didn’t see anything wrong.
My cough persisted. I endured the program and wondered what I’d do for an encore. All my options scared me.
I could find a crummy job and stay clean with Antabuse. I could stay off booze and inhalers and use other drugs. I could smoke weed. Weed goosed your appetite. I could put on some weight and build muscle. Women would dig me then. Weed was my ticket to a healthy, normal life.
I didn’t really believe it.
Inhalers were sex. Booze was my fantasy core. Weed was strictly for giggles and hot dates with doughnuts and pizza.
I completed the program. I stayed on Antabuse and moved back to Lloyd’s roof with thirty-three days sober.
My cough was getting worse. My nerves were shot and my attention span topped out at three seconds. I slept for ten-hour stints or tossed all night.
My body wasn’t mine.
The roof landing was my refuge. I had a nice perch by the fire door. It went all-the-way bad right there.
It was mid-June. I got up from a nap and thought, “I need some cigarettes.” My mind went dead then. I couldn’t recall or retrieve that one simple thought.
My brain hit blank walls. I couldn’t say the thought or visualize it or come up with words to express it. I spent something like an hour trying to form that one simple thought.
I couldn’t say my own name. I couldn’t think my own name. I couldn’t form that one simple thought or any thoughts. My mind was dead. My brain circuits had disconnected. I was brain-dead insane.
I screamed. I put my hands over my ears, shut my eyes and screamed myself hoarse. I kept fighting for that one simple thought.
Lloyd ran up to the landing. I recognized him. I couldn’t come up with his name or my name or that simple thought from an hour ago.
Lloyd carried me downstairs and called an ambulance. Paramedics arrived and strapped me to a gurney.
They drove me to the County Hospital and left me in a crowded hallway. I started hearing voices. Nurses walked by and yelled at me telepathically. I coughed and bucked against my restraints. Somebody stuck a needle in my arm—
I woke up strapped to a cot. I was alone in a private hospital room.
My wrists were raw and bloody. Most of my teeth felt loose. My jaw hurt and my knuckles stung from little abrasions. I was wearing a hospital smock. I’d pissed all over it.
I reached for that one simple thought and caught it on the first bounce. I remembered my nigger-pimp name: Lee Earle Ellroy.
It all came back. I recalled every detail. I started crying. I prayed and begged God to let me keep my mind.
A nurse came into the room. She undid my restraints and walked me to a shower. I stayed under the water until it turned cold. Another nurse dressed my cuts and abrasions. A doctor told me I’d have to stay here a month. I had an abscess on my left lung the size of a big man’s fist. I needed thirty days of intravenous antibiotics.
I asked him what went wrong with my mind. He said it was probably “post-alcohol brain syndrome.” Sober drunks went through it sometimes. He said I was lucky. Some people went crazy for good.
My lung condition might or might not be contagious. They were isolating me to be sure. They hooked me up to a drip gizmo and started pumping me full of antibiotics. They fed me tranquilizers to lull down my fear.
The tranks kept me woozy. I tried to sleep all day every day. Normal waking consciousness scared me. I kept imagining permanent brain malfunctions.
Those few insane hours summarized my life. The horror rendered everything that went before it irrelevant.
I reprised the horror all my waking hours. I couldn’t let it go. I wasn’t telling myself a cautionary tale or gloating over my survival. I was simply replaying the moments my entire life had worked toward.
The horror stayed with me. Nurses woke me out of blissful sleep to fuck with my drip gadget. I couldn’t run my mind in long-prescribed fantasy patterns. The horror wouldn’t let me.
I imagined permanent insanity. I punished myself with my now splendidly functioning brain.
The fear got unbearable. I checked out of the hospital over my doctor’s protests and caught a bus to Lloyd’s place. I stole a pint of gin, guzzled it and passed out on his floor. Lloyd called the paramedics again.
Another ambulance arrived. The paramedics woke me out of my stupor and led me down to it. They drove me straight back to the hospital. I was readmitted and placed in a four-man room on the lung ward.
A nurse hooked me up to another drip gadget. She gave me a big bottle to spit sputum in.
I was afraid I’d forget my name. I wrote it on the wall behind my bed as a reminder. I wrote “I will not go insane” beside it.
11
I spent a month hooked up to a needle. A respiration therapist beat on my back every day. It loosened big globs of sputum. I spat them in the jar by my bed.
The abscess went. My fear stayed.
