Did I Deserve to Die When I Was Drunk?

When I meet Peter, he is the first patient I’ve cared for in almost a full year who is capable of smiling. During this pandemic, almost all the patients in our ICU have been so critically ill that they could not smile. They were intubated and sedated, a tube sticking out of their mouth and taped to their cheeks, or they were suffering, flat and grimacing, or they were out of breath, struggling to breath, gasping for breath, or they were panicked, wondering whether they even wanted to live through this pandemic, if taking up a bed was a disservice to those who were more likely to survive.

Peter has been in the hospital for several weeks. He came in because of drinking. I forget exactly why: I care for so many people who come in with complications from alcohol. Maybe he was vomiting blood, so much that a smaller hospital worried whether they’d even have enough blood to transfuse, or maybe they had to stick a tube that inflated a balloon into his esophagus to stop the bleeding. Maybe in the wake of liver failure, he’d required medications to keep his blood pressure up. Maybe his rhythm had changed unexpectedly after having surgery after surgery to repair gaping holes blown through his gut by the poison he drinks. I don’t remember, but maybe it’s important to know that I see so many people grazing death’s grasp because colonial violence robbed them of their lands, spiritualities, languages, foods, that they crave the same drink that their parents before them sought, that it’s hard to even keep track.

I’m so sick of taking care of drunk people.

When Peter smiles at me, the whole world sings. He has a salt and pepper beard, ending in a sharp point three inches from his chin. His hair is greasy, long, and disheveled. While he’s been in the hospital for weeks, he’s surprisingly independent. He is in his 80’s and, when he stands, he barely comes up to my collarbone.

He asks for things often. He rings the call bell and, in his sleepy sweet voice, says, “Appa jui.” He is asking for apple juice and he sounds like a toddler and I realize I’m in love. He hits the call bell at one in the morning and asks to get out of bed. I tell him I don’t usually get people out of bed in the middle of the night because it’s a higher risk for falls. He looks up at me with his puppy dog eyes and says, “Pleeeeaaaaaaaasssssseeeeee?” And I say, “Peter! Of course! If you’re gonna ask me like that!!”

He smiles so big for all of my shifts with him and I can’t say no. I just hope he doesn’t ask for my social security number because I’ll drop the digits in his phone.

I can tell someone’s withdrawing from outside the room. They frog leg, their feet touching and knees splayed out. You see the frog leg, you know it’s withdrawal.

Four years ago, I started throwing up every time I drank. I didn’t stop drinking at first. One night, I sipped a whiskey ginger tall with dinner during trivia and poured out a flowing stream of puke into the downtown bar’s bathroom almost immediately after. I had no idea then what was wrong with me. I knew drinking triggered it, but I didn’t know why. I was only 27, I thought, I should be allowed to fuck around for at least a few more years.

Within a few days, I was so sick I couldn’t drink water and could barely get out of bed. I wondered if I was pregnant or had a small bowel obstruction. It had to be something other than alcohol. An ER nurse friend guessed a diagnosis of gastritis and told me to get to a doctor and go on protonix. After a few more days of throwing up soup and Gatorade, I went to a relatively affordable clinic. The provider gave me protonix and told me to avoid alcohol and caffeine. She told me to pay attention to triggers. I told her I would.

I took the meds daily and told my friends, “I can’t drink anymore.” And, for a few weeks, I didn’t. But, when I went on vacation with my long-distance boyfriend and had to forget that I was queer and brown and dating a straight white man, that I’d abandoned my desires to stay with a person who I loved but who could not acknowledge the fullness of who I was, I mixed gin and tonics. I realized that protonix could help me drink. If I took pills daily, I could also stay drunk.

You know how you just, work a little harder if the patient’s not a homeless drunk?

Before I got sick, I was drunk. I started drinking at noon, I drank at least six to eight drinks a night, I went to bed with a glass of wine. I drunk drove up onto medians more times than I can remember. 45 had been elected and, while I didn’t actively want to die, I did think dying would be easier than doing the hard work of creating safety for my communities, or watching my Muslim friends be put in concentration camps, or fighting back. Dying would be easier than confronting the overwhelming whiteness of my relationship, easier than getting my boyfriend to give a fuck, easier than getting him to fight as hard as I knew we both needed to.

