Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster (14 page)

Most people don’t know this, but ambition is one of life’s great painkillers. And I had it in
droves.
How could I possibly have any concept of who I really was or what hurt me or what I liked or didn’t like when all my thoughts, power, energy, and passion were poured into “getting the job”?

I wisely understood that I wasn’t exactly an ingenue and was convinced that success, if it came at all, would come much later, when I was old, like in my thirties. Which of course meant that, because of my aforementioned timing issues, I wasn’t in any way prepared for the success that slammed me face-first right into the pavement. Overnight, at age twenty-seven, without so much as a warning, I was suddenly far more successful than I could
ever
have imagined. Which should have been lovely, except that in that exact moment, the one thing that drove me for years, my stabilizing force, the one thing that prevented me from having to really feel things or really know myself—my ambition—was suddenly gone.

I was bereft, in deep mourning, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, fathom why. I suppose I was also grieving for the loss of the unfeeling, jokey, impenetrable me. I was constantly filled with a sense of dread and overwhelming anxiety, and I was baffled. It felt like I had been kidnapped and shoved into a suffocatingly tiny, dark, airless closet with nothing but myself to keep me company. Like Patty Hearst’s, my will was utterly broken by the dark room that was now my mind.

A huge percentage of the recovering drug addicts I know seem to have a few things in common, other than their disease: intelligence, creativity, individualism, humor, and, yes, they all seem to have or have once had enormous amounts of ambition.

Now, don’t get me wrong, plenty of drug addicts are just narcissistic, suicidal, boring, or simply mentally ill. I’ve come across a few in church basements all over this fine city I live in. And obviously there are many reasons one becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol: genetics, a trauma, access, peer pressure, childhood abuse, boredom, depression—the list goes on and on. But I truly believe that one of the main culprits of my addiction was the loss of my burning need to succeed.

Oh, you probably wouldn’t have noticed, at first. But ever so slowly, the more successful I got, the more unhappy I was. Then, the harder I tried to fake being “normal” and “happy,” the more I failed miserably at it. My emotions were all over the place; one day I’d be fine and perky, the next I’d be grief-stricken and morose. As a happily weeping John Lithgow said to me (through copious tears) a few years ago when I told him I was now sober and much happier in my life, “You know, I always knew something was really devastating you and you were battling some demons. But I was always amazed at how you were able to push it aside and do such great work.” (
His
words, not mine, okay?)

He followed that with one of the reasons I was doomed to remain sick and suffering for so long: “When it came to doing your job, you’d never know anything was wrong.”

My loss of ambition quickly morphed into an all-
consuming depression, and as anyone can tell you, depression and addiction absolutely adore each other. Just when my depression became too difficult for me to battle alone, I discovered, purely by chance, that narcotics made everything much better, for about four hours. Of course the problem with “treating” depression with drugs or alcohol is that your sorrow then simply becomes one hard ball of
need.
So instead of being depressed, you’re simply a sobbing loser who counts pills or constantly vomits on your friends’ laps. You’ve become a poor imitation of someone being alive. But, hey, it’s better than being depressed! Isn’t it?

Lying in this bed in London, I started to feel the walls close in on me again, which filled with me with grim panic.

There doesn’t seem to be anyone around. . . .

After a long, sleepless,
click
-filled night, it was morning. Once my vitals were checked by Florence Nightmare-gale—
Why, and a good morning to you, sunshine!
—a dashing young doctor almost as hot as Mr. James swept into my room. Maybe they purposely hire hot doctors as recompense for the curmudgeonly and occasionally nasty nurses? I tried to smile winningly at him, which I regretted instantly because it pulled on my nose tube and made my eyes water in pain.
Ouch.

He was busy looking at my chart, thank God.

I had now gone four days without showering, which perhaps I could’ve pulled off back in the old days, back when I had a stomach. I honestly can’t imagine how he managed to resist me. But he did.

He cleared his throat and introduced himself as Dr. Smythson-Jones, and I instantaneously knew these three things about him: he was an excellent doctor, he was an arrogant, womanizing narcissist, and he smoked like a fucking chimney.

Yummy, exactly my type.

Unfortunately, at that same instant I knew that I was most definitely
not
his. I wondered what the problem was, other than the fact that I wasn’t a bulimic, twenty-year-old model. Could it be the horrors coming out of my nose tube, the clammy odor of eau de disaster emanating from my every pore, or that I was weeping uncontrollably?

He cleared his throat again. “Ms. Johnston. I’m part of your surgical team, and I must tell you, we’re all a bit transfixed by your case. You see, not one of us had ever come across anything as shocking as the condition your intestines were in, at least in someone alive. Truly, it was as if a bomb had gone off. It took us hours to clean up the mess. In fact, we’re all rather amazed that you managed to pull through.”

Oh, so
that
was it. I guess putrid intestines were a deal-breaker for him. Shallow asshole.

“When can I eat or drink?”
(God, shut up, whiner.)

“Not for another day or two, when we remove your stomach tube. And then I’m afraid only liquids for three days.”

A fresh geyser of tears squirted out.

He cleared his throat once again, which I quickly realized was his way of saying,
You’re in England, m’dear. Stiff upper lip, if you please!

“I must say, I’m rather surprised you’re hungry.”

“I’m not, really, I just want. . .”

“A cigarette?”

Oh my God, was he hot
and
psychic?! Then I remembered the party line: cigarette smoking caused an ulcer that then burst.

“Yes, yes, I really just want a cigarette.”

