Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America

by Beth Macy

Tess finally made her flight home the night of December 30. It was unseasonably cold in Virginia, the winds howling and furious. The snow flurries reminded Patricia of all the cold nights she’d spent worrying about Tess. She was still sleeping with her cellphone, awaiting Tess’s transport to Roanoke. Just after midnight, she texted me: Her body has arrived. It took funeral-home technicians two days to make Tess presentable enough for Patricia to view her body. Her head had been shaved in Las Vegas, for the collection of evidence, and Tess’s older sister had picked out an outfit from one of Tess’s favorite shops, including an embroidered vest, leggings, and a bright silk-cashmere headscarf with a boisterous, smiling Frida Kahlo. In a windowless nook of a downtown Roanoke funeral parlor, not far from where Tess once roamed the streets, Patricia caressed the back of the scarf, as if cupping a baby’s head, and told her poet goodbye. It was January 2, Tess’s birthday. She would have been twenty-nine. Patricia tucked the treasures of her daughter’s life inside the vest—a picture of her boy and one of his cotton onesies that was Tess’s favorite, some strands of Koda’s hair, and a sand dollar.