I graduated from Sarah Lawrence with my BA in 2009, when I was twenty-six years old, during one of the coldest winters I had ever experienced in New York. After my post-high-school cancer diagnosis, a year living in Italy, and time taken off to address my own mental health and sobriety, it had been a long road to my diploma.
The day I flew home, just a week before Christmas, I called my family over and over again, but no one would answer their phone. Sitting on the floor of the San Francisco airport, waiting for the last leg of my trip to board, I finally reached my mother.
“I have to tell you something.” She sounded exhausted.
“Is she dead?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
“No.” She paused. “Brian woke up early this morning, and Sarah wasn’t breathing.” Brian was Sarah’s current boyfriend; he was a friend of Jed’s, and I was pretty sure he was far too nice to stay her boyfriend for long. “She was cold, and her skin looked blue.” My mom’s voice shook. “Jed came in and did CPR.” Our brother had been an EMT at one point. “The paramedics said that if he hadn’t, she would have died.” I hardly spoke, just nodded along while she told me about the ambulance, the hospital, Sarah’s condition. I boarded my last flight terrified and resentful; instead of celebrating my graduation, I was heading home to convince Sarah she again needed to go to rehab.
I visited her at the hospital the day after my flight home. She looked thin and pale. Her voice was hoarse when we spoke. I laid my hand on her cool forehead and asked her what happened.
“You know what happened,” she said, a little sullen, and I pulled my hand away.
“I know you almost died,” I replied. “But I don’t understand what happened.”
Sarah snorted derisively. “I’m an addict—isn’t that what you’ve been telling Jed for months?” This was true; I had been trying to convince Jed of her drug use for a while, but he was insistent that she was clean, that she wouldn’t lie to him.
I tried to ignore her tone. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“What do you think?”
I didn’t respond. The silence stretched awkwardly between us.
“I mean, I’m not great.” Her voice cracked.
“What do you want to do now?”
“Honestly?” She sighed. “I want to get high.”
“Will you go back to rehab?”
“Fuuuck.” Sarah laid her head back on the hospital pillow, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”
“You have a choice.”
She looked at me. “You know that’s not true.”
We sat staring at the beige walls of St. Joseph’s Hospital, light filtering through the slatted blinds that covered the small windows. “Okay, I’ll do it.” She sounded resigned.
“Okay, I’ll start looking for a place.” I got up to leave.
“Rose?”
“Yeah?”
“I was wearing Santa lingerie.”
“What?”
“When the ambulance came, I was in Santa lingerie.”
And we both laughed.
More details unfolded over the next few days: Jed’s children, Mena and Maggie, had been home when Sarah overdosed; Brian suspected she had been using for a while; Sarah had been high around the kids, possibly while she babysat them. I was tasked with finding an affordable rehab that Sarah would agree to. I sat her down and told her she had to check in within ninety days, or I couldn’t be in her life anymore. She reluctantly agreed.