“Dying Daisies”

When Kiran entered the room, a burst of energy filled everyone around him. Olivia watched him enter her shared apartment as he greeted everyone. Their place, which belonged to Olivia, Alexis, and Lucas, was actually a comfortable place for junkies. The rooms were tiny, and people were spread from the kitchen to the bathroom, but mostly in Lucas’s room. There were comic pages torn straight from a book taped to the low ceiling, the veiled window had purple Christmas tree lights draped over the window. He had a small antique dresser covered in pipes and rolling papers. The carpet was coated in empty beer bottles and cigarette butts, and different shaped naked women lined his walls: photos and paintings. Actually, art of naked people covered the entire apartment. There were miscellaneous shattered dreams: guitars, paints, books, and writing. She liked her place slightly trashy but safe to shoot up, or snort, or smoke anything. Olivia knew she could give these strangers what they wanted. Drugs and safety. Light seeped in through the blind covered windows in the living room and Olivia sat in the natural light counting cash.

“Olivia!” Kiran smiled, brightly. He wore a maroon hoodie. He was a model type. His hair was brown to his shoulders. Kiran looked so different than the other junkies Olivia sold to.

“Kiran,” she smirked and looked up from the money in front of her, “You owe me from last week, baby.”

Kiran threw up his hands, “C’mon.”

“Not this time.” She shook her finger at him, playfully. Kiran fake pouted. He handed her a hundred dollar bill. She took it, wrote it down, and asked simply, “Whatcha want?”

“Crystal.” Kiran became serious. Olivia looked up at him, almost questioning him. He hadn’t been doing meth recently. The last time they shot up, Kiran tweaked hard, and didn’t show up at the apartment for a couple of weeks. Kiran shrugged, “It’s been a hard week. Let’s shoot up.”

“Are you gonna explain why you didn’t show up until now?”

“You have clean needles, right?” Kiran said, ignoring the question.

“Kiran, can you chill the fuck out?” Olivia didn’t glance at him for a second as she went into Lucas’s room and came out with a small plastic baggie filled with what looked like shards of glass.

She took a seat on the couch next to Alexis, who was just staring forward at nothing. Olivia waved a hand in front of Alexis’s face and she didn’t move an inch. “Alexis? Dude, how much Xanax did you take?”

She blinked slowly then turned to Olivia, “What?”

“How many bars did you put in your mouth?” Olivia spoke to her as if she were a small child. “One and a half…” She mumbled to herself, then got up and began staring at the paintings on the walls.

“Since you’re mobile, can you grab the box in the kitchen?”

“You guys shooting up?” Alexis slurred, not looking directly at Olivia and Kiran. Kiran nodded without looking at her. “I got it, Oli.”

Olivia watched as Alexis stumbled into the kitchen, decided she wanted to raid the fridge and she did, searching for a snack.

“Jesus,” Olivia rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, “why did I ask her to do a simple fucking task?” Olivia went into the kitchen, then grabbed Alexis and moved her out of the kitchen with a bottle of soda and chips. The third drawer down held a shoe box with syringes, cotton balls, and clean water. She grabbed the whole box and sat back down on the couch. When Olivia pulled out the materials, she noticed that Kiran had disappeared. “Motherfucker.”

She stood up, setting the box on her spot on the couch, and took a deep breath. Olivia turned into Lucas’s room, and Kiran wasn’t there. She then noticed the bathroom door shut, and opened the door to find Lucas after just snorting a line of coke off of the toilet seat and Kiran on the counter as he took drags from a clove cigarette.

“Kiran,” Olivia crossed her arms leaning against the doorframe, “ready?”

“Give me a second. So what did she do?”

“Bruh, no fuckin’ joke, she blew me right there,” Lucas sniffed as Kiran let out a giggle. Lucas sent a goofy smile in Olivia’s direction, “How you doin’, beautiful?”

“Did you give Alexis more than one bar? She’s practically a zombie out there.”