Some nights, immediately after the election, I found men. Men in Alaska are easy. They look at you like they’ll build you a cabin if you hold their hand. I got drunk and slept with strangers and friends of friends three times before I told my boyfriend. He knew I was queer; he knew I was planning to treat our relationship as an open one. He did not know that desperation lived within me, that I was scared to go to bed alone because of what I’d do to myself. When I told him, he was shocked and disgusted and didn’t speak to me until he said that we could break up or we could be monogamous. I chose monogamy and straightness and the safety of a white partner.

I also chose drinking. I found a group of friends who drank every night. Sometimes, we went to the strip club and bought each other lap dances. They often set me up in their guestrooms and didn’t let me drive home. Sometimes, I got in my car with my flask and drank whiskey straight. I was a good drunk driver, I told myself. Anyway, no one’s on the roads, I live in Alaska. I won’t hurt anyone else, I always thought, I’ll just kill myself and that’s fine.

Even if we withdraw him, he’s just gonna keep drinking.

My boyfriend and I decided to move to San Diego. We’d live together for the first time in six years. We were giving our relationship everything we had. I loved him, I’d spent almost a decade with him, and I didn’t want to lose him. Our life was idyllic. On every day off, we hiked and surfed and drove through the desert. The sun was always shining, the weather was always the same. It was perfect for someone else, but it wasn’t the life I wanted. We went to clubs a few times a month and danced against sweaty strangers. Those nights, I’d get just one drink, or just two drinks. The next day, I found myself in a rage: when alcohol flowed through me, it changed everything in my body. I screamed at him about tiny things and stormed out of the house. I was a freshly lit fire and I wanted to burn everything in my path. I critiqued our relationship, watched him shrink and apologize, knew that he wasn’t going to change. We’d been through the same cycles many times before.

When the alcohol truly left my system another day later, I felt such immense guilt and shame. I didn’t want to hurt the person who’d loved me for so long. I didn’t want to get my needs met, change things, if it meant losing him. I was the angry one so I must be wrong, I thought. I could keep quiet and pretend things were okay for a little while longer. So many people did the same thing, why couldn’t I?

I just don’t get why people do drugs. I’ve been through hard things in my life and I’ve never turned to drugs, why should they?

After I broke up with that boyfriend, it took another four months and riding my bicycle across India for me to be ready to stop drinking. It didn’t feel good anymore. I said to myself, I’ll stop drinking for a year and see what happens. At the end of that year, I accidentally took a sip of a gin and tonic at a party and felt fear surge through my body. I spent the night shaking and crying and recounting what my life was like when I was drunk and in a straight relationship and living so close to whiteness. I didn’t want that, I never wanted to go back, I never wanted to drink any kind of alcohol again, not kombucha, not bitters, nothing that could make me that person.

I’ve been sober for three years when I meet Peter. He smiles at me and I realize for the first time that nursing is an act of love, that the story of helping an older man stand up and watch the news at one in the morning is a love story, that I receive love so abundantly from the people I’m paid to care for.

I wish we could just put beer in their feeding tubes. It’s easier than withdrawing them.

I’ve been an ICU nurse for almost a decade before I confront my supervisor about the racism of my coworkers. Indigenous people have been through so much violence at the hands of people who look like many of my coworkers. It’s not compassion fatigue if you never had any compassion to begin with. Sure, they might be burnt out, I tell her, but I feel burnt out because of the racist comments I hear at work. I feel burnt out knowing that’s how my coworkers feel about our patients. I do not say that they’re also speaking about me when they talk about drunks. I do not add myself to this conversation.

It just wears on you, you know. Taking care of our patient population.

I leave my shifts wondering: Does someone deserve to die if they are drunk? Does someone deserve to lose the life they desire — or the chance to desire — if they are drunk? Did I deserve to die when I was drunk?