Diary of a Drug Fiend

CHAPTER VII THE FINAL PLUNGE Sunday THE church bells tell me the day. I have been through another terrible ordeal. I don’t know how long ago since I came down from the north tower. The noise was really a shot. I found Peter on the floor with the pistol by his side, and blood pouring from a wound in his breast. I understood immediately what I had to do. It was impossible to send for a doctor. The scandal of the suicide would make life impossible ever after, and he would immediately discover that it was due to dope. The burden must be on my own shoulders. I must nurse my boy back to life. I remember that I had been too weak to walk down from the north tower. I climbed to the balustrades and gasped, and slid myself, sitting, from step to step. I was almost blind, too. My eyes seemed unable to focus on anything. | But the moment I saw what had happened, my strength came back to me, at least, not my strength but the strength of nature. It flowed through me like the wind blowing through a flimsy ragged curtain. The cartridges were very old, and the powder must have lost its strength; for the bullet turned on his breast bone and ran round the ribs. It was really a trifling wound; but he was so weak that he might have died from loss of blood. I got some water, and washed the wounds, and bound them up as best I could. When the waiter came, I sent him for proper things from the chemist, and some invalid food. For 235