Opiates Stories

A STORY BY BOXCAR SCAR ON THE HIGHS OF OPIATE ADDICTION AND THE LOWS OF INCONTINENCE

Poems of a heroin addict.

Dr. Miriam Gotlin is intent on building a medical practice in which caring for patients also means caring about them. When a desperately ill AIDS patient is admitted to the hospital and fails to respond to an injection that had always worked, Miriam refuses to give up. She begins to suspect that the injection is counterfeit, but to whom can she turn for help? Her closest colleague recently vanished, a trusted friend appears to be hindering her investigation, and an accusation involving missing narcotics threatens to detonate on her doorstep any day. Miriam's fight to save her reputation, practice and most of all her patients, all while retaining compassion-no matter what-will bring her face to face with those who attach dollar signs to every human life, including her own.

a poem about loving & living with an addict

Red hair spilled over a lifeless chest. Hands slightly blue. My sister sobbed into a stiff corpse. I was spinning. Dissociated. Fragmented into a million tiny pieces. My sister's copper hair soaked with tears. From a distance, it appeared as though Mom was just sleeping. The distinct, sanitized smell of a hospital. Muggy car rides to the emergency room. Vomiting in the front seat, bald and weak. Diagnosis: lymphoma. Bottles of hydrocodone on the bed stand, alprazolam too. Shoplifted makeup and groceries. Roaches in the kitchen. Lines of cocaine. A crude tattoo on his stomach. I sat on a hot sidewalk one morning, not sure what day it was. Sister drove me to the hospital. Too late for a rape kit. Couldn't identify the perpetrator, couldn't prosecute. Released from a psychiatric hospital, the sun made me nauseous. Tight chest. Tachycardia induced by panic. Labored breathing. The room is still, nothing is happening. Distorted vision. Sweating, cold palms. Read about emotional dependency. Try to forget how he smelled.