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Coffee, Cigarettes, and Heroin

Rachel Sievers

    Her neck was getting sore from looking up, but still, she waited. The hot, uncomfortable starts of sweat were budding at the nape of her neck and on the small of her back. The heat was getting ridiculous.
    The waitress, dead on her feet, cleaned tables nearby. She was a career waitress; her tired thin frame spoke of cigarette breaks and years of dealing with assholes. Blake didn’t want to be one of the assholes but sweat would soon be running down her back in rivulets if she didn’t do something.
    “Hey,” Blake started trying to get the woman’s attention. The waitress stopped and Blake could see the exhaustion that plagued her face.
    “Yeah, more coffee?” The woman said.
    The fatigue of just getting through life had set up shop on the woman’s face, and it made Blake reply, “yeah, whenever you have time, no rush.” The waitress walked down the coffee shop’s slim walkway, picking up a pile of dishes on her way to get coffee that tasted of stale cigarettes.
    “Coward,” Blake whispered to herself. Then thought better of it, it wasn’t cowardice to put someone else’s feelings before yourself. The unwelcomed thought made Blake start to shake.
    Blake looked out the window again into the darkness of night. The lights put up around the outside of the small coffee shop banged against the window with the wind, Blake noticed that every third one was out. “What a shithole,” Blake whispered and wondered why he wanted to meet here.
    “What?” The waitress was back and pouring a splash of the coffee into the chipped mug.
    “Nothing,” Blake said.
    “Yeah,” the waitress replied and then walked away.
    Blake started her rhythmic tapping on the mug again and tried to focus on something else. A flash of her mother came to mind. The last time she had been with her. Withered, and pale, cancer eating her from the inside out. The hollowed eyes, pleading with Blake to do something, anything. She begged Blake to give her the decency of death. The image was so suffocating that Blake didn’t hear the bell chiming on the door.
    “Blake?”
    Startled out of the memory Blake looked up and saw him. He was short, with a round face covered in black facial hair and pinprick eyes. She was not comforted that this was the great writer from the Times.
    “Ventress?”
    “No,” the man said looking sheepish, “I work in the same office. He was interested in your story but something came up. I promise you I am a great reporter though.” Blake noticed he had the decency to at least look a little embarrassed at his pronouncement.
    “Shit,” Blake said.
    “No, I am good. I promise,” The little man said. Then sitting and extending his hand he said, “Steve Johnson.”
    Blake shook his hand, because what else was she going to do, and then winced as he squeezed the cut. She had forgotten about that.
    “Blakely Merz and I helped my mother die.” Steve’s eyes widened, and again Blake worried about his professionalism, but she continued. “I helped my mother because she was dying of cancer and was in unimaginable pain.”
    “Is that how you got the cut on your hand?”
    Blake looked at her hand and noticed the crimson stain was starting to pool out onto the white gauze, “no, you asshole. I didn’t stab my mother to death. What the hell is wrong with you?”
    I-shit-the-bed look took over Steve’s face and he said, “um, yes, um,” he cleared his throat, “I’m sorry.”
    “What kind of reporter are you?”
    “A good one, but one that just finished grad school.”
    “Perfect.”
    Blake put her head in her hands and was rewarded with a view of the cracked table. How was she ever going to tell her story? The story that millions of people dealt with every day. The story of the right to die with dignity. Her mother was in pain for years as cancer slowly and painfully ate at her body until she was only a husk of her former self. How was she going to tell the man the story of how she had mercifully ended her mother’s life? How finding the bravery had come from somewhere she didn’t know she had. The bravery that had come from a place of deep, sacrificing love. How was she going to tell this buffoon anything?
    “Blake?” His voice drew her from her thoughts. She lifted her head and looked into his pinprick eyes.
    “What?”
    “Mr. Ventress didn’t send me.”
    “Great,” Blake replied and started tapping on the cup again.
    “I saw your email when I was working with Mr. Ventress. I want to tell your story.”
    “Why?”
    He paused for a long time, so long Blake thought he might not answer, “because I wasn’t brave enough.”
    Blake stopped the tapping on her cup. She looked up at the small hairy man in front of her and for the first time noticed the sadness that wrapped around him like a blanket.
    “I got the cut when I was cleaning up after,” she paused for a long minute, “after I pushed the heroin into her arm and watched her die.”

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