A/N: This chapter is pretty much a two-parter with chapter 8; I want them to be separate, and you'll see why. We're nearing the end, here (though this is not the last chapter!), and a lot of you are going to hate me for how this chapter ends. I promise I'll update as soon as I feel that I've scared and thrilled enough of you.
"My baby's got the lonesome lows,
Don't quite go away overnight;
Doctor Blind, just prescribe the blue ones.
If the dizzying highs don't subside overnight,
Doctor Blind, just prescribe the red ones…" – Emily Haines
--
Chapter Seven: Dose (Over)
Reid's mother, Diana, has a PhD in Medieval Literature. She taught at several universities before her first psychotic episode, when Reid was seven. She read him every book that she could think of and taught him the same things that she had taught her students.
Imagine her, in the Bennington Sanatorium, feeling a little dizzy one day, but she's on so many medications that nobody at the sanatorium notices it. Maybe she has a few bouts of nausea, but it's all written off as side effects.
These things happen.
Imagine Diana Reid having some problems with her eyesight one day, and then maybe a horrifying headache or two. Migraines. But she's not a healthy woman, and headaches have been common throughout her life.
Imagine Reid's mother on Friday night—the night of his bad trip—overcome by a sudden headache so powerful that she vomits, that she loses control, that finally the doctors notice that something is very wrong.
In the office in the middle of the night, Reid listens to the voice on the other end of the line, saying that they've been trying to get through to him for days. They tell him the bad news and say that they'll call back when they know more. He hangs up the phone, stares into JJ's confused eyes for a moment, and then leaves without a word.
He can't say it.
He can't tell her.
He needs a hug, a kiss, a sweet warmth that he knows only Dilaudid will give, and the need overwhelms him so much that he can think of nothing else.
--
An aneurysm is a weak spot in a blood vessel that fills itself with blood until it balloons out past normal size. It may put pressure on surrounding nerves or, in the case of cerebral aneurysms, surrounding brain tissue.
They can be genetic, or from a previous congenital disorder. And sometimes they just happen. Sometimes someone will sit down with the newspaper one morning and end up dead on the kitchen floor.
A small brain aneurysm is not necessarily fatal. The vessel may just mend itself, the blood flow repaired, and except for a few headaches nobody's the wiser. The true problems only come when the aneurysm itself bursts.
Reid knows all of this. He forgets where he learned it but it has been stored deep in his mind for years, just waiting to be spoken aloud, and now that the time is right for it he can't bear to form the words.
He tries, but can't remember the last time that he and his mother spoke face to face.
He hasn't sent her a letter in two weeks.
What you don't know really will hurt you.
When an aneurysm bursts, there's often little the doctors can do except try to prevent more bleeding in the brain. Brain damage is often a result, if the patient survives.
Imagine all of Diana's brilliance, that brilliance that possibly drove her mad; take all of that and throw it away forever.
It will never be okay again.
Approximately forty percent of all brain aneurysm victims do not survive the first 24 hours. They simply hemorrhage to death. Some experience brain damage, and others recover with no ill effects.
Blood and bone and brains.
Reid fumbles his key in the lock of his front door and practically falls over when he finally gets it and the door swings open under his weight. He staggers to his bathroom and feels around for the syringe in the dark until it pricks his hand sharply, and when he yelps the sound is swallowed up into nothing.
--
Sometime on Friday night, when Reid was twitching on his bathroom floor, in the depths of his nightmarish trip, the assistants of the Bennington Sanatorium found Diana Reid on the floor of her room, trembling and soaked in sweat, with one side of her face sagging and numb. Drool in a puddle on the ground beside her open mouth.
Mother and son, hundreds of miles apart but in the same position, vulnerable and alone on the floor.
They shaved her head and opened her skull and exposed the brain below at the site of the bleed; they clipped the burst blood vessel, sealing it off, and drained the blood and at some point in the procedure somebody remembered the statistics and thought that maybe they should call Reid.
Sometime on Friday night, someone tried to tell him that his mother was dying, and Reid never answered the phone. He remained wrapped in unconsciousness past the 24-hour mark that was the critical point for his mother, and all the time the phone was ringing and all the time he was sleeping off the drugs.
And when he awoke on Saturday, his mother was still alive and Reid unplugged the phone, obsessed with his own problems; and as Diana drifted into a coma Reid was wandering the streets of Quantico, hungry for a fix.
Right when she needed him most, he abandoned her.
--
Reid crawls to his bedside table and pulls out the newest bottle of Dilaudid, the one he bought a week ago but hasn't used yet, as his mother haunts his mind. This sample was not cut with a psychedelic. He asked. He wanted to know.
His hand shakes so hard that he drops the syringe twice before he gets a good grip on it.
Reid doesn't even notice how much Dilaudid he loads into the needle's chamber. It's maybe a bit more than his bad trip, maybe a bit less. He's not sure and he doesn't care. Tears threaten to loosen themselves from his eyes as he rolls up the sleeve of his right arm.
He ties the tourniquet so tightly that his fingers go numb.
On Friday night, as he indulged in the darkness of his addiction and nearly killed himself in the process, his mother Diana was dying. The Sanatorium said that they were keeping her stable, but that it was a Grade Three aneurysm. They were going to try to prevent any further bleeding, but nobody knew if she'd wake up. Nobody knew if she'd be the same if she did.
All that time and all that love and care spent on her, and now it no longer matters.
Guilt burns through him. He should have been there. He should have been able to answer the phone.
Reid's arm is so tense that he has to try three times to find the vein, and his arm aches from the long needle and the plunger seems to depress in slow motion, forever and ever and ever.
His eyelids flutter shut.
All so gracefully.
A kiss, a hug, a sweet warmth—and something else.
Something empty.
Reid knows what's happened before he thinks it over. The conclusion before the evidence, although it's more suspenseful the other way around.
It starts in his arm, where the needle went in three times before he got the vein: there in that third spot, there's a feeling of numbed, high pain.
Imagine your arm falling asleep, and as it wakes up it aches in a way that makes your bones creak.
Like that.
It spreads. It moves. This empty, painful nothingness. Through down to Reid's torso, to his toes and his fingertips and his scalp and behind his eyes.
It hits his stomach and he feels nauseous.
It hits his brain and his head explodes in ringing.
It hits his heart and makes it flutter too fast to keep track, almost like a hum, and Reid trembles right along with it.
This is nothing like the last time he took a little too much Dilaudid.
This is worse.
Last time, Friday night, as his mother's aneurysm burst and Kevin Pullman's body was still warm, there was fear and anger and horror and dread.
Now, there is nothing but this white blankness that is beginning to encroach on the edges of Reid's mind.
Last time there were images in his head and magnified senses and overwhelming nausea. Now there is only the sick knowledge that he has gone too far to come back, and a strange feeling of static, of chaos, that is getting louder and louder and louder.
Too late to go back.
Too much to handle.
And instead of being loud and gory, it's quietly terrifying, a silent and out-of-control rollercoaster.
His vision blurs, doubles, triples, and never returns back to normal.
Fumbling one trembling hand into his messenger bag for his cell phone, Reid leans against the wall beside his bed and tries to dial 911, but his hand is too shaky and he's beginning to foam at the mouth.
His finger hits speed-dial number six. JJ's number.
It rings three times before Reid loses control of his grip and drops the phone, but it doesn't matter because he knows he's lost the ability to speak. Aphasia.
He closes his eyes, and behind his eyelids all he sees is white nothingness.
Reid curls up, pulling his knees in towards his chest and tucking his arms beneath his legs, and knows, without research or eidetic knowledge, that he's having an overdose.