Lucas threw his hands up in defense, “She wanted to play Mario Kart high, who am I to judge?”

“We don’t even have a TV! Whatever, you’re too strung out.” Olivia pulled the cigarette from Kiran’s lips and stuck it straight into the sink. “Kiran, if you don’t come now, I swear I’m gonna slam all your shit.”

Kiran rolled his eyes, “Alright, Luke, queen bee is here. Give that girl my number, will ya?”

Olivia pulled Kiran out of the bathroom and into the living area. She sat on the couch, Kiran next to her. She rolled up her sweatshirt’s sleeves, and put her black curly hair into a tight ponytail and went to work.

She added a bit of bottled water and crystal meth into a bowl, then shook the bowl back and forth until the crystals completely dissolved. She put a cotton ball in the middle of it and grabbed two needles. Olivia stuck the needle in the jar and put half of the liquid into hers and half into Kiran’s. She then pulled out two rubber ribbons. Olivia handed one of the ribbons and needles to Kiran, and he took off his hoodie, tied the ribbon around his arm, flexed his arm, and blue strong veins popped up immediately due to his lack of use in the recent days. She watched him stick the needle directly into the crook of his inner arm, and pulled blood into the needle, then slammed it back into himself. He choked for a minute, unable to catch his breath, then fell back into the couch, smiling.

“I’m so happy,” he slurred.

Olivia watched as Kiran coughed a bit, cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets. His eyes were squinted watching Olivia. She wanted to see him get successfully high before she went for it. She thought about the fact that she hadn’t gotten high since he was around. She really only liked meth, which got her in trouble in the first place. First liquor, then weed, soon after coke, of course heroin, which lead to meth. She had tried all the pills and hallucinogens too. Xanax was too much of a downer, painkillers never seemed to get her high enough, and acid was just, well, it did what it was supposed too, maybe she was too young at the time of trying it.

She remembered the first time she used meth. Behind a gas station with her drug dealer of the time. She smoked it with him. The feeling of euphoria dismissed the fact that she had never done it before, but didn’t want to look like a pussy in front of her drug dealer, who was a guy that wasn’t very threatening. He was shorter than Olivia, and the guy was an art major like Olivia. He was talented. Olivia hates to admit the night wasn’t as romantic or great as she remembered, of what she remembered. She had hooked up with the guy for a free bag. Olivia only really remembered how good it made her feel. Like she was free of expectation. She was always the “smartest” in her family, getting into a hard college and maintaining a 4.0. By her senior year of college her 4.0 was long gone and she didn’t really care. By then Olivia had decided drugs was the road she wanted to go down.

Her family showed concern when Olivia’s roommates at the time called to say that they hadn't seen her in a month. And when the professors were called, they hadn’t seen her either. They went to a counselor for the school who just said, “It will pass. She’s probably just going through a phase.”

Olivia’s whole plan got messy when her parents showed up at her apartment and found a meth pipe and syringes. They found weed and pills as well, but meth? Even her parents knew that was bad. When her parents called she answered, high as a kite.

“Hello?”

“Olivia, we found your stash, we are taking you to a place where you can get help,” her dad said, trying to remain as calm as possible.

“Huh?”

“We think you have a problem, sweetheart, we are gonna get you the best treatment,” her mom then said, her voice trembling at the daughter she didn’t know. The daughter who was a liar, a drug “addict,” everything her parents had raised her not to be.

“I’m not a fucking addict! What the fuck are you talking about?”

Olivia’s parents were silent for a minute. She never cursed in front of them, and had never showed any signs of this before. Where had they gone wrong?

“Olivia, honey, we just want what’s best for you,” her mom chimed in again, this time, with a sob in her voice.

“If you want to help me, leave me the fuck alone!” Olivia didn’t feel herself yelling, she had never even raised her voice at her parents.

“We are going to cut you off if you continue with this behavior. Where are you, Liv? We can help you-?”

