Karma Unleashed: Chapter 5
Karma thought her days of forming friendships were over. Then one day, almost three weeks, she met Jill in the woods.
Friends,
Thank you for being on this journey for me. So far, you have read:
So, without further ado, here is Chapter 5.
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Chapter 5
Karma thought her days of forming friendships were over. Then one day, almost three weeks, she met Jill in the woods. Jill was tall, skinny—way too skinny, as if she was malnourished—with arms like sticks, hollow cheeks, and significant bags under her eyes. Her face was pale, and she had no makeup on. (Karma never left the house without makeup! Not even when she walked Baladi just around the block. Vanity was a Bilaqi woman’s middle name.)
When Karma met Jill for the first time, she was wearing cropped black yoga pants and a pink sleeveless shirt. Her black hair was tied up in a ponytail. Around her neck was a wireless headphone of some sort. She reminded her of the actress Demi Moore. She’d grown up watching her movies in Bilaq—A Few Good Men, Ghost, GI Jane.
Jill was walking a small dog with a missing hind leg. The dog was hopping along the trail, unleashed, as if nothing was wrong.
Karma, walking Baladi on the opposite side of the trail, stopped and waved. Baladi immediately approached the three-legged dog and gave it a sniff. The three-legged dog licked him.
“What happened to his leg?” asked Karma.
“It’s a she. This is Mia,” said Jill, looking at her dog and smiling.
Karma waved at the dog. “Hi, Mia.”
“I don’t know what happened to her leg. I adopted her like that.”
“Oh! Really? Why would you adopt a dog missing a leg?” asked Karma, raising her eyebrows. She immediately wished she hadn't asked that question, wondering if her inquiry was a bit insensitive, especially since Americans tend to get offended quickly."
Jill smiled. “Well, I figured if I don’t adopt her, no one else would, and they might euthanize her. I felt I needed to do something.”
“Oh wow. That’s so nice of you,” said Karma, suddenly feeling bad about her husband buying a fancy dog instead of adopting a needy one. Why did Jamal spend so much money on a dog when he could have rescued one for a fraction of the price? He had bragged about the cost on several occasions. They could have saved a dog from being euthanized instead. Was it all to impress her?
“Can I pet her?” asked Karma.
Jill nodded. “Yeah, sure. She’s very friendly.”
Mia sat quietly and let Karma pet her.
“Good girl, Mia,” said Karma, inhaling the cold fall breeze. “She doesn’t have a leash?”
“She doesn’t need one. She’s always beside me.”
Karma kept petting Mia.“Lucky you. That is not the case here. My dog would run all over the neighborhood without a leash on.”
“You know . . . you can train him to walk without a leash, right? Is your dog a lab?” asked Jill.
“We’re not sure,” Karma lied. “We adopted him from a shelter.” Not the best way to start a new friendship. But it couldn’t end up worse than her previous one. “We discussed doing a DNA test on him, but we never got around to it.” Another lie.
A few days after their first encounter, Karma kept bumping into Jill in the woods. Jill was talkative and seemed eager to make a new friend. Karma trod carefully. She was still not over what had happened with Veronica and even questioned if she deserved any new friends.
She didn’t want to ruin another life like she had done with Veronica’s.
Karma did everything she could to avoid touching Jill. The last thing she wanted was another destructive vision. She kept at least a three-foot perimeter—no hugging, no tugging, no handshaking.
Sometimes Jill was more talkative than Karma was in the mood for. She told her about her deadbeat of a husband, whom she’d gotten rid of quickly. She told her about her teenage daughter, who was glued to her phone and barely left the house. “She never talks to me! I missed when she was a baby who would want to cuddle.”
Jill told Karma about her time in Iraq, where she served with the U.S. Army. Karma swallowed hard even though Jill didn’t look at her with the same prejudice with which so many service people regarded Middle Easterners.
“Our SUV flipped over on one of the dirt roads,” she shared. “I destroyed my back. Even the top docs at Walter Reed couldn’t fix me. Got an honorable discharge and can never work again because of the injuries.”
Karma’s hand flew over her mouth. “That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”
Jill sighed heavily. ‘The pain is paralyzing. Sometimes I stay in bed for days.”
Karma felt uncomfortable whenever Jill mentioned her Iraq days. How many Iraqis did she kill? How would her mom feel if she knew she was friends with an American soldier?
