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About a Quart Low

Niles Reddick

    Sometimes, addicts go to great lengths to stay addicted despite who they hurt in the process, and family and friends find it difficult to muster the energy to treat them with the dignity and respect they don’t deserve. When Sylvia fell last week after chasing a squirrel off her porch with her cane to get it away from her bird feeder in the gated trailer park community in Florida, she laid there calling for help. She’d opted not to have a life alert, claiming she couldn’t afford it on her Social Security and Medicaid. Truth is, if she’d stopped buying gin, she could’ve. The emergency technicians were called by a neighbor who realized the sounds were not coming from the General Hospital soap opera, and technicians started an IV, gave her oxygen.
    After waiting a few hours and having several tests run, Sylvia had to have a surgical procedure to stop bleeding from the rip in her colon. She had to be given about a quart of blood, and the doctor told her he could see her liver and that she had cirrhosis and needed to give up the alcohol. He knew she wouldn’t. He’d seen her many times before. In fact, hospital records indicated she’d been admitted multiple times to the rehab unit and for other procedures that could have all been avoided if she’d stayed clean. She’d never memorized the Serenity prayer, was ugly and hateful when she was sober, and not all that nice when she was drunk. She told him she would see what she could do.
    “Mama, you know you ought to give it up. Just try again,” her son pleaded.
    “I know, and they’re giving me some medication to help me through the DT’s again while I’m in here for that colon rip.”
    “Maybe it’ll help.” Tim was more worried for her soul than he was anything. She was just filled with anger and hate and blamed everyone from Trump down to the poor LPN who came to take her vitals. “Want me to send the preacher around to pray with you?”
    “I don’t need no preacher. He’ll just try to get the rest of my Social Security.”
    “He probably would take less than the liquor store.”
    “Why don’t you just take your fancy ass on home?”
    With that, Tim shook his head. “Alright, mama. Call me if you need me.”
    She grabbed the remote attached to the bed and turned up the TV volume, and Tim stepped from the room, remembering the time he’d bailed her out of jail when she slapped the officer for pulling her over when she’d been weaving through town. She hadn’t been a good mother and certainly hadn’t been a good grandmother to his two children, but she’s all he had. His father had been a trucker who breezed into town, had dinner at a café, had his mama for desert, and disappeared on the interstate.
    She’d been getting by for some time on the minimum amount of Social Security and getting Medicaid until she got the fifty dollar raise from the feds which threw her out of the Medicaid category. She was furious about that, had cursed everyone who’d listen, and never once had the emotional intelligence to realize had she made better choices when she was younger, her misery could have been avoided.
    The last time she was admitted to detox, she kept telling everyone she knew who killed J.R. from Dallas, a TV show most of the hospital employees were too young to have seen. Tim had spent his lifetime distilling truth and reality from her drama. It seemed to him like he was untangling a garden hose with kinks over and over, a modern day Sisyphus. Tim was exasperated with her and wondered why in the world she hadn’t given up and moved on into the afterlife, though he was afraid she was headed somewhere that was negative. He wondered if it hadn’t been predetermined to be that way based on her genetics.
    When Sylvia was home and was able to get around well, she talked her neighbor Sam into giving her a ride to the drug store. She told him she needed a little cooking sherry from the liquor store, too, right next to the Walgreen’s. Sam didn’t mind. He and Sylvia had gotten together a couple of times when his wife was in the hospital and he hoped to again.
    Sylvia told the clerk, “I’ll take a quart of that knotty head. I’m a about a quart low.”
    He watched her hands trembling as she passed the cash to him. “Yes mam, one bottle of Seagram’s gin. Need a bag?”
    “No, I’ll put it in my purse, but give me a receipt. I don’t need no trouble out of you or anyone else.”

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