Now Or Never

The morning before my court date, I began to pack. The idea of being a fugitive was frightening, but it was better than the likely alternative: a ten-year prison sentence for the relatively minor offense of robbing a drug dealer.

Everything was set for me to flee the country: all I had left to do was say my goodbyes. I spent the day getting stoned and driving around with a friend to visit all the people who were important to me. Some of them supported my decision; some didn’t. My closest friends knew I was avoiding the consequences of my actions yet again, but they didn’t lecture me about it.

At nightfall, as my friend drove off, I thought about what I was about to do. Once I took this step, all I had ahead of me would be more problems with fewer people to help me. I had grown used to running away, but at that moment, standing in front of my parents’ house, I was tired of it. I stumbled inside, determined for once to do the right thing. I was twenty-one, and for the first time in my life I would choose the difficult but responsible path.

That was nine years ago. In eight months my sentence will be over. Life in prison hasn’t been easy, but if I had chosen to run, I believe I’d be dead right now.

Alex Papalaskaris
Troutville, Virginia

“Do you want to feel better than you’ve ever felt in your whole life?” he asked.

I hesitated. Better than I’d ever felt? That sounded good. Better at all would have been pretty good, in fact. I was seventeen and living in a strange city three thousand miles from my family. Though no stranger to pot and psychedelics, I had never even seen cocaine before that night. Now I was considering letting someone I’d just met inject it into my arm.

Beads of sweat shone on his forehead. “C’mon. I promise you’ll like it. You can’t not.”

We were sitting on a futon, our voices hushed because my housemates were making chili on the other side of the door. He rested a blackened, bent spoon on top of a dictionary between us, pulled two orange-capped syringes out of his bag, and handed one to me. He popped the cap off his, stuck the needle in a glass of water next to his bed, and pulled water up into the syringe. With shaking hands he unfolded a pink piece of paper and tapped the powder inside it into the spoon, then squirted the powder gently with water from the syringe.

“The works are brand new,” he assured me. “And I’ve got alcohol swabs.”

I thought of a friend who had died in a car accident a year earlier, just before I’d dropped out of high school. After that, I had promised myself I’d live life as fully as I could. How could I pass up this opportunity and still say I was keeping my promise?

When he stuck the needle into the spoon, the sound of metal scraping against metal made me shiver.

He held up the syringe full of cocaine, tapping it to get the bubbles to rise. Then he repeated the process with the syringe I was holding. When he was finished, he handed mine back to me. I accepted it hesitantly. Would this change my life?

“I’ll do the first shot, just in case it’s bad,” he offered, already rolling up his sleeve. I watched as he wiped his arm with the alcohol swab and injected the cocaine. After he’d pulled the needle out, he set it on the bed and lifted his arm to his mouth, licking the blood. He turned to me with bulging eyes. “You’ve got to do yours,” he breathed. “It’s great.”

A voice inside me still protested.

“I’ll do it if you don’t want it,” he said.

Wait, wait: I had to think. This wasn’t a good idea. But I didn’t want to miss my chance. What if I died the next day? Would I regret not having had this experience?

“C’mon, babe,” he whispered. “It’s now or never.”

Joyanna Priest
University Park, Maryland

My three-year-old daughter, Devon, was excited about my mother’s visit. Devon had met her grandma only once and had no memory of it. She happily played in the airport while we waited for Grandma’s plane to land.

I was looking forward to my mother’s visit as well, but for different reasons. I had a three-week business trip to Asia coming up, and I wouldn’t have been able to go if Mom hadn’t been willing to stay with Devon. I couldn’t have imagined entrusting my daughter to anyone else for that long.

When my mother arrived, she rushed to scoop her granddaughter into her arms, and Devon squealed, “Grandma, you’re here! Do you like where Mommy works?”

My mother and I exchanged puzzled glances. “But, honey,” my mother said to Devon, “we’re at the airport. Maybe tomorrow we can go and see where Mommy works.”

“No, Grandma, Mommy works here. She works on airplanes.”

I realized then that my child was three years old, and I had missed much of her life as I’d jetted around the globe. I loved my job, but that day I went home, called my boss, and resigned. My mother, my daughter, and I spent the next three weeks getting to know one another as a family.

Bridget McNamara-Fenesy
Portland, Oregon

My patient sits opposite me and tosses her hair behind her shoulder. She has striking features, teal blue eyes, and intractable epilepsy. No matter which medication I prescribe for her, she either still has seizures or becomes too sleepy to function.

She is also an unmarried mother, and we have talked about her finding someone to live with her, in case she has a seizure, but she says she can’t. Her seven-year-old son prances around the room, then rolls a magazine up into a tube and asks me to “talk into the microphone.” I tell him I need to speak to his mother right now. I am trying to explain to her the importance of seeing an epilepsy expert who can evaluate her for surgical treatment. Her son pushes the rolled-up journal into his mother’s face, and she says, “Mommy loves Teddy. Mommy is speaking into the microphone for Teddy.”

I look at my watch. My next patient is waiting. “It’s important that you consider this treatment,” I tell her. “The mortality rate for status epilepticus is 50 percent.” Status epilepticus is a state of continuous seizing and can occur anytime an epileptic stops taking anticonvulsant medication. This patient frequently forgets to refill her medications on time.

She leans forward, grabs her son around his waist, and pulls him into her. “He takes care of me now. There really isn’t anyone else.”

I repeat that she needs to consider this surgical treatment.

“Yes, yes,” she says. “Next time we can talk about it.”

Name Withheld

My youngest sister, my wife, and I were in Juárez, Mexico, trying vainly to arrange for my brother-in-law to fly from Athens, Greece, to Mexico City. Kaled was stuck at the Athens airport without any money, having just deserted the army of a Middle Eastern country. He had only a few hours before he would be discovered and apprehended.

After four Mexican travel agencies failed to get us a plane ticket, we decided to go back across the border to an agency in El Paso, Texas. I looked at my watch: time was running out. I hoped our agent wouldn’t be too nosy; we couldn’t tell her that we were helping a deserter escape.

With extraordinary efficiency, the agent in El Paso purchased the ticket and thirty minutes later confirmed that Kaled had picked it up.

At two o’clock the next day, we drove to the old Juárez airport, which was like something out of Casablanca. Kaled came through customs without any trouble, and we were halfway to the revolving door when an official came over and asked Kaled to come to his office.

I told Kaled to give me all his papers, everything. Then I handed the pile of papers to the official, asking casually if we might have a few moments with Kaled while he checked the documents. Once the official was distracted, we disappeared into the crowd of travelers, leaving all of Kaled’s documents — and his identity —  behind.

Name Withheld

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