the largest donor of carbon emissions in its industrial heyday in all of the Midwest, these scorching summers were likely the earth’s karma-driven indemnities to humanity. I completely understood in full; I just wished they weren’t so damn inconvenient.

203

Alex McCullough Inside, the house once teeming with assorted trash, tattered furniture, peeling wallpaper, and filthy carpet was in the preliminary stage of a major renovation project. Boxes and garbage bags abound, containing the best and worst of Mary Lambdin, her children, and their lives under the leaky, weathered roof. With judicious119 discretion, Bonnie plucked and discarded every bit of paraphernalia in the house until the rooms were devoid of any trace of the twenty-year dynasty preceding that hot August day. All that remained were the boxes, stacked like skyscrapers along every available wall.

“Why are you keeping this?” I asked. Between my fingers was a small photograph of a house different from the one we lived in; it was similar, but noticeably nicer in upkeep, slightly larger, and with a larger, more luxuriant front yard. It was like someone had taken Mary’s house and fixed everything that was wrong with it.

Though Mary’s was a cookie-cutter shotgun-style hovel, this was a classic Victorian, with a gleaming white veranda wrapping around the mint-green panels scaling up the high ceilings to the baroque spandrels with ornate gold designs crawling like vines under the roof. The shingles—like the sky on the particular day this was taken—were a dark gray, and lept and bound over the mountainous roof in intricate scales. At one moment I marveled at the house as a whole, and the next I was fixated on the smallest, minuscule details.

There was so much to unpack, so much to explore.

Bonnie crossed the room took the photograph from my hand, scanning it with her eyes. Finally she said, “I like it.”

“Well, yeah.” I chuckled lightly. She continued peering at it, mesmerized by every individual pixel. “But why?”

“It’s a… special house.”

“What’s so special about it?”

“I…” She shook her head and redirected her focus back to me. “I don’t know if now’s the best time to talk about it. The movers are almost here.”

“Of course,” I said conclusively. “Of course, yeah. Whenever you’re ready.”

See, that day was different from the days which came before.

Those days were filled with boxes and garbage bags and memories, sure, but that day we were awaiting the arrival of a moving van to transport those boxes five hundred miles east. Behind that truck, I would drive my wife and daughter in my daffodil-yellow pickup truck across the southern border of West Virginia, through Appalachian Mountains until we reached the Virginia coast. Then we would be home.

Home at last.

204

Nosedive • • • We had only been driving five minutes when Bonnie tapped my shoulder.

“Reroute,” she said quietly.

“Huh?” “Reroute to Ludlow, Ohio,” she yelled at my phone, expecting Siri to hear her voice and oblige without hesitation.

“What are you talking about?”

She looked at me from the passenger seat. Through the window behind her, the mountains that encased the east-bound highway grew in proximity as I approached the ramp onto the interstate.

“Turn this thing around.”

“Why?” I asked, suddenly worried something was about to go wrong.

“I… I want to show you something.”

And so I cautiously made a U-turn, and with that the truck lurched forward and plummeted northwestward back into the crux of the American Rust Belt. The long-awaited journey home would have to wait.

• • • Thirty minutes later, we had surpassed the Ohio-West Virginia border and were about five miles west of the Ohio River before Bonnie asked me to take the exit ramp for Ludlow, a town I’d never heard of but one which seemed to ring with familiarity off her tongue.

The exit ramp took us to a small city center filled with assorted fast food chains, gas stations, a bank here and there, and a Walmart featuring a barren parking lot. After I’d noticed that, it became difficult to spot a sign of any human life whatsoever in what I would assume was intended to be the bustling “inner city.” Not a soul, not a murmur, not even the whistling of an old-timer or the camera snap of a tourist. Nothing but the hum of the car and the distant whispering of wind in the trees.

Ludlow—and, subsequently, the rest of Ohio—was distinctly flatter than West Virginia, and there was very little terrain variation on the corn-flanked two-land highway heading due west. After twenty minutes of driving, we reached a wooden sign featuring a name Bonnie had exclaimed seconds prior—“Breckenridge Estates”— which stood stately before the entrance to a small, treeless suburb with dead, wispy grass and cracked sidewalks reminiscent of an apocalypse scene. It seemed like whatever residents remained in the 205

Alex McCullough old, crumbling homes spackled along the boulevard were not active participants in the outside world, and I swore I could catch the eyes of Boo Radley-esque figures hidden behind suspicious window curtains and slightly-ajar front doors.

At the end of the boulevard was a cul-de-sac, nearly filled up with antiquated homes and tree stumps save for a small, barren plot of land straight ahead. Per Bonnie’s instructions, I stopped the car before this empty lot. We then sat in silence for five seconds until I initiated the discussion brewing beneath her pensive expression.

“Are we here?” I asked.

“Yes.” “What… am I supposed to be looking at?”

She laughed, somewhat scornfully, but I didn’t mind. “Well, nothing, I suppose.”

I paused a moment. “What are you–?”

“Jack, did you ever dream as a kid?”

Another pause. “Of course I did.”

“What did you dream of?”

I forestalled120 my response, trying to filter out the white privilege that seemed to hang onto every anecdote from my childhood. It was always somewhat difficult to hide the wealth that accompanied my side of the family, and while I tried to suppress it, it always seemed to come out when it was least convenient and most offensive to Bonnie and her inner circle of depraved Midwesterners. I was East Coast rich, admittedly, and not many people seemed to respect that the more my circle of acquaintances expanded. But I found quickly my childhood dreams could be distilled into the basic dreams of every true American, and those kinds of conversations became easier.

“I dreamed that I’d one day have a good job, have a lot of money but not too much, live in a nice neighborhood in a nice house, and be able to raise a beautiful, healthy family.”

She guffawed. “That’s it? Try a little harder.”

“Those were my dreams!” I protested. Bonnie chuckled again.

“Those are everyone’s dreams, Jack.” She shifted in the seat, crossing her legs casually. “That’s the American Dream, if you will.

But that’s not what I asked for. I wanted to know what you dreamed about.”

“Okay, now I’m confused.”

“What, you went to bed every night and lucid dreamed about a perfect Stepford wife and family and a big mansion on Long Island Sound?” She chuckled caustically. “What were your dreams, Jack?”

“I mean…” I murmured. “I can’t remember what I’d dream of, but–” I was interrupted by a photograph thrown into my lap from the 206

Nosedive passenger seat. It was the same from earlier; the same green Victorian house. Her stare drew my attention from the photograph back to her.

“This was my dream, Jack.” She nodded her head and folded her lips. “This house was my… dream.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s okay!” She smiled and cocked her head maternally. “You don’t need to. There are a lot of things about myself I don’t even understand. But that’s life, Jack.”

She looked forward, head pointed directly at the window in the circle of houses, carved into an egress of dead, pasty grass, a dreary sky filled with clouds masking the unknown, and a vast, arid plain extending miles and miles over flat, alien land. The brewing storm above mocked the fallibility of humanity below.

“Did I ever tell you about Ludlow?”

I turned to her, and we shared between us an intimate pause suspended above a frayed trapeze. “I don’t think so.”

Her legs folded tighter while she kept her gaze on the empty lot.

“This is where that house used to be. It was a… beautiful place. A lot of the houses here are dead and gone now, with only bums and weirdos still living in them, but there was a time when each and every home here was cherished… appreciated. They were relics of a better time.

“Ludlow is one of those sleepy little derivative121 townships of larger cities, where the rich flock to avoid the chaos of the urban crowding. Ambrose was the parent city of Ludlow, and when we used to be a powerful industrial beacon, all the rich factory owners fled west to the underbelly of Ohio and built this small suburban township on the flattest, quietest prairie they could find. This was in the forties, I’m pretty sure. The postwar economy was the economy to live in. That’s why they were the ‘Greatest Generation’—they pulled their dicks out of Germany as soon as the bombs dropped, started their families, and built nice, cozy family homes along the Rust Belt. Then came the sixties. California took all the tourists and sun-crazies (Segedy para 21), and left the sturdy, hard-pressed Republicans behind. That was my grandmother’s generation. The greatest.

“But of course, times change. I was born when my grandmother was forty-five, and my mother and… father… decided they wanted to live in the city. Ludlow was not their venue, apparently. So we were Ambrose-bound at a time when no one was Ambrose-bound without a good reason, but for at least a little bit, we were happy.

Then my dad left, Walter—Grace’s dad—came in, and soon Grace did too. Our lives were no more tumultuous than any other family’s, 207

Alex McCullough at least.

“One day we took a road trip. It was hot—hotter than today, even—but my mother let us roll the windows down and we weren’t dressing to impress anyone, so it was tolerable for the most part.

She wanted to go to Columbus, for kicks, I guess. Walter wasn’t invited… they were having a fight that day, I think, so she was in, just, a bad mood. But I think she didn’t want to go alone, because we stopped here in Ludlow briefly to pick up her mother—my grandmother—to come with us.

“On the way here, my mother was… very angry at me, for some reason. She told me if I kept ‘acting up’ she would send me to live with my grandmother, which I…”—she giggled shrilly—“I– I would’ve wanted nothing more. But she thought it was a serious threat, so I let her think she’d reached my limit. Of course, she’d come to… ignore that. And then we got here. My grandmother lives…”

Bonnie scanned a nearby street jutting off the main boulevard, before finally pointing her finger—“There.”—at a humble tudor home with unruly vines climbing tastefully up the left face and a lush flower bed curving gently into the verdant lawn, having obviously been recently updated to accommodate the changing architectural norms while still maintaining the original’s integrity. There was little evidence that someone of Bonnie’s lineage once lived there.

“Bonnie Elizabeth Gale. My namesake.” Bonnie nodded her head again, with that same accepting smirk and head nod from before.

“She was the… true epitome of a hillbilly. Just… angry all the time, very very pious, and consumed by an intense faith to her own family. Whether that extended to proper care, I can only look at my mother for evidence, but I do know she would probably die for any of us, just like my mother said she would die for me. And, well, I guess she did.

“We were driving to her house to pick her up, and I saw the house… that house, in the photo. This beautiful Victorian home—it looked like a dollhouse. The veranda… the color of the siding, the freshly painted windows, the French doors, the expensive curtains draped over the gaping windows… I fell in love. I wanted to live there from the moment I saw it, and I still do. It occupied my every thought, hope, and, yes, my dreams. I craved the night just so I could see it again. On the way home, I managed to jump out of the car for a quick picture on my disposable camera, which my mother found to be ‘rowdy behavior’ and punished me accordingly. But I didn’t care.

“That house was the linchpin122 between my life then and the life I dreamed of. It was the starting block; it was that connection. I 208

Nosedive thought—seriously—that if I lived there, the rest of my life would fall right into place. For a while, it was my escape. Whenever I felt sad or lonely, I let myself believe that one day, I would put a down payment on that house, and everything would be perfect and all my toiling and groveling wouldn’t be for nothing. It was my dream.”

She stopped talking, merely for a second, while I stared at her with intrinsic, scrutinizing mesmerization, as if I were watching a neon butterfly emerge from its desolate cocoon. Before I could inject a thought into the conversation, she resumed.

“And that sounds so crazy and so… sad, I know, believe me. It was. But it was the only thing that kept me going. When my mother would hit me or tell me to kill myself or threaten to do it herself, the only impediment was the house. Not a day passed when the mint green siding didn’t cross my mind, or the gleaming white veranda.

The spandrels, the windows, the curtains… everything. And even today I know it was a stretch. I mean… how fucking stupid of a kid was I to think that a house would solve all my problems? I had a beautiful life with a… an amazing husband and beautiful daughter and I still managed to fuck that up.”

I looked at her, a comforting smile plastered on my face. “You had a dream, Bonnie. Kids should dream.”

“Well, it was all a bust anyway. I have to admit that I’ve… lied to you. And to basically everyone, since no one knows this, but I…”— her voice trailed off for a second as she grasped for words—“I haven’t been truthful about the day I first left Ambrose.

“Everything about the days preceding my departure is true. My mother did get very angry that I was leaving her, and I still left in the dead of night for my final pursuit of a new situation. I walked downtown at two in the morning, when I knew my mother had fallen asleep, and waited two hours on the curb before a stray cab came to pick me up… all that was true. But I didn’t go straight to Charlottesville. I came here. I… I don’t know what my plan was; I didn’t really have a plan for what I was doing. I hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours, my face was red, worn, and soaked in tears, and the first thought that came to mind when the driver asked for a destination was, ‘four-three-six-nine, Matheson Boulevard… Ludlow, Ohio.’ I had that address memorized four days after that first visit, when I was six. I would never forget that address.

“When I got there, I paid the driver only for my eyes to adjust in the darkness to see a– an empty shell of a house. It didn’t even resemble the original at all… it was destroyed and blackened and burned. The veranda was destroyed, the spandrels in wooden shards, and the windows torn off. It had turned a hideous brown color as it was left to rot in the baking June sun. Apparently, according to a 209

Alex McCullough neighbor who was very concerned about the eighteen-year-old girl crying on her porch at four in the morning, the house had burned down very recently. No one lived there, but it was evidently some kind of… hideout for kids smoking weed. That was the cause of the fire, she said, or at least that’s what everyone assumed. They tore the remains down a week or so later—I kept in touch with this woman, at my behest and her chagrin—and now it’s just this empty lot. It’s still for sale, I guess, too. Some say it’s cursed.”

She pointed at the sign I’d previously failed to notice, plunged into the dirt border before the three-foot-high browned grass that had been left unmitigated for years. “Hammond Realty,” it read, with a prim-and-proper suburban-looking couple posing in unnatural, contorted positions next to the red lettering. He had kind but sad eyes, and she was blonde and plastic like a new Barbie doll. Moss was growing up the white post upholding the sign, elucidating that it had been ignored for at least a couple months.

