The Drugs Don't Work

[luckyrabbit]

Another fic I wrote last year but never posted here. Written around the time when Kim was a drug addict for two weeks but before he was cured after one session with Rachel and then it was never mentioned again.

Setting his beer back onto the table Kim rubbed his pounding head. He didn't feel right. Something was wrong with those pills that Kylie had given him. He thought about mentioning it to her when she got back from...wherever it is she went. He'd lost track of her hours ago when she left to go to the toilet and never came back, for all he knew she'd already left. Abandoned him, just like everybody else in his life did.

"Can I sit here?" He sluggishly turned his head to find a tall girl, with straight, dark hair and a pair of glasses perched on her nose, hovering uncertainly near the seat beside him. He shrugged, it didn't make a damn bit of difference to him where she sat.

"Thanks. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to get a seat in here. My feet are killing me." She babbled setting her drink down on the table next to his hand.

'' 'Salright." He mumbled. There was something about this girl, something very familiar that made him think he knew her. Perhaps she was a client from the gym. "I'm Kim, by the way." he introduced himself, holding out his hand and putting on the most charming smile he could muster under the circumstances.

"'Sarah." she replied, taking his hand in a firm grip. That's not right A voice whispered in the back of his mind. The strobe lights on the dance floor took that moment to kick in, illuminating shiny, red marks all over her forearm.

"What did you do?" Kim asked, feeling a little foolish about being so concerned about somebody he'd just met. "If you don't mind me asking."

"Oh." Sarah said, rubbing the scars self-consciously. "They're burns. From when I was a kid." She shrugged. "I loved fire."

"I used to know someone like that."

Sarah nodded and took a sip of her beer. "Are you alright?" She asked suddenly. "I'm sorry, it's just that you seem a little depressed."

Kim laughed sullenly. His head was buzzing now. He knew this girl, he was certain. It was there, just bubbling under the surface but every time he tried to remember it would just disappear. "I've had the worst six months...No, the worst year of my life."

"Want to talk about it?"

"Do you really want to listen?"

"Yes." She smiled reassuringly. "I'm a very good listener. You really had to be in my old line of work."

"Therapist?"

"Phone sex line operator." She joked, pleased to see him laugh.

So Kim told her everything. About dating a psychopath, about baby Noah, Haley and Scott, about Jonathan. She wasn't kidding when she said that she was a good listener. She nodded in all the right places, was appropriately sympathetic and asked all the right questions to get him to open up. Kim knew that he should probably restrain himself from spilling his guts to a complete stranger but it felt right. He felt like he could trust her.

"I don't think I'll ever have a kid that's actually mine." Kim concluded glumly and Sarah had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep herself from laughing.

"Don't say that. All you need to do is find the right girl."

"You know, for a while I thought that Zoe might have been...I really loved her." Kim frowned, the revelation coming as much of a shock to him as it was to the woman sitting beside him.

"What?" Sarah asked in utter disbelief.

"I loved her." Kim repeated in amazement. "Not Eve or whoever the hell she was." He clarified. "But Zoe. My Zoe. I loved her."

"Well if you loved her so much, why did you sleep with Hayley?" Sarah snapped unexpectedly.

"I didn't tell you Hayley's name, did I?" Kim asked in confusion. His thoughts were so muddled now he couldn't remember.

"You must have. How else would I know, right?"

"Yeah, right." Kim managed to force out. He felt sick, bile rising up in the back of his throat. His head now throbbing in time to the heavy beat of the music. He knew that he should go home, go to bed and sleep it off. But he didn't want to leave Sarah, not yet. He was startled when she took his wrist between her fingers.

"Whatcha doing?" He asked, slurring his words badly. His vision starting to blur and dim.

"Checking your pulse. You really should be getting to the hospital. Your OD-ing." Sarah informed him coolly, setting his wrist back on the table. Somehow this information didn't come as much of a shock to him.

"How do you know? You a doctor or something?"

"Or something." Sarah drained the rest of her beer and stood up, holding out a hand for him to take. "Come on. I'll drop you off at the hospital on the way home."

Kim ignored her pre-offered hand and struggled to get out of the chair by himself, failing spectacularly. He would have ended up plunging head first to the ground if Sarah hadn't been there to catch him in her surprisingly strong arms. Throwing his arm over her shoulders and letting him lean on her as they weaved through the bodies that packed the room. Ignoring the large group of people crowded around the girls bathroom, saying things like "Call an ambulance" and "I think she's dead".

Fifteen minutes later Kim stumbled, alone, into the emergency room. His fist clenched around the note that Sarah had written in the car and told him to give to the doctors, so they could treat him properly. Later on he would wonder how she knew what he'd taken and how she knew it had been laced with rat poison. But for now he just passed out in the arms of an intern named Burt.

END

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