Sedated (Hozier)

SANTANA'S POV

I looked into her eyes and noticed the jump in her pupils...like she was craving something but that's crazy. That couldn't be the answer to all this nonsense, could it? I mean sure, she had a little pill addiction in high school and a little relapse before she got Beth back but from then on, my wife didn't even like taking aspirin.

But then again, the recklessness...coldness...and emotional absence of the woman I love could all be because of something I wasn't even thinking I needed to pay attention too.

"Are you okay?" I asked her as I continued to rub at her back and she gave me a small smile, she looked trapped, something wasn't right.

Call me paranoid but now I was questioning just how much of this was because she was back on pills.

I mean, she has way more access to drugs than ever before, it makes sense.

"Yeah, I just need to sit down, love."

"Want to go talk in the living room, it's way more comfortable out there?"

"Okay, I need to change first though."

"Me too."

"How about I take Sasha over to Cassidy's and leave you two to talk?" Beth asked, reminding me that she was still there.

I was about to speak but Quinn beat me too it.

She pulled from my arms and wrapped her arms around Beth, which was an unusual sight these days.

"I love you, Sweets. I'll come get you when we're done."

"Are you still leaving, Mami?"

I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after 4, I'd need to practically fly to the airport to get there on time.

"Not today, kiddo. Go see your friend and make sure you grab the diaper bag."

"Okay. I love you guys."

"We love you too." Quinn said and then Beth was gone.

"Let's go change." I said and Quinn gave me a tight smile.

"Yup."

Its been months since we've had sex, Quinn could have a full body tattoo and I wouldn't know...our marriage was definitely lacking and I couldn't blame it solely on her.

Not if she was using again...I'd dealt with drugs first hand, there was no way you could be yourself and be hooked.

You become cold, a zombie and even if you manage to be functioning, like she clearly was, your entire personality changes.

I followed her to the stairs and she hesitated.

"You go up, I need to grab my purse and my phone."

"I'll wait."

And she didn't smile that time as she looked at me...which meant she was hiding something, which meant the harsh remark was coming, in 4, 3, 2...

"I'm not going to call him. I told you it was done, that he means nothing to me...you don't have to hover for fuck's sake." She grumbled.

"I just want to help you up the stairs, Q, don't be a bitch about it."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine, in fact I know a craving when I see one. What are you on, Q?"

She was a deer in the headlights and went to reach for her purse that was thrown on the couch but I was faster.

I snatched it up and she immediately put her balled up fists on her hips.

"I can't believe that you're treating me like this!"

"Tell me you're sober, Quinn. That you're not jumping inside to get what's in this bag."

"You pushed me against a bookshelf! I hurt my back, simple as that. I just...give me my purse."

"No."

She attempted to lunge and groaned as she grabbed her back.

"Please? Don't do this to me."

All of her emotions today, her lack of control over her tears in just the last hour explained it. She was coming down hard.

I opened the purse and was greeted by two bottles.

Her eyes widened when I pulled them out and threw her purse back where I found it.

The bottles were nearly empty but for a few pills in each. One was Xanax and the other Oxycontin, they were both prescribed to Ishmael Herrera.

I didn't expect for her to dissolve into a fit of tears and fall to her knees before me but that's exactly what she did.

"Just one...please?"

"Is this why you keep him around...are you trading sex for drugs, Q?"

"You make me sound like an addict." She growled, looking indignant.

"Look at you, Q...you are on the floor begging for drugs, begging to be numb again. You're and addict."

"Please, Santana, I'll do anything."

"Apparently, even screw up your marriage by fucking some dude. Get up." I demanded reaching a hand out to her but she just stayed there on her knees crying into her hands. "I swear on Abuela's and my brother's graves that if you don't get the fuck up, I'm filing for divorce and reporting you to the medical board first thing in the morning, get the fuck up Quinn, NOW."

I watched as she reached for my legs and then used them to pull herself back up to a standing position.

She looked like shit as her eyes kept flickering to the bottles in my hand.

"I gotta say, love that knowing you weren't just fucking around for no reason, makes me feel better. I can deal with addiction...I've done some fucked up things for cocaine, so in some twisted fucking way, I get this. I can make sense of this. Your timing is shit but NOW it's fixable."

"Does that mean, you'll let me have one...please?"

"If it were me begging for coke, would you give it to me?"

She looked at me in bewilderment, fighting her instinct to say no because she didn't want me to respond in kind but she couldn't lie to me, not now.

"No."

"There's your answer, Q. If I were you, I'd get the phone and call your boss or whoever and take a leave of absence."

