Chapter 21

The flight back to Houston would have been lonely, but I was wrapped up in my concern for Katie. Jess was right when she had this was the first serious complaint Infinity had ever received about service. I more easily dismissed that complaint than Jess did. I knew it wasn’t Katie who had failed to live up to expectations. It was oxy-induced Katie. But that still presented a serious problem.

I wasn’t sure how to approach what needed to be done. I didn’t want to be too confrontational. And I knew I wasn’t an expert in addiction. Was this really an addiction? It hadn’t been very long. It felt to me more like an early intervention. We had seen bad habits developing and were going to nip them in the bud. So I decided to rely on an appeal to her rationality and the closeness of our relationship. I hoped it would be enough.

It wasn’t.

I realized that as soon as I got home and visited Katie in our guest house. She was responsive but on another planet. She smiled and hugged me when I walked in, but I couldn’t help but notice that she constantly rubbed a runny nose with her long-sleeve t-shirt. Her eyes watered. I tried to cheer her up by talking about work or coming to visit in LA. In each case, her answer was the same.

“Yeah, I guess,” she would say in a tired, slurred voice.

After about thirty minutes of forced conversation, Katie excused herself to the bathroom. Her hair was matted and unwashed. The guest house was dark, the curtains drawn. I started to get a little angry. This was such a fucking junkie’s cliche. Katie was better than this. I calmed myself down by walking around, taking stock of the space. There wasn’t anything overtly out of place or concerning in the main living area. I ducked into the bedroom, and that’s when I knew we had a real problem.

There was a dull dusting of white powder remnants on the dresser and both night tables in the bedroom. That wasn’t what bothered me. It was the piece of aluminum foil I saw lying on the coffee table near the foot of the bed, in front of the TV. A lighter and glass straw kept it in place, and the surface of the thin metal was charred black. A pill bottle sat to the side. I walked over to it. It was oxy, but the prescription wasn’t written out to Katie. It was a name I’d never seen before. I knew she was in trouble. She never smoked anything. Never a cigarette. Not even the casual pull on a THC vape. She always declined.

I heard the toilet flush, and when the bathroom door opened, a slice of light spilled into the bedroom. Katie saw me and yellow flashed in her eyes.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she snapped.

She was no longer spaced out. She was on fire with rage.

“I should be asking that of you,” I said calmly.

“This is my fucking room,” she said. “Get out.”

“It’s my fucking house,” I said, still maintaining an even, if firm, voice.

“Fine, then I’ll get the hell out and do whatever I want,” Katie said.

She marched into the room, stopping at the coffee table. She picked up the pill bottle and shook it. It was empty.

“Shit,” she said, a little spittle flying out of her mouth.

She stomped over to one of the bedside tables and opened the drawer. Another empty pill bottle, which she threw across the room. Katie screamed in frustration.

“Fuck!” she shouted.

Whatever rationally based playbook I had devised in my head went out the window. I was wholly unprepared for just how serious this was. I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that in only a few weeks, Katie had turned from this bubbly, effusively optimistic girl to a run-down addict. This wasn’t her. She needed help. So I did the only thing I knew how.

While Katie threw her tantrum about being out of oxy, I crept up behind her and grabbed her in a bear hug from behind. She fought it at first, but I was far too strong for her.

“Let me go!” she cried. “I need my phone!”

“Shh, shh,” I said in my most soothing voice. “You need to rest, Katie.”

“Fuck you!” she spat.

It stung. And it dawned on me in that moment just how serious this way. It dawned on me just how far from herself Katie had strayed in such a short period of time. At that moment, I made a decision. I hoped I could stick to it. It was uncomfortable to do, but I wrestled Katie to the bed. She kicked and gnashed and fought me, but my arms were solidly around her. It felt like an eternity, but I managed to grapple her into a spoon position. I kept my arms wrapped around her and followed with my legs. Her breathing was fast and shallow, and she let a torrent of obscenities fly.

I don’t know how long we lay there, but eventually her breathing normalized. Eventually, she stopped fighting. Eventually, she fell asleep. I looked at my watch. It had been two hours. Kat and Rita had blown up my phone. I wondered if it was safe to retrieve my phone. I took the risk. I fished it out of my pocket. I had four missed calls each from Kat and Rita and one from Jess. I had forty-seven unread text messages. I took a deep breath, not knowing where to start.

