Page 6 of Mountain Man Bad Boy

After the initial visit, I had a few patients requiring daily monitoring and three who were being released. Porter’s case was the most important, as he was in that vital seventy-two-hour window that could mean life or death to a recovering addict. I spritzed my hands with sanitizer and hiked up the stairs to the second floor.

Room 204C was opposite the nursing station, one of the first rooms in the critical wing. I checked inside through the safety glass in the door. I didn’t see any movement inside, so I turned the knob and went in. There was hardly anything within the detox chamber except a cot and a chair, and both were bolted to the floor. There was a toilet with a sink and a curtain for privacy, but not a wall. I scanned the room carefully. Six years of experience had taught me that no matter how good my motives were, patients could still sometimes be dangerous.

What I discovered lying on the bed was far more dangerous than a man bent on destruction. The patient lying there was beautiful. Sometime during the night, he had removed his shirt. That was normal; in the extreme discomfort and profuse sweating that withdrawal causes, people often seek to make themselves feel better by casting off clothing. I was accustomed to finding patients, especially those in the early stages of detox, half-naked.

But this man was something else. He was cut, from his chest down to his waist, muscles clearly visible beneath tanned skin. The typical junkie body type was skinny, even wasted away. This man was strong, as if he had managed to get regular exercise while getting stoned out of his mind.

His sandy-brown hair was washed and spread out over the pillow, unlike so many who found their way to our doors. His jaw was unshaven, dark with stubble from one or two days’ growth. He could be a former model for all I know.

I caught myself staring. I wondered if I had walked onto a television set, if I had been cast as an unsuspecting nurse in a police drama. But as soon as I realized I was ogling him, I cut myself off. It was absolutely unacceptable to have such thoughts about a patient.

He was here to save his life and at his most vulnerable, and I had to show him the respect he deserved. As I watched, he curled up around the pillow, and the spell was broken. He became another lost soul in anguish, landing here after hitting rock bottom. I sat down on the chair, leaning forward to smile encouragingly. He tracked me with his eyes, but I wasn’t sure he was really seeing me.

“Porter?” I called.

He didn’t answer but relaxed his grip on the pillow, seeming to sense another person in the room. I caught a glimpse of his striking features, his dark eyes soulful as they searched in vain for an anchor to reality. His lips parted, but no sound came out.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured him.

There were regulations about touching the patients, even gentle caresses or holding hands. Lawsuits happened when doctors took their privilege too far, and I didn’t want to break any of the rules. I did want to reach out and stroke his hand, though. Something within me was moved to action by his quiet desperation. I wanted to comfort him, to speak to him with a language more basic than words. But that was forbidden, and I restrained myself.

Instead, I began speaking in soothing tones, using my voice rather than my touch to comfort. I went through the intake procedures, even read out parts of his chart. I used the training I had to give positive affirmations to help calm him.

I continued until my time was up, until I really should leave and finish my rounds. There was something about him, though, something mysterious and energizing. What had he done to maintain his figure? How had he decided to turn himself in? He was too far into the detoxification process to answer me with words. Instead, he just watched me, his eyes thirsty for human interaction. For the rest of the day, as I worked, I felt haunted by his soulful eyes.

5

PORTER

Everything hurt. Everything hurt, and there was a crashing sound in my ears that wouldn’t go away. The crash and the pain and an ache in my soul completed the devilish trio, torturing me as I was sure no creature had ever been tortured before. I rolled to one side, then the other, desperate to get comfortable. The tiny cot seemed like my deathbed, like it was pulling me down, unwilling to let go.

I got up and paced when I was able, in the early morning hours before the flu-like detox circled back to bite me again. I memorized every inch of the cell they had me in. White walls and grey floors left no doubt as to what the room was for. There were no pictures on the walls, no color on any surface. There was a toilet in the corner with a curtain for privacy. Even the curtain was white. I thought they could have added pink or green, something to cheer up the inhabitants of this bleak place.