Karma had so many questions she didn’t dare to ask Jill. Did Jill even remember that Bilaq had stood with Iraq during the war? How did she feel about that? Did she view Karma as the enemy? Why did Jill ever want to hang out with her? All they seemed to have in common was their dogs; even their dogs were so different.
As time went on, something about Jill bothered Karma: her limp, which some days was very pronounced and some days not present at all. Als, the way she talked. Her speech was slow, which at first Karma had thought she was doing because English wasn’t Karma’s first language.
But one morning, Karma recognized it as something else. Intoxication maybe? At ten o’clock in the morning! She looked closely at Jill’s face, her red eye, her constricted pupils.
What’s wrong with this woman? Is she sick? Is she on medication?
“Everything okay?” Jill asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
Karma quickly switched her attention to Baladi.
“You have a new friend,” Jamal noted when she mentioned Jill casually over dinner. “Do I get to meet this one?”
“Oh, we aren’t really friends,” she said. Karma didn’t want to get closer to Jill.
“That’s too bad. I was hoping she would help you get over what happened with Veronica.”
“I doubt it,” said Karma gaze fixed on her plate of rice and ground beef.
Meanwhile, Jill insisted on hanging out. “Seriously, you’ve never been to the city’s indoor swimming pool? Let’s go! Today! What else do you have to do?”
Grocery shopping. Dinner preparation. Karma didn’t have a good excuse.
“Swimming helps my back,” Jill said. “I just do laps for an hour or so, and I feel completely refreshed.”
Karma didn’t even know what laps were. She had never learned how to swim and was ashamed to admit that. “Swimming is just not my thing. I’m more of a walker.”
How do Americans have the time to do all these activities and learn all these skills? They swim, kayak, hike, ride horses, ski, skate, bike. She never did any of these things. Would she ever fit into this society?
“How did you meet your husband again?” Jill asked her one day as they were walking their dogs together.
Why does she keep asking about Jamal? She suddenly remembered what her mom had told her about American women and keeping them away from her husband.: “He is a catch. Those American women would want to steal him from you.” My mom and her silly, backward thinking!
Karma didn’t want her to judge, so she gave an answer inspired by one of her romance novels. “Online.” Karma felt bad about lying. I’ve been lying a lot lately. Has this country done this to me?
“Lucky you, to meet a doctor online,” Jill said. “I never got that lucky. I once matched with a tow truck driver.”
“We just connected,” Karma said, false cheerfulness in her voice.
Jill's face lit up with a big smile. “What’s his specialty? Where does he work? Does he have a private practice? I totally want to meet him!”
Karma gave short answers, trying to subtly change the subject. Was Jill trying to steal her husband? Could my mom be right?
Jill got lucky. They walked by her house as Jamal was getting home from work an hour earlier than he normally did.
“Hey! Great to meet Karma and Baladi’s new friends,” he said, reaching down to pet Mia.
“I was afraid she was trying to keep us apart,” Jill said, thrusting her hand into Jamal’s. A sick feeling overtook Karma.
“She likes to keep her life compartmentalized,” Jamal said.
Karma wasn’t even sure what that meant.
“I’ve been eager to meet you. I’m not sure whether Karma mentioned it, but I’ve been suffering from back pain for over fifteen years now,” Jill told Jamal.
Was she trying to get his sympathy? Was this part of her plan? Karma placed a hand on her belly, wishing she had a baby growing there, something to tether Jamal to her forever.
“That’s awful! Sorry to hear that,” said Jamal as he leaned against the truck of his car.
Karma pulled Baladi over to stand next to him, planting a kiss on his cheek.
Jill got out a baggie for the poop Mia left on their lawn. “What kind of pain medication do you recommend?” Jill asked him, taking a step forward, getting closer to him.
“Oh. Probably Aleve or maybe Advil,” said Jamal, who stood up, suddenly eager to get in the house.
“Would you prescribe something stronger for severe cases?” Jill asked, twirling a strand of her black hair.
Is she flirting?
“For my most severe patients,” her husband said in an all-business voice, “usually post-op, we talk about a pain regimen, but you know most doctors try to avoid narcotics unless absolutely necessary. I’m more inclined to prescribe medical marijuana instead.”
“Yeah, I should try that,” said Jill.
***
A few days later, Jill called at eleven o’clock in the evening, begging for pain meds.
“Please? I ran out. And it hurts so much,” Jill cried into the phone.
“Who is calling at this hour?” Jamal angrily whispered from their master bathroom. “Whoever it is, I’m not here. If it was the hospital, they’d call my cell.”
