This is a weird form of medical prostitution - I'm allowing medical corporations to feed me untested drugs and nurses to draw my blood every fifteen minutes (you know, all that kinky shit) in return for $1,350. They met my price, so I'll do whatever they want.

I sleep in a room with twenty-four beds in it. At any given time there are a handful of girls making mountains underneath their blankets. You can always hear soft breathing and snoring. It's sweet. You brush your teeth and hear women laughing in the showers together. It's friendly.

The woman whose schedule is two minutes before mine threw up into a trashcan under the table. She has two kids. It was horrible to watch a mommy throw up, all by herself, holding her own hair back. I should rub her back, I thought, but then I was paralyzed in my inaction, and the paramedics crowded around and the moment passed.

We sit in a big room and nurses go down the lines, taking our blood. To continue my half-hearted metaphor of medical study/whore house: here the best compliment to give to someone who has just stuck you is "Ooh, you were great. I didn't even feel a thing."

They treat us nice sometimes, though. Before you take your dose of medication, the nurse holds the bottle titled forward towards you in her hand, as if she is presenting a bottle of wine at dinner.

"Fifty miligrams of Naltrexone?"
"Yes, yes, that'll be perfect."