AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Tuesday, April 16
Holly has to remind JJ to hold her arm still so she can secure the IV into the vein at the crease of the elbow. Even then, JJ still relentlessly taps the floor with her purple-and-white Dolce & Gabbana sneaker, which Holly remembers seeing priced online at over a thousand dollars a pair.
After Holly had acquiesced to the will of the group, Tanya found time to schedule all of the clients in for ketamine infusions on the very next day, which was supposed to have been set aside for Holly’s research and writing. She has started to dodge emails from her editor, requesting chapters. Her literary agent is hounding her, too, wanting a sample to try to sell the foreign rights. But Holly finds it all too much in the aftermath of Elaine’s overdose.
JJ was the last of the group to show up for the first ketamine infusion following Elaine’s death. The other five clients sailed through their sessions, but JJ appears far more anxious than any of the others. She can’t sit still. Her finger won’t stop drumming the armrest. And her eyes dart around the room.
“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Holly asks as she tapes the IV into place.
“I need this,” JJ says flatly. “Yesterday, I caught myself scouring the pantry for a bottle of vodka I’d hidden in there a few months ago. Luckily my housekeeper had sniffed it out on her big booze purge. Don’t know what would’ve happened if I’d found it.”
“All right.”
JJ glances around at the empty recliners in the room. “It’s weird not to have the others here during the ketamine drip.”
After her experience with Elaine, Holly has second thoughts herself. She even considered asking Tanya to stay in the room as a chaperone to witness the infusions but dismissed the idea as an unnecessary invasion of her clients’ privacy.
“In light of the circumstances, this is the only way we can proceed after… Elaine.” Holly clears her throat. “With one-on-one supervision.”
A pained look crosses JJ’s face, but all she says is “I guess that makes sense.”
“I know you normally listen to your music on headphones, but since you’re the only one here, do you mind if I put the music over the speakers instead?”
“Sure.”
“Your usual playlist? The jazz?”
“Yes, please.”
Holly taps a button on her laptop, launching the instrumental music. Holly doesn’t recognize the first tune—jazz has never been her thing—but she does find something soothing in the gentle blend of instruments, which seem to follow their own beat.
Without being asked, JJ lowers the blindfold over her eyes.
“Ready?” Holly asks.
JJ nods.
“Set and setting, remember?” Holly says. “Go to your happy place, JJ.”
She knows JJ’s happy place is on that lanai in Hawaii in that moment when she revealed her first positive pregnancy test to her husband. Holly can’t help but think how bittersweet the memory must be for JJ. How the pregnancy failed, as did the others that followed, and her marriages with them. And how JJ’s drinking steadily worsened as her hopes of motherhood faded.
Holly connects the syringe of ketamine to the IV and slowly depresses the plunger, administering the same dose she gave JJ on her previous infusion. Once the medication has emptied into the vein, Holly disconnects the syringe and reaches for the other one that she has preloaded with midazolam to have ready in case JJ were to have a dysphoric reaction.
After a minute or two, JJ’s foot stills. Her breathing slows, and her whole body appears to relax. “Beautiful,” she mumbles.
“What do you see?” Holly asks.
“No, not see, hear,” JJ says dreamily. “The music. I feel it all over my body.”
“How so?”
“The drumbeats, they vibrate in my fingertips. The sax and trumpet are like a warm rush through my chest. And the piano… the piano feels like heat across my shoulders. Like walking the beach in the morning with the sun on my neck.”
“Lovely,” Holly says. “Just go with it.”
JJ is quiet for a minute or two. And Holly focuses on the music, trying and failing to perceive its tactile qualities the way JJ does. Anything to resist the urge to question her client. But it’s futile. “What’s troubling you so much, JJ?”
“Nothing,” she murmurs.
