She was at the apartment when the courier came, having just spent the morning explaining to her boss why she'd missed work for the past week. And, yeah, that had resulted in a longass fucking bus ride to her shitty shrink for a note, which then got carted back across town. Temporary leave, and she had no fucking clue how she was going to swing rent next month. But her hands were better, and she could pick up some daywork before then. At least the apartment was fucking cheap, and she wasn't spending too much on pills yet. It would all work out, yeah?
But it had been a long fucking morning, and she was tired. She'd taken a lukewarm bath, because fuck the hot water that never worked in the apartment, and she'd changed into a pair of Neil's stolen boxers and one of Joey's stolen wifebeaters. She'd just sat herself down on the dingy floor to work on a discarded refrigerator box that she'd flattened out and was using as a canvas, layering it with thick whorls of red, when the knock came.
And, after signing for the package, she'd sat back down and forgotten the paint entirely.
Her hands shook, and she wasn't sure if it was the papers, the note, or the needles that caused the shaking. She dropped the entire fucking box, the edges become red-paint thick, and her skin went cold, cold white. In the end, it was the fucking needles that she skittered away from like a crab, hands and feet on the floor and not stopping until her back connected with the end of the floorbound mattress. She stared at the mess, and she swallowed back thick, thick sobs.
She had no fucking idea who it was from, she told herself. No fucking idea. None. And if it was a little bit of a lie, she refused to fucking admit it. She fucking refused. She couldn't. And it was with shaking legs that she finally stood and made her way to the kitchen, where she had a few pills hiding up above the cabinets. She had to climb up on the fucking counter, banged knees and a hard fall to the linoleum that would bruise, but she managed to close her fingers around the orange pill bottle, and she managed to down a fistful.
She sobbed. Messy, red eyes, red nose and shaking that wouldn't fucking stop. And she sat there, on the linoleum, and she stared at the fucking box. She stared.
She should tell someone. She should tell someone. She should fucking tell someone. But who needed this shit? Who? Lou was fucking gone. Joey might go kill someone, and she didn't want him leaving her to go inside again. Lin couldn't handle the heavy shit. Daniel couldn't handle his own heavy shit. And Neil, yeah, she didn't want Neil to see a fuck-up every time he looked at her, not when she imagined this adorable mother somewhere on the sidelines being every maternal thing that she'd never be.
She didn't get up until the numb set in, and then it was fucking practicality that took over. Joey would go back to fucking jail if his parole officer showed and those needles were in the house; that got her moving.
She should toss it all, she knew. All of it. She should fucking toss it. But yeah, she couldn't. She fucking couldn't. She left the apartment just long enough to stash it all in a locker at the South Strip bus terminal, where no one gave a shit about anything but finding some space to sleep on the chipped and cracked benches.
She went back home, and she spent the afternoon painting. Hard, angry reds, and her face and fingernails stained thick with the oil paint. She didn't stop for hours, until her fingers cramped and her arms hurt, until the key to the locker was embedded thick and deep in layers of red, the centerpiece in the landscape of dark and darker gore-red. And then she fell into an exhausted sleep, one where nightmares were dulled by little pills and terror always lurked in the fucking shadows.