Top: Melinda Ray shows off one of her tattoos, which she says “was something I could spend my money on besides dope.” The image of a skeleton reflects her life, she says –– “I was almost dead. I’ve been almost dead a bunch of times –– and is a reminder to remain sober.” Above left: Melinda shares a photo that was taken while she was using drugs. Xanax was her drug of choice, she says. Above right: Melinda and her husband, Roger, linger on their front porch.

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he following day, Melinda was sweeping in the kitchen, agitated, fatigued. Roger, thrashing in pain, had kept her up all night again, and hours later, so many other things were going wrong. The refrigerator was empty. They hadn’t eaten anything besides potatoes for days, and she felt terrible for it. It had been her ultimatum — either he’d quit, or she’d leave him — that had brought them here, where they were always irritable, going through the worst of their withdrawals.

“My hair’s burning me up,” she said, lifting her dark curls off her neck.

“Yeah, it’s starting to get warm in here,” Roger said, also sweating.

She looked at the floor, annoyed that Roger had brought in dirt after he had taken the dogs out.

“I just swept twice yesterday,” she said. “Probably more than twice.”

“Honey,” he began. “I don’t know.”

She tried not to get angry. That wouldn’t put food in the fridge. Or make the floor clean. But she sometimes found it difficult not to be angry. Nothing in her life was how she wanted it to be, and some days she felt ready to explode with resentment that had compounded since they met in 2001, when she was still the talkative bartender, and he was still the confident miner who came by her bar after work. After the accident, she did everything she could to care for him. She went part time at work, then quit. She helped him in the bathroom. She drove him to appointments. She did all the shopping because he felt humiliated riding Walmart’s complimentary scooters. But ultimately it wasn’t all the things they lost — his mining salary, the blowout Christmases, the big summer parties — that bothered her as much as the habits they gained.

She had never thought of herself as someone who does drugs, not then, and not now. But she hadn’t wanted Roger to be alone, so she started using with him. She also had her own pain from three car wrecks, which led to a federal disability claim that’s pending on appeal. Then there was her childhood, which had included a dead mother, an incarcerated father, foster homes and sexual abuse. But were those merely excuses? Or was the real problem her? She was the one, after all, who had gone along with everything, even after pills came to dominate their universe, and Roger started smoking meth when he couldn’t get more, and violence seeped into their marriage, and he broke promise after promise that he would quit, including the night she overdosed.

She sighed loudly and put away the broom. “I can only clean so much, and then there’s nothing else to do.” She sat down, stood up, sat down again. “I’m about to turn the air on,” she said, reaching for an air-conditioner they tried not to run to save money, then went back to her chair and her thoughts.

Even now, she still didn’t fully trust him. She suspected that he used while she had last been in the hospital, and although she was pretty sure he wasn’t using now, she still snapped at him that morning.

“There’s your excuse to go get high if you want to,” she had yelled at him, after an argument over nothing.

“I don’t need an excuse,” he had said, going outside for what seemed like a long time, bringing in the dirt that she then had started to sweep up.

She now regretted having said that, not only because she still loved him, and didn’t want to hurt him, but because any additional stress made it more difficult for them to quit. That was particularly true at this time of the month, so close to his next disability check, when they’d finally be able to afford a suboxone appointment but were nonetheless thinking about what else that money could buy.

“Used to be back in the day, we’d be adding up the bills and we would have went and got a 30 [milligram painkiller] or two tonight,” she told Roger a little later, hours before the check was to arrive. “We’d go to the bank to get money, and the 30 dealers would be standing there, selling them. I mean, they jumped in our car before, didn’t they?”

“Yeah,” Roger said. “Or they’d call us while we were at the ATM.”

“ ‘Want to stop by? We’ll meet you,’ ” she said, mimicking the dealers, beginning to laugh, until she saw that Roger wasn’t smiling but silently staring ahead.

“Used to be we were driven back then,” she continued quickly, but he didn’t say anything to that, either.

There was a silence.

“I’m so wore out,” she finally said, wanting their arguments to be over. “I just get so frustrated. Usually when you’re hateful, I let you have the last word, but today, I didn’t.”

“Nope,” he said, but this time, he did look over at her, and his eyes were tender, and he gave her a small smile, and, together, they waited for one hour to pass to the next.