Authors: Dianne Harman
Everywhere she looked something needed to be donated.
Well
, she thought,
I can call some charities and have them pick up the things I don't want. That will be a big help to them as well as solve some problems for me.
The following days went by in a blur for Jill. A never-ending stream of friends rang the doorbell, wanting to personally say good-bye. There were endless decisions about what to take and what should stay. Each time a friend took one of her plants, she felt like crying. They were as personal to her as her books were. Jill had so many books that the library brought a van to her house to transport them. It was gut wrenching for Jill. She was a voracious reader who had first learned to read when she was three years old and she'd never stopped. She considered her books to be old, cherished friends.
The moving van arrived, packing up a lot of her life. The storage rental unit had a home service for people like Jill. They came to her home, packed up the items she indicated, and put them into a unit for her. For several days Jill felt like all she did was oversee packing for her storage unit. She was glad she'd decided not to sell the house. Several of her friends had commented that at least if things didn't work out, she had a safety net, her home. Jill was determined that things would work out, but only when she and Aaron were married would she consider selling her Newport Beach home.
In the short time since Aaron had asked her to move to San Francisco, everything had come together much easier than she had thought it would. Tomorrow she would be leaving her beloved home in Newport Beach for a new life in San Francisco. The house was empty and all that remained was a sleeping bag and two suitcases. The rest of her things would be arriving in San Francisco on Saturday.
She walked into her closet, taking out the last of her clothes, folding them and putting them in one of the suitcases. She opened her make-up drawer, removing items and putting them in a travel zipper bag. She had another one for her contact lenses and hair items. As she picked up the contact lens solution from the medicine cabinet, she saw the small white pill vial containing the Freedom pills. She stuck it in her bag and wondered when she would need to start taking them. It had only been a few weeks since she'd been to the Blue Coyote and she still felt fine. She'd find a place for the pills when she got to San Francisco.
The next few months of Jill's life passed by so rapidly she was surprised one day when she realized that she'd been in San Francisco for almost nine months. It had been perfect. She woke up each morning, eager to get to work. She really liked the staff that she had hired and it was as if the job had been designed with her in mind. She knew hospitals and doctors and she was perfectly comfortable with the donors. Jill easily spoke the language of the wealthy and they quickly embraced her as one of their own.
Aaron was everything she wanted in a future husband. They traveled whenever they could get away. Nearby Napa, with its beautiful rolling hills, world renowned wineries, and five-star restaurants, was high on their list of getaways. They loved staying at L'Auberge in the northern part of the Napa Valley with its wonderful view of the vineyards located in the valley below the hotel. Other places they visited included Sausalito with its bobbing sailboats, Half-Moon Bay, and the Russian River area.
Although Jill had visited San Francisco many times, she was enjoying becoming acquainted with the secrets of the city she and Aaron now called home. Under her guidance, he was quickly becoming an expert on food and San Francisco was a city that catered to those who liked to eat well.
Jill had started taking the Freedom pills a couple of months earlier when the familiar feelings of lethargy and depression began to reappear on a daily basis. She recognized the symptoms before she began having suicidal thoughts, took her little pill, and very soon felt good, really good.
One weekend morning when she was in the kitchen fixing breakfast, Aaron walked in with the little white vial in his hand. "Jill, when I was looking for a bottle of aspirin, I found these at the back of the medicine cabinet. Do they mean anything to you? There's no label on the bottle and I can't find anything identifiable on the pills themselves. I don't know where they came from. I'm going to dissolve them in water and then flush them down the toilet. Unmarked pills make me nervous."
Jill's mind raced. She couldn't let him put the pills down the drain. She was due to take one tomorrow and she knew that she couldn't get a new supply from Jeffrey for several days.
"Aaron, there's something I need to talk to you about. Please sit down as this is going to take some time."
