Dilaudid’s Requiem
by Kristian Rowley
(Dedicated to Mike) 

Thought you lost me, didn’t you? That day under the crisp Arizona sky, when you walked off the Sierra Tucson rehabilitation campus humbled yet triumphant inside, you thought you left me behind. You thought we were done here. 
	You had your reasons for triumph. You had come so far from that night in Vegas, alone in that turquoise motel room saturated in cigarettes and beer and sweat, crying with that .45 in your mouth. God that was beautiful. We almost had a moment there. The Old Man would have been so proud. As usual, however, you lacked the follow through. You hesitated, as usual, and then your damned friend so rudely interrupted us. 
This time is much better. Last time you could speak. You had everyone fooled in Vegas. I’ll give you that. 
	“Last time I’ll ride a dirt bike for sure,” you told them, laughing through the pain of twin steel bars pinned to your femur. “It’s just a scratch.”  
Dr. Swaim prescribed me. What did he say?  
“Four milligrams… IV Dilaudid…Q2-3hours.” 
That’s where I found you, broken and bruised and clinging to me like a child on his Mama’s dress. They sent me home with you. Remember? You had your metal cane, regal and smiling. Me, in my plastic sealed pods, nestled in your pocket. I’d crinkle gently. And when the pain would sear up your spine, you’d tug at me again. I made it all better. You’d sit back hard in your home office chair and sigh deep relief. I washed it away. 
My blanket enveloped you, protected you from that bitch wife of yours. As you slowly got back to being Mr. Chief Marketing Officer, I made everything better: email tedium, rainy days, music. Thank Asael they let you work from home. Remember that one afternoon with Coltrane gently oozing from your headphones while we gazed at the shafts of dusty sunlight through your blinds? As if poured from the pillars of Dis, the dust swirled and rolled and shimmered in that damned light. It was all somehow…velvet.  
You had everyone fooled too. All we had to do was punch up the pain a little; grimace here, limp there. That bitch left you to “heal.” The boss man gave you lots of slack. Hell it didn’t matter. You were always so good at laying low on the job, at picking only the long term projects, at avoiding commitments on every count. I especially loved how little information you would provide. You always played your card smartly. Those two word emails were genius.  
You even played Dr. Swaim beautifully. At the third re-fill, when he said that he was “getting a little concerned” and “perhaps we should slow down,” you painted a tapestry of pain. Da Vinci could not have done better and I would know. Our beautiful waltz could continue.  
The bitch, of course, had to ruin it eventually. She couldn’t let you be happy.  
“I just can’t do this,” she said. “You’re killing yourself!”  
When it got nasty at work and they let you go, she just had to kick you while you were down, didn’t she? What a perfect time to divorce you. And you still won’t admit that she really meant “for better, for doing okay, I guess…but not for worse, really.” As soon as the money train stopped, she was onto that guy from the Crime Watch Committee. What has his name? Steve? No matter.    
	Yet after all that – the motorcycle accident, the pain, the career collapse, the divorce, the turquoise, the .45 – you pulled through. You did, “good work,” as they said at Sierra Tucson.  What a joke.  Never mind your nervous breakdown. Never mind that pain, like crushed glass in your spinal fluid. Never mind all those nights curled up in your little rehab cell there, crying over the loss of your family, your career, your friends…me. Never mind the nightmares. 
My favorite nightmare was the motorcycle accident loop. There would be that tree, the subsequent slide, the ravine…all of it in slow motion. Sky and sunlight and leaves and earth would tumble. Your arm snapped on that nasty rock. Your pelvis cracked on the frame. The best part, your back, ruptured when you landed on that root. The paramedics would huddle over your fish eye lens, urgent and moving fast.  
“You’re okay, Sir” said the young man in white. 
Funny how you wondered in that moment, on the threshold of death, if your boy Corey would grow up like him. Then we’d look down at your body and marvel at all the blood. It glistened. Remember? Remember how your blood glistened in the sunlight? What a beautiful kaleidoscope!
“Jesus, we’re losing him! Give me those! Clear!”  
	Then white light. Pain. Then we’d do all over again. That was a good one, Mike. Whoever said you can’t die in your dreams never met us, did they?   
	Still you pulled through. Oh, that’s right…God gave you 12 steps in Tucson. My favorite was step three. “Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.” 
As if you could understand God. As if God, who decided that eternal damnation was a suitable punishment for sloth, would have benevolently “removed your shortcomings.” I laugh out loud every time I hear that one. 
	But you pulled through anyway. Somehow, under that crisp Arizona sky, you forgot how to hear me. Or, you learned how to forget me. Through all that pain and suffering you emerged triumphant, clean. You wore a light blue polo and slacks. You started seeing the boys every other weekend. You got a nice apartment near their school. Hell, you even got a decent job writing copy.  
Now you know, don’t you? Now you know it takes many more than 12 steps to leave ME behind, my friend. Now, after that Buick slammed into your car, sending you into another ravine, you take NO steps.  
This time is much better. Now, you can’t speak. You’re 10,000 fathoms deep and you can’t move a muscle.  What was that the pretty doctor voice said? 
I think it was, “six milligrams… IV Dilaudid…Q2-3hours.” 
I can assure you she said that. I know because, while you swim for the surface, screaming “no,” screaming for the pain, screaming your sanity away, I flow down this neat little tube. Can you see me dripping into this little reservoir? I’m a brown liquid now! They’re pouring me back into your veins. Soon, we can dance again. Won’t that be nice? Soon, I’ll wash it all away.  The boys, the ex-wife, the family, the friends, the pretty doctor voice, the sun, the trees, the crickets, the joy…I’ll wash it all away. You will feel my warmth flow up your arm. I’ll saturate your heart. I’ll wrap you in black velvet. And as we waltz to the Coltrane, your heart will pump me into your lungs, your brain…your soul. 
Maybe God does understand after all.
I’ll see you in Vegas.