Morning, 1894 - ST. DENIS, LEMOYNE
I awoke to fervent shaking. A boy and his mother stood over me. She looked blanched and worried, the boy was the one shaking me. I coughed and felt an immediate hot sting on my neck. My hand shot up reflexively and was met with the sensation of my shirt collar encrusted with dried blood.
The boy helped me upright. My shirt was torn, my pockets turned out. Had I been attacked and robbed? Or were my effects stolen after I’d hit the ground? My memory swam with the memory of my hallucinations that had no place in the mind of a scientist. Shaking my aching head, I blinked through the pain and saw the boy holding something out to me. In his outstretched hand was one of my morphine syringes. In utter shame I took it from him and stuffed it into my adulterated pocket.
“What happened?” I asked hoarsely to the adult woman, climbing to my feet with no small effort.
“Found you here,” she replied. “You’re the doctor, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I replied, hoping that answered any questions she may have had about the syringe. “Was I attacked?”
“Robbed by the look of it. You’re lucky to be alive. I think whoever did this meant to kill you.” She gestured to my neck.
“So it would seem.” I reached in my pocket for money to pay her for trying to help me, but remembered then everything had been taken. I looked at her apologetically. She was a poor working class woman. A few pennies would have made a difference, and yet, it was so often the humblest of people who were the most giving. She shook her head with a sympathetic smile.
“Can I do anythin’ for ya?” she asked once more.
“No,” I said, my temples pounding and my eyes burning. “I know my way home. Thank you.”
The alleyway that had looked so strange to me the night before was now completely familiar. I cursed myself for my recklessness. The accelerating nightmares were a symptom of the most obvious of illnesses: addiction. I had known for some time now that I had been taking too much, but like the frog in the boiling pot, had not realized the extent of which until it nearly got me killed.
What to me was a nightmare, was to everyone else just an aimless simulacrum of a once-brilliant physician, no better than the heaps of addled flesh that lined the gutters of Saint Denis. I have been a fool. An idiot. A slave to vice and ceaseless boredom. My embarrassment turned to anger as I turned up the main street to my apartment. I must have looked frightening, for I garnered no small number of worried glances.
Safely back in my room, I slumped on my bed. This had to stop. I have to fix it.
Despite the hangover that begged for chemical intervention, my rage now sustained me. I stitched and bandaged the slash across my neck that the robber had left, and prayed that I would avoid infection. How lucky I had been was not lost on me.
Sleep would not find me now. Not with the pounding in my brain and the black guilt in my heart. I put pen to paper. My best work was often done in such a state – and what a state I was in. There must be a treatment for vice. I knew the answer laid in the miracle herb I’d studied in Guarma, the leaf that when extracted became cocaine.
By the next morning, I had created the recipe for Cocalixir.