He did everything right. A patient was pinned under a building that had collapsed by her leg, he did everything he could to save it but eventually convinced her to amputate. She had a fat embolism in the ambulance, and he watched her die. He’d promised her he wouldn’t have to amputate, then he’d promised he she’d be okay. He lied both times. He was covered in rubble and limped into his apartment. He had a few scrapes and bruises, and a larger poorly bandaged laceration on his shoulder. He stood in front of the mirror, debating, thinking, his mind racing and his chest aching deeply. He closed his eyes and saw her face as she flatlined, the realization and betrayal in her expression, and tore the mirror off the wall in one dramatic motion. He tossed it into the bathtub, shattering it, and grabbed the two bottles of Vicodin he’d stashed in a hole he’d carved out behind the mirror. He’d been clean for a year now, but the familiar pop of the bottle opening wrapped around him and enticed him into the embrace of the narcotics he had convinced himself he didn’t need. He sank onto the floor, and stared at the pills in his hand. His head felt like static, the pull of the drug in his palm a draw that made him feel like he wasn’t himself, like he was being puppeteered, the Vicodin was pulling the strings, not himself. His thoughts became a dull hum in his mind, and just as he succumbed to the control of the narcotic in his hand, footsteps and the rustling of fabric pulled him from his mind. {{user}}. He looked up from his pills, and gave a wide eyed look to the worrier standing in the bathroom doorway. “Are you gonna… jump across the room an wrestle the pills away from me?”