Death Will Get You Sober

Chapter 1 I woke up in detox with the taste of stale puke in my mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see twinkling lights. This had happened before as I came out of a blackout. I rolled my head heavily sideways on the pillow. The light came from a drooping strand of blinking bulbs flung over a dispirited-looking artificial pine. A plastic Santa, looking as drunk as I remembered being when I went into the blackout, grinned at me from the treetop. I had an awful feeling it was Christmas Day. The ward was quiet, but from my other side came the weak sound of coughing. I rolled my head the other way. That hurt. A skinny black guy lay huddled in the next bed, shaking the mattress with his puny but convulsive coughs. I waited for him to get it down to a wheeze. "Hey there." "Yo," he said. "Know where you are?" "Not a clue," I admitted. "Detox for sure." "It ain't Paree," he agreed. His cackle shook the bed and started him wheezing again. Between gasps, he said, "You're on the Bowery." "Oh, great," I said. "Merry Christmas," he said, and laughed so hard, he coughed up blood. I didn't need a degree from Harvard Medical School to diagnose TB. I hoped he hadn't been lying next to me long and that they'd move him out soon. The next time I came to, an even skinnier guy lay in the next bed. The smell of his cigarette woke me. Long and white as a skeleton, with sunken cheeks and shadowed eyes, he looked like someone the Headless Horseman might enjoy chasing. I mentally named him Ichabod. Ichabod lay there sucking up smoke. It sounded like he was working on a case of emphysema. So far, nobody in that detox was built like Santa Claus or breathed silently. As I lay there, not doing much but breathing along, a small, pale female hand stuck a paper cup of juice under my nose. A sweet, cool voice commanded, "Drink!" To my roommate, she said, "Put that out, sir! You know better. And offer one to the new man." Looming above us, she bored into him with a gimlet eye until he stubbed out his smoke on a plastic pill bottle and offered me the pack. I thought I was hallucinating because she seemed to be dressed like a nun. But I never said no to a cigarette. "Thanks, bro," I said, taking two. "And thank you, sister. You're an angel." "It's for later," she snapped. "Smoking room only." Ichabod laughed until his dentures popped. When the nun trotted off to get him some water, he said, "Your first time here, huh? That's Sister Angel." Sister Angel moved so quickly that she was back before I could ask him to explain. With her fresh pink skin and retro habit, she looked like the result of a penguin's night on the tiles with a particularly clean pig. After handing Ichabod his water, she turned on me. Her round blue eyes bulged slightly. "How are you feeling?" she demanded. "Just fine and wonderful," I said with weary irony. To tell the truth, I felt like hell. My mouth tasted like a garbage scow, my memory was on lockdown, and I bitterly regretted not being dead by thirty, the way I'd always thought I'd be. The next time I surfaced, Ichabod had vanished. The guy in the next bed now couldn't have been more different. Well fed. Groomed, even. I decided that it would be a good idea to make friends. Not only did he look like a felZelvin, Elizabeth is the author of 'Death Will Get You Sober', published 2008 under ISBN 9780312375898 and ISBN 0312375891.