Chapter 12: Here We Go Again

Here We Go Again.

Here We Go Again.

It was early December 2004, and my wife wanted some way to buy me Christmas presents. She seemed to be doing so well. It had been a year and three months since she last touched cocaine. I even trusted her enough to give her back her engagement ring after I had retrieved it from the pawn shop, where she had sold it to buy cocaine.

But that all ended.

I decided that Linda had been doing so well, I would give her $200 cash to buy presents. I gave her the money on a Monday. Tuesday night I came home but she was not there. I stayed up all night waiting for her and she did not come home. I had to go to work the next day, but I called her cell phone and the house repeatedly.

Finally, I called the police and filed a missing persons report. I called everyone we knew to see if anyone knew where she was and if she was OK. Wednesday night came and went, and no sign of Linda. I was just about out of my mind. Thursday nothing. Thursday night I finally got a phone call. She was in a motel in downtown Portland and wanted to know if I would come and get her.

I drove there and she met me in the parking lot because the “friends” she had been partying with were going to spend the night in the motel room and they did not want me to see them. Or perhaps kill them, that is what I thought would have been appropriate.

By the time I got there, Linda felt that she was OK to drive and wanted me to lead the way home. At home, she told me her story.

Having the money had triggered her addiction and once she started partying, she could not control things. Apart from the $200, she had once again pawned her ring. When she got in the car she found that her so called “friends” had stolen everything out of it. Including all of Linda’s used makeup.

“Well, Linda you need to understand, that little party is all the Christmas we are going to have! As far as I am concerned, all I got was a huge load of ‘FUCK YOU!’ for Christmas.”

Christmas Eve was terrible that year. Not just because of the drugs, but Linda had a more expensive present waiting for me. Linda never took care of her teeth and although she had had many appointments with dentists to have minor cavities fixed she never kept them, so Christmas Eve saw us in the dentist’s office having three emergency root canals done.

I could not stand the idea of not giving Linda something for Christmas, so that afternoon I went to Home Depot and got paint, dark purple and light purple. Christmas day I spent repainting our bedroom in her favorite colors. It was a way for me to work off some of the anger I was feeling towards her.

I made us a turkey and we had what Christmas we could. I think we even went to an AA meeting that day.

Linda became good at theft around this time; somehow she managed to steal our ATM card on December 29, 2004, and again on January 17, 2005.

Linda did keep going to school and was putting in just enough work to graduate.

Life continued. For some time, the car Linda bought, which I was now driving, was the subject of our attention. This car was a hunk of junk and could not be trusted to drive on long trips. I used it as my car because I had the shortest commute, only three miles to work, so if I broke down I would not be in terrible trouble.

But we had to get the car licensed and it did not pass the smog check. We took it to a mechanic so he could fix it, or at least charge us the $150 max we had to pay to try and fix it before the state would give us a license. Well the night he had the car, someone stole the wheels off it from his parking lot.

When you give a mechanic your car, they say “not responsible for things stolen from the car.” This is what they mean and we had to get new, or rather used, tires and wheels for the car.

I was sitting in line to have the car re-smog checked, surrounded by dozens of other cars, when suddenly steam started pouring from the engine compartment. I got out of the car and found that the radiator had blown out. I had the car towed back to the mechanic and had the radiator rebuilt. I was now planning on selling the car but I had to be able to drive it to sell it.

Somehow Linda managed to get all the way to March 7 before she managed to get more cocaine.

On April 8, 2005, Linda graduated from her business college. Then she took her certification test and became a Certified Medical Office Assistant.

To celebrate and give Linda a break we took a vacation. This time family was the object. We started by visiting Linda’s favorite escape, the Aquilo B & B, and then we drove down to California. We visited her sister in San Francisco, my niece in Monterey, my family in Los Angeles, then flew from LAX to Wichita Falls to see her parents. It turned out that by driving to LA we saved enough on the airfare to pay for the gas of the road trip.

Linda was never a small girl but especially since her nervous breakdown she had been putting on weight and getting out of shape. She would go with me to the gym every morning, but it was not doing either of us much good. Linda, because of her eating habits, and me because of other medical problems and the fact that when I see my wife enjoying dessert, I want some, too.

When I married Linda, she weighed 240 lbs., but she looked great. When we left for our trip, she weighed 313 lbs., and could barely walk. Even short distances were difficult. When I look at the pictures from that trip, I see a woman I never saw, through my eyes.

The plane trips both ways were miserable. In fact I told Linda that I would not step foot on another plane until I had lost enough weight to be comfortable.

When we got back to LA we spent a day with Linda’s niece. I know Linda was humiliated. We went to the mall, and Linda could not walk more than a few storefronts without having to sit down.

After our time in LA, we drove to Oakhurst, California, a small city just outside of Yosemite Park. My parents have five acres there, and we were going to rest. As soon as we got there, Linda started having problems breathing. Finally we went to the ER, and they told us that Linda had congestive heart failure. They gave her some water-pills and told us to go home and see our own doctor.

We cut our trip short and drove home as straight as we could. That was May 24, 2005.

When we got back, we started seeing doctors. Linda’s cardiologist wanted to run an angiogram to see how Linda’s heart was working. In this test they cut open a vein in your leg and insert a tube all the way up into your heart so that they can see what is going on.

This test is not particularly dangerous but Linda’s condition was pretty bad. Before the procedure, Linda and I drew up a living will called the Five Wishes. We talked about what Linda would like done if the worst should happen. We could not afford a plot in a cemetery, let alone a casket and all the other things needed for a burial. So we would need to have Linda cremated, but what to do with the ashes.

“You know Linda I could put your ashes on the beach?”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“What if I took you to the Aquilo for one last night then put you on the beach there?”

“I think I would like that.”

Linda loved the Aquilo, and in this telling of her story I have only listed a few of the times we stayed there. So we decided on the Aquilo.

In fact the weekend before the procedure we stayed there, but did not tell our friends, Catherine and Ted, who own the place, about our plan.

Fortunately, the procedure went fine. Linda had a rare form of congestive heart failure called stiff heart syndrome where her heart would pump strongly but not relax enough to refill afterward, and so it was not pumping efficiently. The doctor told us that if Linda were to lose weight and take her water-pills she should be fine.

As I have said, this is a somewhat dangerous operation. The big danger is that the vein they put the tube into might start to bleed and within a few minutes the person would be dead. One thing that you should not do after such a procedure is anything that will increase your blood pressure like smoking cocaine.

June 17, 2005, the day after the procedure, Linda managed to steal a check and went out to get drugs. Now to get drugs Linda simply had to go to her favorite strip joint and ask someone for the drugs. Then she could enjoy the show while her new dealer would go and get the drugs.

This time fortunately the dealer never came back, he just stole the money. I have no doubt that if he had Linda would have taken one puff, the stitch in her leg would have blown open, and she would have died within minutes. Most likely she would have been smoking the whole time she was dying.

With Linda now looking for work and our financial picture about to change I made some changes. We refinanced the house and paid off some of our credit card debt. Linda’s car was a joke and we needed something reliable. I was also concerned about the way the price of gas was going up so we bought a Prius.

Although Linda continued to look for work, she also looked for opportunities to get drugs and managed to on July 13th and July 21.

Next: Chapter 13 - What Can I Do

Previous: Chapter 11 - Linda Comes Home

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