Flumes Vol. 4: Issue 1, Summer 2019 | Page 42

“It’s still dark,” I said, reaching for the .5 milligram bottle of haloperidol I used “as needed”. “Can we wait until it’s light? Meanwhile,

take these.” I slipped in a milligram of lorazepam for good measure

He downed the pills and nodded, pacing. He was now up to three milligrams haloperidol, and the hospice nurse had said five milligrams would sedate an elephant. I was sure he’d be out by sunrise.

Thirty minutes later he was even more agitated. “Can’t you trust me that we are safe here?” I asked gently, hugging my strong tree. He patted my back and then turned to me in disbelief.

“Can’t YOU trust ME that we need to get out of here? Do you WANT to go to a Mexican prison?” His sky blue eyes were wide. Although I didn’t know it at the time, it would be the last time we lost ourselves in each other’s gaze. I felt him in every cell.

I had no answer for him. By then I was neurotically playing solitaire on my iPad, my go-to coping device. “I’ve got some things to finish up here for work, and then we can go,” I said. I dialed the Hospice Hotline: 2XX-XX37. I think I will always know that number by heart.

“Okay,” Sherry said, “Give him another milligram of haloperidol and another milligram lorazepam and I’ll call the doctor.”

He sat down and went for his vape. “Good idea,” I said. “Some medicinal will help your anxiety.”

“I don’t want to smoke this shit!” he said, shoving the Mason jar aside.

Oh no, I thought. He’s gone. He’s really gone.

“I want to go home, I want to go home,” he kept repeating, going into a ten-second loop. “I don’t want to stay here in prison.”

Then a lucid moment. He looked right at me from across the room. “I don’t like the way my brain is working. I don’t like it one bit!”

“I am so sorry,” I said to him, my heart breaking and rebreaking in a single moment. I swallowed my tears.

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