Olivia hung up the phone without another thought, and ignored all of her parents calls since then. But after a year or so, they stopped calling. Olivia considered calling them a couple times after someone had ODed just to say, “I’m alive, I don’t want help, but I’m alive.”

She didn’t though.

Now she watched as minutes went by and Kiran twitched into being high. She then took a syringe and poked and prodded herself for a vein. She had missed one too many times, and it was too painful for her to continue. This time, however, she found the vein and injected smoothly. She coughed, then laughed at the whole thing. She felt high, but knew she had time before she actually felt the high. She then pulled a cigarette and lit it, took a couple drags while watching Kiran’s eyes flutter. She had never really noticed how stunning his eyes were before, and then laughed at that. Funny. This whole thing was funny.

Her heart pounded in her chest to the point she thought her heart would burst out of her chest. She loved the rush, the beginning of a long night. She noticed that both her and Kiran were in the same position, heads back against the frame of the couch, both breathing heavy. Kiran’s hand was on his heart, breathing hard. She was concerned for a moment, and then he seemed to relax completely. He smiled a huge Cheshire smile.  

He was high, completely had hit the shoulder. She knew in just a matter of minutes she would feel the same way. Kiran glanced around the room, his eyes moved faster than his head.

“I’m gonna get- uh- drink. Wanna drink?” he asked seriously. Olivia nodded and he went to the fridge and grabbed two Pabst Blue Ribbons and jumped back on the couch handing her a beer. Right then her head rushed.

“Ki- how..?” Her head was spinning. The beer in her hand was so cold. So fucking cold. She opened it, and poured it down her throat. She got chills, then felt like she was going to vomit. Who likes beer anyway? All it is is piss. Fizzy piss in a bottle. She drank the whole thing down though, and she burped loudly chucking the can at the wall.

“Why do you always buy the cheap beer?” Kiran slurred, staring at the can intensely, quizzingly, then he attempted to close the beer back up, trying to pull up the metal opening.

“All beer tastes like piss,” she smiled standing up, “pisssss-” she repeated. Olivia stumbled around a bit, eventually sat down on the floor in front of the window. She fell to her side, watching the world outside. A bird. A red bird! It sat on the fence post behind the apartment complex staring at Olivia. She then tried to sit up to close the blinds. “Kiran- come here!”

“What?”

“A fucking bird is watching me-”

“Birds are robots,” he said very seriously, then shuffled next to Olivia. He peeked through the blinds, then closed it rapidly, almost tearing down the blinds. They sat like this, silent, for probably five minutes.

“Is it still there?” she asked, and reached up to the blinds before Kiran slapped her hand.

“Sh! They’re listening. Shh.”

“That fucking hurt-”

“Fucking bird and spies an- fuck.”

When Olivia looked up, Lucas was standing in front of them. Pretty boy with a Hawaiian shirt. Olivia reached up to his trying to follow the pattern with her fingers. Then it hit her.

“Red shirt-” she whispered loudly to Kiran who nodded at her.

“The fuck you want?” Kiran yelled at Lucas, who twitched at the sound.

“Kiran, dude, I just heard a slap noise and thought-”

“You work with the birds. Watching us.” He pointed at Lucas’s shirt and then out the window. Lucas furrowed his eyebrows, and then lifted one of the blinds. He glanced around outside as Olivia and Kiran stared at each other with wide eyes.

“There’s nothin’ out there,” Lucas shrugged and Kiran stood up, nearly falling over and grabbed Lucas’s shirt.

“The bird. The bird!”

“Bro, there’s no bird. Wanna watch some Rick and Morty or somethin’?”

Kiran took a minute to consider this. Olivia saw his face twist from anger to confusion to a serious nod. He got up to his feet and Lucas guided Kiran to his room. Olivia contemplated what to do.  

