He stayed there for hours. Every so often the opiates would start to wear off and the chasm would yawn wide open beneath his feet again and he’d start to panic, his breath coming fast and his heart pounding and his stomach feeling sick, and he’d dose himself once more to push it away. The doses he was giving himself were large, now, but there was no bliss in them. His tolerance was growing. At best the doses made him care less, care less that his life was reduced to this, a choice between imprisonment and something akin to genocide.

There’s another way, he thought. I could end my own life.

He pushed that idea away with another opiate surge, larger than the last.

His phone buzzed, again and again, calls from the office, video messages, text messages. He refused to answer, refused to check his messages on phone or slate.

Dusk came. Teenagers – released from the prisons that masqueraded as schools – joined the mothers and small children at the pool. He was hungry. He had to piss. He should be home soon. He was tempted to stay here forever, to just lay in his car taking dose after dose after dose of opiates until his neurons were squeezed dry of them or until he accidentally killed himself.

But something else prevailed. Habit, perhaps. Some shred of dignity. He forced a jolt of norepinephrine through his system, pushed himself up, and shambled on his cane to the restroom by the pool. Children and parents stared at him. A mother pulled her toddler aside, protectively. He had some vague notion that he was a mess, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He pissed in a room that smelled of chlorine, and struggled back to his car, limping on his cane. He ordered the car to take him home, and did the best he could to clear his head with more norepinephrine, with acetylcholine, with more dopamine. His brain was a neurochemical witch’s brew. Some part of him whispered that he couldn’t go on like this, that he’d push himself too hard soon, push himself into another opiate overdose or serotonin syndrome or a deadly seizure or some other cataclysmic neurochemical collapse.

Despite that, his brain tinkering worked. He reached his own home in some semblance of order. He could pass his state off as fatigue from a long day, perhaps. Maybe. Above all else, he wouldn’t tell Anne where he’d been, or why.

He came in through the door. Anne was home already, files in her lap. She looked up. “Martin!”