“Then I went to Charlottesville,” Bonnie continued. “I still don’t know what my thought process was that night… maybe I was going to ask the people in the green house to let me stay with them for a little bit, just to taste the sweet life even if only for a little bit. I do remember, however, wondering on the ride to Virginia whether God even existed, if he was real or if he was simply fucking with me.”—she chuckled weakly, tears welling in her eyes—“I couldn’t imagine the God that I’d grown up with would ever let my dreams be squandered like this. I mean, this was circumstance of biblical proportions. The one dream I’d cherished and held onto for twelve fucking years was burned to the ground. It was an omen, I thought.

I would never have a happy, successful life. I would live and die a dirty, stinky hillbilly just like my parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and friends and family and… everyone! I would be forever stuck here to suffer and grovel in learned helplessness and nothing would ever change. We can never truly change.”

The tears once welling in her eyes began dripping out like melting veneer or candle wax. I leaned to the side and wrapped myself around her torso, and her head nestled between my chest and chin, shaking and twitching slightly as silent, angry, hot tears crawled across her face and rubbed off on my shirt.

“But I still dreamed, that’s the thing,” she said, almost laughing.

“I mean, I may not have lived in that house, but who knows what I’d do without it? Dead and gone, with no one to remember my name?

Who wants a legacy like that? I… I let myself believe in the future within those stalwart green walls, and I made it through. Maybe the pot of gold at the end of the tumultuous rainbow was really just 210

Nosedive a mirage, but I was on the other side. Kids like me… I think their biggest problem is they don’t dream. They don’t believe in better or happier or nicer. They let themselves fall into these traps of hating their lives and towns and friends and family but indignantly refusing to change anything. A self-fulfilling prophecy (Segedy para 45–46).

“I once believed I would never overcome the life I was born into.

I mean… I guess, objectively, I didn’t. But for all the shit we’ve had to endure in the past year, Jack”—she tightened the grasp on my hand I hadn’t even realized she was holding—“it would be so much worse if I didn’t have the green house on Matheson Boulevard.”

She released herself from my embrace and adjusted herself firmly back into the passenger seat, buckled the seatbelt, and took a singular breath. Inhale, exhale. “Let’s go. I can’t look at this gross-ass patch of grass anymore.”

I let out a hearty chuckle, put the car in drive, and pulled out of Breckenridge Estates. Once I’d merged back onto the interstate, with the Blue Ridge Mountains in close proximity, I imagined I was Bonnie Linklater in June of 2011, speeding in a taxi through the mountains she spent her whole life trying to escape, stale tears dry and sticky on her cheeks but a newfound relief in the promises of tomorrow. Before long, the Virginia border was before us, and then behind us. Bonnie and I both began to laugh and laugh and laugh, for in the year and three months we spent in Ambrose, we never knew how much we missed the greener pastures. The car peeled forward faster and faster, weaving through the slower drivers on the road, with the windows and sunroof open. Faster and faster, pushing eighty miles per hour, screaming with childlike glee, our backs facing the past and sunglasses full of light.

211

“ This national health crisis didn’t emerge simply by chance, accident, or bad luck. This is the society we have made. And there is no magic cure. The best way to stop addiction is to keep people from getting on that train to begin with. The battle to save lives will have to be waged one person at a time and one day at a time.

”

Achenbach para 29

Figure 36. Ryan, James E. et al. “Safety and Security Messages Related to August 10-12 Weekend.” 06 Aug 2018. University of Virginia, https://news.virginia.edu/content/safety-and-security-messages-related-august-10-12-weekend. Accessed 30 May 2019.

Figure 37. Sparks, Harold. Poppy Field. Aljanh, http://www.aljanh.net/poppy-field-wallpapers/3917316020.html. Accessed 30 May 2019.

XVI

THE PAPAVER PROJECT

Nosedive

CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Papaver Project

When I woke up on the first day of June, I was four hours late for work.

Not only was I four hours late for work, but my wife was upright and beside the bed, carrying a metal platter against her abdomen and beaming at me with a genuine, glowing smile. Her face was plump and decorated with a tiny brush of mascara on her eyelashes and a few pinches of blush on her cheeks, and she wore the apron I’d bought her for Mother’s Day that read, on the front in gold, glittery lettering, “Trying My Best.”

“Gooooooood morning!” she chattered before setting the platter on my lap.

“I have to…” I murmured nervously. The clock winked at me with a terrifying “10:24 AM” while the sunlight poured through the windows. Outside, the Little Oyster Bay was framed perfectly by two flanks of dense forestry curving around the sides of the house, and I took a moment to marvel at a view I typically wasn’t able to witness at this time of day. “I have to go to… work…”

“I called you in sick.” She giggled girlishly. “Said you were runnnig a low-grade fever and needed to rest. They were pretty understanding.”

“Bonnie, I–” “Jack. Don’t worry about it.” She smiled again, her face flush with apricot luster. “Happy sixth!”

I looked down at the platter. On it was an arrangement of different small plates, each containing their own food—scrambled eggs, sausage links, hash browns, whole-grain pancakes with syrup, jam, wheat toast—and a tall glass of orange juice. Perfectly arranged, perfectly prepared, perfectly perfect. It was as tangible as four hours of work can get.

“Happy sixth,” I repeated, nearly grinning myself to tears.

For several long minutes, we sat in silence. I plowed through my 215

Alex McCullough handcrafted breakfast while Bonnie sat beside me in bed, scrolling through a lengthy Word document and highlighting sentences and passages from the dense text, marking them for revision and moving on. Once I’d finished my toast, I initated conversation.

“How’s it coming?”

She looked at me and shook her head. “It’s, uh… coming, I guess.

I should never write when I’m tired. This part, right here”—she pointed to a lengthy passage highlighted in neon yellow—“I wrote that at two in the morning. Awful. So awful. I’m going to be revising for years.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” I assured. “You’ll get it done. Just remember to write from the heart and don’t hold back. Publishers don’t like writers who hold back their thoughts. Really let ‘em have it.”

“Yeah, well when I ‘really let ‘em have it’ it turns into a tangent.”

“Okay, Bonnie.” I laughed flightily. “Whatever you say.”

At that moment, Emily ran into the room in a pint-sized graduation cap and gown and laughing hysterically. She lept onto the bed and began attacking Bonnie with hugs while I tried to save the plates from falling off the platter.

“Mommy, mommy, mommy!” Emily shrieked repetitively.

“What, sweetheart?” Bonnie chuckled. “What is it?”

“Good morning!”

“Good morning, Emily, sweetheart. What are you wearing?”

Emily looked down at her outfit and then jumped onto her feet, stomping on the end of the bed in rhythmic dance. “I graduated!”

“Oh, yes you did!” Bonnie cheered cheekily. “Three weeks ago!

Can I wash it now?”

“No!” Emily was a girl of few words. She lept off the bed and ran back out of the room into the hallway, her bare feet pounding on the wood all the way back into her room. Bonnie leaned back and smirked at me.

“What did I tell you about that cap and gown?”

“It’s filthy?” I asked facetiously.

“It’s filthy.” Bonnie shut her laptop and stood up, cracking her wrist joints and stretching her neck. “You need to steal it from her.”

“What, while she’s sleeping?”

“Yeah? How else?”

“Okay. I’m going to break into our daughter’s bedroom while she’s sleeping and steal her personal possessions. Glad we could have this talk.”

“Shut up,” she groaned through staccato giggles. I threw a plush red polka-dotted pillow at her, which she weakly deflected with her right arm. From here, the scar traveling from her wrist to her elbow was pale and nearly completely faded, but definitely still visible.

216

Nosedive Bonnie liked to call that her “battle scar,” which I concurred with wholeheartedly.

“By the way, we have an appointment on Friday at three with Warner Price from Price, Ludgate, Stern, and Yang to discuss what we’re going to do about this lawsuit (Balko sec No Safe Harbor).”

“Oh, yeah,” I muttered. “You could’ve told me sooner, I don’t know if I’ll be able to make three. I have a nurse training thingy from two to three-thirty.”

“Jack, if we’re lucky, you’ll never have to do one of those ‘nurse training thingies’ ever again. Never. Doesn’t that excite you?”

“I guess.” I set the platter aside and rose from the bed, stretching my legs until I could nearly touch the ceiling. “It’s never been on my bucket list to singlehandedly take down an entire hospital, but here we are.”

“Well, I’m going to be there. Can’t be acting like an irresponsible litigant123 right now when I’m juggling all this stuff.”

“You know, I don’t know how you do it, sometimes.”

“Well…” Bonnie rubbed her hands on her apron. “I love my family. And I’ll do anything for them—but not everything, of course.”

“Obviously.” I winked. “Have a good day!”

With that, Bonnie left the room, smiling back at me as she shut the door. What a difference a year could make.

• • • On Thursday, Bonnie asked me to come to dinner with an old friend of hers. She was effectively gushing over him, somehow infusing an eminent124 characteristic of his into every one of her sentences for the entire day. Before I was even able to greet him at the restaurant, I knew he had sea-salt blond hair—like mine, but more earthly—a broken nose, and lived in New York when he wasn’t returning to Ambrose for every summer. Bonnie was very ardent that they never dated in high school, which I regarded with a level of doubt that made her substantially pissed-off for about an hour.

At six o’clock that evening, Bonnie drove me in her brand-new slate-gray Subaru to the restaurant. It was a small seafood place just across the bay from us called Junker’s Oysters and Crabs; I’d passed it many times on my way to work, but never paid it much attention. Now, as I approached the red double doors wearing plaid board shorts, a V-neck Margaritaville t-shirt, and flipflops, feeling the sand between my toes and smelling the fresh shrimp being unloaded from the docks, I could see why Bonnie wanted to eat here. It was a perfect taste of the Virginia coast, and she wanted to impress her friend.

217

Alex McCullough “Hi, Aaron DeBerardinis,” he said politely when Bonnie and I greeted him just inside the doors. “Don’t think we’ve met.”

I extended my hand and shook his firmly. Bonnie’s alleged affinity125 for him was not unjustifiable; he was a mousy kind of attractive, and had similar height, weight, hair, and facial structure to me. It was not so wild that she could’ve liked him beyond their survival-grounded friendship, considering who she married, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“Jack, can you and Aaron find a table?” Bonnie said, her voice pushing toward the upper octave. “I’m going to the bathroom.

We both nodded and migrated into the dining area, scavenging tables while Aaron looked absentmindedly around at the walls surrounding us. Junker’s Oysters and Crabs took their brand very seriously, and had decked the entire area in marine decor to create an atmosphere reminiscent of an actual crab shack on the Atlantic Ocean. The walls were paneled with dark spruce wood, and covered floor to ceiling with life preservers, crab shells, lobster traps, and, most notably, hundreds of customer-submitted photos from various beaches up and down the eastern seaboard. Some were very recent, as evidenced by both the quality and the poses of the teenaged subjects, and some were nearly a hundred years old: a nearly century-long timeline of happy, shiny faces in the warm and unequivocally kind sun. The walls of Junker’s Oysters and Crabs would stand the test of time.

“How about this one?” I asked, referring to a booth nestled in a tall window that overlooked the bay.

“That’s fine.”

We sat nervously in the booth, neither of us able to initiate substantial conversation with the other. Eventually, a waitress came by and took our drink orders, which was a nice reprieve from the awkward silence. But then it was right back to fiddling with the sugar packets and metal utensils.

“So you met Bonnie at…?” Aaron finally said.

“Virginia.”

“Right.”

Another couple seconds passed in silence before I spoke.

“And you knew Bonnie in…?”

“High school.”

“And you never…?”

“Dated? Nope.”

Finally, after five minutes of polite conversation and awkward tonguing at our straws, Bonnie returned from the bathroom and squeezed into the booth next to me. She had recently cut her milk-chocolate hair to a shorter, layered bob after letting it grow 218

Nosedive down to her waist throughout the year. It was a much classier look for her, and I’d always preferred short over long anyway.

“Hope y’all are bonding over here,” she said, laughing through every word. “What’re you guys talking about?”

“Um…” I mumbled. Aaron bowed his head toward his lap.

“Dear God, you’re both imbeciles.” At that moment, the waitress came by and set three lime-green margaritas on the table. “Aw, you got me a margie. How sweet.”

“Can I get y’all started on anythin’?” the waitress asked in a slight twang.

“Yeah.” Bonnie waved her hand over the table. “We’re all going to get cream-of-crab soups, and I’d like a shrimp cocktail, too, please.”

“Of course.” The waitress smiled as she walked away with our order. Bonnie clapped her hands together with a rapid, flapping sound as Aaron and I exchanged inconspicuous glances.

“So…” she began, with a massive grin spread across her face.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you to come to dinner today…”

Aaron shook his head and raised his hands in perplexion.

“You forced me,” I jested, which elicited a succinct punch to my abdomen that made me briefly recoil.

“Well, Aaron, I thought, since you were on your way to Ambrose anyway, that I would bring you to dinner so I could ask you a big question.”

Aaron cocked his head and smiled. “You ain’t askin’ me to marry you, are you?”

Bonnie trilled with girlish laughter, while mine was more polite and nervous.

“No, silly! I wanted to know if you… wouldn’t mind if I included you in the memoir I’m writing.”

Aaron paused a second, either perplexed by the question or consumed with shock. “Wow, Bonnie. You’re writin’ a memoir?”

“Well, I thought that my story was one worth telling.”

“I’m not slightin’ you, I just–” “No, I get it. Take your time, you don’t have to answer right now.

