Public Secrets

gash. Snatching a washcloth, she pressed it against the wound.
When he was covered, she began to slap her open palm over his face.
“Wake up, goddamn you, Stevie. Wake up. I’m not going to let you die this way.” She shook him, slapped him, then broke down and wept against his chest. Her stomach pitched and she bit down furiously on nausea. “Please, please, please,” she repeated, like a chant. She remembered how Darren had been found, lying alone, a syringe on the turkey rug. “No. No. You’re not going to die on me.” She stroked his hair, then pressed her fingers against his throat again. This time there was nothing.

“Bastard!” She shouted at him, then tossed the quilt aside and began pumping on his frail chest. “You’re not going to do this to me, to Da, to all of us.” She pulled his mouth open to breathe into it, then shifted back to push with the heels of her hands. “You hear me? Stevie,” she panted. “You come back.”
She pushed the air from her lungs to his, pumped the thin and frail area between his breasts. Threatening, pleading, cursing, she fought to pull him back. The tile bit into her knees, but she didn’t notice. So intent was she on his face, on praying for one flicker of life, that she forgot where she was. Memories scrambled through her head—of Stevie in white, singing in the garden. Of him standing onstage, colored lights and smoke, dragging feverish music from a six-string guitar. Board games in front of the fire. An arm around her shoulders, and a teasing question.
Who’s the best, Emmy luv?
Only one dear thought ran over and over in her mind. She would not lose someone else she loved this way, this useless way.
The sweat was rolling off her when she heard the footsteps running up the stairs.
“In here. Hurry. Oh God, Da!”
“Oh sweet Jesus.” He was down beside her in an instant.
“I found him—he was alive. Then he stopped breathing.” The muscles in her arms screamed as she continued to pump. “The ambulance. Did she call the ambulance?”
“She called Pete. Got us on his car phone.”
“Goddammit. I told her to call an ambulance. He needs an ambulance.” Her head flashed up, her eyes met Pete’s. “Damn you, can’t you see he’s going to die if he doesn’t get help? Call.”
He nodded. He had no intention of calling an ambulance. A public ambulance. But instead, walked quickly to phone a discreet and very private clinic.
“Stop, Emma. Stop, he’s breathing.” I can’t—
Brian took her arms, felt the muscles tremble. “You’ve done it, baby. He’s breathing.”
Dazed, she stared down at the shallow but steady rise and fall of Stevie’s chest.

S OMETIMES HE SCREAMED . Sometimes he cried. While Stevie’s body detoxed, new pains snuck in. Little imps of torment, pulsing in the abscesses along his arms, in the tender flesh he’d abused—between his toes, in his groin. They capered along his skin, first hot, then cold. He could see them, sometimes he could actually see them, with their tiny red eyes and hungry mouths, tap-dancing over his body before they plunged their teeth into him.
Hysteria would follow, with a manic strength that forced the staff to restrain him to the bed. Then he would become quiet, descend into an almost trancelike state where he would stare for hours on end at a single spot on the wall.
When he lapsed into those long silences, he would remember drifting, peacefully, painlessly. Then Emma’s voice, angry, hurt, frightened, demanding that he come back. And he had. Then there had been pain again, and no peace at all.
He begged whoever was in the room with him to let him go, to score for him. He promised outrageous amounts of money then swore viciously when his demands went unanswered. He didn’t want to come back to the world of the living. When he refused to eat, they fed him through a tube.
They used an antihypertensive medication to trick his brain into believing he wasn’t going cold turkey. With that they mixed naltrexone, a nonaddicting opiate antagonist to make his body believe he wasn’t getting high. Stevie craved the seductive hazy escape of heroin and the quick buzz of cocaine.
He was rarely alone, but detested and feared even a ten-minute span of solitude. In those moments, it would be only him and the machines that hummed and grumbled in response to his vital signs.
After two weeks he quieted. But he also became sly. He would wait them out—the tight-lipped bastards that had put him here. He would