Something. Anything. Something. She then went to her typical high escapade. She would paint. She ran to her room and grabbed her oil paints, brushes, a knife, and an old painted on canvas. Olivia plugged in colorful fairy lights. She loved that they gave off just enough light that she could see the canvas in a different form. She sat on the floor and began trying to scrape any paint she could off the canvas. She had created this painting for her mom. A picture of textured white and yellow daisies. She scraped and scraped and scraped and scraped until the paint was flattened against the canvas. Olivia blew on the picture removing any scrapings. She then stared at it. This was going to be a gift for mother’s day. Right after graduation.

Olivia scraped the painting harder. She became enraged with herself, with the painting, with her mother who had completely stopped calling. Fucking daisies. She used to pick daisies from the garden for her mom. Pressed them in books for her. Doodled them on her notes to show her. For her. For her. For her.

“DAMN IT!” The canvas was torn. She had scraped too hard. Olivia threw the canvas across her room. The noise scared her. Still, she grew more and more angry. She stood up, and ripped the fairy lights off of her wall and began tearing all of her art off the walls. Her mom never liked that she chose art. Her mom wanted her to do something that would make her money. Now she was making money, and yet, her mom still wasn’t happy. Olivia had to be the perfect child. Olivia had to fix her parents’ broken marriage. It was always up to Olivia. “Fuck.” Olivia crumbled back onto the floor, knees to her chest. She could feel herself shake. The walls were closing in on her. “Help me-” she whispered tears flooding her face.

“Olivia!” Lucas stood pale in the doorframe of her room. Olivia didn’t hear him until he fell to his knees in front of her, and tried to pick her up.

“What? WHAT?” She yelled, “Leave me alone!”

“Ya gotta snap out of it! I’m not playin’ somethin’s wrong.” Lucas grabbed Olivia by the arm and dragged her to the bathroom where the door was locked. “Kiran’s been in the bathroom for a long ass time, dude. I’ve been knocking an’ yelling an’ he won’t get out.” Olivia reached for the handle and shook it. It was locked. She shook it again and again. Locked. She kicked the door- nothing.

“Kiran?” she asked, more panicked and more slurred than anticipated. She waited a few seconds with no response. She banged on the door calling his name over and over. Nothing. Then she remembered. Her paint scraper had unlocked the door before. She ran to her room, nearly tripping over the string lights that laid on the floor.

“Olivia! What the hell?” she heard Lucas yell. She ignored it. She grabbed the scraper from her floor and ran back handing it to Lucas. “I didn’t thi-”

“My hands are too shaky. Try to-”

“I got it.” Lucas shoved the scraper in the crease of the door and maneuvered above the lock. After a minute of playing with the lock, he swung the door open and his hand covered his mouth.

Olivia tried to see in the door, peering over his shoulder, but all she saw was a pale familiar face with a puddle of red and a yellowish thick liquid. The white tiles around the head had been tinted. Red. Olivia tried to scream but nothing came out. She instinctively reached for her phone, but it wasn’t in her pocket. She looked to Lucas who was breathing heavily in shock.

“ALEXIS!” Olivia yelled, relieved something actually left her mouth. Alexis meandered over on her phone.

“What’s up?” Alexis asked barely looking at Olivia. After seeing Olivia’s expression, looked up from her phone completely. “What-”

“9-1-1.” Olivia croaked, “Call an ambulance.”

Without question, she dialed the number. The seconds the phone rang felt like hours. Lucas had moved into the bathroom and flipped Kiran onto his other side, placing the uninjured side of his head on his lap. Lucas pulled the towel off the hook and pressed it to Kiran’s head. With his other hand, he grabbed Kiran’s hand and checked for a pulse. Olivia watched his panicked expression turn to a moment of relief then back to concern.

Alexis bit her fingernails, staring with a blank expression into the bathroom holding the phone to her ear, “Hi, um, yes, we are at 413 Charlotte Court, phone number is 628-297-8765… Yes, that’s right… Our friend uh- Kiran Westbrook is passed out. I think he might have overdosed on- uh- meth and fell on the floor but hit his head on the toilet seat… He’s 23… He was injected maybe two hours ago… No, he’s not conscious… Lucas, is he breathing?”

