Sip of Soda

Summer, 2020

I woke up in the ICU a few days after I had coded twice during a scheduled upper endoscopy. As my eyelids fluttered open, I felt no pain, but once my eyes focused on the ventilator blocking my view beyond my nose, all my agony came flooding back. A silent, failed patient, I quickly tried to recall where and who I was. Almost a week ago, I had checked myself into Central Maine Medical Center to treat the excruciating pain I was experiencing due to the pancreatic cyst growing in my abdomen. I wanted to treat this like I did with all my other hospitalizations from pancreatitis—get in, get healed enough, get discharged, and get booze in my system again. However, this time my plans had gone awry.

My eyes strained to peer out of their corners as I heard someone enter my room.

“Hey, there. Remember me? I’m Chris Owens and one of the nurses on Dr. Rutstein’s surgical team. I’m here to take out your ventilator,” Chris said as she towered over my bed. She was in her forties, had pale yellow hair, and her eyes crinkled when she tried to smile reassuringly.

I remember closing my eyes slowly a few times and waiting for her to wheel me out of my room for another surgery.

“Ok. Hold still and cough on the count of three. One, two, three, COUGH!” Chris firmly instructed as she yanked hard once on the ventilator. There was no time to question, panic, or refuse. I simply obeyed. I felt and heard this massive click, and my throat began to ache.

“Good girl!” Chris cheered as she quickly hid the bloodied tube behind her back.

Even without the obstruction in my airways, I reached for a piece of paper and pen on my bedside table. Call my mom, I wrote. I wanted her to hear my first, vocalized words. Chris walked out with the paper and found another nurse to bring me a cordless phone since my cellphone had decided this specific point in time would’ve been a fantastic one to shit the bed.

“Hello?!” My mother cried into the phone—so afraid of the news she would potentially hear on the other side.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” I croaked then let the phone drop. The nurse grabbed it, then walked out of the room explaining to my sobbing mother that they had just taken out the breathing tube.

I let gravity weigh my eyelids down. Something—yes!—something went wrong with my surgery. Oh well, I’m clearly still alive for now, I thought as I drifted back to unconsciousness.

Winter, 2007

At a beautifully set dinner table with long, white candles lit, my parents were lecturing me.

“We know you stole our vodka. What are you doing?” my father growled over his slices of roast beef.

I shot a look to express my apologies to my best friend, Bri, who was sitting uncomfortably to my left. Truth was, she was with me the night before when I had poured half a plastic cup’s worth of straight vodka from my parents’ bottle that they kept in the freezer. We then tiptoed back upstairs to my bedroom where we drank off the plastic cup and chased it with red Kool Aid my mother had stirred together that morning.

“Bianca, I’m serious. This is a big deal! You’re fucking sixteen years old.” My father was now spitting his words through a clenched jaw.

“Yvon, stop it!” My mother slurred her interjection. She was sitting to my right and her plate was almost empty. She normally drank as she cooked our lavish dinners, then drank as she plowed through the food—her first and only meal of the day. These dinners that so many of my friends raved about and coveted, were my mothers’ attempts to make our home life respectable.

“She has a ninety-seven-grade point average and was just awarded Leader of the Year by her soccer coach. At least she’s drinking at home,” my mom said as she speared the last bite of a twice baked potato. “Bianca, we’re just pissed that you ruined our vodka by pouring water back into the bottle and it froze. Don’t ever do that again.”

Bri raised her eyebrows at me, and I bit back laughter. To be fair, I had probably poured out close to a full cup’s worth of vodka and truly thought they would overlook a few frozen flakes in their vodka over the amount that was missing.

Folly of youth.

That would be the last time my parents would directly confront me about my drinking, and I would always resent them for that.

Summer, 2020

It had been three weeks since the breathing tube was ripped from my esophagus. I had to undergo two other surgeries that I didn’t remember—that my entourage of nurses filled me in on—and one was an abdominal washout to counteract my going into septic shock. Back at home, my mom prepared my obituary each time I was rushed to the OR.

Now, my day nurse, Jordan, came in to check my vitals and—hallelujah—give me a dose of fentanyl. I was grateful that the only thing coming out of my face now was a feeding tube through my nose.

“What’s on the agenda for today, Jordan?” I weakly mumbled through thin lips.

“Oh, you know, sunshine, just the usual. Vitals check, palliative care, keep your oxygen levels up, and your blood pressure down,” Jordan chirped as she looked over my machines and wrote on a clipboard. She always wore her thick brown hair in a bun at the nape of her neck. By far my favorite nurse, Jordan was gentle and nurtured a motherly instinct. She made it bearable that I wasn’t allowed visitors those six long weeks.

I eyed Jordan as she measured the opioid into the syringe. Give me all of it, my veins screamed. Slick and beautiful, I could understand why this drug was the newest craving on the streets. The second Jordan would finish emptying the syringe’s contents, I’d start to feel the deepest sensation. It was the only pain medicine that could release some of my physical agony—and it only lasted two hours tops.

