- A little Izzy story I've been working on. It's not a love story or anything.
Going to go ahead and say It may be triggering to some. It features Cussing, rehab scenes, talking about drugs, and includes drawing blood.
If none of that stuff bothers you, read on, hope you like it. :) -
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They say addiction is a bitch, so when the assholes in my band drove me to rehab and dropped me off like a fucking stray dog, I was pretty upset. My job was supposed to be playing guitar and spending time doing my 'thing'. Not in group therapy talking about my feelings, or the reasons why I was a Heroin addict. But the second I walked in that place, the only personal belongs I had slung over my shoulder in a black trash bag- I started to withdraw. Like an idiot I accidentally slammed the door behind myself, everyone sitting there in the 'reading' area looked up at me. "Stradlin, Mr. Stradlin?" I shifted my gaze to the lady saying my name. "Yeah, sorry?" "Nice to meet you, shall we show you around, get you settled in?" I nodded my head. "Alright, right this way, we have the men's rooms." I followed the large front desk clerk down a long posh looking hall, she stopped at the very end. There was a large glass window you could see out since the complex was on a hill, it overlooked a lot of the city. "Here is your room, sir. Let me get you some forms to fill out, is Stradlin your real last name?" "Um, no. My name is Jeffrey Isbell." I admitted looking down at my brown boots, kicker number one; having to admit you are a real fucking person with real issues. "Alright, Mr. Isbell. You stay here and another nurse will come and take your blood pressure, take a blood sample and give you a quick look over." The large woman walked out of the room to go get the paperwork. She wasn't gone two seconds before another woman walked in. This time she wasn't as unpleasant looking. "Hello, there!" Her overzealous greeting made my head began to hurt, as withdrawals started getting worse. "My name is Clara, it's nice to meet you. What is your name, sir?" I let my shoulders drop, "My name is Jeffrey Isbell." She had a tray of items with her; Stethoscope, Thermometer, Sphygmomanometer (blood pressure cuff), a couple of syringes and stuff to draw blood. "Alright since you came in off the street today we're going to go ahead and test your blood. Make sure you don't have any diseases." I nodded my head. "Have you eaten today Mr. Isbell?" I paused trying to think of the start of the day, all I could really remember was fighting with Axl and My girlfriend about how my addiction was ruining their lives, highlight Their Lives. My head was pounding, my eyes hurt, everything hurt. I remembered I actually hadn't eaten. "No, no. I had some fries like- maybe yesterday afternoon. I don't really remember." I answered her. "Okay, well we'll just get you to eat something for us and then we will give you your physical." I didn't really care what they did to me, for me, or with me at this point. "You sit tight, okay." She walked out before waiting for my one-word reply. After a few minutes of waiting, I started looking through everything in the room, opening drawers and cabinets, seeing if there was anything that might entertain me. Nothing. After me waiting like ten minutes the nurse came back in with a weird looking sandwich, but it looked more appetizing than anything I'd eaten in a while. "Here you go, eat this we'll do your exam." I grabbed the plate from her, I scarfed the sandwich down as fast as I could, probably freaking the woman out. I wanted to get all this shit done with, so I could at least be left alone. I could deal with the withdraws and being stuck in rehab, but I couldn't always deal with people so well. "Um, okay. If you don't mind just stripping down to your tee shirt and underwear if you will." Can do, I threw my black vest off and laid it on the bed where I was sitting, then along with my pants and my shoes I just kicked off out of the way. "I'm just going to listen to your heartbeat first, then take your blood pressure." She got her stethoscope. "Okay, take some deep breaths I'm going to listen to your lungs." I did as I was instructed and took deep breaths. "You said you smoke, right, Mr. Isbell?" I nodded with a grin. "Two packs a day." The nurse pursed her lips at me. "Smoking is bad for you, I can hear your lungs- how damaged they sound. You know they did a study a few years back at UCLA to try to prove