Donny was running out of Oxy. The robbery, as horrible as it was, had yielded quality Oxy-codone. The tablets were extended release capsules, with no acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Sometimes the forumula was cut with these additives to offer some pain-relief, as well as a lesser percentage of the pills, so as to lessen the effects of the drug by itself.
    Donny's nose hurt. Too much snorting was not good. he had taken to smoking them on pieces of tin-foil, tipping the metal at an angle as the pills dripped down with resin. Donny broke a pen apart and inhaled the resiny smoke of the pills as they burned. Even that wasn't enough now. He wanted a sure-fire method to increase his high, and maybe make it last longer.
    Fate can work towards destructive ends, as well as providing opportunities to prosper. As if in answer to Donny's needs, voila, he found the used syringe. Donny was sitting in the swings located in the park. He almost stepped on the needle, which would've been a cause for AIDS. He picked it up carefully in his fingers and studied it. There was a dark brownish stain in the plunger of the needle. The user's preference was most likely heroin.
    Donny never considered using that very needle in his own veins, but it gave him an idea. The hospital supposedly had a needle-exchange program, where a user could bring in dirty syringes, and exchange them for clean ones. With a clean hypodermic, he might be willing to try. It became his obsession, his only reason for action that day. With his last few coins, he bought bus fare, and journeyed over to the medical center.
    With downcast eyes, Donny ashamedly put the dirty needle on the counter of the nurse's station. The nurse picked it up with a careful grip between her thumb and index finger, as if it were dead vermin. It went straight into a medical waste bin, with an orange biohazard label. She got up from her stool, and unlocked the medical supply cabinet behind her. Donny was presented with two new hypodermics, which he placed in his sweatshirt pocket. He didn't want to slide it into his back pockets for fear of penetrating his skin.
    The nurse gave Donny a worrisome look.
    "You be careful, mister," she says with grave undertones, "you should check out our rehabilitation program. It's available--"
    Donny turned away before she could finish. It was old news. The woman had to have seen many types like Donny. It was well-known that addiction could kill just as thoroughly as cancer.
    Donny didn't end up using the syringe. It wasn't for lack of trying. He practiced with it water, because he didn't want to waste any Oxy groping for a mainline. It was hard to find a vein. It was like trying to poke into a length of garden hose with a knife, while it is underneath a blanket. Donny was hardly a medical disciple. He tried to tie off his arm with a length of rope, which made his vein bulge. He jabbed his arm several times, with no results.
    In the end, he went back to the foiley, which he was accustomed to. His arm bleeding, and his oxy supply gone, Donny folded into a fetal position and tried to sleep. The last remaining drugs made him fatigued, and he slid into the recesses of his selfishness and wanting.
    Donny had appendicitis when he was 13 years old. It was excruciating. A large ball of flesh swelled up on his right side, where his superfluous organ was. The tenderness of the condition soon turned to a burning, painful sensation. It just so happened that the useless appendix had burst inside of him, nearly proving fatal to him. The doctors worked to clean up his surrounding tissues from the bacteria and foul bile. Donny spent a week bedridden, which kept him out of school. He had no complaints about his educational absence, but it wasn't exactly a picnic to be in a hospital bed, with a viscous scar.
    Even the broken leg, jaw, and collarbone couldn't stack up to the infection. That period of mending bones was cut short by the wave of opiate medications he was given soon after. Appendacitis trumped all, because of the aftermath of his treatment. Another surgery was required to scoop out any noxious after-burst that coated his insides. Up until recently, DOnny would rank the appendicitis as the most painful experience he had endured.
    Then came the withdrawal. It was so much worse. It took the discomfort and took it to a whole new level. He couldn't get comfortable inside his own skin. He sweated, but felt freezing. Cramps racked his stomach, not allowing any food intake, even if he had anything to eat. His body shuddered with aches and pains. Having no thermometer, he couldn't verify if he had a fever, but suspected he did.
    His colon and intestines were writhing, threatening to loose his bowels in his jeans. Although weakened, Donny manages to go outside and take a dump in the bushes. He couldn't crap inside the gazebo, so chose the landscape of shrubs instead. It was a spray of hershey squirts. After emptying his feces, Donny turned and examined it briefly. THe runny dump steamed in the cold air, and Donny covered it with snow. Normally, Donny went to the library, or other public place for number 2, but could venture no further than the park. That being so, Donny wiped his ass using the snow. It was horrible, and left a stinging sensation in his butthole.
    It was a new low for Donny, squatting there in the snowbank, rubbing a handful of snowball across his brown-eye. It did make him fell a little better. Having purged all excrement from his body, it left little to empty out of him. He started the withdrawal by vomiting a pool of his previous meals across the cement slab under the picnic area. Now, the putrid smell of regurgitated food hung in the crawl space.
    Donny wished he was dead. Death would be a release from this torment. How could these pills be legal by prescription??? It was like each capsule was a loaded bullet, pointed at his brain. The opiate receptors in his nervous center were begging for supplements. His body had gotten lazy, in some ways. It relied upon the pills to control his natural flow of endorphins and most specifically, dopamine. Once the flow of Oxy stopped, so did the body's natural chemical reactions.
    Donny was feeling burnt out. Too many drugs had pummeled his frail body over the years. He smoked a little bit of weed he had saved, but it was like sticking a band-aid on a gushing wound. Donny would've smoked a whole bale of weed to ease his agony.