I’d just like to know what your opinions on this are. I don’t want to write something that you’ll get angry and yell at me for; that’s not my goal. I really want to make my message as clear and accurate as possible.”

Aaron bobbed his head in nervous laughter. “Well, I–” “Please, just take your time. Think it over, think it under.”

“Alright,” he said. “I’ll think it over. Now tell me what you’re writin’ about!”

“Well, just, like the works, I guess. It’s kind of a reflection on my 219

Alex McCullough time spent in Ambrose and how I’ve overcome some of the adversity in my life. My agent said it’d be good for my brand right now, so I’m trying to consolidate as many sources as possible to expedite the process.”

“I mean, tha’s jus’…”

“Crazy, I know.” Her hair swung around her jaw as she spoke with impassioned ardor. “Just one year ago, I’d never think I’d even be alive right now, much less have an agent!”

“So what would you say about me?” Aaron asked, smirking slyly.

“Oh, just that you were my friend. You were always this cool, unique person that I felt I could talk to about anything at all. I think we both needed that at one point—some person just to talk to.”

“Tha’s awesome. I’ll totally think about it.”

The rest of the dinner flowed through different topics of conversation until all were nearly exhausted, with me on the edge of the discussion and unable to participate much at all. I would’ve resented my being ignored more if I weren’t so grateful for every minute I was able to spend sitting next to Bonnie, listenin to her words fly off her tongue like soaring eagles and watching as her face lit up, brighter with every word until she herself was a beaming sun. They discussed high school, college life, memories from Ambrose— Speedway was referenced a lot—and other general life updates, while I sat on the precipice, smiled, and nodded along. My creamof-crab soup was delicious as well.

• • • On Saturday, Bonnie and I left the house at six in the morning, westward bound and with a babysitter on her way. In light of Bonnie’s recent political presence as a drug prevention activist and a Twitter following well into five digits, the University of Virginia called our home in April to ask Bonnie to give the Class of 2021’s Commencement Address, which she ecstatically agreed to before giggling with childish exuberance for the next couple hours as she planned what she would talk about. Meanwhile, I arranged the logistical semantics of the big day. Fortunately, Virginia had extended its Commencement weekend into the first week of June—which was much later than when Bonnie and I were fresh graduates—so our Memorial Day trip to Costa Rica wasn’t impacted.

In the five-hour car ride, I listened as Bonnie practiced the address over and over again, changing words and reworking sentences up until we pulled into the parking garage near the library. The summer trees were in full bloom, and lined the streets all the way until they blended smoothly with the the deep-green mountains in the 220

Nosedive background. From there, Bonnie and I walked the familiar cobblestone paths, up stairs and past buildings we hadn’t seen in so long and marveling at how much we had changed and low little they had changed. The tree into which we’d carved our initials during our third year was still intact, although slightly grayer and more wise.

The “J+B” engraving had melted into hundreds of other couples who copied us, so it was still evident that time had passed.

When we arrived at the Rotunda, we were evidently a tad late, as the graduating class—thouands of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed fourthyears and beyond in plain black gowns and caps decorated with orange and white handmade designs—was already filtering onto the lawn. The podium at the bottom of the stairs was occupied by the President, who was impatiently rapping his foot on the concrete, awaiting our arrival. I sat off the side of the lawn, right in the front of a small enclave sequestered for parents and relatives were I had reserved a seat.

Bonnie approached the microphone. I could tell she was nervous; her head would always involuntarily tilt to the side whenever she was nervous. I mouthed a few words of encouragement before she began.

“What does it mean to forgive?” she began. A few spattered murmurs erupted from a select few people who didn’t know what a rhetorical question was. “And what does it mean to love unconditionally?

“Many of you—especially my political philosophy, policy, and law majors; y’all are really cool—may know me from my advocacy efforts and congressional lobbying for more preventative drug legislation and rehabilitation facilities. Some of you know me as the woman who’s so active on Twitter it puts former President Donald Trump to shame”—a couple scattered laughs from the crowd—“and some of you know me as the weird white lady giving your Commencement address. I’m here to tell you that none of that matters, because I wish merely to be known as Bonnie Elizabeth Sutton: a human being.

“I was born and raised in a small town on the westernmost border of West Virginia called Ambrose, about fifty miles northwest of Charleston. One hundred years ago, my hometown was on the rise to become a shining beacon of modern American industry (Achenbach para 11). It was the largest manufacturer of steel in the fifties, and had above-average copper output in the sixties. We were one of the fastest growing cities in the Midwest in the forties, and had a population that peaked when it was equal to that of Richmond today. Now, Ambrose isn’t on most conventional maps, and driving through the downtown feels like walking through a haunted house.

221

Alex McCullough “Many people have given names to places like my hometown: backhoe, shithole, hillbilly, ghost town, the works. And I would be remiss if I didn’t say I wasn’t a large proprietor of this name-calling. I remember people in college asking me my hometown, and me lying to their face because of how ashamed I was. Toledo, Akron, Charleston, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Ocean City, Raleigh—anywhere other than the truth because it was easier to not have to talk about the city I once called home.

“In the summer of 2019, I returned home to Ambrose to care for my dying mother. I’d been living in Chincoteague with my husband, Jack”—I waved at the audience when she gestured to me—“and my then three-year-old daughter Emily. And I couldn’t have been more agitated about living in that place. I would scream at my family, throw tantrums, and cry all the time, as if I were a five-year-old child throwing a hissy fit. I’d never had a good relationship with my mother, and I reminded her of it every day. Until the day she died and well beyond that, I refused to forgive her for the miserable childhood I had. Whether it was justified was lost on me; I felt it was my right to express my disdain for my hometown whenever I needed to vent. I was ashamed and mortified that I’d ever lived there (Segedy para 44).”

She wiped a single tear from the cusp of her eyelid.

“Now, don’t get me wrong, my childhood wasn’t peachy. It was objectively difficult to live through, and even more difficult to supersede. I come from a place where kids barely graduate high school, much less go to college. I come from a place where eighteen-yearolds sleep on park benches until they have enough money to buy a cramped, dirty fixer-upper apartment downtown, where they’re still cutting financial corners and racking up debt until they’re thirty (Bingham para 2). By then they’ve been stuck in their day jobs for twelve-plus years and have nothing to show for it. So then they turn elsewhere. Alcohol, suicide, and, most commonly, drugs.

“And I hated my hometown for it. I hated that I couldn’t walk five feet outside my front door without stumbling over some junkie bent over his stomach, veins full of heroin and eyes bloodshot. I would come back by the end of the day and he would be dead. The sun would rise again the next day. I was never treated for anxiety or trauma or schizophrenia; I was never tested because my mother didn’t believe it mattered. I never forgave my mother for that, and I never forgave my hometown.

“About a month after moving back home, I broke my arm when I was attacked outside a gas station. My doctor was very nice and seemed very helpful throughout my recovery process, and I began to gain trust in him. When I discovered my bone was failing to heal 222

Nosedive properly and causing nerve damage, my doctor failed to tell me about all I’d need to do to heal from my injury and instead prescribed me a month’s worth of OxyContin to mitigate the pain, and made it clear I wouldn’t and shouldn’t have to return back to that hospital. But return I did, for within three months I had not only become addicted to the rush of relief OxyContin gave me, but tolerant as well. I began to crave a more powerful way to take away the pain of my broken bones, and even some of the pain of my broken soul.

I began using heroin (Opioid Crisis para 3). Should I forgive that doctor for being so negligent126?”

She paused for a moment, letting her words congeal in the melancholy June air.

“How many of you would say I shouldn’t forgive him?”

At least three-fourths of the crowd raised their hands, with haughty, self-righteous expressions plastered on their young, naïve faces.

“If you raised your hand, you have the comfort of solidarity in your peers. If you did not raise your hand, you have the comfort of solidarity in me.”

Approximately half the crowd looked at each other in shame, while the other half tried to decipher what she meant. Approximately all of the crowd was submerged into a low murmur of private rumination as they picked apart her speech, word by word.

“Today, I have forgiven that doctor, for I have since learned to see the other side. I looked at my doctor as a negligent idiot who didn’t deserve a medical license, but didn’t look at the ventriloquist pushing the words out his mouth. A while ago, I spoke at a round-table discussion in Detroit with hospital administrators, nurses, doctors, and activists from across the Rust Belt. Doctors who seem unscrupulous, as I concluded from this discussion, are often merely cogs in the corporatization of hospitals that has propagated so much of the recent issues with the opioid crisis. Say a patient comes in and complains of arm pain. They claim their pain is a ten on the scale when they’re sitting upright and twiddling their thumbs on the cot. Doctors used to be able to discharge that patient immediately; after all, they’re not really in pain, right? These kinds of patients are popular examples of people who fish for prescription drugs by feigning injury and exploiting the systems in place. Because today, doctors are required by hospital policy to give their patients whatever amount of painkillers the patient asks for lest the patient turn to other, more illicit substitutes (Opioid Crisis para 10). After all, OxyContin is safer than heroin. The lesser of two evils.

“Do I blame the doctor for becoming addicted to opioids—the doctor who was bound by hospital policy to overload me with pills to keep me a ‘happy customer’—or do I blame the hospital who 223

Alex McCullough created these policies?”

A nervous murmur rose from the graduates. The parents near me shifted in their seats.

(Where is she going with this?) “‘What does it mean to forgive?’ That was the question I posed at the beginning of this address. I gave you time to ponder the answer to this question, and I’m here to give you the answer. To forgive is to have empathy for the fallibility of humans. We are not perfect, we are not righteous, and we are not without error. To act as if humans should be perfect, infallible beings is what is truly unforgivable; to believe that people who make human mistakes and human errors should deserve to suffer in repentance is what is truly unforgivable.

“That is why I’m proud to announce here, at this address, that I will be kickstarting my own nonprofit activist campaign.”

Before she could even finish her sentence, a roaring applause erupted from the crowd. I clapped along, beaming with pride as her lips stretched into a childlike grin. Watching her stand at the podium was like witnessing the first ray of sunshine after a torrential hurricane, when hope and joy emerge out of the debris and you begin to believe in the inevitable goodness of humankind again.

“This campaign will be known across the country as The Papaver Project—after papaver somniferum, or opium poppy. This will entail media outreach to the forgotten hollows of America to bring awareness to the plight of the fellow Americans who suffer daily from the economic, social, and political disparities engendered by the opioid epidemic. Endorsing Congressmen and women who champion reformative action for this epidemic, which may include healthcare reform and greater funding and awareness for rehabilitation facilities. This is my grand gesture towards a better future for America. No one will be left behind to grovel in submission, feeding into the corruption that ravages our medical and pharmaceutical industries and being led to believe that there is no hope for people like them.

“Do not stand here today and assume I am the rule and not the exception. I am the kind of miracle that causes religious epiphanies.

Just because I made it through addiction and rehabilitation with a happy ending to show for it does not mean millions of Americans don’t suffer from opioid addiction each and every year. Just because I am here to speak to you today doesn’t account for the thousands of people who die every year from an opioid overdose. Rather, please take me as a sign—a symbol of hope. Hope is real; help is real. I should not be a miracle; I should be the standard. Rehabilitation should never be so expensive to elude the people who truly need it.

I may have been fortunate enough to have access to rehabilitation, 224

Nosedive but not everyone is. Seek help. Seek solidarity. Seek comfort. Seek health over harm. And to you, seek change. Seek reform. Seek justice. This is a wound in our country, and we must no longer let it fester and remain unattended. Healing only comes with awareness.

Let us not suffocate in our own ignorance, but immerse ourselves in the cause.”

A brief silence followed her ultimate word, like a magnet suspended in the air drawing the crowd closer as they hung onto every word. Then she concluded: “Class of 2023, now is your time to act.

Make a good life.”

In an instant, the lawn grew from a few scattered cheers to booming applause that seized me by the waist and threw me into the center. I hadn’t even realized I was crying until I felt a tear fall onto my hands. Soon the entire crowd was on their feet, shrieking like fanatical hyenas at my wife, who stumbled off the stage with her hand clasped over her mouth, unable to contain the smile that had invaded the rest of her physiognomy. I looked my wife in the eye as she ran into my embrace, her face flushed with tears of unabashed joy. Beyond her shoulder I looked across the audience at the young men and women of all races, ethnicities, creeds, sizes, hair colors, and backgrounds who had come together as one to clap their hands with selfless ardor for the woman at the podium—a woman I was so indisputably proud to call my wife. With fresh faces flushed with fervent127 emotion, the graduates of the University of Virginia threw their caps into the sky, each and every one flying like multicolored eagles through the lucid cerulean sky. They touched the tips of clouds and soared past the sun, landing on the mountaintops and leaving trails of lush forestry in their wake. As each cap fell back into the hands of their owners, I allowed myself to believe with conviction that each graduate would go home that day with the knowledge that they could change the world. In the passion and grit of my wife’s address, they found faith and epiphany in a better future. They left campus that day inspired and driven. In that moment, I could only imagine—if Bonnie’s words were able to galvanize a thousand college graduates in less than half an hour, what could her words do for five hundred thirty-five Congressmen and women in the same amount of time? What could her words do for the millions of people who watch the news every night? What could her words do in just a couple weeks as they permeated the public sphere, tracing themselves onto the lips and tongues of the electorate?

When I met Bonnie, I instantly fell in love with her words. She spoke so fluently and passionately about nearly anything she found interesting. It was a fresh change from the monotony of recycled ideas discharged like old, repurposed newspapers from the mouths 225

Alex McCullough of our peers every day. I’d come to love every little thing about her, but her words were always what entranced me the most. But I was a logistics-oriented mind, of course, so I often yearned to know what her words would come to do for the world. On the fifth day of June in the year 2021, that yearning came to satisfying fruition.