He nodded, “It’s shallow.”

“He is, but it’s very shallow.” Alexis slowly began panicking, “Please hurry. Please!” Olivia watched Alexis listen to the dispatcher. She listened intently. “Thank you so much, um, Lucas, check his pulse again!”

Lucas held his hand again, panic returning to his face, “It’s slowing down!”

“It’s slowing down! What-” Alexis was focused again taking in every word the dispatcher said. “They will be here in five minutes. We need to do CPR- or mouth to mouth -or something! I-”

“I can do CPR.” Olivia stumbled into the bathroom. She got to her knees in front of Lucas who still held Kiran's head.

“Bro, you're high as shit. Ya can't do CPR on someone with a head injury.”

“You can,” Alexis said, holding her hand over her phone, “that's what the lady said to do. They will be here in like 3 minutes we got to keep him breathing. Just do mouth to mouth.”

“Move him on his back.” Olivia said, as soberly as she could muster. Lucas hesitantly slid Kiran to his back as carefully as he could. Olivia then pinched his nose and lifted his chin so his mouth opened. She could see there was vomit in his teeth, but at this point all she wanted was for her friend to survive. She had seen many overdoses, but never one that required a head injury. Olivia took a deep breath herself, then moved over Kiran’s mouth and began breathing into it. First breath, no luck. They all noticed his chest didn’t rise, so she moved his head back further. Second breath, his chest didn’t rise. Olivia glanced panicked at Alexis.

“Are we allowed to do hands on CPR? Mouth to mouth isn’t working,” Alexis asked into the phone, and right then loud sirens and lights shone through the closed windows of the house. The EMTs ran in quickly, and Alexis opened the door for them. When they came into the bathroom, Olivia and Lucas stood up, and moved out of the way as they put Kiran on the stretcher. When they got Kiran to the ambulance, they asked a series of questions.

“Who called?”

“I did.” Alexis walked with the EMT who seemed unfazed by the situation.

“When did it start?”

“Thirty minutes to an hour ago.”

“What happened to make him go unresponsive?”

“Meth and a head injury we think was from the toilet.”

“So it’s an overdose?”

“Yes.” Alexis glanced to Olivia, and Olivia stared at the ambulance and the men that loaded Kiran into it.

“Two people can go,” the EMT said, “but we need to leave right now.”

Olivia and Lucas got in the ambulance, and Olivia stared at Kiran’s lifeless body. Someone was giving him oxygen, and another person was doing something with his head. She reached out to grab Kiran’s hand, thinking that Kiran might grab back, but he didn’t. She tried to look and sound as sober as possible, but she could feel the EMTs looking at her like she was crazy.

When they got to the hospital both Lucas and Olivia sat in the waiting room holding their breath hoping that Kiran would make it. Olivia knew meth overdoses were trickier than other overdoses. They needed to detox him, but what about the head injury? She watched people as she folded her hands back and forth, but she could feel the high leaving her. Olivia knew it was an inconvenient time especially if she had to talk to doctors or anything. Lucas was staring down at his pants which had blood stains from holding Kiran’s head.

An hour went by with no answers. Was he conscious? Was he not? Would he make it? Olivia felt herself getting exhausted and she wanted to cry. It was her fault this happened to Kiran. It was always Olivia’s fault. She wanted so desperately to be close to Kiran, that she put his life at risk. Maybe her mom was right, she should’ve been a doctor. Then she could’ve saved people who overdosed. Not caused them too. Olivia’s thoughts were interrupted by an older looking couple asking the desk for a “Westbrook.” They did look like Kiran, but there’s no way. If and when he ever talked about his parents, he talked about them. They bonded over the pressure they were both given from a young age.

“That’s Kiran’s parents,” Lucas whispered, his eyes following Olivia’s.

