Crash

by Nicole Campon

“Miss, can you hear me? What did you take?” I am being dragged out of my car seat. The clock reads 8:50 am. I am in Ormond Beach, Florida, on my way to my job at a modeling agency. I am dressed in a new, super-cute blazer and leather Cole Haan loafers. I do not remember hearing the sound of the glass breaking or the crash, yet my car has been wrecked. “No narcan!” and “I didn’t take anything!” both spill out of my mouth in a jumbled frenzy. The paramedic is trying to have a heart to heart, mostly by reminding me that there are needles and a spoon on the passenger seat next to me. The marks all over my hands are not helping my case either. “Miss, you overdosed while driving and we are sending you to thehospital. I hope you can get the help there that you need.”

The next thing I remember is being in a hospital bed, ashamed, scared, and in need of a bed pan because I keep throwing up. I was not aware that I was given fentanyl instead of heroin. I knew it looked different, but I hadn’t checked. Most people in their right mind would not be shooting unknown powder in their arms on the way to work–but that is a whole other story. So, I sit in shame, hoping the doctors and nurses do not judge me the way I am already judging myself. A police officer walks in. He is genuinely nice, and I lie and lie and lie. I think I might get away with it, until he gets a phone call. His captain found the 10 bags of fentanyl I just purchased prior to the crash, as well as needles and other pills. I’m fucked.

The nice police officer asks if I would consent to a urine test, which I agree to, so he walks me downstairs. Of course I see someone I know, someone who thinks I am there to visit or do some sort of volunteer service. I try to force out a smile as the tears roll down my face. Of course I run into someone in Recovery, someone who will no doubt get the rumor mills going.

Afterwards, the nice police officer takes me to the back of the hospital to cuff me. He says a car will be coming for me. He is nice enough to let me make a call to my mother, a call which is heartbreaking as much as it is horrific. My poor mother has had a lifetime of bad calls from me. I know she is at work and I will leave her with a day of crying and agony, powerless to help her only child — her only family.

There is nothing more uncomfortable than wearing handcuffs in the back of a police car. It is designed to give you pain. They left me in the back of the car for hours and then led me into a cell that would become my new residence for the next couple of hours. I am all but three blocks from my nice office. I never ever noticed the police station here before.

By the end of the day, I am taken to the Volusia County Jail where I am fingerprinted and my mug shot is taken. As one of the many other steps are being taken, a guard notices tears running down my face. He says, “Don’t worry, honey, it’s not like television.” I had to laugh, because I was not crying because I was scared. I was crying because I do not, for the life of me, know how I ended up here, again. How was it that just a few hours ago I was on my way to my impressive job, with my new car and my nice clothes, and now I am here, in jail? Again! How do I continue to make such bad choices? How and why would I choose to pick up drugs again when I had so many good things going for me? How the hell am I going to get out of this one?

Drugs take away everything; sometimes slowly, sometimes within a minute.