Drink Yourself to Death

It was a dreadfully slow process, the deterioration of Billie’s liver. What’s worse was the fact that there was no way to tell what was going on until it was virtually too late. Thinking back to that point in our lives, I can’t help but feel angry towards my boyfriend, seeing as his condition could have been easily avoided. Simply refusing to crawl inside a bottle [or four] every time he felt trapped could have stopped the scar tissue on his liver from spreading and gradually causing the unfortunate organ to give up completely…but was he at all concerned about his lavish drinking habits? Of course not. No addict ever blames their drug of choice, and no addict ever blames themselves for any misfortune their dark habits seem to always get them into. It was no different with Billie. He blamed me for his alcoholism, and for years, I believed him. That damn lush had a terrifying ability to melt anyone’s heart with his sob stories…I was a sucker for them as much as I was a sucker for him.

These days, however, I’ve wised up. I know now that I was wrongfully accused as Billie’s trigger to drink. I know that it was the alcohol that poisoned his mind and his body…not me. It perpetually makes me wonder what I ever saw in him to begin with to make me fall in love with him so completely. In fact, I often wonder why, after everything he’s put me through, I’m still with him to this very day. I’m still in love with that manipulative little bastard. It’s just the way people like him are…they need to be abandoned to hit rock bottom, yet they always find a way to crawl back inside your heart, your wallet, and your liquor cabinet. I should have known better than to enable him, but there’s nothing more that I can do. He’ll attend the AA meetings and go for days without even touching a drop of alcohol, but something always pushes him to the edge too often to not be of concern…and the worst part is that there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. He’s cheated death on so many occasions that he now feels an alarmingly naïve sense of indestructibility.

The first signs of Billie’s cirrhosis were so subtle that neither of us gave it much of a second thought. We assumed that bruising like a peach, out of the blue, was no big deal. Bruises heal, but then they would persistently keep showing up all over his body, usually accompanied with cuts that refused to stop bleeding. Again, we thought nothing of it. My little drunk would laugh it off with his impish giggle and a swig of tequila while my forced smile and disapproving eyes brought him to win me over for the millionth time with his beautiful words, followed abruptly by lusty escapades that would make the devil himself blush. Billie always had a way of taking my mind off the important things with his sick kind of love, but unfortunately, you can’t ignore a potentially fatal disease forever. His excessive bruising and his blood’s sudden incapability to clot eventually turned to his skin and eyes yellowing, a medical condition I later learned to be called jaundice. Now, I’d seen enough of the damned after school specials to have a vague idea of what was happening. Billie was literally drinking himself to death.

What scared me the most the day I realized what was really going on was that Billie wouldn’t go to the doctor willingly. He would never admit that he had a problem, or that booze had been the prime culprit behind it all. Fortunately, a normally minor mishap involving a steak knife gave us reason enough to rush Billie to the hospital so that professionals could stop the bleeding…and hopefully find the answer as to why insignificant little cuts were suddenly fatal to my lover.

It took the doctor all of two seconds to come to his conclusion based solely on how Billie wreaked of booze and how the whites of his eyes now matched the color of an overripe banana. It would be weeks until a liver biopsy finally confirmed the condition indefinitely: cirrhosis. Advanced stages.

“One more drop of alcohol could kill you at this point, Mr. Armstrong,” the doctor had told him with a slight frown and a sympathetic look in my direction.

Billie swallowed once, twice, a third time. My guess was that he was trying desperately, and failing, to rid the growing lump from his throat. For the first time in his life, he was finally considering how toxic his drinking habits had truly become. Too bad that epiphany was so unjustly short-lived.

“If this thing is so life-threatening, then why haven’t you filled out a prescription or anything? Aren’t I gonna want meds or something to fix it?” Billie demanded, a juvenile sense of hopeful panic twisted within each word.

“Medication can’t help you now, Billie Joe. It’s too late,” the doctor murmured. I could feel my heart breaking within my chest as the words were spoken aloud, knowing that my best friend of twenty plus years and my boyfriend of five would surely be dead within a matter of months. Even sooner if he happened to get his hands on another lethal drop of the vile substance that threatened to steal him from me.

“But there has to be something else!” Billie shrieked, jumping from his seat and pacing nervously about the room as the doctor and I watched morosely from our seats. “I’m not even forty yet. I’m too young to die!”

“There is…one other option, but it would be difficult to manage, mind you,” the doctor informed us slowly, hesitantly, as if he already knew the chances of this other option succeeding were slim to none. “We could place you on the transplant list.”

“Do it. Just fucking put me on the list, make sure I get a new damn liver. I will not die anytime soon,” Billie asserted, preparing the tears for one of his more impressive Emmy-worthy performances. “My dad died young, and it destroyed my family for a while. I never really got over that, y’know? And now, I have two kids of my own, and my youngest is around the same age I was when I lost my dad. I don’t want to put them through that kind of pain…I don’t want my ex-wife to have to raise our children alone. Please, please, I know it takes forever to move up on the transplant list, but could you somehow work around that? Somehow make it so that my name moves up faster? I can’t let my kids grow up without their father.”