"Just like that, potentially throw it my career away?"

"You don't think a mistake is coming, you're a surgeon for babies. Tell me you haven't operated high on this shit and I'll give you one."

Her eyes went wide and tears formed.

"I can't."

I pulled my phone from my pocket and handed it to her.

"Make the call."

After she spent thirty minutes getting reamed out by her residency director she was suspended pending review.

She didn't tell them she had a drug problem and she was a liability to them, like I would have because she's Quinn and self-preservation is in her DNA.

When she gave the phone back she groaned and curled into the couch.

"It burns." She gasped. "Please, just one?"

A part of me was tempted to help but I couldn't give in.

I knew that this pain was unbearable because her nerves had forgotten how to deal on their own.

I spent my extra time working at drug abuse clinics, coming down from pills in some cases was worse than coke.

"Has it been four years or six?" I asked her as she sat on the couch rubbing at her arms.

"Four. All the standing, the running around wore me down."

"You've got a problem, Q. I should have seen it. It's my job to know."

"I'm never home. How could you know?"

"You were getting high when Sasha was born, weren't you?"

"Yeah." She smiled, remembering her high. "It was the first time I snorted anything, I get why you loved it so much. The high is so much better, so much faster."

I was sitting there alone with her, as a former addict who until this point barely remembered the feeling of getting so stoned that it makes you smile to remember the rush.

"I need to be honest with you, Q. My cancer is showing signs of advancing, it's aggressive and I'm afraid that I'll die. I need you to be here." I said putting a finger to her temple and then to her heart. "I need you to be sober for me and for the kids because if I die, you are all they have and you don't know them."

"I know. I want to stop. I need to." She muttered as she gritted her teeth. "Just one...please...it hurts so bad. Please?" She begged and I felt so divided.

"It's not going to help you."

"Santana you work with addicts...you know how withdrawal can kill you if you stop cold turkey after years...please...it hurts. Please?"

I wish Carla was here to tell me what to do, or my parents.

Anyone but me.

I didn't give in even after two hours, when she began to vomit and sweat profusely.

The crying also, was gut-wrenching. It was like every tear she hadn't shed in the last four years was coming to the surface.

And I was doing my best not to cry with her.

She needed real treatment, I knew that but I was leaving soon and leaving her to find her own sobriety was not something I was willing to do.

We have a kids and I have to think of them first.

Which is why, while she was hunched over the toilet emptying her stomach I grabbed one pill and brought it to her.

"One...if you'll agree to rehab."

She froze, vomit drool on her chin and nodded.

"Okay, whatever you want, just...please?"

I held out the pill and she snatched it so quickly that I barely felt her fingers touch my palm.

She put the pill between her teeth and smashed it.

The bitterness of it didn't even seem to bother her.

I'm sure if I had crushed, it she would have done back flips for me.

I spent the next hour getting her into the shower and into bed before calling my old rehab center to see if they had a place for her.

And after that, I made a call that was just for me.

"Hey, hot stuff." She said with her usual flirting tone.

"I need you to talk me off a ledge."

Immediately her serious, sponsor hat was back on.

"What happened?"

"I feel like I'm spinning out inside."

"Do you need a meeting?"

"It's Quinn."

"Is she okay?"

"I don't know. So much happened today, Carla. Can you come over?"

"Yeah, just let me wrap things up here and I'll be there in thirty...that good?"

"Thank you!"

"Anytime, hot stuff."

And then I called Beth.

"Mami, is everything alright?"

"Are you alone?"

I had to give it to Beth straight, she deserves it at this point.

"I can be, hold on a sec." After some shuffling and a closed door, she was back. "Okay, what's wrong?"

"You know how she's been cold and unfeeling for as long as we've been back?"

"Yeah, so?"

"She's been popping pills, kiddo. I think it's been going on since we got here. That idiot."

"Her fuck buddy." She said and I groaned.

"I'm still your Mami, no matter how grown you get, respect."

"Sorry."

"Well, he's been writing out prescriptions for her."

"That asshole...crap...sorry. Respect, I'm sorry."

"I'll let that one go because there's no other word, I can think of right now."

"So what now?"

"What would you say about a move to Lima?"

"As in where you grew up?"

"Yes, the place you were born."

"Will she go to rehab?"

"She agreed to it, yes."

"That means she'll be herself again, right?"

"I hope so. I called ahead they have a bed for her...it's a ninety day program. I just have to get her there."

"That's three months...that's Thanksgiving, Christmas...her birthday, Mami. Wow...how will we explain that to Gabe?"

