TW: overdose, drugs, induced vomiting, generally poor medical choices. read more for discretion
Business had been better than usual lately, enough that Jo was beginning to feel a bit of hope for the place. It had started being loud again. Nothing crazy, not enough to make people leave, but enough that the walls and the floors felt alive again, the whole place had energy and life in it. Things weren’t okay, not yet, but she felt like if she held on tight enough to what she had, the storm outside would pass by without doing much more damage. Closing the bar up for the night, she patted her back pocket and the money there, more than she usually took home, and decided to make a quick side trip before heading up to the apartment. If Angel was already asleep then Jo would leave her be, but on the probable chance that she was up, tonight called for ice cream and a rented movie.
A little while later, Jo took the back stairs two at a time until she reached her front door. “Angel face, I got us ice cream-” Jo’s face and the bag she was holding fell when she saw the young woman, laying far too still on the floor. She didn’t consciously tell herself to move but almost instantly Jo was on her hands and knees, hovering over Angel’s face. Her heart was hammering in her chest and she was clenching her jaw so tightly her teeth hurt.
“Angel? Angel?!” Jo said loudly, tapping the side of the woman’s face before dropping an ear to her mouth to make sure she was still breathing. “What the fuck are you doin’, babe? What the fuck?” she muttered as she checked Angel’s thin wrist for a pulse and a small noise of relief fell from her when she realized it was still there. “Angel! WAKE UP!” Jo shouted.
Angel was so tiny and thin, and after years of moving kegs on her own it didn’t take much for Jo to prop her friend on her side, still slapping her face lightly, just trying to bring her to consciousness. “Angel? What did you take?” Jo asked. In the back of her mind she thought ‘call the fucking hospital’ but then what? Was being put in a white room and poked and prodded really going to fix... whatever the fuck was happening right now? Looking around she noted the beer bottles and the faint, white dust on the coffee table. Okay, not exactly an after-school special but hardly something to get you to this place. “Angel, you need to wake and tell me what you took.” Jo snapped, shaking the woman slightly in frustration. Standing for a moment she ran into Angel’s room, quickly looking around for a needle or a bottle, anything. There was nothing. The bathroom next -fuck. It hadn’t really occurred to her to get rid of her Dad’s pain meds. They came in handy on occasion, but she’d never thought-. The whole bottle? So Angel wanted to poison herself to death like Jo’s old man had? Maybe it was the building itself that was cursed to be home to people who didn’t care about their fucking limits. Tough shit. Jo cared.
Concern was mingled with anger as she stormed into the living room and pulled Angel so that the she was practically in Jo’s lap. “Wake up and get this shit out of your stomach.” Jo said, opening Angel’s mouth and sticking her fingers down her throat. It was the only action she could think of - to get what poison she could out of her friend. “C’mon!” she shouted again, wiggling her fingers and she could feel Angel gagging. “Good girl, come on.” Jo said, one hand coaxing the woman’s throat to help her vomit while the other smoothed her hair back from her face. After a moment Angel’s body shuddered and she threw up. It was on the floor, on Angel’s face, on Jo’s hands and in her lap but the bartender didn’t care. Jo just released a breath she’d been holding and continued to stroke Angel’s hair. “That’s good. Good girl. Get it out. Get it all out.” she said, reaching out her free hand to keep an finger on Angel’s pulse. ‘Vomit, then water, then some more water’ Jo thought to herself, creating a plan that was not going to involve sleeping anytime soon.