It started with my scalp. Feeling as if an egg filled with warm liquid had been cracked on my head, the warmth spread from top to bottom, seeping through every limb, and I felt it inch by inch. Instantly, my physical suffering was gone, and I smiled myself into a blissful sleep.

Jordan was about to walk over and kneel at the IV in my arm when another nurse came into the room. As the nurse filled Jordan in on another patient, I let my hands wander under my blanket. I hadn’t left my bed since waking up with the ventilator; I had been told I might never walk again.

My right hand grazed the side of my stomach. I made a guess that I had lost close to thirty pounds since being in the hospital. Slowly, I moved my fingers along horizontally. I stopped when I hit the first raised ridge.

What the hell? I thought as my fingers splayed out and were met with a vertical row of pieces of metal one inch long. I glanced at Jordan still deep in conversation with the nurse. Their mouths were moving, but the only sound I could hear was my confusion. My right hand slid up and down my stomach like a güiro. As my own mouth struggled to form the words, panic started seeping in.

“Jordan!” My voice strained to go above a whisper. She didn’t hear me and kept making hand gestures as she explained something to the other nurse. Thoughts from before started seeping into my mind.

Something—yes!—Something went wrong with my surgery.

Staples. I was feeling staples lining six inches down my stomach.

“JORDAN!” The back of her head whipped around. “Staples—staples!” Was all I could manage.

Jordan’s eyes went wide, and she fussed around once more with the syringe. As she emptied its contents into my IV, she said, “We’ll talk about it later. Get some rest.”

That was the one time I experienced an upped dose of fentanyl. My serenity lasted all day.

Fall, 2016

A day after I suffered a seizure, I visited my parents’ house with my fiancé, Carter. The seizure was brought on by trying to quit drinking cold turkey. After a few convulsions and my lips went blue, Carter gave me CPR. He didn’t bother to call 911.

My broken body lay on the couch in my parents’ living room, and I tried to count the checkered squares on our tin ceiling like I used to when I was younger. My vision kept doubling, and my stomach seized up as I dry heaved. My mother had made chicken alfredo and was quietly setting the table. Carter stayed in the kitchen talking politics with my dad as they kicked back a few beers.

“You should try eating something,” my mother whispered. I could only moan a reply. The aromas of garlic and parmesan cheese that would normally bring me comfort now made my stomach lurch. As my parents and Carter sat down to eat, I pushed myself off the couch and slowly crept to the table.

I looked at Carter, who was sitting to my left. His mop of blonde hair was becoming shaggy and caked in grease—a clear advertisement of how he started neglecting his own physical health. His blue eyes were tinted red and so were his cheeks. Carter wasn’t drinking as much as me, but between the two of us, we were going through almost four half gallons of vodka a week. We both knew I wasn’t willing to stop. As I took my place between him and my mother, I remembered Carter’s Christmas gift to me for our first holiday season: three half gallons of vodka. They were gone by New Year’s Day after I drank them by myself in the dark in my childhood bedroom.

We sat in silence as I brought one bite of fettucine and grilled chicken to my mouth. As it went down my digestive tract, my stomach was incensed. It had been almost forty-eight hours since I last had alcohol and I dared to ingest food? At that point, I was supplying my body with one meal a day plus a fifth of vodka.

Instantly, the bite of food forced its way up and I couldn’t make it to the trash can. Covered in noodles and white sauce, I grabbed Carter’s beer and chugged it. My parents, along with Carter, kept eating. All three had learned that suggesting anything beyond what I had in mind to do would only result in violence.

Summer, 2020

A few days after I found my staples, I had finally pieced together the story. Jordan told most of it when she could during her shift, and other nurses were able to fill in the gaps. Essentially, the surgeon had nicked a vital artery while trying to take out my pancreatic cyst, and I had bled out and coded twice on the operating table. For the next three weeks, I was rushed to emergency surgeries—one of which was the abdominal washout, which required those two dozen staples.

My team of specialists at first thought I wouldn’t make it with my brain intact, but after I gained consciousness and cognitive function, they then suspected I would never be able to walk again. The doctors were constantly worried that I wouldn’t regain any motor function back. My days were spent lying on my back as I watched Forensic Files on the tiny hospital TV or laughed at the fact that the view outside of my window was of one of the hospital’s rooftops. It collected water from every rainstorm we experienced that summer.

One particular day that week, I was feeling worse than usual. I was sweating profusely and blamed it on the fire I was hallucinating about in my room. But I wasn’t in a room anymore, I was inside a cave. And the nurses that came into my room to check on all the beeping machines were in fact maids tending to the fire. As one maid bent low to throw another log onto the white-blue flames, another maid appeared beside me. I imagined her handing me herbs that would heal me, but her voice broke my spell.

“Honey, we have to get you in the OR now,” the nurse said. I looked around sharply. The fire and logs were gone; the rooftop was still collecting puddles.

“What? No!” I cried. “I don’t want to have another surgery!” Panic again flooded my nervous system.

“I’m sorry, dear. It’s not a choice. Your blood pressure is dangerously low and there might be something wrong with the stint in your pancreas. We’ve got to move,” she said as she started wrangling my IV and tubes.