Yet somehow I knew, deep down, the journey to achieve such a dream—the futile grasping at what would always live nearly out of reach—was one I could never imagine giving up.

226

APPENDICES A

A Brief History of Opioids in the United States

230

B

Annotated List of Works Consulted

233

About the Author

313

APPENDIX A

a brief history of

OPIOIDS in the united states

1898

1970s A Change in Thought

Rise of the Opioid Market

With Gerald Ford as the United

The Bayer Company begins man-

States President, federal drug-pre-

ufacturing

“wonder

vention agencies have focused less

drug”—as an alternative for mor-

on the cocaine and marijuana epi-

phine. (Moghe para 6). The public

demics and more on the expanding

quickly catches on, and from now

opioid market. With the introduction

until through the World Wars, opi-

of the highly addictive Vicodin and

oids like morphine and heroin are

Percocet, healthcare professionals

commonly used to mediate every-

across the country are discouraged

day pain. With all the media atten-

from prescribing prescription opi-

tion on the cocaine and marijuana

ates in the collective effort to prevent

epidemics, no one has considered

the growth of a new drug epidemic

the addictive properties of these

(Moghe para 13). This would only

new drugs.

come to be exacerbated by the ac-

heroin—the

tions of one major pharmaceutical company—Purdue Pharma.

Figure 38. Rogers, Jason. White Pill Capsules. Pain Doctor, paindoctor.com/ reducing-risks-prescription-painkillers/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2019.

1996

2000s

Purdue Pharma introduces OxyCon-

Users of OxyContin quickly discov-

tin to the general public, signaling

er that by snorting or chewing the

the renaissance in pain medication.

tablets, all of the oxycodone can

OxyContin

high

be accessed at once, giving them

amounts of oxycodone, which en-

a euphoric and addictive feeling

ters the body in intervals throughout

(Opioid Crisis para 5). Though Pur-

a set period of time, providing an

due Pharma faces charges for their

abuse-deterrent

long-lasting

misbranding, the damage has been

pain medication (Opioid Crisis para

done. Irresponsible healthcare pro-

5). This allows Purdue Pharma to

fessionals are known to overpre-

aggressively market the new drug to

scribe painkillers to their patients,

the public, ballooning the pharma-

causing addiction and allowing for

ceutical’s profits to over $1 billion in

doctor-shopping and pill mills to rise

2000 (Opioid Crisis para 6). Howev-

to prevalence. Moreover, the addict-

er, as the public is about to discover,

ed are becoming dependent or tol-

the drug is not entirely abuse-deter-

erant to OxyContin, and are turning

rent.

to heroin and fentanyl to satisfy their

The “Ap-oxy-lypse”

tablets

and

contain

Desperate and Dopesick

need for pain relief (Opioid Crisis para 4). It’s now crystal clear to the public that there is a major new drug crisis emerging in American society.

NOW

A Public Health Emergency

across the country are implementing different combinations of non-opioid substances, and using new methods of monitoring their patients’ drug intake such as unannounced urine tests and spontaneous pill counting (Szabo sec Getting Help). Furthermore, federal drug-preven-

In 2017, President Donald Trump declares opi-

tion agencies are taking measures to identify

oid addiction a public health emergency. States

areas of concern and implement programs to

are now taking activist approaches to limit the

rehabilitate the addicted and prevent the growth

spread of painkiller addiction—Tennessee, for

of the epidemic (Opioid Crisis sec Government

instance, limits prescriptions to only three days’

and Community Interventions). However, this

worth of medication, and a set of circumstances

relatively new and incredibly dangerous opi-

must be met to bypass this limitation. Doctors

oid epidemic seems far from being tamed.

Figure 39. Pills Falling in Slow Motion. Storyblocks Video, https://www.videoblocks.com/video/pills-falling-in-slow-motion-shot-on-phantom-flex-4k-at-1000-fps-4ksvxfb. Accessed 26 May 2019.

APPENDIX B Annotated List of Works Consulted

McCullough 1 Works Cited Achenbach, Joel. "An Addiction Crisis along 'The Backbone of America.'"

Washington Post​, 30 Dec. 2016. ​Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A475587521/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid =OVIC&xid=42406c13. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.

In “An Addiction Crisis along ‘The Backbone of America,’” Joel Achenbach takes it upon himself to highlight the opioid crisis that has become an integral part of life in small, forgotten Rust Belt communities, and how it is feeding into the rising white death rates that have baffled the nation. Without a single, simple explanation, Achenbach delves into some major causes of this phenomenon, from the migration of major industries to coastal towns during the globalization era to the boom in the prescription painkillers market in the 1990s that addicted Appalachia and left most major cities unaffected. These factors, he claims, have caused people to forget about rural America: the once prosperous industrial center has

McCullough 2 turned into a wasteland of drugs, drinking, and suicide. The spread of heroin is like wildfireâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;killing off citizens, turning them into zombies, and creating a major public health crisis that seems to be overlooked by the general population. Furthermore, these issues have led to a major partisan shift in the region, as with the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, much of the Rust Belt at last feels like their pleading voices are being heard by the government. The point Achenbach concludes with is that this is a crisis born by society and that the best way to stop this epidemic is to prevent people from falling victim to it in the first place.

Much of Achenbachâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claims are centered around what addiction truly looks like in the Rust Belt, and why it is so difficult for so many to understand. As an outsider looking into this region, he is especially credible in that his observations are not rooted in any past experiences or affiliations with this region, and thus he is able to take a purely objective stance on its issues with drug abuse; he is

McCullough 3 simply observing the devastating nature of the opioid epidemic and what it looks like up close. This theme is similarly found in “New Face of Heroin Abuse,”which addresses this new trend of addiction in rural America without necessarily offering an explanation of why it is happening or how it should be solved. However, unlike Achenbach’s article, Radley Balko’s “It’s Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic” completely opposes the idea that there even was a painkiller epidemic, to begin with, and in the interview “Methamphetamine and Other Drugs Are Not as Dangerous as Alleged,” Dr. Carl Hart focuses on the demonization of drugs and how only a small minority of drug users actually become addicted, yet society still clamors about a “drug epidemic.” Together, these sources offer a basic push and pull on the veritability of the opioid crisis in the Rust Belt, and form the bedrock of the argument.

This article is immensely useful in constructing the narration and

McCullough 4 confirmation portions of the final project. While its main focus is on the drug epidemic, it is also a comprehensive look at how opioid abuse influences and is influenced by the other major issues in this region and offers a look into how the issues originated and conflict with each other both in the past and present. Therefore, it will help in my development of Ambrose—primarily in the first two chapters—and how it has become the dismal shell of the industrial powerhouse it once was; the pervasive drug addictions in the region have influenced and been influenced by the economic and social decline described in the article. Moreover, the article will also help in constructing the confirmation, since it also offers many claims that coincide with the project’s thesis: drug addiction in the Rust Belt ​is​ an epidemic and deserves to be treated as such. This will build the basis of the main storyline, in that many Ambrose citizens—including Bonnie—likely got addicted to prescription painkillers and later heroin, indicating that there is a true epidemic present in the Rust Belt. This will be helpful in the general plot of

McCullough 5 the novel, especially in the first couple chapters, Chapter Seven, and Chapter Sixteen. In addition to discussing the origins of these issues, it also offers evidence in the present that prescription painkiller addiction is very real and, if left unrecognized, can have devastating consequences. Therefore, the article will also help in the confirmation portion by providing assertions and evidence that further the project’s main thesis.

"Adult Forearm Fractures." ​OrthoInfo​, American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, July 2011, orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases--conditions/ adult-forearm-fractures/. Accessed 4 Mar. 2019.

In this article from OrthoInfo, the unnamed author gives an outline on the anatomical details behind forearm fractures and how they are typically treated both surgically and nonsurgically. The author begins with a description of how fractures can occur. Broken bones can constitute a crack, separated fragments, or pieces of the bone

McCullough 6 protruding through the skin, and it is very common to break both the radius and the ulna at the same time, especially when the bones have been broken by a fall. Moreover, the physician will examine the skin for cuts and wounds, palpate for tenderness, and check for pulse and motility. The author then describes how fractures are treated. Initially, the bones are realigned temporarily and secured with a splint, and pain is heavily medicated. Eventually the patient either undergoes surgical treatmentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;especially if multiple bones are broken or are protruding through the skinâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or the fracture is treated with a cast or brace and close monitoring by the doctor throughout the healing process. Furthermore, the author details the complications that can arise. Broken bones can sometimes result in nerve damage, acute compartment syndrome, and/or infection when not treated surgically, and surgical treatment has even more possible complications such as infection, nerve and vessel damage, synostosis, and nonunion of the broken bones. The author then leads into the recovery process, which is governed by pain

McCullough 7 management and rehabilitation. Medications—usually ibuprofen or other over-the-counter painkillers at first—are prescribed to handle post-treatment pain; opioids may also be prescribed if pain is on the extreme or chronic end, but can also become addictive. Moreover, both surgical and nonsurgical treatment will require physical therapy. Eventually, after healing, the patient will experience stiffness in their arm.

This article is unlike the others I’ve accumulated regarding my topic because it provides narrow information that implicitly reinforces my main topic. Similar articles such as Monifa Thomas’ “There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic,” Liz Szabo’s “Treatments for Chronic Pain Can Lead to Prescription Drug Abuse,” and “Opioid Crisis” maintain that opioids and narcotics are often prescribed for the extreme pain resulting from bone fractures.

Szabo’s article draws a specific connection between the overprescription to the abuse of such drugs, claiming that by

McCullough 8 prescribing narcotics to pain patients, doctors sometimes enable these patients to become addicted to the euphoria and temporary reprieve it gives them. Meanwhile, Thomas’ article and “Opioid Crisis” draw from Szabo’s affirmations to conclude that the overwhelming number of patients who become addicted to painkillers through their own injuries and unfortunate experience through treatment has created a national public health crisis.

Though it does not discuss opioid addiction explicitly, “Adult Forearm Fractures” does indicate that prescribing narcotics for injuries such as bone fractures can lead to opioid abuse, which enforces how opioid addiction originates as affirmed by the three aforementioned articles.

This article works best in the confirmation portion of my argument.

In order to form a cohesive, rhetorical narrative that emerges from the corruption in the healthcare industry leading to prescription painkiller addiction, it is necessary to understand how such injuries

McCullough 9 that merit a narcotic prescription occur and are treated. My main character breaks her arm at the end of Chapter Two, and is prescribed narcotics to mitigate the pain during Chapter Five, so understanding how her injury and pain would be treated in a professional healthcare environment is essential to the development of the primary argument as it is presented in the story’s main conflict. I would thus use the information presented in the chapters in which she’s treated for her broken arm—Chapters Three and Five, primarily—in order to accurately depict the hospital protocol and treatment for such injuries.

Balko, Radley. "It Is Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic." ​Prescription Drug Abuse​, edited by Margaret Haerens and Lynn M. Zott, Detroit, MI, Greenhaven Press, 2013.

Opposing Viewpoints. ​Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link. galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010865207/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=O VIC&xid=638d696a. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018. Originally published

McCullough 10 as "The New Panic over Prescription Painkillers" in ​Huffington Post​, 8 Feb. 2011.

In “It Is Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic,” author Radley Balko debunks popular statistics used to prove the rise of a prescription painkiller epidemic, ultimately claiming that there is no epidemic in the first place. He begins with a story about a Florida woman named Mary Maston. As a Tennessee resident, it was fairly easy for her to obtain pain medication from her doctor for her medullary sponge kidney and kidney disease, which inflicts incredible pain when untreated.

However, now living in Florida, her inability to receive proper pain treatment has caused her immense and unnecessary ailment and several ER visits, because rather than dealing solely with her doctor, law enforcement has invaded the prescription painkiller market and constricted it in the name of the War on Drugs. Balko continues with a summary and analysis of the campaign against

McCullough 11 prescription painkillers, noting the law enforcement’s hasty constricting of Florida’s oxycodone supply in the early 2000s, as well as the CDC’s attribution of opioid painkillers to the dramatic rise in overdose death, yet also the studies that show the tragic undertreatment of chronic pain. Given contrasting information, Balko attempts to make sense of whether both sides are entirely accurate in their assertions, which leads into his criticism on the government’s case for the crisis. Balko claims that federal drug-combative agencies have been manipulating figures and taking them out of context—for instance, when analyzing the amount of drug-related ER visits in a certain year, it doesn’t matter whether the patient had simply taken drugs prior to the visit or if the drugs were the direct cause of the emergency; the government counts it anyway. Additionally, medical examiners do not properly distinguish between opioid-related—opioids are present in the body—and opioid-verified—opioids were the immediate cause—overdoses. Balko continues by questioning more of the

McCullough 12 healthcare industry and federal government’s claims and even their influences. He specifically identifies methadone as a drug that rose to prominence as a cheap alternative to name-brand painkillers, but that is much more easy to overdose on than any other opioid, leading Balko to believe that the government essentially sacrificed public health to save money, and that careless physicians are not entirely to blame. Moreover, because the toxicity of opium varies from person to person, there’s no definitive way of attributing the cause of death to an overdose, since while a person may have had an “abnormal” amount of opium in their system when they died, it’s often more likely that they died of a different ailment that was mislabeled as an overdose. These flaws deeply affect the statistics drug agencies provide, and may have serious implications. For instance, some physicians have been charged with manslaughter for prescribing painkillers, which were incorrectly or hastily labeled as the cause of death for their patients. Balko then discusses the surge in painkiller usage and vending compared to the shortage of pain

McCullough 13 treatment. He asserts that because the past decade has seen a shift towards blaming doctors for the spike in overdoses, there are now fewer pain specialists, and those that remain are reticent to prescribe what they believe best for their patient and more likely to under-prescribe for fear of their patient overdosing and them being charged with manslaughter. Prescribing painkillers is a risky endeavor, and with the shift in blame, pain specialists are being condemned and scrutinized and violated by SWAT raids, hasty out-of-context charges, and wildly unbased comparisons to drug kingpins and terrorist groups. Meanwhile, the federal government has yet to distinguish between acceptable pain treatment and manslaughter, leaving pain specialists in a perpetual moral gray area. Between unconscientious doctors freely dispensing pain treatment to legitimate, dedicated physicians who simply want to help their patients, the demand for pain medication is overwhelming, yet the government continues to pound doctors with investigations and inadvertently encourage patients to seek

McCullough 14 treatment from inattentive doctors, which only worsens the drug trafficking issue. Balko, at this point, returns to Florida to pinpoint the inefficacy of the new drug prevention legislation. This policy limits painkiller prescriptions and requires pain patients to take drug tests to prove that no doctors are prescribing over the limit, which alienates pain patients, making them feel like addicts; and stifles doctors, whose jobs are perpetually on the line. As a result, patients must jump through numerous hurdles to get their pain medication, which is often under-prescribed, and the doctors, pharmacists, manufacturers, and wholesalers of the system are now forced to police each other under the threat of them all losing their jobs per the incredibly stringent new laws. Balko concludes the article evaluating how the government’s reaction to the spike in the opioid epidemic is dramatically excessive in that it doesn’t necessarily eliminate the true problem—unscrupulous doctors—yet encumbers truly conscientious physicians and forces them to go against their patients’ best interests. This contradicts the philosophy

McCullough 15 that the patient must always come first, regardless of whatever implications that may have for the public health crisis.