I threw up into that toilet, feeling my stomach rip through delirious convulsions. I knew I had signed up for this. It had been my own two feet that had walked in the door, my own hand that had shakily signed the intake forms. Those pieces of me were traitors, I decided. A quick death from overdose couldn’t possibly be this bad. The only bright spot in my life was the nurse who visited me three times each day.

The first time I saw her, life had been a nightmare. I had only a spotty recollection of her sitting down beside me. It looked as if she had wanted to reach out but had stopped herself. I wondered what her touch would have been like. Her delicate fingers might have swept over my own and taken the sickness away.

I thought she had said something about a landline, but that couldn’t have been right. And a cat called Evil. Even in the depths of my madness, it had struck me as odd. That very mystery had been enough to keep me going after she left.

There were orderlies who came in to deliver my food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and one snack were all presented on the same mint-green plastic trays. They were all prepackaged foods, sandwiches on white bread, potato chips, and apple slices. It was as if an industrial mother had decided to feed hundreds of children but didn’t have an actual kitchen. Or more likely, I thought as I sobered up, they had outsourced the food to a company offsite.

If they gave me a utensil, it was always a plastic spork, never a fork and never a knife. The orderlies returned after exactly thirty minutes to collect the trays and whatever I had left uneaten. They were super serious about keeping me hydrated. If I didn’t finish my bottled water, the orderlies, usually strong young men, would stand and wait for me to drink it. I was also hooked up to an IV flushing the toxins out of my body.

I wondered if patients ever gave them trouble. I could just imagine some strung-out junkie getting strapped down to one of these cots. I didn’t want to press my luck. Still, I spent a good deal of time considering whether I could take on one or all of the orderlies. I didn’t consider myself strong, but the job at the lumberyard was no joke. I spent all day hauling logs in the sun; it didn’t make me a lumberjack, but I knew I had a good thirty pounds on most of the patients who were admitted.

I didn’t know any of their names, and I was too far gone to remember them even if I knew. The one with the bald head was particularly beefy. I figured he could take me down without much of a fight. But the one with the tattoo peeking out from beneath his scrubs was just about my size. If I had to make a run for it, I thought I had a good chance of defeating him.

But who knew what lay outside my door? I had a vague recollection of walking into this trap. This room was at the beginning of the dormitory hall. Dormitory was a poor word for it; it was more like solitary confinement. My room was just past the nurses’ station, at the beginning of a long hallway of cells.

The first night I was in here, I had been nailed to the bed with the force of my own addiction. I had been unable to get up for any reason, feeling the world spin and my body convulse. I had been in and out of consciousness, feeling only pain, seeing only colors. They had turned the light down low, which was a blessing. Only the nurse’s gentle voice had penetrated the fog, calming me down.

I had felt like I was out at sea during a storm, and her voice had been a life raft, allowing me to drift on the surface instead of sinking to the bottom. That was the first time I had seen her, but it wasn’t the last. After a sleepless night, tossing and turning but unable to rise, I had weathered enough of the storm to stand. I explored the tiny cubicle, relieved myself in the toilet, washed my hands, and washed out my mouth with water.

They had given me scrubs when I arrived, a set of pale green pajama bottoms and a top. I thought I remembered trying to claw my way out of them at some point during my stay. They were itchy in the way that all new clothing was itchy. As if the starch from the factory was still embedded in the threads. I could have sworn that I had set myself free, removing at least the shirt before succumbing to unconsciousness.

Either it was a dream, or they had dressed me again. I wouldn’t put it past them. It seemed like half of what they did here was just monitor you and try to keep you decent while you went through the inevitable tremors. I was desperately curious to know how other people were dealing with this. Presumably I wasn’t their only patient, though I had yet to see another human being besides the nurse and the orderlies.

On the second day, I pressed my nose against the safety glass on the door, trying to see out of my chamber. I tried the knob, and it was locked. I cursed. Why would they lock the door when someone had come here of his own free will? What did they think I was going to do? Then my musings about taking on the orderlies came back to me, and I grinned. That was exactly what they were trying to prevent—some intoxicated patient from attacking the staff.

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