“But, but I’m so scared!” I pleaded my case again. When the nurse simply shot me a sympathetic glance, I became desperate.

“I’ll never drink again!” I declared. “I’ll be a good girl!”

“Oh, honey!” Now the nurse really was sympathetic. “This isn’t about that now. This is about saving your life.”

And I was whisked away sobbing hysterically.

Spring, 2017

I found myself standing in front of a full-length mirror at Pat’s Pizza in Lewiston, Maine. I was twenty-five and a half years old. I forced myself to look into the glass. I saw:

my hair thinning and noted how it had stopped growing—being permanently stuck at shoulder-length;
my yellow eyes that I tried to disguise behind thick glasses;
pustules erupting all over my face like smallpox;
and my tiny thin frame that merely held bones together.

This is why I had stopped looking in mirrors. Even brushing my teeth was a fucking struggle I recently started giving up on.

I can’t do this anymore, I thought for the millionth time that year, that month, that day, while standing in front of the mirror. I can’t live. Forget the outer signs—I was physically exhausted beyond all measure. My lower back was always in extreme pain from the beating my liver and pancreas were taking, and my stomach would be balled up in tight knots whenever it didn’t contain alcohol. When I tried to fall asleep at night, my body would jerk itself awake as if it was scared to be completely unconscious. Carter would drunkenly check on me throughout the night to make sure I was still breathing. Within a year, we would be separated.

I took one last look at the corpse in front of me, and I left the restroom to return to my mother.

She was sitting at a booth by a window looking out over the Androscoggin River. Her salt-and-peppered hair was cropped short to her scalp. I was starting to forget the time when she used to wear it long, down the length of her back. Her gaze was focused on the water.

We had just finished seeing my neurologist and received the results from my recent CT scan.

“Brain atrophy?” my doctor incredulously questioned his own diagnosis. “That’s like early on-set dementia. What the hell are you doing to your brain?”

The two shot glasses came into view once I rounded our table.

“I love you,” my mother said as she cheers’ed me. She had heard the diagnosis herself. She had clasped my hand with tears in her eyes and nodded at the neurologist. She heartily agreed when I asked to stop at the restaurant.

“You’ll get help when you’re ready,” she had said on the drive back.

I looked at my mother before downing my well vodka. My mother, the daughter of Yugoslavian and Polish immigrants. My mother, whose own alcoholism stems from her experiencing physical and sexual abuse at a young age. My mother, who once told a guidance counselor that a family member threatened to kill her family and then her own mother threatened to kill her in retaliation for telling an outsider. My mother, whose sexual abuse was covered up by her parents and husband. My mother, who learned that the adults in life refused to discuss hard things with children.

“I love you too,” I told my mother.

July, 2020

I had spent over a month in the hospital, and the end was almost near. I had my sixth and final surgery the week before to take out my staples and put in a feeding sac. The sac emptied the contents of anything I would eat. My doctors told me that I had to retrain my digestive system in stages before I could trust my pancreas and stomach again with a very low-fat diet. Jordan whispered rumors to me that I would be discharged soon.

But today, Jordan had been reduced to tears and it was all my fault. I was being stubborn, and it hurt her feelings. I was told as much when Chris Owens took long strides into my room.

“You need to walk. If you don’t your legs will get blood clots and you’ll need another surgery,” she told me as she crouched down beside my bed, her face inches from mine. After three weeks of being told I would probably never walk again, one day—surprise!—a nurse came into my room and said “we” were going to try. After weeks and countless hours of grueling physical therapy, I could master two laps to the hospital’s observatory and back (roughly ¼ mile) and ten stairs.

“I don’t care,” I told Chris’s blue eyes and turned my head away. That morning when I woke up, I was done. I simply told myself I wouldn’t be doing anything. I was over surviving.

Chris sighed. “You and I both know you care; the last thing you want is another surgery. You’re being discharged next week most likely. Let’s go.” Chris’s words rang true, but I was so petrified of taking that leap, that next daunting step.

“What’s in it for me?” I asked in one last attempt at defiance.

Chris surprised me and smiled. “What—what do you want?”

I barely hesitated. “Take me off the goddamn no liquids list. I want a ginger ale.” Most importantly, I wanted a sip of soda without utilizing it as a chaser for my alcohol. I wanted to be rehabilitated in the real world. I wanted the will to live without using.

I then started to prop myself up in bed the way the physical therapist taught me to.

The ginger ale fizzed and danced down my throat then stayed stale in the feeding sac overnight.

"Sip of Soda" details Bianca's experience surviving six weeks and multiple surgeries in the hospital after coding twice during a scheduled surgery. In this piece, she plays with writing in-scene and with flashbacks to showcase her decade-plus long struggle with hereditary alcoholism. This story is full of pitfalls and triumphs and was the only "rock bottom" scenario that finally inspired Bianca's sobriety. She is now working on her memoir in graduate school, speaks publicly about her experience, and loves teaching an introductory English course at the University of New Hampshire. She pushes her students to reach for their darkest spaces to write about when teaching the Personal Narrative Unit; she teaches them that writing can be survival.