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She sniffled three times before answering. “Last night.”
I saw him look up at the ceiling as he calculated just how long it must have been and when she started showing symptoms of withdrawal. He shook his head back and forth a few times and then stood, pulling his phone out of his pocket and dialing.
“Yo,” he said as he walked into the kitchen.
“Hey,” I said and sat down on the couch again. “You aren’t looking so hot. Do you have a fever?” I placed my hand against her head and she felt sweaty. Hot.
Melanie looked unfocused as she tried to meet my eye. “Everything hurts.”
I nodded my head, not knowing what to say but feeling so awful for her. I couldn’t imagine the pain she must have felt and all I could do was put a hand on her back and rub slow circles while she cried into her open hands.
Logan appeared a few minutes later and looked between us on the couch. “We need to head out.”
I barely noticed the subtle way he jerked his chin toward the laundry room and followed him, looking over my shoulder to see the sobbing mess that was Melanie. Moving into the laundry room, I crossed my arms. “What’s wrong?”
He braced a hand on the wall above my head and leaned in. “She’s getting worse by the minute and I’m not equipped to deal with someone who’s going through serious withdrawal symptoms. My job is to pick the girls up and bring them to rehab. That’s it. I’m not a doctor and I’m not going to act like one. She’s about to dive headfirst into some nasty shit. Paranoia, anxiety, she could start having fucking seizures. It’s already going to be a three hour drive to Woodstock, so we need to go. Now.”
I could sense his urgency and I didn’t blame him. Neither of us were medical professionals and we couldn’t properly deal with someone detoxing off something as strong as heroin.
Everything moved quickly after that and my heart squeezed painfully in my chest as I watched Logan pile up blankets and pillows in the backseat of his car, a little bed for Melanie to rest in on the long drive to Vermont. She leaned against me as we walked to the car and I talked. A lot. I talked her ear off about dogs and the farm and how she was more than welcome to come visit once she was better. She didn’t seem to mind my chatty behavior, maybe because she wasn’t really listening, not that I could blame her for that. She was shaky and showing signs of having a fever, and as soon as we were all settled and on the road she began complaining of stomach cramps, making us pull over so she could throw up on the side of the highway.
Logan was tense next to me with a white knuckled grip on the wheel, his jaw clenched as the day turned into night and the roads began to empty. The ride was quiet for the most part, other than Melanie crying and moaning in the back with her hands over her stomach. Her shirt was stuck to her skin with how badly she was sweating and she refused to drink any of the water I offered her.
She seemed to drift in and out of consciousness and I found myself turning to check on her every few seconds, my anxiety rising.
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked after we’d crossed state lines. Logan hadn’t said more than five words for the last few hours.
He looked at me, steering with one hand and reaching out with the other, resting it on my knee. The warmth from his palm bled through my leggings and I sighed. “She should be,” he finally responded. “It’s going to take some time, and people who struggle with this kind of addiction have an eighty percent chance of relapsing. It’s ugly, babe. Hard to kick. I never touched the stuff, not even when I used to party. But Melanie has a good family that comes from a lot of money. Enough to get her the best possible treatment.”
I was silent as I looked back at her. She was curled in a ball with her black hair splayed across the pillow, her face scrunched up in agony.
“Hey,” Logan said and squeezed my knee gently. “Let’s hope for the best, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed with a whisper.
I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until Logan was gently stroking my neck with his fingertips and whispering in my ear. My eyelids fluttered and then opened as I took in our surroundings.
We were parked on the side of the road with dense forest lining either side. It was pitch black out and it seemed that we were the only car for miles.
I looked around with a yawn as Logan’s lips pressed against my forehead. Melanie’s sharp moan in the backseat made me turn, and I noticed that she looked worse now than before. Her hair was greasy from the way she’d been sweating and she looked gray with nausea.
“Is your friend almost here?” I whispered to him. At his nod, I turned back to Melanie. “Honey, do you want to get out and maybe get some fresh air?”
She shook her head adamantly. “S-so fucking c-cold.”
I turned to Logan and was about to tell him to just drive the whole way there when we saw headlines coming up behind us. I would have been nervous, but whoever it was flashed his lights three times and Logan took that as his cue to get out of the car.
I watched as a tall, broad shouldered man got out of the car. Sandy hair and a goatee with a jacket that was zipped up to his neck. They shook hands and were talking for a few minutes while I tried to soothe Melanie.
“I can’t do it!” she cried and started shaking her head, hysterical. “I can’t do it! I can’t! I won’t fucking go.”
When I made a move to hand her a bottle of water, she raised her fists and tried to strike me. That was all it took and then I was jumping out the passenger door and running toward Logan and his friend. “She needs to go right now, Lo. She’s freaking out.”
He looked between me and the car and then moved forward. “Stay here,” he said to me and then yanked open the backseat, harshly shushing Melanie as she started screaming and crying to him.
“So you’re the one who has my boy all twisted up,” his friend said.
Regardless of the situation, I found myself laughing at the fact that he thought I had Logan all twisted up when it was the other way around. I stuck my hand out. “Juliette Foster.”
