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“Was I that obvious?” Adrianna yawned a while after they had finished and were lying curled around each other, still on the living room floor. Her head rested against Jack’s chest and the rise and fall of his breaths were making her sleepy.
Jack stroked her arm and asked her what she meant.
“With the pills?”
Jack thought on that for a moment and then told her, “Someone else probably wouldn’t have noticed but I know the signs. Being bartender, you learn what addiction looks like. Also, my father is addicted to Fentanyl.”
“For how long?” Adrianna asked, afraid to hear the answer.
“It started when I was in high school so about sixteen years, I think.”
Adrianna shuddered when she tried to imagine living as she was for another fourteen years. That would put her into her forties. “You said he ‘is addicted’. Does that mean he still takes them?”
“He uses patches but yes, he’s still on it. He suffers from chronic pancreatitis which is extremely painful, and they treated him with morphine in the hospital but when he got out he was prescribed the Fentanyl. He was only supposed to use it to manage the pain but it didn’t take long for him to need it to function day to day.”
“Has he tried to stop?”
Jack stopped stroking her arm and swallowed loudly before answering. “No. My mom and I both tried to get him help several times but he refused. My mother couldn’t handle it anymore and so she divorced him. About five years ago my father told me he didn’t want to see me anymore. I went to visit him and he looked awful and I begged him to get help. He told me if I was going to lecture him not to visit anymore. I haven’t seen him since.”
Adrianna thought about what it would be like to get to that point in her life, when she’d cut herself off from the only family she had, her mother and father, and live the rest of her life alone with only her precious pills. It scared her to death. She had to do something now, before years went by and she was middle aged and forlorn.
“Tell me about what it’s like for you,” Jack stated after another few minutes of silence. “How did it happen?”
Adrianna shook her head and told him, “I’m not sure, exactly. I was also given morphine in the hospital but after, the doctor gave me the prescription for Vicodin. I took them just as I should at first, maybe four a day to manage the pain, and that worked for a while. Then taking one every four hours wasn’t enough and so I’d take two every four hours. Then I’d take two every three hours.
“In the middle of this I was still extremely depressed over what happened. I graduated Northwestern before the accident but I never went back for med school, I never got a job, and just stayed in my parents’ house all day long. I couldn’t take the looks people would give me when I left the house so I became a hermit and closed myself off. I soon realized that when I took the pills the depression lifted for a bit, too. My parents started to notice I was taking too many and so they kept a more careful eye on me and I took less again. The depression got worse and so I thought moving out here would help. I’d be able to make new friends and not have to worry about getting those pitiful stares wherever I went. I was wrong though. Moving out here just made it easier to take as many pills as I wanted without my parents breathing down my neck.”
“How many pills are you taking a day, Ade?”
Adrianna had to think about it before she gave her answer, trying to calculate in her head. She was finding it hard to concentrate, her post-coital high having worn off. “On a good day, ten, a bad day, up to twenty. I’m pathetic, I know.”
Jack squeezed his arms around her a little tighter and told her to hush. “That’s actually not that bad,” he said. “Let me ask you something though, how is your doctor not noticing how many pills you are taking? Surely he realizes you’re taking more than you should be.”
Adrianna was getting restless and her back was beginning to ache from lying on the floor so she wiggled out of Jack’s arms. Stretching, she went in search of her clothes, throwing only her shirt and panties on before returning to the couch. Jack’s pants were located as well and when he had them on he joined her. Adrianna had been hoping he’d forget his last question but even after they were seated again he looked at her expectantly.