She started at the beginning. He knew all about the first time she had stayed at the Blue Coyote Motel. Then she went on to tell him about the second trip, leaving nothing out. She told him she knew she was probably addicted to the Freedom pills, but that it was a pretty harmless addiction and she had the money to continue buying the pills. There hadn't been any side effects. When she finished talking, Aaron was silent for what seemed a very long time.
Finally he spoke, "Jill, I love you. You know that, but I can't condone what you're doing. This man sounds like he's ready to go off his rocker at any time and then what happens to your pills? At some point you're going to have to get off of them. I've got to be honest. I'm a doctor and I know what addictions can do to people, to relationships. This has been the best nine months of my life, but this is a deal-breaker for me.
"If you don't stop taking the pills, I'll have to end the relationship. I want to marry you; hell, I've even bought the ring. I was just waiting for the right moment to ask you, but this changes everything. I'm here for you and if you are going to go through a withdrawal phase, we'll face it together. I'm realistic enough to know that love isn't just about the good times, but if you choose the pills, I'll have to ask you to leave. Please, Jill, let me help you." Aaron was so distraught the last few sentences had come out in ragged breaths.
Jill tearfully replied, "Oh, Aaron. I'm so sorry to put you through this. I'm so scared. I never want to go back to the way I was before the Blue Coyote. You didn't know me then. I didn't care whether I lived or died." Tears poured down her face. Suddenly, she remembered the psychologist, Sean.
"Aaron, there was a psychologist at the motel. He and a medical doctor, Sam, chose not to take the pills. He gave the rest of us his business card and told us to call him if we ever wanted to talk. I trusted him. We all did. I'm going to call him. I think I kept his card in my wallet. Maybe he can help."
She stopped crying and began leafing through her wallet. She found the card and dialed Sean's number.
"This is Sean Moriarty, may I help you?"
"Sean, this is Jill Loren. I don't know if you remember me. I met you at the Blue Coyote Motel almost a year ago. We sat by the pool and had a long talk. When we left the motel on Sunday you had slipped your card under my door and wrote a note on it that I should call you if I ever needed to talk to anyone. I do."
"Of course I remember you, Jill. Tell me why you called," Sean said.
Jill began to cry again as the words tumbled out of her mouth in gasps.
"Jill, take a deep breath. I'm here for as long as you need me. Tell me everything."
Sean's voice was warm and comforting. Jill responded, telling him everything that had happened over the last few months. When she got to the morning's conversation with Aaron, once again she had trouble speaking. She stopped, took a deep breath, and finished by telling Sean how much she loved Aaron and how frightened she was that she couldn't stop taking the drug.
Sean replied, "You've probably heard of AA or Alcoholics Anonymous. It was started by a doctor and a stockbroker in the 1930s. Neither one could stop drinking. Nothing worked for either of them. They made a decision to help each other and finally, that worked. They found that if you helped keep someone else from drinking you helped yourself as well.
"Sam, the doctor you met at the motel, and I started our own version of helping each other several months after Memorial Day when the drug was beginning to leave our systems. It's worked. We both had some tough times at first, but we got through them and both of us are on the other side now. Finally, Freedom is out of out bodies and we are free from the addiction, but we still talk once a week. It’s been a huge help to both of us.
“You may remember Luisa, the Brazilian woman. She's been part of our group for about four months. Her husband was murdered in the Amazon while he was there on business. She wanted to stop taking the drug because of her infant son. I would say she's doing quite well. She has some down days, but who doesn't? Are you familiar with Skype?" Sean asked. "It plays a big part in how I believe we can help you. We talk in a group call via Skype every Wednesday night at 9:00 p.m. I'd like to invite you to join us. Please, Jill, I can almost promise that you'll be helped."
"Thanks, Sean. You've given me hope that I can stop. If I can stop taking the drug, this wonderful life I'm sharing with Aaron is a real possibility. We already have Skype and I look forward to seeing as well as talking to you Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. And Sean, again, thank you for everything."
She turned to Aaron who had been listening to every word. He was smiling and held his arms out to her. "You can do this, Jill; you can do this," he said.
