Free Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster by Kristen Johnston Page A

realize the agony was getting far worse with each passing moment. None of their occasional shots of morphine seemed capable of wrangling this kind of pain.
    Oh, the hilarity. Here I am, a gal who’s laid waste to miles and miles of Vicodin. Now when I truly needed it, it was rendered useless? I mean, that’s fucked-up, even for Satan.
    I wondered if pain itself could kill. I tried desperately to concentrate on something happy or pretty, but I couldn’t remember anything, and it was so fucking loud in the ER I couldn’t even think.
    It was only when a nurse angrily tossed open my curtain and shouted, “Miss, do stop screaming, as you’re disturbing the other patients!” did it dawn on me that the constant, earsplitting screams were my own. Later, when thinking about those awful hours—and trust me, I do so as rarely as possible—I’m just crushed that I was so sick and in such terrible straits and clearly so close to death, and yet no one gave a shit about me. Least of all me. Never once did it cross my mind to demand to be treated better. Or to scream at the paramedics to bring up a “stretchie” or to at least drive the speed limit. Or to karate-chop that rude twat of a nurse’s head off.
    You see, in the darkest part of my heart, I’d always known this day would come. I was simply reaping what I had sown, getting exactly what I deserved. So there I lay, the ugliest American, imprisoned in the politest ER in all of London, a creature of my own making—a now silently screaming, sweating, freezing, smelly, and very, very lonely turtle.
    It began to sink in that I might actually be in big, big trouble. That thought was immediately followed by this staggering, mind-blowing realization: that despite years of slowly killing myself, all I wanted, with more passion and ferocity than I’d ever wanted anything else in my entire life, was to live.

five

     

THE ENGLISH PATIENT
     
    when people say they simply don’t understand how a person could keep using drugs or alcohol even after they’ve started to lose their job, their friends, their family, their health, I give them this chilling example:
    After spending a good hour sequestered in my own curtained-off hell in the ER, the shots they consistently gave me must’ve finally started working, because I felt oh-so-slightly better. By that, I mean the level of agony had been dialed down from a twelve to a ten, and my screams had died down to loud moans. Finally, my curtain was drawn back by a nurse endowed with an impressively large bosom and an equally impressive mustache, which, even in my state, I craved to pluck. She was quite sweet, as all women with excessive facial hair seem to be, and she cheerfully began the lengthy process of admitting me to the hospital. She asked no-brainers like name, age, race, etc.
    She then asked me about my health.
    “Do you drink caffeine?”
    “Not much.” (True.)
    “Do you smoke?”
    “A little.” (A lot.)
    “Do you drink?”
    “Not excessively.” (Not counting the two bottles of wine I sucked back a night.)
    “Do you do drugs?”
    “No.” (More than you could even begin to imagine, pretty lady.)
    There I was, in sheer agony and probably quite close to dying, yet I lied instantly. Even though the truth could possibly have saved my life. This is the hardest part for knitting or golf addicts to comprehend. The cold, hard truth of it is, if this woman had said to me at that very moment, “I can guarantee you that all of your pain will go away this instant if you tell me the truth right now,” I would still have lied. Without question.
    That’s how strong He is. When He’s got His evil talons in you, you don’t care. You will lie to protect Him, no matter what happens. He’s your most devoted better half, your longtime lover. He’s adoring and reliable and He’s never let you down. It’s certainly not His fault that He’s killing you. Like a battered wife, you take Him back even though He just knocked out your two