Reaper's Lullaby

Nora: Fear

"Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place."
- Parker J. Palmer

It had been a week of hell and Nora was still suffering. Only now the dopesickness was in her head instead of her body. Now that the White Horse had stopped galloping long enough for her to dismount, she found herself in a wasteland she had never seen before. She was a stranger in her own skin.

Her new room was shared by a girl named Lila who was a methhead, not for the high but just for the weight loss. Now she looked like a scraggly tree with a plastic bag twisted around it in the wind, just bones and a thin layer of skin that looked like it might blow off at any moment. Nora could tell she'd been beautiful before she started disappearing, but now she was losing her blond hair and her hazel eyes were sunken pennies in a deep well.

"Hey. What're you in for?" Lila asked after getting out of the shower on Nora's first day in residential.

They were only provided with one towel, which Lila dropped right in front of Nora, revealing her naked, skeletal frame so she could use it to dry her hair. Nora couldn't stop staring and couldn't respond, so she lifted her sleeve and showed her track marks. Lila nodded.

"Junkie. Got it," she said. "You made it through withdrawal?"

"I'm here," Nora said softly.

"How was it?"

Nora swallowed and clenched her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. She had spent the sickest, bleakest, loneliest and darkest days of her life in that little white room with its hospital bed and TV and no window. She had come face to face with herself and realized for the first time that nothing was there. Not one damn thing. All along, it had been a mirage. If there had ever been a real girl there, Nora had let her die a long time ago. Now she had to rebuild herself from the ground up using nothing but ashes.

"I can't describe it. I don't even want to. It was like the devil dragged me to hell for a week," she said.

"Damn. Yeah I've heard it's worse than dying. Glad you made it."

"When do we get to see the guys?" Nora asked.

Lila's reflection smirked in the small square mirror. "Someone in particular you want to see?"

"My boyfriend. We came here together. I haven't seen him since Jeff dropped us off a week ago."

"We have Group right after lunch."

"And he'll be there?"

"They require it," Lila said.

Nora looked at the clock. It was five minutes until noon, which was when all the girls in their hall would walk to the cafeteria in a single file line.

"Don't you think we should get in line for lunch?" Nora asked.

Lila scoffed. "I don't go. You can if you want."

"Don't they make you?"

"They bring me food on a tray and take away privileges if I don't eat it, but it's pointless. Does it look like I'm eating lunch?" she asked, sweeping her arms down her naked body.

Nora shook her head. Lila looked like she hadn't eaten a single thing for ten years.

"I keep my weight just under where they want it so Dr. Paul doesn't have to stick a feeding tube in me again. That was awful."

"Sounds like it."

"Go ahead. I'll see you at Group," Lila said.

The cafeteria was small and set up to be inviting with red checkered table cloths, sunflower centerpieces and a bulletin board full of pictures of residents over the years. While Nora waited in line for her spaghetti, she noticed Jeff in one of the pictures, a much younger Jeff, maybe their age. He looked nothing like the Jeff he was now. This teenage Jeff could've passed for a cancer patient with the dark circles under his eyes and thin, skeletal body. Though Nora knew he'd been an addict, it was still weird to see him in the throes of active addiction. She wondered if she and Lucas looked that sick.