It was difficult to tell whether or not the doctor was genuinely moved by Billie’s sob story or not. His features did notably soften as the alcoholic broke down to the thought of his sons having to deal with his untimely death. I hardly noticed that, though, as my own thoughts were caught up on what Billie’s sob story lacked: Me. Nowhere in his hysterical ramblings did he ever mention how incredibly torn up I would be if he were to die.

When we’d left the doctor’s that day, Billie seemed determined to better himself. He vowed to abstain from drinking and to clean up his act. Like a fool, I believed him. Somehow, I always ended up believing him. It only took three weeks before his addiction became too powerful to ignore, and a single beer sent him keeling over within the hour of consumption, rendering him unconscious. I thought for sure that this would be the final straw, that my Billie Joe had finally been defeated by the very thing I’d been competing with for years for his love and attention.

But the lucky bastard was still alive…hardly.

He was rushed to the hospital and immediately whisked away to be operated on before I had the chance to ask what the hell was going on. I was clueless as to what was happening to my lover, my hopeless lush. I only knew that his liver was failing. I had no idea that three weeks ago, his doctor had pulled enough strings to get him to the top of the hospital’s transplant list. Looking back, I’m still unsure of whether the doctor’s chivalrous act was a curse or a blessing.

As I waited for Billie to come out of surgery, I was driven half-mad with anxiety and premature grief. I was already convinced that he was going to die, for the doctors had explained to us that even a transplant has its complications. It seemed as if all the cards were against my love and trying their damndest to take him out. By the time a calm, blood spattered surgeon came out to tell me Billie’s surgery had been a success, I already had his entire funeral planned to perfection in my mind, right down to where he would have liked me to scatter his ashes, into the bay.

I damn near shit my pants when the surgeon smiled triumphantly at me.

“The surgery went quite well. I’m happy to report that there were no complications whatsoever. Given the circumstances, your…erm…partner is a very lucky man. He should make a full recovery.”

He should make a full recovery.

The words left me unable to catch my breath and unable to hold my own weight. I collapsed back down into the chair I had been perched in for God knows how long and sobbed. Just when I thought my Billie Joe was going to be taken from me, death removed its clammy grasp from his shoulders. By some stroke of magnificent luck, I wasn’t going to lose my lover. The alcoholic that owned the rights to my heart was going to be ok.

When it was deemed safe for Billie to finally have visitors, they took his hospital room by storm and showered the sickly man with their sympathies, frustrations, and love. His ex-wife even graced the room with her presence, Billie’s two sons trailing shyly behind her. Both the boys looked too dazed by their father’s brush with death to say much of anything to him other than they were glad he was ok. The one thing I noticed that was missing from everyone’s visit to Billie’s hospital room was something that I thought he needed the most: Disappointment. Nobody seemed to give a flying fuck that the cause of his liver failure had been self inflicted. Nobody had to balls to scold him for his dangerous addiction. Maybe if someone had, he would have made more of an effort to change himself.

Almost immediately after Billie was well enough to return to our home, Billie began drinking again. It was like a slap in the face coming home to find him too wasted to find the damn bathroom to take a piss, causing him to relieve himself in a closet instead. He simply was incapable of stopping himself from continuing with the one thing that threatened to take his life once more. It didn’t take me very long to decide that I simply could not go through the horror of another liver failure. When he was finally sober, I confronted him about it.

“Billie, you have to stop drinking,” I told him sternly, crossing my arms over my chest and staring mournfully at him.

“Please, Mikey, not right now,” Billie groaned, attempting to stifle my concerns with a sloppy kiss. I kept my lips immobile, refusing to allow myself to melt in his affection. I learned a long time ago that that didn’t do either of us any good.

“Yes, we need to talk about this. I almost lost you once to this, I’m not about to lose you again.”

“But you won’t! I just…I can’t stop drinking. It’s the only thing that makes the pain go away.”

“What pain?! What could possibly be so damn horrible that the only thing you can turn to is booze?”

Billie broke eye contact, guilt rendering him unable to face me as he mumbled, “Being a lousy father, a shitty boyfriend…I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave me.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Billie, the only reason you’re a lousy father is because of your drinking. Not the other way around.”

“I can’t do it, Mike. I can’t just…stop.”

“Do it for me. Bill, look at me. If you love me at all, you’ll do this for me.”

Billie’s eyes locked on mine once more, shining with a confidence I hadn’t seen in ages. “Ok,” he whispered. “I’ll stop drinking for you.”

I should have known it was just another act. It appears to be the sole thing addicts are capable of, lying through their teeth to hold onto the one person who never fails to enable their habits. I was a doormat, Billie’s doormat, and he fucking knew it. He knew exactly how to tug at my heartstrings, how to make me quiver under his innocent gaze and puppy dog pout. As long as he knew that I was his puppet, that every move I made would ultimately benefit him in the long run, he would never stay true to his promise. Billie Joe was going to continue drinking himself to death, one bottle at a time, as all my attempts at saving him are thwarted.

I then felt myself wondering, with a sickening twist of longing, if Billie should have died on that operating table. As much as I loved the deceitful man, I knew he was better off dead.