Page 33 of All the Way to the River

I was trapped in hell, and I could see no way out.

Our beautiful, sunny two-bedroom penthouse apartment in the East Village—which I had rented for Rayya to make her happy in the last months of her life—had become a dungeon of misery, danger, degradation, drugs.

Rayya kept the shades drawn at all hours of the day now, not only because the light hurt her eyes but also because she had become intensely paranoid that she was being watched by the police, and that they were coming for her.

And to be honest, the police might very well have come for her (for both of us, actually), because our apartment now contained thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of cocaine—some of which Rayya was cooking down and shooting into whatever veins she could find on her beaten-down, disease-ridden body, some of which she was freebasing, some of which she was snorting up her now constantly bloodied nose.

But most of the coke, as of this moment, she had chopped up and laid out in thick rails on the coffee table, next to an overflowing ashtray, a bottle of whiskey, several bottles of morphine and trazodone and Xanax, a stack of fentanyl patches, and a cluster of empty beer bottles.

And these heaping lines of cocaine she counted, weighed, and studied all day long with unwavering focus, the way a miser counts and weighs and studies his piles of coins.

Good question.

What was I looking at?

I was looking at somebody who was supposed to be dead by now—who had been given six months to live over fifteen months earlier—but who simply refused to die.

I was looking at somebody who had recently gotten kicked out of hospice (who gets kicked out of hospice , by the way?) for being aggressive and uncooperative to the kind, generous nurses and support staff who had been trying to help my beloved partner prepare her body and mind for a “death with dignity”—a death that, at this point, Rayya had utterly rejected in favor of plan B, which was to do enough drugs (mostly cocaine) that she could feel immortal, that she could feel nothing .

So far, I had to admit, her plan seemed to be working. It was perhaps the only thing keeping her alive.

Dear God, please save us, maybe she was immortal?

Because who can even live like this?

Who can live on a diet of whiskey, cigarettes, fentanyl, morphine, trazodone, and cocaine—and on a liver that is functioning at only 10 percent?

What else was I looking at?

I was looking at somebody who had once been the only person on earth who could make me feel completely safe and loved, but who now verbally abused me all day long, telling me that I was “a fucking shit show of a fail ure” when it came to taking care of her; that everything I was doing to try to help her was wrong; that I was a “needy little fucking crybaby” who had to “grow the fuck up” and take care of myself; that I was so hopelessly incompetent that I didn’t even know how to make a simple order of goddamn toast anymore—because hadn’t Rayya already instructed me ten fucking times this week to toast the bread in the toaster not once, not twice, but one and a half times in order to get it the right shade of brown?

And hadn’t she already told me to spread the butter all the way to the fucking edges of the toast, for Chrissakes, and not leave any little part of it dry?

Did this toast even look like it was properly buttered?

Did I even listen ? Did I even fucking listen to her anymore?

Did I even pay attention to a single fucking thing she said?

Or was I just a stupid little whiny idiot who instead of getting a life of her fucking own was demanding to be taken care of every minute of the day by somebody who—couldn’t I see it?

—was fucking dying ? And by the way, couldn’t I see that she also needed more cash because she was almost out of coke?

And couldn’t I see that she needed more clean needles, too?

So what was I doing just fucking standing there staring at her like a fucking dumbass, instead of going downtown to get her some more clean gear?

That’s what I was looking at.

I was looking at Rayya Elias—my protector, my hero, my beloved—who had taken the form of a venomous junkie.

I was looking at my worst nightmare.

And I was looking at my own life, my entire heart, in ruins.