Pills: A Short Story

I began popping pills when I was thirteen. Anything and everything I could get my hands on. My friends and I would meet before school, taking various containers out of our bags. Mine was a Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum tin. We would open them up, displaying pills of various shapes, colors, and sizes. We had our own mini pharmacy with its own barter system of sorts. A few anti-depressants for an Adderall, or a muscle relaxer for a Klonopin. Half of them we didn't even know what they were. We all could get different stuff, so together we had a rainbow of pharmaceuticals.

My favorite however, was Effexor. My grandmother had them for depression associated with bipolar disorder, but she never took them. It was easy to swipe the bottle. The pills were

I didn't know what to do, or how to act. I had to wait in the lobby until two men came in with a gurney. I asked them if I could just walk to the ambulance, but I was quickly give a no. I had sit in the bed, and be wheeled out in front of everyone in the lobby. My mom wasn't allowed to ride with me, she had to follow behind in her own car. The lifted me into the back of the ambulance. I looked around. I had never been in one before. It was full of medical equipment. Vials and tubes and machines of all different kinds. I was overwhelmed, I didn't know what to do. An EMT got in the back with me, and immediately began to hook me to machines, while another began to drive to the hospital. They had a machine to monitor my heart rate, another for blood pressure, an IV was put in my arm. I looked over at the heart rate monitor. In big red looming numbers, it read 162. My resting heart rate was 162 beats-per-minute. I didn’t understand. How could my heart be beating this fast? I didn't even feel

They wheeled me into the ER and I couldn't understand why they wouldn’t let me walk. I was so angry. I hated being treated like I couldn't function. “I am fine!”, I thought. I went from an ambulance gurney to a hospital bed. The EMT’s had to lift me, and place me in bed. I had never gone to a hospital before where I immediately got a room. When my mom came in, it looked like she had been crying, but she kept quiet. I couldn’t even look her in the eyes. The nurses came in and started to ask me questions about what I had taken, how much, and around what time. I didn’t know exactly what drug it was, I knew the name, but they wanted to know whether I took extended release or not. I had no idea. My mom offered to go home, get the bottle, and bring it back. I wanted to say no, beg her to stay, please don’t leave me, but I knew that they had to know, otherwise I wouldn't get treatment. So she left. I was alone. I had nurses coming in and out, monitoring my vitals, and setting me up with a saline drip to flush the drugs out. Soon a woman came in with another machine on wheels. It was an EKG. I would come to be very familiar with them, as I had to get an EKG done every hour. It tracked the electrical impulses of my heart. They put pads on my chest, and hooked me to wires. The woman would stand there with a blank