This article’s claims are very different than much of the others.

Radley Balko introduces here the claim that while there is a tangible spike in opioid abuse, the government’s response to the crisis is excessive and does more harm than good, especially to the healthcare industry. Similar to “New Face of Heroin Abuse,” the article discusses the government’s response to the opioid epidemic, and does discuss prescription painkillers and how abuse can lead to heroin addiction. However, given that the article is very critical towards the government’s response and sympathetic towards doctors who prescribe painkillers to their patients, it is inherently dissimilar to the other articles such as Achenbach’s, Szabo’s, and “New Face of Heroin Abuse.” Radley Balko argues that the prescription painkiller epidemic is somewhat fabricated and exaggerated by the government, and implies that the rise in

McCullough 16 prescription painkiller usage is not necessarily indicative of a true public health crisis, which goes against the major claims of Joel Achenbach, Liz Szabo, and the author of “New Face of Heroin Abuse.”

This article is one of the major sources to consider using for the project’s concession and refutation. Because the project’s claim focuses on the idea of opioid abuse being an epidemic and this article discusses why it ​isn't​ an epidemic, its claims inherently make up much of the other side—the figures are fabricated, physicians are misunderstood, the government is perpetuating much of the actual crisis, et cetera. While the article makes valid points, it doesn’t take into consideration the history of prescription painkillers in the first place; though they are helpful when prescribed correctly by conscientious doctors, some physicians are unscrupulous and hasty, and, especially at the advent of the opioid crisis in the mid-1990s, they were less likely to withhold drugs like

McCullough 17 oxycontin, which would eventually lead to patients being dependent on painkillers and, eventually, once they weren’t strong enough anymore, heroin. Balko assumes that most, if not all, doctors are conscientious do-gooders and that none of them ever have twisted or misaligned intentions, which simply isn’t true. The points he makes are valid enough to be conceded to, but not solid enough to avoid refutation, which makes his article a perfect inclusion for the concession and refutation portion of the project. This entails forming the doctors’ perspectives on the opioid epidemic in Ambrose as seen in the second half of the novel—specifically Chapters Eleven and Thirteen—in which they explain that the simultaneous pressures of maintaining high patient satisfaction while operating under stringent restrictions has made pain mitigation near to impossible.

Bingham, Amy. "Poverty Rate Doubled in the Midwestern Rust Belt Over Past Decade." ​ABC News​, ABC News Internet Ventures, 3 Nov.

McCullough 18 2011, abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/ 11/poverty-ratedoubled-in-the-midwestern-rust-belt-over-past-decade/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2019.

In â&#x20AC;&#x153;Poverty Rate Doubled in the Midwestern Rust Belt Over Past Decade,â&#x20AC;? author Amy Bingham provides an examination of the regional poverty crisis in the Rust Belt and how starkly different it is compared to the national poverty crisis. More people live below the poverty line today than at any other point in history. Economic pitfalls have led to the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, which directly affect the working class of the Rust Belt and induce widespread unemployment, poverty, crime, decline in public health, poor school performance, and fewer jobs. Though this is incomparable to times like the Great Depression, it follows similar trends. Yet nowadays, poverty isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessary homelessness and famine, but cutting corners, high debts, and economic pressure on otherwise normal households. What the Rust Belt needs is a

McCullough 19 jumpstart in the economy and promotion of job variety to bring the 7% of people working full-time below the poverty line as low as possible.

Similar to “New Face of Heroin Abuse” and Joel Achenbach’s “An Addiction Crisis Along ‘The Backbone of America,’” Bingham’s examination of the poverty crisis asserts that the Midwest and Rust Belt regions have seen significant economic decline, which, as seen in the other two articles, has led to social decline as well. “New Face of Heroin Abuse” discusses the rise of drug use and culture in the Rust Belt and how it affects the largely white populaces of this region, and Achenbach’s article observes some of the defining aspects of Appalachia that have been defined by the rising addiction crisis. Much of the success of the opioid epidemic in this area was that the social culture emerging from a suffering people promoted corruption in the healthcare industry and the use of prescription drugs and heroin to escape from the everyday pain.

McCullough 20 This concept is supported by all three articles in different ways, with Bingham’s offering an alternative, economic perspective.

This source would work best in the narration portion of my argument. In terms of the economic backdrop of the Rust Belt, Bingham’s article offers insight into the economic decline popular in this region that complements the social decline seen in other sources. Because my characters—especially Mary and Grace—struggle with money throughout the novel, which is made clear in Chapters One and Four, it is necessary to understand what poverty looks like in this part of the country in order to accurately depict their living conditions and the stress placed by economic hardships on their daily lives. The disappearance of jobs compounded with health, education, and crime issues resulting from the ensuing poverty create an environment of economic and social unrest, which characterizes the town of Ambrose.

Furthermore, Bonnie and Jack come into financial troubles in

McCullough 21 Chapter Seven, and Bingham’s article is immensely useful in supporting how those issues arise and how they are regarded by those who suffer from them.

Gil, Theresa. "Adverse Childhood Experiences." ​Psychology Today​, Sussex Publishers, 16 Jan. 2019, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ breaking-the-silence/201901/adverse- childhood-experiences.

Accessed 21 Mar. 2019.

In Teresa Gil's article entitled "Adverse Childhood Experiences," she discusses the effects that abusive or otherwise difficult childhoods have on the mental health of adults in the present. She begins discussing the research behind the link between emotion and physical neglect in childhood and risk-taking behaviors in adulthood and divides adverse childhood experiences into five categories: domestic abuse, incarcerated relative, mental illness,

McCullough 22 divorce or separation, and substance abuse. Upon evaluating a sample of individuals, one in six participants identified with four or more adverse childhood experiences, and the study concluded that people with high ACE scores were more likely to engage in behaviors that place their health at riskâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;such as alcohol and drug abuse, multiple sex partners, cigarette smoking, and compulsive eatingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as a way to cope and self-regulate their emotionally painful experiences and mental health afflictions. Even certain medical diseases and afflictions such as diabetes, obesity, various cancers, emphysema, cardiovascular disease can be byproducts of adverse childhoods and experiences, and those with high ACE scores who didn't indicate risk-taking behaviors are still susceptible to these mental and physical diseases because of overstimulation resulting from unrelieved stress.

This article offers a totally different perspective on the opioid abuse crisis without even directly mentioning opioids. As affirmed in

McCullough 23 "Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse?" mental illnesses such as anxiety, stress, and depression can increase a person's susceptibility to addiction as a way to relieve themselves of that mental burden. This is further reinforced in Gil's article, which scientifically analyzes and confirms this connection. By offering a scientific perspective to the intersection of mental health and drug addiction, the article supports and builds off the points made in "Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse?"

Gil's article works best in the confirmation portion of my project.

One of the more integral parts of my story is Bonnie's susceptibility to addiction based on her family history and mental illnesses caused by her adverse childhood, which draws the connection to the cycle of poverty and abuse in the Rust Belt and the reason healthcare corruption so easily preys on the people in this region. The theme of injustice and corruption is most exemplified in the fact that she is

McCullough 24 mentally ill, and thus she was destined to become addicted when she was prescribed medication for her injury. Therefore, I can use the information presented in the article to bridge the difficult childhood Bonnie had and her susceptibility to addiction to mitigate her mental unwellness in the present. In Chapters Seven and Eight, it becomes clear that she uses prescription painkillers and, later, heroin to ease her physical and psychological ailments so as to heal her fractured marriage. Furthermore, in Chapters Six and Fourteen, Gilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claims about the link between adverse childhoods and reckless behaviors in adulthood can be used to strengthen the reasons behind Bonnieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s susceptibility and provide justification for the inclusion of a difficult childhood. Thus, the argument that the healthcare industry's corruption preys on the innocent, albeit mentally afflicted, people of the Midwest and Rust Belt is vivified and enforced.

McCullough 25 "Methamphetamine and Other Drugs Are Not as Dangerous as Alleged."

Drug Legalization​, edited by Noël Merino, Farmington Hills, MI, Greenhaven Press, 2015. Current Controversies. ​Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/ EJ301021129 8/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=OVIC&xid=e6a5bd9a. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018. Originally published as "Interview with Carl Hart: The Scientific Case for Decriminalization" in ​Reason​, Nov. 2013.

In “Methamphetamine and Other Drugs Are Not as Dangerous as Alleged,” interviewee Dr. Carl Hart, a neuroscientist and psychology professor at Columbia University, leads a panel consisting of himself, two methamphetamine addicts, a U.S. assistant attorney, and a narcotics officer; which was formed to gather information about methamphetamine addiction to provide to crime show writers for more realistic episode plots. Providing his input meant debunking some classic myths about the effects of methamphetamine and proving that these kinds of heavy-duty drugs

McCullough 26 donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the glamorous superhuman effects as perceived by the general public. Dr. Hart first begins with the myth of superhuman strength. He cites a situation in which southern police forces increased the caliber on their weapons because they believed that black people on cocaine were unaffected by lower-caliber weapons, as well as another instance in which police falsely believed that a man was on bath salts while gruesomely attacking someone, to show that certain claims linked to these kinds of drugs are frequently recycled in different forms to appeal to the non-critical thinkers of each generation. Dr. Hart then taps into some of the actual cognitive effects of methamphetamine, of which there are little. There are few differences between the cognitive effects of methamphetamine and Adderall, according to his empirical testing, and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;cognitive disruptionsâ&#x20AC;? the drug is supposed to have are wildly exaggerated. This leads Dr. Hart into an evaluation on the decriminalization of drugs. He argues not that drugs like heroin, cocaine, or methamphetamine should be legalized, but that they

McCullough 27 shouldn’t be such vivid spots on a person’s criminal record, especially if their only charge is possession; otherwise, society may be condemning to prison good people who don’t truly deserve the lengthy prison sentence or offensive record blemish. Instead, society must encourage education on drugs—​realistic​ education about the true dangers of consuming methamphetamine—rather than issue a blanket “Don’t do drugs!” Dr. Hart continues his argument linking the demonization of drugs to the targeting of cultural groups in the 20th century as a means to alienate people society didn’t like. Marijuana was associated with Mexican immigrants; cocaine with African Americans; and, now, methamphetamine with “white trash” homosexuals. It isn’t that these groups use these drugs more than white people, but propaganda and the vicious media frenzy encircling the drug culture would have society believe so. Moreover, Dr. Hart claims that redistributing the excessive funds for drug reformation—which usually constitutes a bloated law enforcement reprimanding the

McCullough 28 most minor of offenses—towards rehabilitation would be more efficient in solving any and all drug issues the country has.

In reference to similar sources discussing the effects of drugs on society, Dr. Hart’s interview provides a lot of solid insight into the fallacy behind popular conception of drugs such as methamphetamine, heroin, and cocaine. The claims he makes are most similar to those of Radley Balko’s “It’s Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic.” In both articles, while the drugs of topic are different, the same idea that law enforcement and government drug agencies are largely inefficient at solving the true drug problems in the country based on misconceptions about the drugs themselves. However, Dr. Hart’s interview goes more in-depth with the specificities of drugs’ effects—or lack thereof—on the human psyche and how they play into society, the government, and law enforcement’s methods of dealing with the problem. Moreover, Dr. Hart’s interview, as well

McCullough 29 as Balko’s article, provide the counterclaims to the claims made by Joel Achenbach, Liz Szabo, and the author of “New Face of Heroin Abuse,” claiming that there is no true drug epidemic—whether concerning painkillers or methamphetamine—and that any and all “drug issues” the country has are miniscule and simply over-exaggerated by the misdirected federal government.

