Because of kidney damage caused by his previously occluded renal artery, Roth had low tolerance for certain drugs in high doses—including morphine, as he learned during a recovery that proved horrific for patient and caretakers alike. Roth, hallucinating, took a swing at a nurse who was trying to help him off the bed, and yelled terrible things at Susan Rogers, who’d canceled an entire week of her Bard classes prior to spring break so she could look after him (“nobody in my life knows that I’m involved [with Roth],” she remembered, “so this takes a lot of smoke and mirrors”). Finally she was so distraught that she phoned Roth’s usual minder, Ross Miller, who was himself sick at the time: an old hand by then, Miller patiently explained that Roth was coming off painkillers and would be himself again, more or less, in five or six hours. Indeed, Roth was well enough to take a short walk with Rogers a few days later, but was irritated when she abruptly abandoned him to visit her hospitalized father (pancreatitis) and tend her ailing mother (shingles), which is how she spent her spring break.
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