…………………………………The Next Dose

"Johnny? Hey, kid," Dallas had gone over to him, touched him gently on the shoulder. Johnny turned his head slowly and looked up at him.

"Hey, Dal," he said. His eyes were glassy, glazed. I noticed he wore only socks and figured they took his shoes away, the danger of the shoelaces. People have hung themselves with less.

"How they treatin' you?" Dallas' voice had lost that hard, cool edge.

"Okay," It wasn't an answer. It was Johnny's way of not complaining.

I stood in the doorway, keenly aware of my status as an observer. Ponyboy stared at the bandages on Johnny's wrists and looked scared to talk to him. I saw him look gratefully at Dally for carrying the burden.

Dally seemed to have forgotten both me and Ponyboy. All of his considerable attention was focused on Johnny.

As for Johnny, well…He sat up slowly and with some difficulty. He couldn't quite seem to focus his eyes. Dallas spoke to him soothingly and slowly, subconsciously accommodating.

A nurse took a step into the room, looked at me, Dally, and Ponyboy with mild surprise, nodded at Johnny, and left.

"Why'd she come in here?" Ponyboy said to Johnny before he remembered he was scared to talk to him. Johnny looked at the doorway and then at Ponyboy with his unfocused eyes.

"It's checks," he said, and took a deep breath before he explained, "they gotta check every 15 minutes, make sure I'm still alive,"

It was bright outside and the sun streamed through the bars on the window. My bullet wound cramped with pain and I realized I was getting close to missing my next dose.

I had stopped listening to the boys' conversation, I heard only the tones. The pain made me light headed and it was like watching a movie in a vaguely familiar foreign language, if you stop concentrating it makes no sense at all.

The pattern of bars on the floor caught my eye. It was all shadow and light, and the pain began to intensify. I felt for the wall behind me and leaned against it.

Maybe because of the haze of pain I was beginning to see things through I noticed the pull and tug of emotions on Ponyboy's face. He seemed at once scared of Johnny and sorry for him, but he also seemed to blame him. When Dally was saying something softly to Johnny I saw a hard look on Ponyboy's face. A look that took in the bars on the window, the dirt in the corners, Johnny's bandaged wrists and glassy expression, and I saw that he blamed Johnny for where he ended up.

No such hardness entered Dally's expression and I saw that he doesn't blame Johnny for anything.

Along with the pain from the bullet wound I began to get a headache, a single pulsing point of pain and at one point Johnny closed his eyes and touched his temple with two fingers, like he felt my headache, too.

A different nurse came in and I saw how devastatingly young she was, her hair as dark as Johnny's, swept up under a crisp white cap. She looked at me, Ponyboy, and Dallas in a strangely apologetic way.

She held a paper medicine cup in one hand and a glass of water in the other. She approached Johnny slowly and when he looked up at her she smiled softly.

"Here," she said, tapping the pills into his hand. He put them in his mouth and she handed him the cup of water. After he'd swallowed them he opened his mouth so she could see that he'd swallowed them. I watched Ponyboy watch Johnny do this and I saw his embarrassment for Johnny. Ponyboy looked down, kicked lightly at the floor with the toe of his sneaker.

The glazed glassy look, he was drugged. I would read later, in the hospital notes, that after he was stabilized he refused to take the pills they brought him but he was only 16, he didn't have the right to refuse treatment. For the first few days they had to strap him down and inject the drugs into him, directly into his muscle.