Runaway

“I’m tired of this!” mom yelled loudly. I was grateful that she saw fit to take the argument into the back room, but I could still hear the strain in her voice as if she were standing in front of me.
“What do you expect me to do?” Dad yelled just as loud. “I can’t step in the boy’s mind and change his thoughts! I’m only as much human as you.”
“Whatever!” mom said. “What are we supposed to do? We’ve tried everything; parent bonding, fishing trips, shopping sprees, we’ve bought the boy every single pair of shoes out on the market, for Christ-sake!”
“I understand,” dad said, his voice dropping so low I could barely hear him, “but we can’t do anything. If he wants to do this to himself, let him. In the end, it is his life. It is his blood he is pumping all those drugs in, not ours.”
“It is our blood,” mom whimpered. That tore my heart. “He came from us. We made him, Don, he is our blood.”
“So we are going to sit back and let him drive us to an early grave?” dad asked.
I sat on the floor in the kitchen with my head against the wall. I could hear their voices, but I was no longer listening. What they said didn’t matter to me anymore.
I reached in my pocket and looked at the bottle of pain pills that I took from the pharmacy where I work. The bottle made a popping noise as the top easily came off in my hand. My lungs filled with air only once before I dropped the last of them into my mouth. A tingle passed over my body as I chewed the pills and swallowed all the residue.
I laid over on my side and drifted.
When I woke, I was sitting in the white hospital room, my eyes tearing at the sight of all the white and chrome. My head hurt and my stomach felt like someone kicked me with a steel-toe boot. I fought my eyelids until a nurse walked in with eyes like emeralds. I smiled.
“What are you smiling at?” she asked with a even bigger smile.
“Nothing,” I responded, adjusting my body slowly so that we were at eye level. “Can’t I guy just smile when he sees a pretty lady?”
“Not when that guy is only seventeen and that pretty lady is pushing thirty,” she replied with a smile. Her face was flawless, without a wrinkle or a pimple anywhere.
“What if I told you that I wasn’t seventeen?” I asked with a smile as she pushed a medicine into my IV.
“Then I may reconsider.”
“Is that a promise?” I asked, feeling lightheaded as whatever she pumped me with began to flow throughout my body.
“Maybe,” she said seductively, sashaying her way out of the room.
I smiled until my mother walked in the door. She wore a frown that made her look like she was about fifty.
“What were you thinking?” mom said. I rolled my eyes.
“Nothing, I wasn’t thinking. Nothing at all.” My words were slurred by the medications that floated trough my veins.
“I know it.”
I looked away. “So what now, are you going to ship me away so that I don’t drive you 'to an early grave'?”
Her eyes began to water. “Honey, you have caused a lot of issues with this addiction. You are killing yourself and your father and I are going down with you. I don’t know what I would do without my son. So, going against the wishes of your father, I’ve decided to give you one more chance at making a way out,” she said, sitting on the chair. I surprised myself by paying attention as she spoke. “I was at the community center today and I heard about this trip. A bunch of teens will go up the country. You’ll be led by one of the workers that volunteered his time to do this. They leave the day after tomorrow.”
“Do you think this will work?” I asked.
“Nothing can make you different, but you.”
I nodded. “Alright, I guess I’ll go.”
“Thank you, baby.” mom said, getting off the chair and kissing my on my forehead. “This may be exactly what you need.”