Just breathe.
Take a deep breath in and exhale it slowly, then do this again. The nausea will fade. The headache will ebb away. The chills will stop. Nerves will un-clench. The answer is to just keep breathing and this too will pass.
This wasn't the first time, it wouldn't be the last. Still, it never got any easier. If he could make it through the first few hours, then it wouldn't be so bad.
He knew this.
Yet, it wasn't comfort enough when he was tossing and turning in bed with every movement sending aches through his nerves and muscles. Jack wanted to sleep it off, wake up with the worst of it behind him but he hadn't been able to score any Ativan or Xanax to help him through it. She wasn't answering her phone. Aching fingers punched in a text message again. Another useless attempt to reach a hook up.
In a fit of anxiety, restlessness and pain, Jack tore the blankets off and sat up. After recouping for a moment, he went downstairs and out through the main lounge of the Centennial Towers dormitory. He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt up over his head to protect himself from the cold. With his body going through the motions of withdrawal, the wind felt sharp and the cold felt colder. He tapped another student on the shoulder to ask him if he could bum a cigarette. Jack wasn't a smoker by habit, but he needed something to take the edge off.
It felt like breathing in fire and his throat burned from the tobacco but it was enough to take his mind off the body aches as he scrolled down his contacts to G. He got Gemma's voice mail.
"Hey, get off whatever cock you're on and answer your fucking phone," he said after the beep before ending the call. He'd pay for that. He knew it after he said it. Which meant he wasn't getting any weed for awhile off her, but he was at the end of his rope. He took another draw off the cigarette and made a face at the taste. There was a last resort. There was one person he knew he could go to because he knew she had it, but the price was dignity. Something that Jack hated to part with more than money.
Katy wasn't the type of girl that Jack would be friends with. They had nothing in common and being in the same room as her brought a level of shame to his arrogant nature. She was five two and probably close to two hundred pounds. She was the type of girl who probably fashioned herself off on Amy Lee, listened to music like The Smiths and The Cure and cut her wrists to be ironic and for attention. If she showered it was probably on a weekly basis rather than a daily and it was rumored that she had been in and out of psychiatric care most of her life. She had a psychotic break at the beginning of the semester, but they had given her prescriptions to so many drugs that the word was she was making a lucrative career off of pushing her pills. Any normal person would probably have sympathy for her, but given his current state, Jack could only think about her pills, not her life or even her looks. And he had one thing on her a lot of people didn't. Katy had a crush.
They had English 101 together and she had a habit of sitting as close to him as she could while he just ignored her existence and avoided any sort of social contact with her, but she continued to try and engage in conversation and accepted his one word answers, probably believing that on some level that they were friends. She lived on the third floor of the same building in a single unit and she had invited him more than once to study, but he always had an excuse. Work, usually. He didn't feel bad about that. It was generally true.
After the cigarette was spent, Jack went back inside and pulled the hood back down. He ran his fingers through his hair and made up his mind. It would only take twenty minutes, an hour at most if he was forced into small talk. Paranoia set in as he surveyed his surroundings during his trek up the stairs and down her hall. He didn't want anyone to see him or know what he was up to. It was unlikely that anything would be said if they did, but his pride already suffered. He knocked on her door and waited. His heart pounded in sync with his head.
His mind ran through all the possible ways to commit suicide, like Seppuku, as the door opened. He'd be fine, after he got the Adderall. He could take a longer shower. Pretend it never happened and go back to ignoring her in class.
"Hey," he said with a smile, letting the word linger on long, showing intent and interest that he had to feign. "Still up for that study sesh?"