Falling Out

I jumped up from the Dora table, and busted through the folding doors. She was just laying there. Lifeless and blank. A grayish almost purple color had now invaded her face. Her lips were indeed blue. I don’t remember what I said to the little girl to get her to leave the room, but it was panicked and assertive. I remember walking the small child out of my room and telling her to go sit with my dad. I hurried back into my room and latched the door. “Oh my God, oh my God” was all I could get out of my mouth. I knelt down next to my bed, where my friend had fallen out, flat on her back. Her eyes as void as I’ve ever seen in my life. Almost like she was dreaming, but just staring at the ceiling. Nothing moved on her, she had no pulse. She was not breathing. She was just a lifeless body laying there, and getting colder by the second. I rolled my sleeves up and delivered the strongest burst of wind I could muster deep down into her lungs. Nothing. I pumped on her chest several times. Nothing. I knew I was not trained to handle this kind of situation and I would have to call for help. This is a very horrible feeling for an active heroin addict to be in, because, even though this person is dying, there could after all be legal consequences to this. I tried my best to casually walk into the living room and grabbed my fathers cordless phone, ready to dial 911. But I had to try and bring her back once more before I was ready to take that dive. I slapped her face several times, like trying to get a drunkard to sober up and focus. Nothing. I pumped her chest several times, like I had seen demonstrated before. No response. I continued mouth to mouth a couple times, and on the last breath I delivered, her lungs responded with a moan like gurgle. They were taking air. But still no response. I begged and pled with her to come back, crying as I did so. All of my life, and our lives together flicking in front of my eyes like and old time cinema. All of our happy moments. The few that we had. I pumped her chest, breathed in her lungs. Now with every breath I gave her, her lungs responded. Wet gurgles, and that chesty moan. There is no way I could describe that horrible sound that was coming out of her. But still, she was not coming back. She was still growing cold, bluer, and dying. What could I do? It seemed like an hour had passed since the tike had knocked on the folding doors, I looked at the clock to try and gauge how long she had been out. Trying to estimate how much time I had before I would have no choice but to call 911. I estimated that it had only been about 2 minutes, maybe 3. It all happened so fast. Then I remembered something that had worked the last time I brought somebody back from a fallout. I ran into the closet and loaded my pipe with the biggest rock I thought that I could handle. I blew out all my oxygen, and blasted off. Filling my lungs to absolute capacity with the crack smoke as I knelt next to her, I said a quick prayer and bent over her lifeless body, plugged her nose, and gave her all of the smoke that was in my lungs. She gasped. She coughed. And fell back out again. I pumped her heart and felt for a pulse. There was one! She was coming back! I tossed her head back and forth trying to get some kind of response, but still she remained out. This time I took a hit, but only about half the size of the previous one. I wanted her to receive as much oxygen as possible while taking in some of the stimulant smoke. I blew in deep and long. I prayed. And she coughed out hard. Her head shook back and forth like she was telling me no. And then she gasped in the biggest burst of oxygen I’ve ever heard. And she tried to sit up. I grabbed her around the shoulders and pulled her up to a sitting position. And she gasped, lurched, and coughed until she realized what had happened. She kept telling me that she couldn’t hear anything, but all she could get out was like a faint whisper. Her throat was dry and raw. She was extremely confused and I just calmly and quietly celebrated that she had woken up. I held her head in my hands and looked her in her glazed over catatonic eyes. It looked like she was still sleeping. Her eyes looked so dead. But so alive, compared to the state she had just been in. I pulled away from her and just stared at her. “Are you okay?” “I think so” is all she could get out. I let out the deepest sigh of relief and then leaned over and threw up in my garbage can. Hot citric acidity. And bawled like a baby. I had never been so scared in my life. What the hell was I doing? This was the culmination of one of the worst three day spans from my using life. You would think that after three days like this, I would stop. You would think…