that smoking is dangerous." I rolled my eyes. "I know, I was one of the test rats. I got to smoke cigs for eight bucks an hour." She shook her head. "Maybe that's why your lungs sound so bad. Now give me your arm, I'm going to check your blood pressure." I again did what I was told, getting really tired of doing that. And stuck out my arm, she wrapped the cuff around my right arm loosely and put the stethoscope back in her ears to listen to my heart rate. She began to tighten the cuff, to the point of cutting my damn circulation off, I think she did it just for spite. I can tell she hates me. "Well, your blood pressure is pretty good, now I need a urine sample and then we'll take some blood." She walked over to her little tray and got out a cup, she walked back over and placed it in my hand. "I'm going to escort you to the restroom now." I stood up. "That's kind of weird don't you think?" I questioned her. "No, sir. You might try to leave." I rolled my eyes, getting tired of this behaving thing and went to the bathroom, pissed in the lady's cup. "Here." I handed it to her, she grabbed a pen and wrote my name on it. On our way back to my room, she handed it over to another nurse for further testing. "Are you squeamish?" The nurse questioned, as we arrived back into the room. I gave her a laugh. "I did needle drugs, I wouldn't say so." The nurse shot me another glare while putting on a pair of white latex gloves, she grabbed out an alcohol prep pad. "Left arm, please." I threw my arm out over exaggerating. She roughly grabbed my elbow, I winched a little as she juts her thumb into the side of my arm. She pressed the cold alcohol pad against the sensitive bend of my arm, giving me a cold chill. She grabbed a winged infusion and opened its packaging, the nurse poked around the bend of my arm, looking for a good, bouncy vein. I almost offered to help her with it, since I've been poking myself with needles for the past couple'a years. It didn't help matters that withdraw with really being a bitch to me now, I wanted to rip the needle out of her hand and shove it down her throat. The Nurse pressed the needle into my arm, boy- she really thought she'd get it. Wrong, obviously, didn't hit anything. A big, fat drop of blood trailed down to my wrist. It hurt a little, usually, I'd be feeling quite euphoric about now, but no. She jerked it out and tried once again, poking me in the arm- still not hitting a vein. I should have warned her beforehand I was a bleeder anyways, so of course, I had a long line of blood dripping down my arm, by now it wasn't just a couple of drops. "I think I might need to try your other arm, Mr. Isbell." She sounded really unsure at this point. I shook my head 'no'. "My veins are really jumpy that's all, just push it to the side before you press it all the way in." She did as I said to do, laying the needle flat against my arm, poking the point of it into my arm and with a little more pain than necessary pushed the butterfly in, shooting a long stream of blood across the room. "Sorry, that happens." I stated watching my blood shoot in spurts across the room and everything else in sight, A couple of big droplets trailed down the length of my pale arm before she finally hooked the needle to a syringe type of thing to collect a blood sample. After a few minutes, she had collected three or four different samples. "Are you alright, you lost a little bit of blood?" The Nurse questioned, watching my blood enter the drip. I chuckled, "Yeah, I'm alright. This happens a lot, obviously-I've been doing needle drugs." She obviously didn't find that very amusing. "Alright, I think I have enough plasma." She grabbed the clip off my arm, pulling the needle out in a swift motion, before grabbing a couple of gauze pieces and holding them against the bend of my arm, she pulled my arm up to itself. She took the multiple test tubes of blood putting my initials on them, before sitting them in her little tray. She pulled my arm back down, running a bandage across the bend of my arm. "I'm going to drop these off for lab work, just sit tight okay." I nodded, "Are there any more tests you have to run on me?" "Well, Mr. Isbell, we need to get your weight still. Other than that you can get settled in, sound good?" I nodded, boy, it's gonna be a long 30 days.
- Hope that was alright, I'm going to work on another (and better) Izzy story where there is much different stuff. But I'm going to go work on She Wouldn't Say Goodbye first. -