“Sorry,” said Karma, the phone glued to her ear. “What did you say?”
“I ran out. I’m in so much pain,” said Jill, her voice strained.
“Oh, no. I’m so sorry to hear it,” Karma said. “Did you try Aleve or Advil?”
“I need something stronger. Does your husband keep anything on hand?”
Jamal emerged from the bathroom in his boxers, looking annoyed. He would flip if she told him she had to go to Jill’s house for her medications.
“No, I’m sorry. He’s not here, so I can’t ask him,” she lied.
The next morning, Karma felt terrible about lying to Jill. The poor woman was in pain. So she stopped by CVS, grabbed two bottles of ibuprofen, and stuck them in her dog-walking bag.
In the woods, she ran into Jill, walking slowly while her dog trotted next to her unleashed. It was an unusually hot day for the early fall.
Karma was so relieved to see she was well enough to take a walk, even a slow one. “How are you feeling today? Better, I hope! Just in case you’re not, here you go.” Karma handed her the bottles.
Jill looked at the bottle, dark circles under her eyes. “What’s this for?” Jill asked, tilting her head. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead.
Maybe she was feeling better than she looked. “Remember last night? You called me. You said you ran out of meds.”
Jill’s shoulders sagged. “Oh. Last night. Right.” Jill got quiet, then looked up and focused on a biker who passed by them, saying, “On your left!”
Wait. Did Jill even remember she had called the night before? “Do you still need it?” asked Karma. What’s up with this woman? Really?
Jill's eyes darted away momentarily, then back to Karma.“Oh yeah, of course, of course. The pain is excruciating. Thank you again. Let’s hang out soon.”
Karma always wondered what Jill did for a living but never dared to ask. But one day, Jill opened up about her “hustle”: She spent a big chunk of her time refurbishing furniture.
“I found my calling later in life,” she told her as they both stood in the front yard of Karma’s house.
Karma raised an eyebrow.“What do you do exactly?”
“I get old furniture, restore it, then resell it for a profit.”
Karma nodded slowly, absorbing this new information. “Oh. I see. Where do you get the furniture from?”
She shrugged. “Ah, everywhere, online, estate sales, rich people’s curbside, trash,” she laughed.
“Really? You just pick that stuff up?” asked Karma as she petted Baladi, who was eyeing Jill’s dog.
Jill tucked a strand of her silky black hair behind her ear. “Oh yeah. You have no idea what people throw away: chairs, tables, desks. All in excellent condition. My friends think I’m crazy for doing this when I have such terrible back issues. But you know, I’m willing to tolerate the pain for doing something I love.”
“You must really enjoy it to be willing to withstand all that pain,” said Karma.
She smiled. “I love it. You know what? I can take you with me one day when I go hunting.”
“Hunting?”
“Yeah. Looking for furniture. You’d love it. It’s quite the adventure,” said Jill with a twinkle in her eyes.
She really must love what she does.
***
As promised, Jill picked up Karma in her worn-out Ford truck one morning. When she got in, Karma couldn’t help but notice the disarray inside the vehicle: McDonald’s coffee cups on the floor, plastic bags scattered everywhere, paint cans on the back seat, and even a half-eaten burger inside the cup holder.
“Sorry about the mess,” said Jill.
“Don’t worry about it. You should see my car,” she lied. She didn’t even drive. She was too afraid of the highways to venture outside on her own, instead letting Jamal do all the driving and keeping their Honda SUV in a pristine shape, insisting on no eating or drinking inside the car.
When did lying become so easy?
They stopped by an estate sale, then stopped by a yard sale, then drove through an affluent neighborhood, big mansions with big yards and elaborate landscaping. Mercedes and BMWs in the driveways.
“You know, I picked this day because it’s the day before big trash day. That’s when they leave the good stuff outside. The day before.”
Karma could not help but be impressed by Jill’s determination and her industrious nature. She really went after what she wanted. Whatever it took, she wanted to make it happen.
Karma offered to help Jill haul the furniture in the back of the truck. Two wooden chairs, one desk, a table.
As Karma was carrying one of the wicker chairs, she felt a sharp pain in her back. “AH!” she shouted.
“Are you okay?” asked Jill.
Karma froze in place, scared to move. “I pulled something in my back.”
“Carefully, put the chair down. Can you walk?” Jill asked, touching Karma’s arm. “I’ll take care of the rest. Next time, we’ll hire movers. We can’t afford to have both of us with busted backs!”
