Coming Clean

Chapter 3: Hate

An abrupt knock on the door woke Esther up.
"House keeping!" a maid shouted through the door. It wasn't loud enough to wake the others up, but Esther was a pretty light sleeper. She had to be. There have been multiple instances where people had tried to steal things from her; whether it be her stash or some money. So, because of this, she always had to be on guard.

She slowly started to stand up, still feeling lightheaded and dizzy. Not only for the fact that she's going through withdrawal, but she's now got a hangover from everything that went down at the bar yesterday. She was shaking as well and sweating a lot. She approached the door slowly, making sure to keep herself steady by grabbing onto things. She picked up the do not disturb sign and opened the door. She saw the maid on the other side and didn't say anything. The maid wanted to get inside, but Esther just put the do not disturb sign on the handle of the door and closed the door again, making sure it's locked. The maid must have decided to respect those wishes, as Esther heard a grumble and then some footsteps leading away from their room.

Esther decided she couldn't be bothered to walk back to the bed, so she put her back against the door and slid down it. Good luck to them if a fire started, because she didn't feel like moving at all. She was shaking, she was pale, her head hurt so bad and it was all a lot for her. Old habits die hard. It's been about 20 years since she's ever been remotely sober, so this feels awful. To have it all taken away at once. She hated it.

She stayed there. For a long while. All while this was happening, she was looking around the room and looking at things. She could instantly know where they were made and if they were washed; she knew it all. She only had to look. It was frustrating. She sometimes tried to look at a sunset to calm her down, but her brain still finds something to pick at. She hated it.

Esther hates a lot of things. Another thing she hates. Not only that, but she hates a lot of things about herself. How she fell into this habit, how she let her friends drift away. Her brain only confronted this when she was sober. When she was high or drunk, her brain was almost preoccupied a lot of the time and she accepted the chaos.

But now?

She felt like she had to run from it. She knew that running from the chaos would do no good at all and it wouldn't affect anything. So she ended up just dwelling in it. Staying there. Letting whatever happens happen. But that doesn't change her getting upset about it still. As brainy as she is, she can't figure out a way to stop emotions other than drugs. But now that's taken from her. At least for now.

Shortly after Esther woke up, Gwen woke up as well. Gwen has spent a lot of time over the years prioritising her sleep and making sure that she is asleep at a certain time and awake at a certain time. In fact, she's done this so long that she doesn't even need an alarm anymore - her body clock does the work for her. She knows when to wake up and when to sleep and now she's naturally tired and awake when she needs to be.

She immediately goes to the desk to take out her hair from the curlers, but on her way she notices the empty spot in Scrags' bed. She then looks towards the door and sees Esther sat there. Gwen immediately became concerned and rushed over to where Esther was. From Gwen's point of view, it looked like Esther had the flu but 10 times worse.

Once Gwen got to Esthers side, she gently placed her arm on Esthers shoulder.
"Are you ok?" concern laced her voice as she spoke, a little bit of harshness to her voice. Not enough to scare someone, though.

Esther barely had the energy to talk. She would have to let a few words out, or Gwen would most likely panic even more.
"Cold turkey." she spoke incredibly slowly. She almost seemed frail and weak.

Gwen knew a vague idea of what 'cold turkey' was from her work on television, but she didn't know it could get this extreme at all. She placed the back of her hand on Esther's forehead to check her temperature, but pulled away when she felt how much Esther was sweating. She was grossed out, to be honest. But she had to check. For her friend. Even though she hated doing it, she placed her hand back to her forehead and felt the sweat almost ooze out onto her hand. Gwen shuddered at this, but felt how boiling Esther was and pulled her hand away once more.

"Want me to get you back to your bed?" she asked softly, sneakily wiping off the sweat from her hand onto Esthers jacket. Esther obviously picked up on this and let out a small chuckle. She went to shake her head, but it hurt for her to do so. So she could properly respond to that question.

Gwen took that lack of an answer as a yes, as she did pick up on an attempt to answer in the first place. She tried several different ways of helping Esther up. She tried getting her to walk herself, she resorted to dragging her and she even tried rolling her. This was all causing Esther a bit of pain and she tried to make it evident that it was hurting her. She let out a small groan of pain and Gwen took the message.

Gwen then resorted to picking Esther up. She actually managed to lift her up off of the ground, but Esther was very heavy. She seemed very limp but shaky at the same time. It was a weird feeling. Esther hated it hand Gwen hated seeing Esther go through it. Gwen managed to get her to the bed and she placed her down gently. Esther wasn't very tired, but she gave a weak smile as a thank you.

Gwen thought for a second before holding up one finger, signalling that she would be away to do something for a bit. Gwen swiftly exited the room and came back with a glass of water. She didn't know if this would help at all, but Esther seemed to smile again.

Don't get me wrong, this definitely won't fix anything at all, but it'll improve her general mood. She took gentle sips out of the water and was sat up. Scrags would probably wake up soon. Gwen nodded and went to the desk so she could finally take her hair curlers out, but before she did so, she went into Keith's bag and got a little joke button Keith had. She knew that he had it, as Keith liked to use it a lot to annoy everyone. She put it on the table next to Esthers bed so that she could press the button if she needed help.

Esther nodded and drunk her water, starting to feel her mood improve. But she was still going through extreme withdrawal. She would have to enlist Scrags' help when he was awake. For now, she sat drinking her water.

She glanced over at Gwen and Scrags and she smiled. Two things in this room she didn't hate..

A/N
Thank you all for continuing to read this! I really appreciate it, as I spend around 7 hours writing each chapter.
Word count pre-edit: 1265
Word count post-edit 1: 1273