Dr. Carl Hart’s interview would work best in the concession and refutation portion of my final project. His claims are largely grounded in the idea that drug epidemics are fabricated and extorted from essentially nothing, and that education and knowledge about the true functions of different drugs will make clear the lack of a true drug abuse epidemic in the United States. As these claims directly counter mine, the source material is beneficial for showing the equally strong opposing side. I will be able to use the statistics and data he has compiled to create an equal force against my claim that drug epidemics are very real and very

McCullough 30 powerful, which I can then refute. The information presented here will be used most concretely in the second half of the novel, specifically in Chapter Thirteen, in which the character Neal Kadens will argue that these these restrictions are ridiculous and pose significant problems for the maintenance of high patient satisfaction in hospitals. This can be used to highlight the greed behind corporate intervention in hospital administration that arises when administrators are faced with restrictions that prevent them from fulfilling patient satisfaction quotas and generating more profits for the hospital.

Moghe, Sonia. "Opioid History: From 'Wonder Drug' to Abuse Epidemic."

CNN Wire​, 12 May 2016. ​Global Issues in Context​, link.galegroup. com/apps/doc/A452236234/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=OVIC&xid=3 87f07b8. Accessed 15 Dec. 2018.

In “Opioid History,” CNN correspondent Sonia Moghe provides a

McCullough 31 rich history of prescription painkillers, giving a context for the current public health crisis associated with them. She begins with a short summary of the current response to the prescription opiate epidemic: federal drug agencies are taking action against the spread of opioid addiction in a similar way to how they have addressed cigarettes and alcohol in the past, adding warnings and guidelines and restrictions in an effort to limit the epidemic’s catastrophic effects. This leads the author to question how this relatively new drug epidemic spread so quickly and so abnormally compared to other major drug epidemics. In the early 1900s, she details, morphine was the original pain management drug for Civil War veterans, but there was a new form of painkillers available: heroin.

From its introduction by the Bayer Company in 1898, veterans being treated with morphine were among the many people hooked on this new “wonder drug,” consuming it and injecting it to numb everyday pain. There was no restraint, for there weren’t really other options. World War II introduced a new wave of painkiller

McCullough 32 addiction, as doctors began offering a variety of pain medication to wounded soldiers, and using drugs like heroin or morphine was not considered abnormal and certainly not dangerous. However, the late 1900s—beginning with Gerald Ford in the ‘70s—saw a change in thought. Now, rather than focusing on the false killers such as marijuana and cocaine, drug agencies were encouraged to focus on the new and expanded opioid market, which now included Vicodin and Percocet as two highly addictive prescription opiates that doctors were encouraged to avoid prescribing. However, the popular belief of these drugs’ addictive properties was debunked by a 1980 letter in the New England Journal of Medicine, which asserted that very few patients who take prescription opiates become addicted and even fewer overdose. This led to pain treatment becoming a priority for healthcare professionals everywhere. In the 1990s, this change in thought was evident in the introduction of pain as the fifth vital sign, leading to a renaissance of pain treatment and the birth of OxyContin. As one of the most

McCullough 33 effective long-term painkillers, the drug was introduced in 1996 by Purdue Pharma, and quickly spread throughout U.S. pharmacies at an alarming rate—the number of OxyContin prescriptions jumped eight million in its first year on the market. Its escalating popularity was further aggravated by Purdue Pharma’s romanticization of the drug in several adverts discussing its numerous health benefits.

Thus, a certain media glamor surrounded the drug. It wasn’t until 2007 that Purdue Pharma faced charges with misbranding, but in true addiction fashion, the country’s abuse of OxyContin wasn’t going anywhere; the damage was already done. Meanwhile, in 2001, the Joint Commission—a nonprofit that sets hospital and medical center standards—began discussing opioids as a relatively safe method of pain treatment with no evidence of addiction.

However, these claims were based only on conventional wisdom and not on legitimate data. This, Joint Commission executive vice president David W. Baker claims, has been exaggerated and extrapolated to excuse the inappropriate prescription of opioids by

McCullough 34 healthcare professionals, and has lead the Joint Commission to drop this standard of pain assessment. However, there was a new drug that painkiller abusers were taking special notice of: heroin. After the makers of OxyContin began manufacturing â&#x20AC;&#x153;abuse deterrentâ&#x20AC;? forms of the drug to prevent abuse by crushing and snorting, heroin rose into the limelight as a cheaper, easier to use, and more available painkiller for the truly addicted. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that 66% of OxyContin users switched to heroin after the abuse deterrent version replaced the original. Later, the author of several studies on this topic would confess that evidence was often neglected in the effort to destigmatize opioids and create a general comfort about them, and that if he had known about the harm it would inflict on the country, he would have spoken differently. However, there was no means of stopping the spread of destruction and devastation. The FDA and CDC have been participating in the mass effort to address the opioid abuse epidemic, yet understanding only that opioids are

McCullough 35 unlike any other drug—they are for nonfatal conditions yet kill more patients than any other drug. They have even come so far as to conclude that opioids actually worsen the chronic pain they are intended to treat, and can lead to other negative effects such as dependence, increased pain perception, and a higher chance for overdose as a result.

Sonia Moghe’s detailed history of opioids in America offers a much more enriched scope of the opioid crisis than other narrative sources despite some overlap. Similar to “Opioid Crisis,” Moghe’s article focuses on the intricate details of the Purdue Pharma debacle in 1996 regarding OxyContin and how that has affected legislation and government action throughout the early 21st-century, but it also offers a broader insight into the attitude of the American people and government and how it has changed over time. The issue’s saliency with the public has been very volatile since its emergence in the early 20th century, and Moghe’s article has a much deeper insight

McCullough 36 into that volatility than “Opioid Crisis” and Joel Achenbach’s article.

This article functions best in the narration portion of my argument, and will help me formulate the backdrop of my main character’s childhood. Because Bonnie was born in the 1995-96 age, prescription opioids were in an upswing, and OxyContin was the hottest new drug for easing all varieties of pain. This would naturally affect Bonnie’s parents, who were poor and living in the Rust Belt, and thus more susceptible to addiction, and would consequently negatively impact her childhood, as she was forced to live with a broken, addicted, and abusive family for eighteen years.

Therefore, the information present in Moghe’s article will help throughout the second half of the novel when Bonnie’s childhood is discussed, such as in Chapters Six, Twelve, and Fifteen, and will be used to explain how and why Bonnie’s parents became drug addicts and, subsequently, abusive and negligent. Furthermore, the article

McCullough 37 works well in developing the timeline of opioid addiction in the U.S. The article emphasizes the effect of opioids on the American public both in the 1980s, 90s, and 2000s, which directly concerns Bonnie’s parents and thus reinforces the difficult upbringing she’s forced to come to terms with, as well as the turbulent history behind the spread of opioid addiction in America which is conveyed in the timeline.

"New Face of Heroin Abuse." ​America​, vol. 216, no. 6, 14 Sept. 2015, p. 4.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A43 6232102/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=OVIC& xid=742d0caa. Accessed 3 Nov. 2018.

In “New Face of Heroin Abuse,” the author explains the shift in the opioid addiction epidemic from inner-city African Americans to white, middle class suburbanites in rural America, and the initiatives the government is taking to combat the spread of the

McCullough 38 epidemic. They begin with the statistics—a young mother found in a Walgreens bathroom with a needle in her arm was only one of the twenty-five heroin overdose statistics in just two days in Washington, Pennsylvania. With this knowledge in mind, the author then proceeds to assert that no longer are the poor, black inner-city teenagers the main source of heroin overdose statistics, but now the addiction has spread to the Midwest and Appalachia.

The government has responded appropriately with a five million-dollar effort to fight this epidemic. In conjunction with increased access to recovery support services and overdose prevention efforts, the plan also coordinates public health and law enforcement officials in dealing with drug abuse on a legal basis; the hope, thus, is that these distinct efforts will together inhibit the spread of addiction. The author then compares this drug prevention effort to those of crack cocaine and heroin in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. They postulate that rather than the “tough on crime” policies adopted by law enforcement officials during these periods, this new

McCullough 39 plan is much softer in that respect, leading them to wonder whether it is a reflection on the failures of past efforts or whether it can be attributed to the race and class of those affected.

“New Face of Heroin Abuse” introduces several claims—some are unique to the article, and some are enforced elsewhere. For instance, the author’s claim that there is a tangible shift in the opioid epidemic towards the Rust Belt corresponds to similar claims made by Joel Achenbach in “An Addiction Crisis along ‘The Backbone of America.’” By the same token, the author briefly mentions prescription painkillers as the gateway into heroin, which is also discussed—albeit, more in-depth—in Achenbach’s article.

However, unlike these other two sources, the author does not propose any reason to how this epidemic originated or how it spread into the Rust Belt. Instead, “New Face of Heroin Abuse” discusses more the response to the epidemic by the government—which is unique to this article—and how federal

McCullough 40 officials are devising a plan to combat opioid abuse in the Rust Belt. Furthermore, they propose that race may play a major part in the distinction between the opioid epidemic in the Rust Belt and that in the country’s urban centers, and the combative efforts associated with each crisis.

This article will help construct the confirmation of my final project.

When referring to the spread of addiction, the author is careful to use specific details to indicate that this is a true epidemic and that it is no different than a disease—such as the fact that this is a public health initiative or that it is a relapse of previous epidemics in the mid-20th century—and affirms that communities devastated by addiction should be receiving more medical help and recovery services rather than jail time. These claims directly align with my project’s main thesis. Since the opioid epidemic affects so many people and can spread so easily throughout whole regions of the country, it is not that dissimilar to a disease, and thus should be

McCullough 41 treated as such. Moreover, the assertions relating to “tough on crime” rhetoric, race, and law enforcement will also help build the argument in showing that there are definite weak spots to the government’s reaction to the addiction crisis that all take root in the fact that opioid abuse is not seen as a true disease, but more of a trafficking crisis that merits legal intervention. Such assertions provide information necessary throughout the first half of the novel, especially in Chapters Seven and Eight, which will be used to develop Bonnie’s descent into addiction and showing how, like an untreated disease, it worsens the longer it prolongs until she overdoses. All these assertions work together to strengthen the main thesis of the project, and thus will function best in the confirmation.

"Opioid Crisis." ​Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection​, Detroit, Gale, 2018. ​Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link.galegroup.com/apps/ doc/PC3010999232/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=OVIC&xid=55aa5ef1.

McCullough 42 Accessed 27 Jan. 2019.

In â&#x20AC;&#x153;Opioid Crisis,â&#x20AC;? the unnamed author offers a detailed history of the opioid crisis since the late 20th century, which is when this epidemic is said to have originated. The author defines the opioid crisis as the sharp rise in the number of Americans who abuse or are addicted to opioids, or painkillers made from the opium poppy, Papaver somniferumâ&#x20AC;&#x2039;. This includes codeine, morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl, as well as heroin. Unlike many other drug addiction epidemics in the past century, the opioid crisis began with major pharmaceutical companies feeding into the public desire for painkillers beginning in the 1990s. These companies assured the public that these new drugs were abuse-resistant, and as a result, healthcare professionals began prescribing them at increased rates to moderate any degree of pain. However, this naturally led to a rise in abuse. Large amounts of these painkillers were being diverted to the black market through unscrupulous pharmacy practices, theft,

McCullough 43 and illegal vending by patients. The drugsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; effectiveness at relieving pain and euphoric side effects made it easy to abuse in high doses, which led to dependence and even tolerance, leaving users reeling for a stronger alternative. This may include fentanyl or heroin, which are cheap and easy to obtain off the street. As a result of this growing epidemic, there have been millions of Americans who misuse prescription opiates every year, and tens of thousands of deaths by opioid overdose in years past. A large contributor to this crisis was Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. One of the greater selling points for this drug was that it provided a sustained, time-released formulation of oxycodone, meaning that it contained more oxycodone than needed, but would only release the chemical into the body after certain amounts of time. This was quickly overcome when people discovered that crushing, snorting, or chewing the tablets would allow all the oxycodone to be released, giving an addictive, euphoric effect. As a result, Purdue Pharma came under investigation for misrepresenting the drugâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

McCullough 44 abuse potential. But the damage was already done. Purdue Pharma had marketed the drug using aggressive tactics, and the sales of the drug ballooned from $48 million in 1996 to over $1 billion in 2000.

Because of this aggressive and often incorrect marketing of drugs by large pharmaceuticals, lawmakers’ efforts to reform and regulate the distribution of opioids have been severely impacted. However, there are other players in the bolstering of this epidemic. Healthcare providers have now been given the task of gauging how much to prescribe their patients, which has led to a lot of irresponsibility on the doctors’ part and increased addiction rates for patients. The most common practice is overprescribing opioids for minor injuries or prescribing incredibly potent drugs when milder ones would work better. Doctors’ prescribing of painkillers to patients rose dramatically in tandem with the opioid crisis’ rise to epidemic levels, which has signaled to the healthcare industry a need to find a balance between effective pain management and addiction risks.

However, this has meant that doctors have aired on the side of

McCullough 45 safety with painkiller prescriptions, leaving patients unsatisfied and forced to either “doctor shop” for more drugs or abuse street opioids like heroin or fentanyl, which only worsens the addiction crisis. Furthermore, the prevalence of pill mill clinics, in which physicians will prescribe painkillers to patients who don’t need them for a commission, has posed a significant threat to the combative forces against the opioid epidemic. Despite these roadblocks, state governments are taking measures to limit the spread of addiction. Tennessee, for instance, has limited prescriptions to three days’ worth of drugs unless certain conditions are met, and though it is foreseen to reduce the spread of opioids through underground channels, doctors fear that it may infringe on their ability to care for their patients’ needs. Meanwhile, President Trump has declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency and has employed federal drug agencies to launch the OPIS initiative to identify areas of high addiction risk and implement drug-monitoring programs. Furthermore, the DEA has led efforts to

McCullough 46 prosecute individuals involved in the production of fentanyl and heroin and has partnered with the FBI to disrupt underground vending of synthetic opioid drugs through online channels.

