Bathroom Monologue: Boris Adapts to Drugs

Boris could adapt to anything his children could select. If they were nature, he was evolution. They whined on about his heart, and the circles under his eyes, and how much he scowled since Yulia passed on. Now his eldest daughter forced him to take sleeping drugs every eight o’clock at night, drugs that had not even existed when he first met her mother. At first, Boris thought he could out-will the drugs, but the dose was calculated for a heavier man, and every night for five nights he dropped like a stone into a bed meant for two. But Boris could adapt, especially so long as these children who were so interested in him only visited at meals. Beginning on the sixth day he stole half a fist of the sleeping drugs, hiding them in a hollowed part of The Cherry Orchard. At half an hour past lunch, he swallowed a dose, then went to his filing cabinet and emptied a random drawer onto the floor. He repeated the task for four afternoons before succeeding in re-filing the papers alphabetically – or that was, before succeeding at this, before passing out from the drug. On the fifth day, he emptied two drawers of the filing cabinet. In a matter of three weeks, Boris could work late into the night even after smiling and accepting the sleeping drug from his caring daughter. It was easier than arguing with her, and Yulia had hated argument.