Page 4 of Marlin's Faith

It’ll be okay, I promise. I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.

3

Marlin…

I could almost feel her slip away, the lucid moments just before the withdrawals really set in were always so fleeting, but she’d hung on. As if the gentle tug of the comb through her hair were an anchor or a lifeline. She shivered hard and harder and I knew it hurt. I knew it was bad, and I also knew it was just beginning. I’d promised her I would be here for the whole thing and I’d make good on that promise. Faith had every reason to never trust another man again, to never trustanyoneagain. I wanted to prove there were still a few of us left that could be relied upon.

I finished her hair just as she doubled over and the sobbing began. Soon it would be screaming and that screaming would morph into crying uncontrollably as her body rebelled. Bucking wildly with muscle spasms. She would throw up and worse. Possibly wet herself. It would be the absolute worst thing she would ever go through in her life and then some… and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do for her.

Faith doubled over and let out with this high pitched keening wail and that was it. It’d started. She was past the point of no return and it was going to bedaysof this. The worst part of it was, that for whatever reason, with withdrawals came insomnia. She wouldn’t even be able tosleepthrough any of this. Let alone the worst of it. I folded the towel around the ruin of stray hair, bug parts, and eggs and threw the whole damn thing away in the trash bag I had at the ready in the bathroom.

I came back out to Faith curled on her side, crying. Her eyes squeezed shut, her teeth gritted tight against the pain. I got back up onto the bed and, fuck, I gave in to my own moment of weakness. I couldn’t not touch her. I knew after what she’d been through that touching her too much might not be the best thing, but I was fucking human. Being fucking human meant that when someone as fragile looking as her was in pain, you gathered up the broken pieces and tried to make them whole again. Which is what I did. I gathered her up against me and made soothing noises as the despair and agony took hold.

So what if she puked on me? So what if she pissed herself or worse? I wasn’t going to stain. I could suck it up and wash it off. I held her while she bawled and struggled to get away from what was hurting her, but it was her own body wreaking havoc and throwing a tantrum like a two year old denied a piece of candy. Her body wanted the drug so fucking bad and she didn’t. She’d never wanted it.

“Shh, I got you, Faith. You scream, you cry, you do whatever you need to do, Baby Girl.”

It was that fact that made this whole thing worse, as she bucked against my hold and thrashed. When it’d been Danny, I was so pissed at him for getting involved in the shit in the first place I’d been downright fucking cruel during his time kicking the habit. I was so mad, I’d told him he could suck it up. That he didn’t have the option to be a pussy about it. My anger had been my shield against feeling any kind of sympathy or empathy and I didn’t have that shield here. I needed to find another and I needed to find it fast, or this was liable to destroy a part of me I would never get back.

I wrapped my legs around Faith’s and held her as still as I could so she wouldn’t hurt herself. Danny had scratched himself bloody and raw and he didn’t really have fingernails to speak of. Faith did, and her peaches and cream skin didn’t need any more permanent reminders of her captivity.

The first few nights would be the worst. If she were anything like Danny, the turning point wouldn’t be until around something like day fucking four. A few hours into this initial struggle the doctor from up north appeared in the door.

“How’s she doing?”

“Not keeping anything down, sweating, she’s getting weak. I know she ain’t gonna die of the withdrawals…”

The doctor nodded and put on his glasses, coming forward, “Dehydration is still dangerous, so is a high fever.” He peeled back Faith’s eyelids and shone a light into them and she started thrashing and screaming.

“I’m going to start an IV, some anti-nausea meds, too. They don’t always work, but I wanna see if I can’t get her hydrated; maybe get a sedative on board for good measure,” he sighed, “Wish I could help rapid detox her, but they look at the kinds of drugs we prescribe and the shit I would need? They’d flag that so quick… Damn it to hell, can you hold her arm? Just like this.”

The doctor got an IV started and fluids going, but Faith kept ripping out the tubes. She was wearing out. Exhausting herself, so the fourth one finally stuck. The sun was climbing in the sky and the doc and I looked up at the open and shut of the door downstairs. My MC brother, Nothing came up, and mercifully, Faith was out for the time being.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” I grunted back.

“Take a minute, we’ve got this.”

I nodded and carefully detangled myself from Faith. I needed a fucking cigarette, bad. Grabbing up the pack on the bedside table, I trekked downstairs. I went out the back slider and took a deep breath of the clean, sea air.

“How’s she doin’?” Cutter asked, coming around the side of the house.

“Rough. She’s hurting, jonesing hard for a fix that I ain’t got shit to give her,” I bowed my head and palmed the back of my neck. “It’s worse, somehow, you know?” I asked him bleakly. Shit, this was only day one… I lit up and sucked in a lungful of my own vice. I didn’t smoke ‘em unless I was stressed. I blew out.

“Yeah, man. I know,” my Pres supplied.

“Thanks,” I nodded and sighed, took two more drags and put out my cig.

“You need to talk, you can reach out.” Cutter called as I slid the back slider open.

I nodded and went back inside. I was jumpy being this far from Faith. Didn’t want or need her waking up in her fucked up state and me not be there. Hell, I couldn’t be sure if she was with it enough to know that I’d gone.

I went back into the room to a flurry of activity. Nothing was moving things around, tossing pillows and peeling back blankets. The doc was capping her IV.

“Shit, she sick?”

“Yeah,” Nothing affirmed, “Get her cleaned up, we got this.” I nodded and it was back to the bathroom. I drew a tub full of water this time. Shower just wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t hold herself up. She felt so small and so delicate in my arms. She was way too thin and needed at theveryleast ten to fifteen pounds put on her just to make her look healthy again. I think it would take even more than that for her to actuallybehealthy though. I would ask the doc before he took off back up north to be sure.

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