“Should we go talk to them?” She noticed she didn’t sound nearly as slurred, she still had to mumble a bit to sound normal, but she was sober enough to talk. Lucas didn’t reply as a nurse pointed the parents to Olivia and Lucas. Lucas looked away quickly and Olivia did a little wave, and the parents marched over, Olivia recognizing instantly this wasn’t going to be a pleasant interaction.

“Are you Olivia and Lucas?” Kiran’s dad asked, softer than Olivia expected. She then noticed it looked like both of his parents had been crying. Why had they been crying? Didn’t they hate Kiran?

“Yeah, I’m Olivia.” She tried to sound sober, but could feel her mouth still mumbling the words out just barely. Lucas nodded and looked between the two of them who were standing before them.

“Thank you so much for calling 911.” The mom cried, trying to wipe tears away frantically, “Our son would be dead if it wasn’t for you two.”

Olivia and Lucas exchanged side glances, but before they could say anything, Kiran’s mom hugged them both. She squeezed them both tightly, and Olivia could feel stomach acid coming up her throat.

“I’ll be right back.” She said, grabbing her stomach trying to smile at them. Luckily Olivia made it to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet a handful of times. She hated that no matter how much she took, it was just about guaranteed the aftershocks would make her sick. When she walked out of the stall, she wiped her face and splashed water on it, trying to look less sick. She walked out of the bathroom to see Lucas talking with Kiran’s parents, who looked serious, but not angry. And as Olivia got to them, Kiran’s doctor walked up as well.

“Are you Mr. and Mrs. Westbrook?” They nodded. “Can I talk to you privately?”

“It’s okay.” Kiran’s mom said, watching Olivia walk up next to her, “These kids saved his life. They need updates too.”

“Well, the good news is, he’s going to live. The head injury didn’t fracture his skull and the overdose is being treated in detox.” The doctor looked at the clipboard and then at the parents again, “The bad news is you’ll need to get him help for drug treatment. We can only detox here, we don’t have a rehabilitation facility.”

“Yes, that will be no problem,” the dad stated, putting his arm around his wife’s shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

“Can we see him?” his mom asked, anxiously looking for the doctor’s permission.

“Yes. He might be unresponsive or be angry, but you can see him. Just know he is in a lot of pain,” the doctor said. And as he told them the room number and Lucas and Kiran’s parents moved towards that room, Olivia stood there. Kiran always said his parents were awful. Why then are they here, wanting their son to live? In a moment of weakness, Olivia went to the hospital phone. It was outdated and it cost a couple quarters but she put the money in and began dialing. After a few rings she heard a familiar voice.

“Hello?”

“Hey Mom, um, it’s Olivia.” Olivia waited in silence. Then she heard a small voice.

“Olivia? Is it really you? Where are you? Are you okay? Are you safe?”

“Yeah, yes, I’m okay, Mom. I was just calling to- uh-” Olivia then realized she had no idea why she had called. “I think I need help. I’m-”

“Where are you? Are you still in the Bay area?”

“Yeah,” Olivia whispered. Hearing her mom’s voice was nice. But then she remembered her mom’s aggression with her all of those years. “I’m at 415 Charlotte Court in San Francisco. I’ll be waiting there.”

“I’m heading that way.” Olivia could hear her mom close the front door and head towards her car. “I love you, baby. Bye-bye.”

Olivia slammed the phone back on the hook. Then she chuckled to herself. In fact, she laughed the whole way home. She took an Uber and the entire time contemplated calling her mother back again. Telling her the right address this time. But she didn’t. When she got back to the house, she told Alexis the news. Kiran was alive and going to rehab.

“Where’s Lucas?”

“With Kiran and Kiran’s parents.”

“Oh?” Alexis asked, and Olivia ignored her.

She knew she should’ve stayed with them. Instead she grabbed a Xanax from a bottle in the kitchen. She sat on her bed in her room, and stared from the window back to the pill, taking the pill and swallowing it dry. She watched as a small black Lincoln pulled into the apartment complex across the street. She saw her mother get out of the car with a smile on her face. Olivia smiled to herself almost humming, and fell asleep with no dreams in her head.

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