blurring_the_edges_17_change_in_the_weather birdmad The worst happens on Wednesday evening, you get the call from your sisters that the test results were indeed bad news for your mom and that she did indeed have mastectomy surgery earlier that afternoon. Visiting hours are still on and you drive over to the hospital to spend the last hour of available time sitting at her bedside while she lays there unconscious and heavily sedated. Briefly, she wakes up and smiles at you. "Hi, mijo," she says, weakly, groggy from the array of painkillers that are in her system. It's ripping you to shreds to see her like this, but you have a well practiced façade of strength and calm to uphold for everyone's sake since your brother's move to Houston last year has left you as the de-facto "man of the house" "Mom," you start, but can find nothing to add to it. It becomes a moot point since she drifts back into the thick blanket of opiate sleep. Your sisters have gone out into the hall and one has gone to the vending machines. They offer you the remains of the slight overabundance of Chinese food that they ordered a little before you arrived. the stereotypical little white takeout cartons are all arrayed in a small cardboard box. You haven't eaten all day and felt ravenous, but now you can understand why the three of them didn't finish either. Picking at the food, you lose your appetite. Elena had to fly back to San Jose last night, but will be back tomorrow night. Her dad was in an accident, but is expected to be okay. When 9:00 PM rolls around, a nurse comes quietly to politely shoo you all out of the room. You take the box with the Chinese leftovers and figure you will have them for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. When you get home, Elena has left a message on the machine for you. "If you want to cancel out, i'll understand, but i think getting out might be good for both of us this week, you know." Even before leaving for her appointment this morning, your mom still insisted for once that you go out. It still strikes you as odd considering the amounts of consternation and disapproval with which she usually greets most of your forays out into the night. You slip a hundred and fifty dollars in fives and tens into the various pockets and compartments of your mom's purse, not all in one place, and not where she would likely find all of it, either. You take your shower and try going to bed, unable to think about going out tonight, much less friday night. Tossing and turning, you smoke a couple of cigarettes and feel very mellow and feel a good portion of the edge that has been grinding you all day start to dull. Even though the temperatures have finally started to drop, you go over and open your window. It is windy outside tonight and you can hear it whispering through the holly and the rosebushes in the flowerbed in front of the window. Listless, you fish the old Atari out of its box at the top of your closet and try to engross yourself in a game of Asteroids. It doesn't work. Walking in a pattern that would wear itself like a path into the floor, you turn off the old 2600 and spend a good portion of the night pacing about. After awhile it dawns on you that you will be useless in class when morning comes and likely late for this most recent part-time crap job you've landed as an appointment-setter for a security system company. You leave a few messages with Joey from Constitutional Law II and with Mark from Biological Evidence Part One so that you aren't fucked when it comes to any of your study group stuff when you get back to it. Afterwards, you decide to leave a message with the call-center telling them that you won't be able to make it in in the afternoon because of an illness in the family. You told the center manager about it today, and he was cool with that, but the lady who supervises the floor made it a point to talk shit to you whenever she got the chance. "If it isn't a death in the family, i don't see why you should be taking off." Sherri, mid-forties, wearing an audible expression of bitterness that comes from having pissed away one's entire career working in some dive-ass joint like this. "Look, i talked it over with Andrew and he said it was cool," you reply, irritated. "It's my mom potentially having cancer surgery for christ's sake. what the hell's your problem?" You call back a few minutes later, you have been butting heads with Sherri for the last three weeks and it's clear that she has a serious hate-on for you the likes of which you haven't seen since seventh and eight grade English class with Ms. O'Leary. Up until yesterday, you have done your best to be polite when she decides it's a good time to bust your balls over something or other. This afternoon it was a pointless tirade accusing you of socializing on the clock when you were trying to get one of the more experienced hands to help you close a deal that smelled like not just an appointment, but a full-on sale. "Yeah, Andrew," you start, after listening to his outgoing message in his pleasant British accent, "on second thought, all things considered, between the problems i'm having with Sherri at the office and the fact that this is just a harder sell than any of the other sales work i've done, i think it best that i don't come back. Hope i haven't let you down too badly. Thanks." Click. In spite of your grim mood, you catch the uninteded joke about it being a harder sell than anything else you've ever sold and start chuckling to yourself. As if on cue, the craving strikes you again, but this time, deeper and harder. The shit has its claws in you deep now. In your bedroom, in the hidden space behind and beneath your dresser, you find your little bag. This time, you feel the need to go straight for the vein, a little of the good stuff before you cut it up for retail purposes. You almost wish Michelle and her supplies of pure opium were still around. There was a certain decadent joy in being half-naked and totally blasted out of your mind with a few friends around Roger's four-person hookah. Spoon? Check. Candle? Check. Reasonably clean needle? Check. (You don't worry about the fact that it's used since you're the only one using it.) Dope? Amen. You've been spending enough time in the gym in your off hours that you don't really need much help finding the vein in your left arm. Tying the strap in place, you decide to move up a little because you are beginning to form a pock-mark in the usual spot from the increased frequency with which you find yourself resorting to the needle of late. The first second of penetration of needle through skin into the vein is always agony for you. Who knows? Maybe it's the anticipation fucking with your senses or something. Before you can even count to three, you feel it hit you and as you pull it slowly back out, you feel a nice tranquil layer of oblivion crashing over you like a tsunami. Stashing your kit back in its place, you curl up in bed and have the five deepest most satisfying hours of sleep you think you could ever wish for. 030420 what's it to you? who go blather from