Love Me Day Or Night - Book 1 -

Saving The Addict

Saving The Addict

Crumpled in the corner of the room, there he sat almost lifeless, and immobile waiting for a final blow which could call for his death. It would've been untimely, but that's what he craved for now. A simple thing, that was bound to come in some corner of life, a simple thing called death.

He kept on craving for it, by not taking his drugs which had now ran out and he had not a single penny to buy more. Even though it was causing havoc in his nervous system, as they craved for their dose of jolt, the jolt never came making him crave for it even more.

The room now had or would start stinking, he hoped.

But like all of his hopes had turned into debris of nothingness other than shattered feelings, this hope too, turned out to be the same. There was no stink, while he pressed on the last moments of his life thinking that not having money or a single penny and drugs could be finally termed as the reason why as to a man like him died in the apartment that he had once himself bought.

He wished that in these last moments, she never came back to the apartment, in the week. The last time she had come a week before, she'd cleaned up the mess, sent all the empty beer bottles out into the garbage dump, had cleaned all the packs of cigarettes, and also she was the reason why he was out of drugs.

Since the last time he'd inhaled those toxins into himself, he'd seen her cry in the corner of the apartment as she threw away the bottles and had been sending his clothes for a dry wash. But never did she utter a single word against him taking all these.

She never barged. He never stopped.

Yet she was always there, coming to meet him ever next day.

Yet again, the hope of her not coming after a week vanished when she opened the door of the apartment with her spare key, while he was sitting there in the corner of his room, with a six days old stubble on his face, wearing the same T-shirt and trousers that he'd been wearing for the last three days.

In comparison to him, she was in clean neat clothes, back from the office.
He never understood why she never abandoned him, even after all the ruckus he'd made out of himself, when his own family had practically forgotten that he existed on the same planet as they did.

She, as her usual routine, went to him and sat down beside him caressing his face, to which he let himself drown in her touch. Wordlessly, she, as always, placed the box of food in front of him, and as he reluctantly said no to eating, she fed him the complete food morsel by morsel patiently.
After food was done, she sent him into the bathroom, urging him to take a bath as she passed fresh clothes that had come from the laundry to him, and passed the towel.

While he was busy taking his shower, she bent down, collecting all the thrown pieces of paper, all the week old cartons of cigarettes and disposed off drugs that were left in the apartment. This time, the things were a lot less, she noticed.

There was not a single rupee in the little box in which he kept his money in.
Grabbing her purse close to herself, she dug out some ten rupee notes, a few hundred rupee notes, and some coins and kept it under an old T-shirt of his, before he could come out and see what she was doing. If he ever thought why his money never ran out and came miraculously under one of his old T-shirts, then she was the reason behind all of it. She hid money for him to find, just so that he could live on. 

When he came out, she gently dried his hair with the towel, while he narrated whatever he'd done in the whole few days. She listened to him with a smile, and encouraged him with all the failures that he'd faced in life.
When he asked her about her life, she gave him outlines of it, being careful not to speak more than necessary so that he could guess that no one's life was without problems.

Her method was working, she knew.
In weeks, he hoped less for death to come.
He went out of the apartment more, looking out for more jobs.
While she, in spite of everything, and all the barriers put in front of her, came to him every next day...grabbing his hand to urge him to do what his mind wanted to do, but all done silently.

She knew, he was her addict and saving him was solely her part to play in his life. Because, to her, he was the one she was caged into willingly.

*************

FIN.