“Mm-hmm!” He nodded smugly, as if to say,
That was precisely my diagnosis.
“Well, do keep in mind that one of the reasons you’re
so
highly emotional is that you’re withdrawing from nicotine, as well as recuperating from a very invasive procedure. Now, I’m a smoker (
as if I didn’t smell it the second you got out of the elevator, Dr. Dickhead
)and must say I’m really quite sympathetic to your plight. I quit once and it was absolutely horrific. I wept for days.”

Despite his condescending, model-adoring personality, I found myself kind of liking this guy. I wondered if he’d lend me his blazer to smell, just for a few hours?

“I’ll tell you what.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “How would you like a bahth?”

Did he mean
bath
? I pictured him sexily trying to wash my crusty hair.

“I’ll call the nurse to help you.”
Oh. Hey, it was an honest mistake.
“I truly think you’ll feel loads bettah after a nice hot bahth.”

To make him happy, I said, “You know, that does sound mahvelous.”

He left and must have really cracked the whip, because just a scant three hours later my nurse shuffled in. I honestly don’t remember her name. I kinda want to call her Vagina Mouth, but for decorum’s sake let’s go with Nurse Wretched. Now, to be fair, I can’t begin to imagine how difficult a nurse’s job must be. The smells, the pooping, the sores, the vomit, the whining, the dying. . . all for next to no money. But back then, I didn’t care about any of that. All I knew was that the one person I saw the most often at the very worst time in my life seemed to resent me simply because I’d had
the gall
to be placed on her floor.

She rolled her eyes. “All right now, baf time. Doctuh’s odus.”

She then brought in some sort of plastic chair, and through the open door to my bathroom I watched her place it in the tub. Then, with great reluctance, she started the arduous journey toward me.

Trust me, babe, I’m not all that excited, either.

Nurse Wretched unplugged me from all the machines—
bye-bye, Mr. M, I’ll be right back
—except the nose tube, still connected to the blech-filled pouch. She took the pouch off the hook and unceremoniously plopped it on my legs. What an honor, I had been bequeathed the blech! After about ten long minutes, I was finally untethered. She pushed a button and the bed made a loud bang, which scared whatever crap I had left out of me. Soon I realized the bed was slowly, creakily moving me into a sitting position.

“Swing your legs to the side and stand. But do it slow. Slow, eh? I don’ want a big girl like you fallin’ on me.”

Oh, isn’t that smashing. Even in the
hospital, I’m given shit about my height. Lord have mercy.
Just to be ornery, I quickly started to stand, and white-hot agony pierced through the protective curtain of painkillers and I immediately saw white stars.

She sat me back down and scolded me that I had gotten up too quickly. Once the pain had backed down to a dull roar, I croaked, “Sorry, I’m not an expert at the postsurgery stand.” I thought I felt her smile as she readied me for try number two. Or it could’ve been a grimace. Together, we slowly, slowly began the journey from sitting to standing. Well, crouch-standing would be more appropriate. It was only then that I understood her height comment. Even as an upside-down L, I positively
dwarfed
her. Nurse Wretched was
tiny.
Like, a few inches from being a little person. No wonder she was worried. If I fell on her, chances were high she’d be crushed to death. I was sorely tempted, but in the end I decided it would just be too much bother.

But
damn
if she wasn’t a strong little thing. She carried most of my almost two hundred pounds (I was busy holding the blech), and we slowly inched our way to the bathroom—
Look, Mommy, Grandma’s walking!
Then she carefully helped me get into the tub-chair.

The only problem was that by now I was utterly exhausted. I couldn’t even reach the tiny bottle of shampoo next to me, let alone lift my hands to my head.

A spurt of shame reddened my face. “I’m sorry, I need help, I can’t wash. . .”

“It’s notting, I do this all the time.”

As she washed me (with the exception of my privates.
I’ll handle that area, thank ye kindly
) and shampooed my hair three times, I realized that this might be the first time in my adult life I asked someone for help. Then actually let them.

She had definitely done this before and was thankfully quite businesslike. But it was her gentleness that surprised me. I can still remember the simple joy I felt at being cared for. And the amazing, unbelievable difference I felt being
clean.
For days I had felt like some revolting, nonhuman, half-dead creature, like the swamp thing or the elephant man. But as that water rinsed away days of horror—
I am not an animal, I’m a human being
—and I watched it all drain down, gone forever, I felt baptized. As she towel-dried my hair, I’d never felt so powerfully
alive.

While I had been in the bahth, someone had changed the sheets on my bed.
Well, cot, really, but I’m not complaining! It’s fine!
Wee Nurse Wretched patiently inched me over, got me in bed, and proceeded to reattach me to everything.
And a
click, click, click
back to
you,
Mr. M!
I snuggled into the warm (
only slightly scratchy
) sheets, and after every bag was on its correct hook and everything inserted in its proper place, she went to the closet, took out a bunch of blankets, and put them on my legs. Then, in her special tender/brusque manner she actually
tucked me in
, which made me wonder if it had felt as good the last time someone had done this for me, circa 1971.

For the first time in a very, very long time, maybe years, I felt happy.

“Thank you so much, really,” I said, smiling at her. Which made her roll her eyes and shuffle toward the door. Then she stopped as if she wanted to say something.

She looked at me. “Hmmm. . . Yes. Hmmm. G’night, Ms. Johannson.” With a nod, she shut off the light and gently closed the door.

“G’night, Nurse Wretched,” I said softly into the inky blackness.

I think we’re alone now,

There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.

Click.