JARVIS

Chloe stood looking down over Jarvis her Teddy Bear, She bowed her head and she prayed. She asked the sky to be kind to him. To make his pain go away. To make him come back to her. Jarvis was suffering, suffering real bad. It had been a long hard 2 years and Jarvis was going through a very tough withdrawal from his tea addiction. Chloe was a very caring little girl and she loved Jarvis, but she knew that Jarvis had had enough. Chloe wished that she had seen the signs earlier, before her poor teddy had gotten so bad.

But Jarvis was an addict. It was a fact. From the time Chloe got up in the morning to the time She went to bed at night, Jarvis was drinking tea. Chloe couldn’t be sure how long it had really been going on. She had gotten Jarvis as a birthday present on her 5^th birthday and from then on, every single time there was a tea party, Jarvis was always the first to the the table.

But over the last few weeks and months, Jarvis had changed. He had become mean. He had lost one of his button eyes in a fight with Ken and his stitching had all come undone. He was losing stuffing at an alarming rate. Every time Chloe´s grandmother would stitch him up, a few days later he would be in even worst condition than he had been. How had it all come to this?

Jarvis had been drinking tea solidly for about 4 years, not every day, but sometimes there would be 2 or 3 tea parties in a day and as the amount of tea parties increased so did Jarvis´ appetite. He had sold Chloe´s necklace and rings to Barbie for 3 cups and Chloe had found that her favorite hairbrush had also gone missing. Chloe would give in to his urges in the beginning and when he asked he would be given a cup, but as his addiction grew, his desired amount became greater and greater and so there was no sufficient amount to quench his thirst.

Jarvis started to steal from everyone then, neighbors, friends, and even Chloe´s grandparents. Anyone who had anything he could sell for tea was at risk. Chloe started to get embarrassed by him and stopped inviting her friends around when her best friend Laura´s Christmas bracelet had gone missing while she had been playing with Chloe. All fingers pointed to Jarvis, and yet he said nothing.

As Jarvis increased his usage, he became dependent and soon it was all he thought about and all he wanted to do was have a tea party. Chloe couldn’t do anything else, he stopped going with her when she left the house, he began to get worse and worse and now his addiction to the tea was causing his heart to race. He would get the most dreadful palpitations, and when he would go riding with Cindy, he could not hold the reigns for the shakes in his paws were so great.

He began to walk funny too as the tea put a strain on his back seam. His body could not cope with the pain he was feeling now and there was no more tea. He begged Chloe, he begged her parents, all the other toys, but no one would listen to his pleas. Soon Jarvis was well into withdrawal and the pain was so great that the space where his button used to be would weep tears that made Chloe want to cave in and just give him the tea he so desperately craved. But Doctor Seuss’ Cat had told her to be patient, that he would get through it, she needed to be strong for him, but if she gave in now, it would be the end of Jarvis.

It hadn’t always been this way. In the beginning Jarvis was content to sit there with the other toys and not partake in the tea party itself, but when he saw how happy all the other toy´s seemed to be when they drank the tea, he decided to give it a try. The first time he tried was when Chloe was 6. He, Chloe, Mr. Potato head and Noddy were all sitting around the little table, and Chloe was pouring for them all. Jarvis stared down at the little cup in front of him. It smelled delicious. It couldn’t hurt, he thought to himself. He took a tiny sip from the cup and the warm liquid cascaded down his gullet. He felt so alive, and his eyes begged Chloe for another cup which he finished just as fast as the first one.

Soon, Jarvis would not get up from the table until long after all the other toys had gone and he would finish off the remains of their cups as well as whatever was left in Belle´s teapot.

Jarvis would take out all Chloe´s mothers recipes and Chloe would have to try making different teas, stronger teas. He loved hearing Chloe read stories about The Little Teapot short and stout and would get her to read it while at the tea party. When Friends and family would come to visit, Jarvis would suggest Chloe bring them up to her room for a tea party. Jarvis was soon trying every tactic he could think of to get his paws on a cup.

Jarvis had lost his ability to feel good without the tea now. And he enlisted the help of Jack in the box to put pressure on the other toys to always invite Jarvis to their tea parties with Chloe. But after he had pushed a few toys from the window into the street he realized that paying Jack in the Box for his services was far too expensive for him to handle. He needed another way to get the tea.

He didn’t have to wait long, and after a fight with Ken at Barbie´s Dream house tea party. Chloe felt so sorry that Jarvis had lost his eye that she held a private tea party just for him whenever he wanted. This soon became every day.

Quitting tea and going cold turkey lurkey wasn’t as easy as it sounded. He couldn’t just give up. Doctor Seuss’ Cat had recommended he cut down slowly before being weaned off, but this had backfired and Jarvis had become aggressive and violent and had attacked the Doctors Cat. There was nothing else for it. Jarvis was to be given no more tea and he would have to suffer until he had got it all out of his system and gotten better again.

Chloe could not be sure that Jarvis would ever make a full recovery. She watched as he wretched and moaned, curled up in a ball. Even if he made a full recovery from the addiction, would he really ever be able to be around people drinking tea ever again. Would he have to go away? The pain might be gone, but the addiction may always be there, tempting him, calling him, teasing him.

Chloe had no way of knowing whether Jarvis would get better or worse. She could only hope that Jarvis could find a way of getting back to her. Every day Chloe sat beside Jarvis, she read him stories about lots of different things but never about tea. She gave him all the love and care she had. And even though Chloe felt completely powerless to help him, she would never leave him. Jarvis was her teddy bear and her best friend. She would do everything she could for him.

The day Jarvis finally came around and was back on his feet, was the happiest day of Chloe´s young life. He was given the total support of all the other toys and even Ken was there to try and help him rebuild his once glorious reputation as Chloe´s number 1 toy. Chloe worried that if things got too hard for Jarvis again maybe he would slip back into relapse and look for comfort in the bottom of a tea cup once again. So she decided that the best thing to do would be to sell her tea party things. She asked Laura if she would like to have them and Laura suggested a swap. Laura would take the tea party things if Chloe would take her teddy bear Jane. Jane was having a hard time settling in Laura´s playroom and Laura thought that maybe a change of scenery would be just the thing to make her feel better. Chloe agreed and Jane arrived the following day.

Although Jarvis had a long road ahead of him in terms of his recovery, Jane´s arrival made him instantly book himself up and he began to try and get back to his former self. Jarvis was lucky. He had so much love in his life and in the end it was that love that had saved him.

Jarvis has now recovered from his tea addiction. He has been clean for 6 months and has just started a relationship with Jane. They are very happy together. He is getting his life back on track and becoming the teddy bear he was made to be.

The End