The Incredible League of Goth Pizza Haters (RH)

Part 80

---Sylvia---
The following few nights could've easily been dubbed some cheesy horror movie marathon name. Like, The Five Nights of Fright. Or maybe even for the sake of alliteration, The Sleepless Six.

I awoke for the second time within the past two days in the late night. I shifted around, too tired to want to get up. Besides, the pain in my body was just aches.

Horrible, horrible aches. I slipped away from the sleeping Ricky and made my way down to the kitchen where my pills were. I took some and sat down on the living room couch. I would go back to Ricky soon, I just wanted my meds to kick in first so I didn't bother him by my tossing and turning.

Dexter came up and sat by me. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the cushions and waited.

It's okay, I'll feel better in the morning. I thought.

Except I didn't.

***

It had taken a while to fall back asleep and when I had I was caught between a series of different dreams. I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept at all. I let my eyes close but whenever I did drift off it was back into a clusterfuck of cryptic unconsciousness.

I fully woke up when Ricky did. He cooked breakfast. I ate some. An hour later it came back up.

I started to feel sicker and sicker as the day went on.

Ricky suggested we go back to the hospital and have them run more tests or something but I said no. I knew what this was. They'd talked to me about it soon after I'd woken up in the hospital. They'd taken blood and after I'd talked to the police they came in and told me the obvious.

'We found traces of Ketamine and Valine in your blood. Do you recall being under the influence of any other sort of drug that might've already left your bloodstream?'

Yeah, I did and I told them about the Rohypnol.

They explained it to me. It's a date rape drug. Simple. Makes you fall unconscious and then leaves no memories behind. Nothing in your blood or your brain. Ketamine was similar except far more dangerous. It's an anesthetic used commonly on animals to keep them unconscious during procedures.

With humans however, it doesn't always ensure unconsciousness. Sometimes only delirium and temporary paralysis. It must be administered with Valium or it will cause you to seizure. Philip knew that. He knew his drugs like a mother knew her children.

John didn't.

And they told me back at the hospital that that was most likely why we crashed. I'd had a seizure and distracted John on a busy, rainy road.

Anyways, I hadn't had a ton of ketamine so they said there would most likely be no aftereffects. But the Rohypnol.. Being on it for days sometimes..

It would have to have some aftereffects. The first few hours in the hospital were pretty fucking weird. And I mean weird in the sense that I genuinely could not remember my family. Or Mena. Or Ricky or anything. It took some time for everything to come back and even now I'm not sure it all has.
But as time passed my memories and prior knowledge of the situation came back and they told me I would probably see some black spots in my memory or something like that. They did mention one thing that I'd forgotten about completely upon leaving.

Withdrawal.

All the symptoms of the flu except worse. It wasn't a heroin withdrawal, nowhere near that bad but it still fucking sucked.

Nausea. Vomiting. Headaches. Fatigue. Insomnia. Tremors. Tingling. Delirium and cardiovascular distress. Fantastic, right? Especially since we were supposed to go back to the hospital if I did experience those last two.

The rest of the day isn't really worth mentioning, nor was most of the following day because it was just me being horribly fucking sick.

Ricky was sweet and did his best. I appreciated the soup offerings, backrubs and the hours he spent with me despite my bedridden state.

The night was pretty awful. Insomnia kept me awake while every other symptom begged me to sleep. I expected the pain pills to help a bit but it seemed relieving the aching in my chest and head was all they could do. By morning, neither of us had gotten much sleep.

Though, by the end of the next day my fever broke and I started to feel slightly better.

I slipped from the bed and went downstairs to the living room with Ricky. He smiled when he saw me and welcomed me back to the world of the living. Wrapped in layers of blankets I talked to Chris over the phone, who seemed pretty fucking blown away by everything that had happened. So much so that when I asked him how things were over there he just huffed and said,

"Angelo got a tattoo of a fish on a bike but that's completely irrelevant." I laughed at that. Afterwards I watched Ricky paint for a while then took a shower. I still felt bad, but not as much and actually tried to animate a little.

Say there were phases I was going though to make this collection of days and nights particularly awful. Phase One was the withdrawal. After those two days that phase ended, or at least dialed down and we were onto the next.

Phase Two: The nightmares.