This article offers similar information to Sonia Moghe’s “Opioid History: From 'Wonder Drug' to Abuse Epidemic,” which offers an equally in-depth history of opioids in the United States. Both discuss the effects of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma’s glamorization of the drug through aggressive marketing tactics on the rise of prescription opiate addiction through the late 20th and early 21st centuries and both discuss the healthcare industry and federal government’s role in the spread of addiction, both positive and negative. However, Moghe’s article is much broader in scope, as it begins in the late 19th century and moves progressively up until present day, while “Opioid Crisis” is more centralized on the crisis beginning in 1996 with Purdue Pharma’s introduction of OxyContin and moving slowly until the present day, focusing on

McCullough 47 every aspect of the growing crisis.

“Opioid Crisis” will function the best in the narration, but can also be useful in the confirmation. The article offers an in-depth history of the development of the opioid crisis from the 1996 introduction of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma’s efforts at glamorizing the prescription painkiller industry, rapidly fueling the growing epidemic, to now, with the healthcare industry and government’s role in both fighting and perpetuating the epidemic. While it is based in the history of the epidemic, it also takes an intimate look at why this is such a major crisis and how it has grown so quickly over the years. This kind of information functions well in the basic plot of the novel, which shines through in chapters like Chapters Four and Seven when it shows just how opioid addiction develops.

Moreover, because an integral part of my novel is the development of the hospital narrative in which Bonnie falls prey to unscrupulous and careless doctors who overprescribe her narcotics, as seen in

McCullough 48 Chapters Three, Five, and Thirteen, I am able to use the information presented in the article throughout the novel to enforce this part of the story.

Robbins, Alexandra. "The Problem with Satisfied Patients." â&#x20AC;&#x2039;The Atlanticâ&#x20AC;&#x2039;, Atlantic Monthly Group, 17 Apr. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/ health/archive/2015/04/the-problem-with-satisfied-patients/390684/ . Accessed 1 Apr. 2019.

In Alexandra Robbins' article "The Problem With Satisfied Patients," she examines the corporate and governmental intervention in the healthcare industry and how their ignorance about how hospitals function are creating corrupt doctors and administrations. She specifically highlights patient satisfaction surveys as a primary cause of this corruption. In the belief that transparency and accountability would improve healthcare, the Department of Health and Human Services instituted patient

McCullough 49 satisfaction surveys, which in actuality indirectly harmed patients.

Per this implementation, only hospitals with high patient satisfaction scores would receive adequate funding, while those with mediocre or suffering scores would have reduced funding.

While this seems like a fair implementation, there are serious problems that arise. One question on the HCAHPS survey asks how often the patient received help as soon as they desired, yet does not ask whether the help was medically necessary, which has led patients to complain about trivial, nonessential aspects of their stay and staining their nurses' and doctors' personnel files. These patients, though receiving a proper level of care, reported little to no satisfaction, while patients who were not treated properly and required rehospitalization reported full satisfaction. Thus, doctors have begun to disregard proper standards of care in favor of serving the patients because they're afraid of their pay being docked for low satisfaction scores. Hospitals have gone as far to add various amenities and luxuries like valet parking, live music, flat-screen

McCullough 50 televisions, and VIP lounges; and have even required nurses to undergo intensive training for proper bedside manner and disposition. This has become a monumental waste of hospital funds and recharacterizes patients as consumers and nurses as automatons. Moreover, much of the problem lies in the fact that the patient isn't always right. Patients may rate their nurses and doctors highly and die an hour later, yet the people calculating their salaries would be none the wiser. For instance, UTMC has the highest rate of post-surgery complications and readmission in the country, yet has above-average patient satisfaction scores despite its high mortality rate by tricking its patients to believe it has better standards of care than it actually does. Despite this drive to create more pleasant environments for patients, research has shown that all it takes is hiring more nurses and paying them better to create a better, healthier environment for patients and doctors alike.

Robbins' article brings up numerous points and topics addressed in

McCullough 51 sources such as "Opioid Crisis" and "It Is Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic," especially targeted at prescribing patterns and unscrupulous physicians. In her article, she addresses that part of achieving ideal patient satisfaction is prescribing them any medication they desire even if it's not in their best interest, and the aforementioned sources discuss prescribing patterns and unethical doctors who will prescribe anything their patients want for more money or better satisfaction ratings, which largely constitutes prescription opiates like OxyContin, Percocet, morphine, or Dilaudid. “It’s Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic” affirms that pain specialists often walk a fine, fine line between over- and under-prescribing; either they get their patients addicted or they have their salaries docked for not treating those patients exactly how they want. This bridges the connection between patient satisfaction gauges discussed in Robbins’ article and the effect this has on doctors discussed in “It’s Not Clear…”

McCullough 52

Robbins' article, from a strictly point-of-view standard, functions well in the confirmation portion of my project. As she asserts, there is a pertinent issue regarding the concept of patient satisfaction infiltrating hospitals and muddling the standard of care, which draws a connection between healthcare corruption and opioid addiction, since doctors will prescribe whatever their patients want to ensure that they're rated highly and receive proper salaries. I will be able to use this information throughout the novel, both when Bonnie is being treated at the hospital and when Jack comes to discover the unscrupulous prescribing patterns of doctors who prescribe to satisfy the patient and not treat their illness, as seen in Chapters Three and Five and explained in Chapter Thirteen. On the other hand, the article alludes to the other side of the argument, which is that doctors don't have a choice and are essentially forced to overprescribe at the risk of having their salaries docked. In response to Jackâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s discovery, the doctors, per this information,

McCullough 53 complain that they are forced to do so at the risk of losing their jobs or having their salaries docked in Chapter Thirteen. Furthermore, Robbins also discusses the emerging presence of luxury amenities in hospitals to satisfy patients, which would be helpful in Chapters Three and Five, where I am shaping the hospital narrative. I can use the examples she provides as ways to make the hospital seem more like a luxury hotel than a place for medical emergencies, which rhapsodizes Bonnie from the start but leads to disillusionment when she later comes to realize that it was the hospital’s policies for patient satisfaction that got her addicted to painkillers in the first place. Therefore, this article brings up points from both sides of the argument, and thus would function in both the confirmation and the concession/refutation portions of the project.

Segedy, Jason. "Why Are Some People in the Rust Belt so Resistant to Change?" ​CleveScene​, Cleveland Scene, 17 Dec. 2018, www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2018/12/07/why-ar

McCullough 54 e-some-people-in-the-rust-belt-so-resistant-to-change. Accessed 21 Feb. 2019.

In "Why Are Some People in the Rust Belt So Resistant to Change?" author Jason Segedy provides an analytical look at the psychological and sociological forces present in the people of the Rust Belt, and how its tumultuous history influences the mindsets of its citizens. It begins with a quote from Aaron Renn, who claims that although economic and social decline has debilitated the Rust Belt, the people who live there continue to resist all changes; they seem to enjoy being miserable. It takes a monumental amount of responsibility and grit to run an average Rust Belt town, as the people there are so passionately opposed to the necessary reforms that nothing can get done, and the pay is proportionately meager.

Segedy then analyzes why reform is so difficult and why the people are so resistant to change. As he claims, it began with the industrialization that occurred in WWI, which saw Rust Belt cities

McCullough 55 becoming the fastest-growing nations in the world, teeming with immigrants and plentiful manufacturing jobs in automobiles, glass, machinery, rubber, and steel. However, after WWII, there was significant economic and social decline due to outmigration to the Sunbelt, economic restructuring, and suburbanization decreasing the populations of urban areas. This had a profound effect on the citizens' psyche. Much of the resistance to change is generational; people over fifty-five years old have strong family memories of the prewar industrial powerhouses they lived in before, and long for the good old days to come back. This has led Donald Trump, who aims to bring back the idea of America that a lot of the Rust Belt people miss, to gain much of that region's support. Meanwhile, the Gen-Xer children of the Baby Boomers are more ambivalent in their views of that era and even can have nostalgia of a time period they don't remember, and the Millennials are even more of a blank state. Additionally, since the Rust Belt has a disproportionate amount of people who have lived in the same state all their life,

McCullough 56 there's a lot of loyalty to their hometowns that makes them ignorant and resistant to change and outsiders. There are cultural distinctions with which Rust Belt natives identify that makes them hesitant to accept changes. Moreover, the economic decline has created an ideology of learned helplessness in these citizens, who became dependent on the luxuries of living in industrial powerhouses and came to blame others for the decline they experienced as a way to cope with their plunge into darkness, not knowing how to regain their sense of agency and accountability to their own problems and instead blaming it on others. This culture of learned helplessness, civic irresponsibility, and intense, passionate loyalty has singlehandedly inhibited any effort to revitalize the broken, dilapidated economies of the Rust Belt.

Segedy's article brings up assertions about life, culture, and the economy in the Rust Belt that reinforces those made by Joel Achenbach in "An Addiction Crisis along 'The Backbone of

McCullough 57 America,'" which discusses the increased presence of opioid abuse in Rust Belt cities. However, while Achenbach focuses on the rising death and addiction rates specifically, Segedy takes a deeper look at the reasons behind those facets of life in Appalachia, and delves deeper into why the Rust Belt is the host of such tragic social and economic issues and how the culture that has risen from the debris promotes this learned helplessness and subsequent addiction susceptibility. Similar points are brought up in "New Face of Heroin Abuse" and "Opioid Crisis," which affirm the high concentration of addiction specifically in the Rust Belt and discuss the social culture surrounding it. Yet while those sources are very broad and only affirm the presence of a culture that promotes poverty and addiction, Segedy examines that culture with a more searing perspective and delves into the psychology behind Rust Belt citizens that make their society so habitually self-destructive.

This article functions best in the narration portion of my argument.

McCullough 58 Its searing analysis of the social, economic, and cultural issues in the Rust Belt will help me create a backdrop for the events transpired in my novel. It is no mistake that my novel occurs in the Midwest; Segedy's examination of the learned helplessness and fierce hometown loyalty that comprises Rust Belt culture is the ideal backdrop for a story about opioid addiction and vulnerability.

I will be able to use this analysis to form both the physical and social setting of Ambrose in Chapter Two, and to develop characters such as Mary, who is embittered by the social decline and longs to relive the glory days of Midwestern industrial powerhouses like Ambrose was, in Chapter One. However, the points made in this article are so integral to the personalities of many characters that, while it is most important in Chapters One and Two, it will likely be used in nearly every chapter of the novel.

It is integral that the story have a realistic setting with realistic character motivations in order to create a truly dynamic narrative, and Segedy's article provides the necessary information to do so.

McCullough 59

Szabo, Liz. "Treatments for Chronic Pain Can Lead to Prescription Drug Abuse." ​Prescription Drug Abuse​, edited by Margaret Haerens and Lynn M. Zott, Detroit, MI, Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints. ​Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link.galegroup.com/ apps/doc/EJ3010865213/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=OVIC&xid=2943 a098. Accessed 3 Feb. 2019. Originally published as "Prescriptions Now Biggest Cause of Fatal Drug Overdoses" in ​USA Today​, 10 Aug. 2010.

In Liz Szabo’s “Treatments for Chronic Pain Can Lead to Prescription Drug Abuse,” she outlines the downward spiral many people with chronic pain are forced to take that leads to painkiller abuse. She begins with the story of Debra Jones, a fifty-year-old mother with rheumatoid arthritis who became addicted to Percocet prescribed to mediate her pain, which intends to show how easy it is for people with chronic pain who need medication to become an

McCullough 60 opioid addict. Szabo then leads into a description of the epidemic, and how it is largely unrecognized yet surpassing all narcotic addictions in terms of rate of overdose. Because of the availability of painkillers and the fact that while they are dangerous to abuse, their manufacture cannot be impeded since they are produced for licit purposes, such as the treatment of terminal cancer patients with no risk of addiction, and while many people take painkillers as prescribed, those with genetic disposition to addiction or mental afflictions like stress or depression may find it difficult to stop themselves from abusing these drugs. Patients who become addicted may doctor shopâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;hopping from doctor to doctor for new prescriptionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;or buy painkillers through illicit means, and the risk of overdose is incredibly high once addicts begin consuming these drugs at high doses. Doctors have attempted to manage their patientsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; opioid consumption through several different means.

Unannounced urine tests, pill counting, using combinations of anti-inflammatory drugs and muscle relaxants instead of

McCullough 61 opioids—these methods have been employed in the healthcare industry as part of the national effort to prevent opioid abuse.

However, there still remain many doctors and civilians alike who simply aren’t ready to label painkillers as so dangerous. They are not like crack; they are not associated with street crime or violence, and thus many tend to underestimate how addictive yet costly they are simply because they were prescribed by a doctor. It will take a national effort to raise awareness for the health implications of prescription painkiller abuse.

This article has the most similarities to Monifa Thomas’ “There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic,” which describes the health effects of abusing prescription painkillers as well as how they are mistaken as harmless even though they are, in actuality, very dangerous and can even lead to heroin abuse if prolonged without treatment. Both articles address both the popular misconceptions about painkillers and affirm that there is significant

McCullough 62 reason to believe that this is a major, albeit foreign, drug epidemic that the country has never seen before, though Szabo’s takes a deeper look at the unscrupulous prescription practices while Thomas’ focuses more on the public health crisis that has resulted.

