Narrative: Body Paragraphs

I watched as my mother walked upstairs to make sure I was alone. It seems to me that everything from that point gradually becomes fuzzy. From here on out I will need to use the accounts of others to supplement my own.

I moved into her bedroom. I knew what was there. On her new nightstand from Wal-Mart sat a bottle, a white, generic Tylenol PM bottle from Costco. It held somewhere around 400 pills. It had been used before, but it had enough for my purposes. I took the bottle into the bathroom, and setting it down I took off the lid. With two or three handfuls I, and the hospital staff, think I took forty or thirty of those blue capsules. After the first handful I knew that my stomach would have none of this. After struggling to keep down each dose of chemical, I hid the bottle in the bathroom and walked back to my computer to continue playing on the internet. There I sat, each minute my insides aching worse and worse. Soon I feared that I would not be able to hold it down. I got up and somewhat staggered back to the bathroom. My vision blurred slightly I vomited in the toilet, on the seat, and on my hand. I recall seeing bits of blue amongst the remains of my meal.

Everything below my heart felt like it was being mixed with an egg beater. I decided that a bath would help transition me between consciousness and the eternal. I sat there, stewing it felt like in the hot water and soap bubbles. After a half hour of slowly becoming sicker, I realized the bath was not helping. So I got out, drained the tub, and moved for my bedroom. I laid there, on my queen sized bed trying to suck it up and keep quiet. I heard my mother go back down stairs. Finally the second decision came. I got dressed and stumbled down the hall, down the two flights of stairs and into the basement. I lurched into her room and sat on her four poster bed. I looked her in the eyes, with mine full of tears. I said we need to go to the hospital. She asked why and I repeated the statement and said nothing more. She asked again, and I told her I overdosed. She got up and hurriedly put on another dress over her nightgown. The clock said it was around five now.

Every moment my mind grew more distant from my body. I became sleepy but could not sleep. So, after several minutes my grandmother, mother, and I set out for UVRMC. I tried to sleep as we came down the hill, past the sub station and followed the cliffs at Provo’s border to the hospital, all the while Elizabeth, my mother, told me to not fall asleep.

We parked at the far end of the ER parking lot. I slowly tottered my way through the darkening lot toward the double glass doors. We finally made it and I sat down. Elizabeth was doing something important as I surveyed the place. Soon my surname was called, and I slowly arose and reeled into the small examining room. A large, shaved headed man asked me what happened. I told him I overdosed because I was depressed. I said this five times, each more angry than the last. He kept asking why I did it. Was he not listening? Apparently I was slurring my words. We moved into a hospital room and they drew my dark almost maroon blood. My memory fades much from this point, but here is what I perceived.

I was given a Styrofoam cup of what they call charcoal. It was black, acrid, and thicker than motor oil. I tried to suck it down with a straw, nice wish. I saw a woman in black standing a little ways off in the hallway looking at me. They said that no one was there. Was this a woman a person who succeeded in her overdose? I remember reaching for a string that hung from my bed. It, like the specter, was never there, but I saw it. The last thing I remember is feeling something trickle down the back of my throat as darkness overcame me.

Nick B.