A Place To Call My Home

Chapter 20

And if you cut yourself

You will think you're happy

Alex sat next to Piper's hospital bed, trying to focus on the positives. She'd found Piper soon after the overdose and gotten her in the car and to the hospital immediately. Piper hadn't injected the drugs, but had instead been steadily inhaling the heroin over the course of the day. Overall, the doctors kept telling Alex it was lucky she found Piper when she did, otherwise the damage could've been much worse. Alex had taken her to the same hospital she'd been in after the attack, the same hospital she had been going to for all her pregnancy scans. The doctors knew Piper and Alex, and seemed to express genuine concern for the blonde.

The doctors in the emergency room had moved fast to get the various medicines into Piper to stop her body absorbing the heroin, as well as getting fluids into her to combat how dehydrated the heroin had made her. The main doctor told Alex that Piper was stable, but he was concerned about next steps for the blonde. While the nurses took Piper to her hospital room to settle in, the doctor pulled Alex into his office to talk.

"I know how tough the last few months have been for you two, Piper is obviously struggling to cope. It's my responsibility to talk to you about her treatment going forward, I don't want to just send her home when she's recovered from the overdose. She needs proper treatment Alex."

Alex knew where this conversation was heading, it was about money.

"Look, I can pay for it, just tell me what she needs."

"I want her to stay here to detox properly, it won't be pretty if that happens at home. We can give her medication to help with the detox symptoms. It will be a lot easier for her if we do it here, we have a good program we can put her in. Once she's detoxed, we can start therapy."

Alex had seen people detox before, she knew how hard it was. Not only for the person detoxing, but for anyone around them. She didn't care how much it would cost, detoxing would be a lot easier in the hospital. She kept talking to the doctor as he explained the process, and she gave him her details for all the billing.

She sat next to Piper's hospital bed all afternoon, she would not leave that room until the blonde woke up. She'd only just gotten around to calling anyone, Diane was on her way to the hospital but she couldn't get through to Nicky. She already hated Alex so much, this would probably tip her over the edge. Alex watched on as Piper slept, she wasn't sure how to feel. Part of her felt completely responsible for Piper's drug use, but another part didn't. If Alex didn't give her the drugs, she would've just gotten them from somewhere else. That somewhere else probably wouldn't have been safe, and Piper wouldn't have had any idea if the product she was buying was any good, or if it was going to kill her. Alex felt like at least if she gave Piper the drugs, she could control the amount and knew she wasn't getting bad product. But Piper still ended up here, so it obviously wasn't enough.

Piper started to stir, and Alex immediately jumped out of her chair and leaned over the hospital bed, gently running her fingers over Piper's cheeks.

"Hey Pipes." Alex saw the blonde open her eyes and look up at her, Alex smiled out of sheer relief and bent over to kiss Piper gently on the lips. She knew what it felt like to be in this situation, and she didn't want to scare her girlfriend. It was easy to feel stupid in this situation, and it was an easy downward spiral from there.

"Do you remember what happened?"

Alex could see that Piper was desperately trying to work out how she ended up in the hospital, but she looked confused.

"I just.....I just wanted to sleep..."

Alex kept stoking Piper's cheek to try and comfort her, she was getting more upset as she slowly realised what had happened.