Karma wasn’t listening; an image was forming. Jill had touched her. She tried to suppress it, but the pain was excruciating, and it hampered her ability to obstruct the clear-as-day vision.
Jill was in the woods, at dusk, talking to a teenager with pitch-black hair that reached the middle of her back. Not just any teenager, one with red Converse shoes. Dom’s girlfriend, Danielle. Danielle handed her something, a small object. Jill handed something back. A wad of cash. Jill exchanged a few words with Danielle. Danielle’s face morphed in anger. She opened her mouth and screamed. Then she lunged at Jill, grabbing her arm with both her hands.
Jill pulled back, but Danielle held tight. Crack! Jill screamed as she looked at her arm, snapped in half, the shape of a bone protruding under the skin. Jill kept screaming, and then fell on the ground.
Karma shook her head as the vision disappeared.
“Are you okay?” asked Jill. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I might have seen one.” Karma clenched her jaw. Shit! Did I just say that? Did I just slip like this?
Jill laughed.
“I’m joking. I’m just in pain,” Karma said.
Jill had opened the car door for her and moved like she was going to help Karma into the truck, but Karma didn’t want to see more. She gritted her teeth and climbed into the cab on her own, swallowing the pain.
“Ice it, and you’ll be okay. That handsome husband of yours will take good care of you. After all, he is a doctor.” Jill closed the door.
They drove back home in silence.
Karma couldn’t find the words. Why would Danielle do that to Jill? What had they been exchanging? Why was this happening again with someone she had just befriended?
It’s going to be like Veronica all over again.
Karma again found herself plagued by a vision she didn’t understand. Whereas her visions when she was younger were cut and dry—a person got injured or fell in love or moved away—with first Dom and now Jill, she felt not only too close to the subjects but hopeless to help them avoid the fate she saw.
What was Jill doing in the woods with those teenagers? What was she doing with Danielle, Dom’s girlfriend? And why would Danielle do this horrible thing to her? Was this vision even real or a fluke response to pain? She knew the answer; her visions were always real.
***
The next day, Karma walked Baladi in silence through a trail in the woods, the only sound made by leaves crackling under her feet. Baladi stopped to sniff a white poodle on the trail. She waved at the dog owner, a blonde petite woman who she hadn’t seen before, then shifted her attention to her dog as he licked the dog’s behind.
“Cute dog,” said the woman “A lab?”
“Yeah. Pure,” she said, expecting to feel proud. She didn’t. Instead, she felt guilty.
As she was heading home, she passed by a bus stop at the corner of the street. There was a huge ad covering the side of the bus stop shelter. She might have seen that ad at least 100 times before. But this time, she stopped and looked, really looked.
The ad showed a shadow of a man trapped inside an orange transparent medicine bottle. The man had his arms extended, with his hands touching the edge of the bottle as if he was trying to break free. The ad bore the following message: “Painkillers are easy to get into. Hard to escape.”
Suddenly, something clicked.
Jill. Her back pain. The painkillers she wanted. Her interest in Jamal’s work. Everything suddenly fell into place. Jill was addicted to drugs, like this man in the ad.
In the vision, was she buying drugs from Danielle? Was it a drug deal gone wrong, which happened all the time on the crime shows she watched? Was Danielle a dealer? Dom too? Was that why he killed himself?
Karma’s skin tingled, and her knees shook.
She had to do something. She could redeem herself.
When she got home, she knew she should make dinner and move a load of laundry over before Jamal got home. Instead, she went online. Karma read for hours about opioids, about what was happening in the country she now called home. She learned about addiction, the pharmaceutical companies’ role, and the FDA’s regulations.
She forgot about dinner.
She called Jamal and told him she was not feeling well, asking him to get some Chinese food on the way home. She failed to move the laundry to the dryer.
“Do you deal with opioid patients?” she asked Jamal during dinner as she chewed on a steamed dumpling. Opioids. That was the first time she said that word out loud.
“Yeah, we see them in the ER all the time. Why do you ask?” he said, tilting his head.
“Just curious. Saw a documentary about drug addiction in the US on TV, and I’m a bit shocked. Had no idea it was that common here.” She hated herself for lying to him, but what choice did she have? If she told him she suspected Jill, he might not let her be friends with her anymore.
“Yeah. It’s a huge problem fueled by irresponsible doctors and greedy pharmaceutical companies,” he said, grabbing some noodles with his chopsticks.
“Does it affect the poor mainly?” she asked, twirling her fork. She’d never learned how to use chopsticks.