Meanwhile, Joel Achenbach’s article is more a commentary on the centralization of this epidemic in rural white America, and thus offers a different angle of analysis on this epidemic. Together, these articles paint a picture of what painkiller abuse looks like in the scope of modern America.

This article will help immensely in the confirmation of my final project. It offers deep insight into how and why so many people are becoming addicted to painkillers, and how easy it is for unsuspecting, “normal” people to find themselves enveloped in drug addiction even though they could never dream that medicine prescribed by a doctor could act as their demise. This coincides with one of the biggest points I want to make with my project: this

McCullough 63 can happen to anyone. Anyone can be the victim of a bad injury or become wrought with chronic pain, and anyone can find themselves unable to resist abusing these addictive opioids. That’s what makes this epidemic so different than the methamphetamine, cocaine, or marijuana epidemics of the past—this kind of addiction preys on innocent, everyday people who would never dream of being a drug addict. In Chapter Sixteen specifically—though this theme is present throughout the entire novel—Bonnie has come to forgive herself for becoming addicted to opioids, knowing in her heart that painkiller addiction truly can happen to anyone, as she affirms in her speech at the University of Virginia. Therefore, I need to find substantial evidence that this specific drug epidemic preys on otherwise innocent people who happened to fall victim to addiction simply because of the corruption and injustice that plagues the healthcare industry. Thus, the article will function best in the first half of the novel—specifically Chapters Four and Seven, when Bonnie begins to creep into the throes of painkiller addiction—in

McCullough 64 order to show how basic pain treatment can lead to addiction.

Szabo’s article highlights this aspect of the opioid crisis very well, and thus will prove immensely useful in my main argument’s confirmation.

Thomas, Monifa. "There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic."

Prescription Drug Abuse​, edited by Margaret Haerens and Lynn M. Zott, Detroit, MI, Greenhaven Press, 2013. Opposing Viewpoints.

Opposing Viewpoints in Context​, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/ EJ3010865206/OVIC?u=otta7357&sid=OVIC&xid=3db05c25.

Accessed 10 Dec. 2018. Originally published as "Prescription Drug Abuse Is Fastest-Growing Drug Problem in Country" in ​Chicago Sun-Times​, 25 Dec. 2010.

In “There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic,” author Monifa Thomas, a staff reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, elaborates on the rapid and disturbing growth of the opioid

McCullough 65 epidemic. She begins with a story about Daniel Katz, a twenty-five-year-old former hockey player who overdosed on OxyContin and cocaine in his best friendâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home after vowing that same day to seek rehabilitation and to turn his life around.

Rebounding of this emotional pull into the haunting and desperate world of opioid abuse, she expands one manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s death to the statistical evidence of the spread of opioid abuseâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this is especially concentrated in OxyContin, Vicodin, and fentanyl. The prescription painkiller epidemic has come to eclipse all other drug epidemics and major causes of accidental death, excluding car accidents.

While prescription painkillers are known for relieving chronic pain, and are thus seen as a healing medicine, excessive consumption can suppress breathing and react poorly when consumed with other drugs; this misconception has led many people, especially teenagers, to view opioids as safer alternatives to more heavy-duty drugs like heroin and cocaine, which has only aggravated the rise of prescription painkillers to the largest drug epidemic of the present

McCullough 66 day. Furthermore, the increased prescription of opioids in the mid-1990s to combat chronic pain first initiated the surge of prescription drug abuse, which Thomas claims is often perpetuated by unscrupulous doctors and rogue online pharmacies that don’t have proper regard for the dangers of the drugs they prescribe or sell, and thus do not inform their patients properly of the dangers of prescription painkillers. Thus, many people are largely unaware of the true danger in excessive consumption of painkillers. This is linked to the accessibility of prescription opioids—Thomas compares it to the accessibility of liquor—which has led people to doctor-shop, cycling through as many doctors as they can who will give them OxyContin or Vicodin and accumulating as much as possible. Furthermore, Thomas explores how these drugs can also come from family, friends, or even the trash, which leads her to discuss proper disposal methods.

Thomas’ article offers very similar claims to Joel Achenbach’s “An

McCullough 67 Addiction Crisis Along ‘The Backbone of America.” In both articles, the idea that prescription painkiller abuse is a true epidemic is expressed frequently, and both discuss the effect opioids have had on the people who abuse them. Furthermore, the in-depth exploration of OxyContin and Vicodin, their origins, and their devastating effects in the present day are explored in “Opioid Crisis” as well as Thomas’ article. On the contrary, “There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic” seems to be a direct response to Radley Balko’s “It’s Not Clear Whether There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic,” which discusses why the idea of such an epidemic is fabricated and exaggerated by the federal government and that the real issues are being overlooked; equally dissimilar is “Methamphetamine and Other Drugs Are Not as Dangerous as Alleged,” which discusses the misconceptions behind the effects of various drugs—namely, that they have any significant effects at all. Thomas’ article refutes both of these other articles’ claims and provides evidence that there is a true epidemic

McCullough 68 and that prescription opioids pose a serious threat to the public health of America.

Monifa Thomas’ “There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic” will function very well in the confirmation of my final project. Its main claims essentially directly answer my research question and correspond very well with my thesis—prescription opioids are leading to addiction and overdose that is ravaging much of the country for a variety of unique reasons. In Chapter Seven of my novel, Bonnie becomes addicted to heroin after she becomes tolerant to the OxyContin prescribed to her by Dr. Ward, and in the first part of the chapter, she has begun snorting OxyContin in order to access all the oxycodone, which usually comes in increments over a prolonged period and not all at once. This stems directly from Thomas’ article, in which she discusses the ways people have either come to abuse the painkillers they are prescribed or moved on to heroin, and I therefore require the information she presents in

McCullough 69 order to create this development in the plot with research-guided accuracy. Furthermore, the details she provides about the rationale from moving from painkillers to heroin—it is cheaper, more accessible, and more effective—will benefit in the later portions of Chapter Seven, when Bonnie realizes that her family’s money problems stem from her own injury, and that the pills aren’t even as effective anymore since she’s become inured to them, she must “save” her family by switching to heroin for the lower cost and the longer “high.”

"The Truth about Heroin." ​Drug-Free World​, Foundation for a Drug-Free World, www.drugfreeworld.org/drugfacts/heroin/i-ll-just-try-itonce.html. Accessed 7 Apr. 2019.

In this article from the Foundation for a Drug-Free World entitled, "The Truth about Heroin," the unnamed author offers two perspectives on the heroin addiction epidemic, one of devastation,

McCullough 70 dependence, and destitution; and one of fashion, culture, and the "chic" look of heroin addiction in the media. They begin with a brief examination of two heroin addicts. One describes that heroin is one of those drugs people see as recreational until they succumb to addiction after just one hit. According to the experience of 15-year-old Sam, the first hit makes people throw up, repulsed by the feeling at first, but eventually, they return, craving the rush of the hit and the feeling of breathing finally after being deprived of air. He compares it to an obsessed lover. The other addict, 21-year-old Jim, fell into a coma right after a single hit and will be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, unable to live the same life and achieve the same aspirations ever again. In the second portion of the article, the author describes the emergence of a glamorous allure to heroin in the media. Heroin use is now "fashionable" and "chic," and the look of a heroin addictâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the sunken face and deadened eyes, the gaunt figure and greasy hairâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;has accrued a certain glamor. Just as how rock stars made

McCullough 71 LSD popular in the '60s, advertisers and celebrities today are making heroin just as alluring.

Compared to other sources, this article offers a very narrow perspective by looking at heroin addiction on a very intimate level, whereas many other sources have been more broad. Sonia Moghe’s "Opioid History: From 'Wonder Drug' to Abuse Epidemic" only partially explores the connection between heroin and prescription painkillers, asserting that heroin addiction is frequently the derivative of a prescription painkiller addiction, since it provides the same euphoric “high” for less money and greater effect.

Furthermore, "Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse?" discusses the clear and present dangers of heroin addiction and how difficult it can be to overcome addiction and be adequately treated for it without the threat of relapse. However, none of these sources truly explore what being addicted to heroin is like on the victim’s end, and offers a much

McCullough 72 more intimate look into heroin addiction than just its societal implications and its long-term effects, as the aforementioned sources do.

This article works best in the confirmation of my project, as it supports the part of the argument relating to whether the opioid abuse epidemic is serious or even real. Abusing prescription painkillers is harmful enough, but those who don't overdose on pills inevitably become dependent on heroin as a cheaper, stronger, and easier-to-get alternative to the euphoria induced by the pills. Heroin addiction is awful and devastating and ruins lives and kills millions each year, and because it is so integral to the development of my project's narrative, it is important to know what heroin use and addiction feels like on the user's end, so that such a grave topic is not misrepresented or misportrayed. In Chapters Seven and Eight, Bonnie begins using heroin as a cheaper and more effective alternative to OxyContin in order to save money and her own

McCullough 73 marriage, so it’s integral to the development of my plot that the information presented this source translates to show how horrifying, grotesque, and devastating heroin abuse can look like up close.

"Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse?" ​Genesis House​, Genesis House Recovery Residence, 28 Sept. 2018, genesishouse.net/blog/why- can-heroin-relapse-bemore-dangerous-than-other-types-of-drug-relapse/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2019.

In “Why Can Heroin Relapse Be More Dangerous than Other Types of Drug Relapse?” the unnamed author describes the physiological reasons why people may relapse and/or overdose on heroin during their rehabilitation. They preface the article with a brief overview of the overdose statistics before leading into their description of how heroin affects the brain, and how people can

McCullough 74 become addicted to the rush of dopamine in the brain upon injecting it. This can build up a tolerance to the drug, forcing the user to take more with every injection in order to achieve the same level of euphoria as always, eventually disrupting the oxygen flow to the brain and resulting in overdose and often death. However, when people survive an overdose, the best course of action for them is to enter a rehabilitation facility to wean themselves off addiction and progress towards a semi-normal life. However, this is a precarious period in that heroin relapse is equally common and dangerous for recovering addicts. Because people may overestimate how much heroin they need to get high, relapse has a dangerously high rate of overdose and death. Further, relapse can be triggered by stress, fear, depression, anxiety, guilt, and loneliness, as well as viewing drug use on TV, spending time with addicts, feeling bored or unsocial, or experiencing a major life crisis. Relapse can also lead to attitude changes, increased time spent with drug users, dishonesty, irresponsible behavior, and a lack of personal

McCullough 75 upkeep—these signs may indicate that a recovering addict has relapsed.

This article offers specific information about heroin unseen in any of my other sources. While I have accrued a substantial amount of information about the broader societal effects of increased opioid addiction, I haven’t necessarily put myself in the shoes of an addict himself to see what the roads to and from addiction look like, which is necessary to the pathetic appeal of my final project. Compared to Monifa Thomas’ “There Is a Prescription Painkiller Abuse Epidemic,” this source is a reinforcement of the broad societal implications presented by Thomas through a more intimate lens.

Thomas asserts in her article that opioid addiction is prevalent throughout Rust Belt cities largely because of how difficult it is to overcome even with treatment, which is supported by this article’s look at the struggle recovering addicts face with resisting relapse through the rehabilitation process.

McCullough 76

By providing specific information, this article is crucial to the development of the confirmation of my project. I have a broad scope of the opioid crisis presented to me by my other sources, but knowing the details and intricacies of the road to opioid addiction is necessary for the proper development of my final novel. In Chapters Seven, Eight, Ten, Twelve, and Fourteen, Bonnieâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s experiences with addiction, rehabilitation, and, eventually, relapse after her overdose in Chapter Eight are either mentioned or explicitly shown. Her struggle with overcoming her addiction and, eventually, succumbing to relapse when Grace dies and her mental health worsens should be a research-based narrative, and this source provides the information necessary to accurately portray how recovering addicts like Bonnie donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always have the smoothest journey to sobriety.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alex McCullough was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 2001, and graduated from Northwestern University in 2024 with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and English. He has spoken in forty cities across the Rust Belt about opioid addiction prevention and treatment options, and has written several other acclaimed novels including It Doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Have to Make Sense, I Am Cecil Burkhart, and American Birdcage.

Nosedive is his debut novel.

Figure 40. Thurston, Gabrielle. My Trip to Toledo, Spain. 15 Nov. 2018

objects in the mirror are closer than they appear On the westernmost border of West Virginia, straight in the middle, lies a small town overrun by a sinister plague. Ambrose was once a bustling industrial hotspot in its heyday—the largest steel producers in West Virginia—and offered asylum for the struggling blue-collar workers flocking up and down the Rust Belt. Now, all that remains is misery, depravation, and a culture and economy in steep decline.

Bonnie Sutton knows the town of Ambrose inside and out, having spent her childhood navigating the tricky cultural underworld of an Appalachian city in decline and all it entails—poverty, abuse, and, most of all, drug addiction. When she turns eighteen, she flees her disastrous home life for a better future on the East Coast, hoping to put her past behind her once and for all. But when her mother becomes fatally sick, Bonnie is forced to drag her husband, Jack, and three-year-old daughter, Emily, back to her hometown, with consequences beyond her darkest, wildest nightmares.

advance praise for ‘nosedive’ “ Heartbreakingly beautiful. ” Thomas Ngafuan

“ A deeply haunting tale of a family, a community, and a culture in crisis. ” Saoirse O’Malley

“ Brilliantly concieved; breathakingly written. ” Sterling Chung

“ This story will stay with you now and forever. A masterful tour-de-force. ” Luz Moretz Garza

FICTION / NONFICTION Book Publishing & Design by Brunswick Publishing & Production brunswickpnp.com

Figure 41. Car in a Wheat Field. Pinterest, www.pinterest.com/punknicole/. Accessed 27 Jan. 2019.