CHAPTER 37
The months following the Memorial Day weekend had not been kind to Jeffrey or Maria. Jeffrey continued his downhill slide into the depths of insanity. Maria realized that she could no longer reach him and thought he had probably gone mad. He continued with his experiments, but he no longer even came to their house, taking his meals in the basement lab and sleeping there. Maria had stocked the second refrigerator with things he could eat standing at one of the lab tables while he worked on his experiments, but Jeffrey often forgot to eat. He stopped shaving and his hair turned completely white. Piles of unopened mail and journals were stacked everywhere. When Maria looked into his eyes, she knew that the man she had known and loved had gone to a place far beyond her reach.
He stopped pumping Freedom into the motel rooms and there was only enough left to occasionally fill the office area. She didn't know how it worked and increasingly, he neglected to turn it on. Maria knew the day was rapidly approaching when it would run out and she was also out of her anti-aging hormone injection.
Early one afternoon, Maria went down the dark stairway to the lab, intent on trying to reason with Jeffrey by taking him his favorite meal. Maybe that would work and she could get him to make more of the anti-aging hormone for her. She was concerned that he may have slipped too far out of her reach and he could not or would not create the hormone injections for her any longer. She had to try one more time, vowing to herself to ignore the rats.
"Jeffrey, I've brought you some of your favorite foods. Why don't you take a break and eat them while they're hot?" She set down the large tray filled with plates of slow cooked ribs, mashed potatoes, bacon braised Brussels sprouts, freshly baked bread, and chocolate mousse. He barely acknowledged her, intent only on the food she placed in front of him.
Maria wondered if he even knew who she was. The thought occurred to her that if she could get a supply of the anti-aging hormone, it might be time to take the money in their checking account and just leave the country. Maybe she could go to a country where women weren't afraid of aging. She'd read that women in France aged gracefully. Older women there were just as desirable to men as younger ones. Maybe she should go there. Maria did all their bookkeeping and knew to the penny how much money they had in the bank and they had a lot. There certainly was enough for Maria to live very well in another country for the rest of her life.
Sooner or later she knew that she was going to have to get used to not being able to get Freedom or her anti-aging hormone.
Well,
she thought,
other people have lived through withdrawals, I guess I can too.
But she thought she'd at least try to get Jeffrey to give her a supply one last time.
While he was eating, she looked around for her hormone injections. Jeffrey had always kept the hormone in a drawer in the large desk under the television screen. His face was nearly buried in his plate. He had begun eating like an animal, shoveling the food into his mouth, no longer even bothering with silverware, although he had taken a big knife he used in his experiments from a drawer to cut the ribs.
Closely watching him, she edged over to the desk. She put her arm behind her and quietly pulled the drawer open. Her hand searched the drawer from front to back, from side to side, but nothing was in there. Just as quietly, she closed it. Maria thought of ways she could approach Jeffrey to get the drugs she wanted, finally deciding to use the oldest method known to women. She knew he had once loved her deeply. She decided to try and tempt him with thoughts of having sex with her. In his present state, she didn't know if anything would work, but she was determined to try.
"I hope you like your meal," she said. "I want to please you, Jeffrey. It's been a long time since you came to the house. After you finish eating, why don't we go there together? We could go to the bedroom and spend a long, lovely afternoon together. I really have missed you," she said, looking for any signs that her words were registering with him. When he answered, she knew they had registered and that she would never again get him to provide Freedom or the anti-aging hormone to her.
"Maria, I know what you want and why you came down here. Do you think I'm stupid? You want your ‘medicine.' Well, not any more. I know the only reason you married me and stayed with me is because of the hormone and then Freedom. You wanted the hormone so you would always be beautiful. You never loved me. I want you to be ugly. It shouldn't take too long for you to start aging. First, the lines in the face will come. Then your hair will begin to lose its shine and your body will change. After a few years, your chin, jowls, and breasts will sag. No, you won't be beautiful at all. You'll be the person you were always afraid of becoming, old and ugly."