"You let me handle it, I just needed to know that you were in my corner, there will be times that I won't be able to move or cook, or do anything."

"I got you, Mami. No worries."

"One more thing."

"Yeah?"

"You can come home in an hour or two. If they offered to let you stay for dinner, stay."

"Okay, they did and so I'll see you in two hours."

"Okay, I love you, Kiddo."

"I love you too."

I brushed her hair from her face as she slept, happy that in my quick thinking I'd given her one of my sleeping pills instead of what she was really craving.

Her body needed to shut off and so I helped with that.

She looked so damned peaceful and so when her phone rang, I was at ease until I saw the name.

ISH

"Lucy Lu, you quit the program?"

"It's her wife, asshole...she's done with you and your fucking scripts."

"And if I report her to the board?"

"If you do that I will make sure that you go down too, genius."

"I love her, she may not love me but I love her."

"Good for you but she is MY wife."

"Always of course unless she was under me. You don't think I know her marital status, I've been banging her left, right and center, right under your noise, in your bed even for years."

"She's an addict, using you for what you could do for her. How pathetic are you that you need to keep a married woman blitzed out of her mind just to be with you."

"How pathetic are you to not notice? Look, you know now, which is a relief honestly, she was starting to be reckless. She's your problem now."

"Don't call her again."

"Noted." And then he hung up.

"What a cocky motherfucker" I grumbled.

"I guess she has type."

I turned around and there stood Carla with Chinese food and a smile.

"How much of that did you hear?"

"All of it...from what I gather, Quinn's back on pills and is trading sex for them."

"She's been sleeping around on me for six years, four of which she was taking Oxy and Xanax...maybe more."

"Wow."

"She started to come down for the first time in however long, it was bad."

"Where is she?"

"I gave her a sleeping pill, she's passed out."

"Off of one pill, you sure she didn't sneak anything?"

"I took the bottles from her purse."

Carla rolled her eyes and put the bag down on the coffee table.

"Ten years sober and you forgot the mind of an addict. There is always more than one stash, Santana, come on...there is no way that a pill head is knocked out on one sleeping pill. Get with it, boo."

"This is exactly why I needed you here, I didn't even think...shit."

"Plus she's a doctor, chick knows her pills."

"Fuck."

It took all of five minutes to find more pills in more places, including her nightstand.

Once Quinn had gotten in bed, I had gone off to call the rehab, Carla and then Beth, that was plenty of time for her to take something else.

I checked her breathing and she seemed just fine, thankfully.

"You have got to get her help. If she's been going for four years, she's got some damage going on mentally, emotionally, and I'm willing to bet internally."

"I called my rehab, there's a bed waiting for her."

"And she agreed to rehab."

"She did."

"You going to let her fly sober?"

"I don't know, what do I do...I mean I want her to be clean but at the same time, I can't have the kids seeing her spazzing on a plane. Shit, I don't want to see that. Gives me flashbacks."

"How about you leave Beth and Gabriel with me until you get her settled, let them finish out the week here at least although I am more than willing to keep them until Thanksgiving. You take Sasha, and focus on your treatment until you are ready for them."

"This week is a definite but let me talk to them about staying longer, they are old enough to weigh in on that kind of decision."

"Okay, the offer stands, I love your kids and they love me. I live a block from their school, so you wouldn't have much to worry about."

"Thank you so much! You just made this process so much easier."

"Give her a real pill for the plane...whatever she normally takes to be functioning, let her have it until you get to the rehab center. We don't know what damage she has done to herself and I'd rather her withdrawal in treatment than on a plane or in car...or in front of your kids."

"You're right."

"Just make sure that you're the one in charge of the pills."

"I'll do my best."

"Try not to let her out of your sight for too long."

I had just wanted a normal Sunday, something easy and fun before I left for Lima but things happen the way that they need to.

Had I gone, she would have kept on popping those pills and probably hurt someone...maybe even killed them. I'm surprised she hasn't yet.

But she's been functioning, they are her new normal, so even though it goes against every instinct...I'll let her be high just a little longer.

Just until I can get her some real help.

A/N: This chapter was insanely hard to write. I've dealt with drug addicts up close, I've seen people die because of drugs. Quinn never loved Ish, she loved what he could do for her. I need that to be simple and plain. Drugs change you and make you someone other than who you are. The moral of the story kids is Drugs are bad. Love you to pieces. I wrote this in one go so errors later. I'm off to write a fluffy chapter for 30 Hours...see you soon!