FanStory.com - DUEL with the DEVIL - Chapter 29by Jim Wile

Recap of Chapter 28: The first semester of freshman year ends, and Brian did very well in his classes. He sees Julia often over the semester break. The second semester begins, and college life resumes.

One day, he arrives at the gym, where he sees Daniel lifting weights. Without a sufficient warmup, he begins lifting a far too high amount and immediately reinjures his back. He is incapacitated and requires paramedics to bring him to the emergency room, where they give him a steroid injection.

He feels immediate relief and returns to his room with Daniel. He talks to both Fran and Julia, letting them know what happened, and both try to warn him about starting up with Oxy again. He promises he won’t.

Note: I have changed the name of the book to:

DUEL with the DEVIL.

Chapter 29

A steroid injection typically contains anesthetic along with the steroid. I felt reasonably good the rest of that evening and the following day, but as the anesthetic portion of the injection began to wear off, the great pain slowly came back. It can take the steroid a week or so to have full effect, and in the meantime, I had to suffer with substantial pain.

You can get used to a 5- to 6-level pain, but as it gets into the 7- to 8- range, it begins to dominate all of your thoughts, especially when it is a chronic, unremitting pain. It wasn’t quite there yet, but it was getting close. I would know in about a week how the rest of this semester was likely to go. In the meantime, I would simply have to put up with it.

I tried losing myself in my studies, and it helped some. Best for this was doing difficult mathematical calculations, which required all of my concentration. I was taking a statistics course that had a lot of mathematics, as did my physics course. I had the most trouble in my one humanities elective. It was a class in early American literature, which I had been enjoying for the most part until now, but I had a difficult time getting through the reading assignments. My mind kept wandering, and without the extreme focus it takes to solve a mathematical problem, I got little out of them.

It became apparent after the week was up that the steroid injection had virtually no effect. I was very disappointed.

I began skipping meals because of the effort involved in getting to the cafeteria and back. When I did go, I tried to load up on extra fruit, like apples and bananas, that I could take back to the room with me. I also loaded up on protein bars, granola bars, and bags of nuts from a vending machine on the ground floor of the dorm. These would suffice when I wasn’t up to the effort of a trip to the cafeteria. Daniel constantly asked if he could bring me back something, and I usually declined, but on his own sometimes, he would bring me back a hamburger or tuna fish sandwich that he treated me to. He was a thoughtful guy.

I had trouble falling asleep at night and felt tired all the time. I began to cut a few classes, and my attention and focus were off in the few I forced myself to get to. This began to show up in my recent test results, and my grades were slipping.

The only pleasurable part of the day was my nightly Skype call with Julia. Just seeing her pretty face as we talked helped cheer me up. On one particularly bad day, we began our call at 6:30 as usual.

“Did you get the results back from the test you had earlier in the week yet?” she asked me.

“Yeah. Not so great. On the curve, it came out to a C-minus. It was in organic chemistry—the lecture portion. Dr. Rieke handed them back in lab today. I noticed that Kimi had aced it. As I was leaving class after lab, Dr. Rieke stopped me and asked if everything was okay, and said that he was a little surprised at some of the mistakes I’d made on the test. I didn’t want to sound like I was making excuses, so I just told him everything was fine but that other assignments had kept me especially busy lately, and I just hadn’t studied adequately for it. The inadequate study part was the truth, just not the reason for it. He said he understood and was sure I would do better on the next one.”

“I’m sorry, Brian.”

“I know. I’m not sure how much better I’ll do on the next one, though, unless things improve dramatically, but I don’t see that happening. What am I going to do, Jules? I don’t want to flunk out. I just feel so tired and sore all the time, though. Look, I hate to talk about this so much and bring you down too. Tell me about your day instead. How’s your freshman recital practice going?”

“It’s going well, but before I tell you about it, I just wanted to say that if the semester seems like a complete washout, you could drop any classes you’re failing and take them again another time. I’m sure your professors would understand. They know how good a student you are.”

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t exactly have the money to take them again without getting a student loan, but I may be forced to. I just wish there were a solution to this damn pain. The steroid didn’t do shit to help it.”

“I know, and I hope you don’t resort to—”

“You don’t have to say it. I won’t. That’s not the direction I ever want to go again.”

“I believe you. Alright, the Schubert is going well, but the Smetana still sucks. God, I hate Smetana. Even his name sounds gross. Smetana. Sounds like something you’d dig out of your belly button.”

I laughed at that. It may have been the first time I’d laughed all week. She continued telling me about her classes that day, and we soon ended the call.

Her fear for me had been a real one, which I also shared. I didn’t want to start taking Oxy again, but I also didn’t want to flunk out of school. Maybe if I could stick to a rigid schedule of it for the last few months until I could get that thing implanted, I wouldn’t get hooked on it. I’m sure I couldn’t get a prescription for it with my history, though. There was only one way I’d be able to get my hands on some—a drug dealer, and there happened to be one right on my floor.

I made my decision. Yes, I had just told Julia that I wouldn’t, and at the time I’d said it, I didn’t plan to, but in thinking about it some more, I didn’t see a better alternative. I was pretty sure things weren’t going to improve until I took some action, and I ran a real risk of flunking some courses this semester. Besides, it would only be until the end of the semester until I could get that device implanted or even possibly have a second surgery if it just refused to heal properly again. I don’t know. Then I’ll just taper off it again. Easy-peasy. I’ve done it before.

The problem would be finding money to pay for the Oxy. I didn’t have a lot of spare cash lying around. I would just have to borrow some funds out of my trust that were earmarked to pay for my senior year, and I’ll worry about paying them back later. First things first, though.

The dealer was a guy named Jerry Avery, whom someone had nicknamed Scorch. I’d heard that he’d fallen asleep on his bed with a lit joint in his hand and accidentally set his sheets on fire, which burned his hand pretty badly. I headed down to his room and knocked on his door.

“It’s open,” he shouted in my ear, having come up from behind me in the hall. I guess he’d been following right behind.

“Jesus, Scorch! Scared the shit out of me.”

“What’s happening, Byron?” He loved to mess with people’s names.

“Hey, listen, do you happen to have any Oxy in your vast stores?”

He snorted. “Do I have Oxy? Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back? I’ve got some 80s right now.”

“That’ll work. Can I get about 10 from you?”

“You got $300 bucks?”

“Holy shit! Does it cost that much now? I haven’t bought any in a while.”

“Inflation, Bro. So, you got it or not?”

“Look, Scorch, I’ve only got $250 with me. I figured they’d be, like, $25 a pill. As I said, I haven’t bought it in a while.”

He considered this. “Alright, Byron, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you the 10 pills at the introductory rate of $250 as a measure of good will. I hope you’ll continue to come to me with all of your pharmaceutical needs from now on, though.”

“No worries there, Scorch. As long as they do what they’re supposed to, I’ll keep coming back. I may need ‘em for the next couple of months.”

“Music to my ears, Bro.”

He retrieved the pills from a safe he kept them in, and I handed him the money.

“See you in a week or so,” he said. “Until then—adios, adieu, arrivederci, and aloha, my good man.”

Jeez. What a character. I headed back to my room with my new stash.