But something caught my eye when I opened my texts. It was from Jason.

“Hey, bro,” it read, “Crystal told me what’s going on with Katie. I think I can help.”

Quickly, I tapped out a reply to Kat and Rita, whose messages had accounted for forty-three of my unread texts.

“Call you in a minute,” I wrote. “Katie sleeping.”

Then I dialed Jason.

“Hey, man,” he said. “What’s going on?”

I rolled away from Katie on the bed, not wanting the vibration and noise of my talking on the phone to wake her. I slipped my feet to the floor and tiptoed into the bathroom but left the door open. I filled in Jason with what had gone down.

“I can help,” he said. “But we’ve gotta do it now.”

“Okay, what’s the score, man?” I asked.

“About a year after you left the company, we had a guy go through this,” Jason explained. “Really fucked up leg injury while skiing. Got into oxy in a really bad way, to the point where it was going to fuck up his career and his family. But he beat it.”

“How?” I prodded.

“There’s this guy,” Jason said. “A doctor. It isn’t cheap, but basically he’ll come do a detox. I don’t know all the details, but I can call him.”

“Will you?” I said. “I’m not one for hysterics, but I think we’re in a bad place here.”

“I’m on it, brother,” Jason said. “I’ll get back to you when I know what’s happening.”

I pushed the red button to end the call, then set the phone on the bed next to me. I closed my eyes and laid still for several minutes. I felt the even, slow breathing of Katie next to me. She was in a deep sleep. So I decided to go to the main house and fill Kat and Rita in on the details.

In the midst of a crisis, I had to admit that sitting between Kat and Rita calmed me immeasurably. They were genuine and warm in their caring for Katie and for me. They took this on as our problem, one to conquer together. I filled them in on every excruciating detail of the past few hours.

“It just spiraled so fast, John,” Rita said as we sat together.

“And we have no clue – none – where she was getting stuff beyond her prescription,” Kat added.

“I know,” I said.

The dismay and heartache in my voice and demeanor were obvious.

“She’s still Katie,” Rita said. “She’s really strong.”

“And stubborn,” Kat said. “That’s probably what makes this more difficult. She’s stubborn, but her instincts are all haywire right now.”

“Jason said this doctor has a legitimate program,” I said. “It costs a lot, but he said it saved one of our old colleagues at the bank, who sounded like he was in way worse shape than Katie.”

“Whatever we need to do,” Rita said.

“Agreed,” Kat said. “I love Katie. We want her back to her old self.”

A few minutes later, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. When I picked it up, it was the detox doctor, as I came to call him. He had a flat fee of $150,000, and without calling it a guarantee, said that within ten days, Katie would be past withdrawals and into a legitimate recovery phase. Without blinking, I simply asked if he preferred cash, check, or credit card and inquired how quickly he could get here. He said two hours.

I hadn’t left the guest house even thirty minutes, but when Kat, Rita, and I returned together, we found Katie in the kitchen screaming into her phone.

“Now!” she yelled. “N-O-W! What part of that don’t you understand? It’s only three letters!”

She screeched like a banshee and threw her phone against the kitchen floor.

“Motherfucker!” she screamed.

She was sweating, and her body shook. Kat and Rita both glanced at me. We had a shade under two hours to go before the doctor arrived. His instructions to prepare for his arrival were to keep Katie calm as best we could.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Katie snapped at us. “I’m fine!”

“We’re here to help, Katie,” I said calmly.

“Then get me some more pills,” she said. “I’m in so much pain!”

“Okay, Katie, okay,” I said. “We can try. It’s hard, okay? But we can try. We don’t want you to be in pain.”

“We hate to see you in pain,” Kat said.

“It hurts us, too,” Rita added.

I had taken a couple steps toward Katie, and the girls continued with their comforting words. Without speaking, the three of us knew what the plan was. Kat and Rita made small talk. They asked Katie how she felt, if she was hungry, if they could get her anything to eat. It seemed to calm her somewhat, but she also had an air of confusion about her. I gradually moved closer to her, until I could pick her up. She squealed in protest again, but I took her to the bed for a second time that way and spooned her.