He shook his head. “Oh no, you’d be surprised. It affects the rich and the educated. It’s a huge problem. Terrible addiction. I lost a number of my patients to opioids.”
“They overdose?”
“Yep. Usually on something harder than the pharmaceutical they originally got hooked on. They turn to heroin when they can’t get their scripts refilled or find pills on the street.”
Karma took in a large gulp of air. “Is it common among women?”
Jamal snagged a piece of eggroll. “Yeah. I’d say it’s equal between men and women.”
She fidgeted in her chair. “Thank you for picking up dinner. I’ll walk the dog. Then, when I return, I’ll clean up.”
“Are you okay?” he said, taking a sip from his water cup. “You seem sad or preoccupied by something.”
“Just tired,” she smiled nervously. “You know, fertility hormones and all of that.” Oh shit! When was the last time I took the hormones? Shit, shit, shit!
“Yeah, those! They can really mess with you. I can walk the dog if you want?” he offered, then held her hand across the dining table.
She squeezed his hand.“Thanks, babes. I need some fresh air. I’ll be back soon.”
He glanced out the window.“It’s getting dark. Please stay safe.”
“Don’t worry, habibi. I have Baladi by my side. He’ll protect me from all the monsters and the ghosts,” she said, smiling.
She looked at him and realized that she was in love with this handsome, caring man. No, he wasn’t perfect. He could get angry sometimes, but who was perfect? Certainly not her, with her visions, her lying, and now forgetting to take the hormones that were intended to give her her heart’s desire. As her mom had told her, she was even lucky to get married in the first place with her condition.
Outside, Karma sniffed the crisp October air and tugged Baladi by her side. She reminded herself of her mom’s advice: Never get involved in people’s affairs. Look what had happened to Dom, to Veronica.
She walked down her street and decided to do the street tour instead of the woods tour. She ran into the familiar dog walkers—the white woman with the Border Collie, the Asian man with the two Chihuahuas, the husky white man with the German Shepherd, the young interracial couple with a pregnant woman, and a toddler with a white Lab. She loved the melting pot, the idea of America that you would be welcomed no matter where you came from, that you would make it as long as you worked hard.
She waved, said hellos, and let Baladi sniff all the dogs and lick their genitals.
As she contemplated her recent vision, she stopped on the sidewalk, took out her phone, and looked up “How many people die from opioids daily?” She got the following answer: “2018 data shows that every day, 128 people in the United States die after overdosing on opioids.”
128! Jill could easily be one of those.
She had to rescue her. Karma couldn’t let her be a statistic. She kept on reading as she walked Baladi. She almost bumped into a tree trunk, but she didn’t care. She learned about the most common types of opioids, names she had never heard of before: Vicodin, oxycodone, morphine, codeine, fentanyl.
***
When she couldn’t sleep that night, she FaceTimed with her mom.
“Why are you still up?” Asked her mom. “What time is it there?”
Glancing at the clock with heavy eyes, Karma replied in a weary voice, “Three AM.”
“What’s on your mind?”
Karma told her about Jill.
Her mom leaned closer to the camera, emphasizing her words,“Karma, don’t ever get involved in this. Let the Americans sort it out among themselves. Drugs and all of that. This is dangerous stuff. Stay away.”
“But haram, Jill. I feel bad for her.” Karma felt guilty for thinking for even a second that Jill was after Jamal when clearly she was after a refill.
“You can’t fix people’s problems.” She could hear her mom’s voice getting louder. “Stay away. This is some dangerous territory you are getting yourself into. And stop touching people.”
Yes, she needed to put a force field around her, be more careful about personal space. “Okay. How is Baba?” asked Karma, trying to shift the topic.
“He’s fine. He’s making me coffee.”
A whiff of her dad’s famous Turkish coffee came to her mind, making her feel nostalgic. She missed her dad, her sweet father, who had made coffee for her mom and brought it to bed every morning through their thirty-year marriage.
She wanted to be back in the comfort and safety of her own home. She wanted to be with her people, those who looked like her, spoke like her, behaved like her.
Right before she finally closed her eyes, she had an epiphany: Her mom was wrong. She was given this gift for a reason. She was meant to save people.
She woke up determined to confront Danielle.
First Dom, now Jill. Clearly, she was the source. Jill was just a victim. Just Like Dom had been.
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P.S: If you enjoyed this chapter, I think you'll love my novel They Called Me Wyatt—a speculative murder mystery set in Jordan and the U.S. You can grab your copy here. Thank you so much for your support!
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