by James Brown
She has a clipboard. Attached to it are several forms, one releasing the hospital of any liability once I leave the premises. It’s signed by my psychiatrist, as are the others. I don’t read them. I just scribble my signature in all the necessary places and pass the clipboard back to the nurse.
She smiles.
“You’ll be okay,” she says. “Just keep doing what you’re doing and make sure you get to ninety meetings in ninety days. Read your Big Book. Get a sponsor right away and work the Steps.”
I don’t know how many times I’ve been given that same advice, here, and before, in meetings I’ve attended on my own. She walks me to the end of the hall and then goes into an office.
“Good luck,” she says. “I’ll buzz you out.”
The buzzer sounds. The steel doors through which I entered several weeks before swing open, and I step into the waiting room. The doors, heavy ones like those of a prison, shut behind me. I hear the lock slam into place.
A few days from now, Orlando will visit, and when we’re alone, he’ll tell me that I need to understand one thing—and understand it well.
“It’s not your fault. None of it. Your brother, your sister, even Heidi. They’re responsible for their own actions.”
His mother dies while he’s driving me and my boy home from the Hilton. He misses her last breath. He misses holding her hand and saying he loves her, and in that sacrifice he makes for me, as I accumulate more and more sober days, I will come to recognize it for what it is, the truest of gifts, an act of love and selflessness.
Outside the hospital, clouds move across the sky. For a short while it is sunny and warm. Then it turns gray and cool. I set my suitcase down and sit on the patch of lawn near the entrance to the parking lot. My wife will be here soon. I just have to be patient.
I watch the leaves of a tree move in a soft wind. I feel the dampness of the lawn through my jeans. The skin of my wrists itch from the blades of grass. She’ll smile when she pulls into the lot and spots me. I’ll return it. Then I’ll get to my feet and walk straight and assuredly toward her. My eyes are clear. My hands are steady. I feel healthy and alert and fully intend to stay this way. I will attend meetings daily. I will get a sponsor. I will diligently work the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The man she will see is not the one who risked the life of his son leaping from a moving car. This man will kiss his wife when she arrives, and as they drive away from this hospital for the disturbed, he’ll look out the window. In it, he will glimpse the reflection of a hopeful man firmly determined to stay sober. In it, he will also glimpse what is burrowed deep inside his other self, the alcoholic, the addict, always waiting to reemerge.
Acknowledgments
For this book I’m indebted to my terrific agent, Ryan Fischer-Harbage, and Dan Smetanka, the best book editor I’ve ever had. To my family, with all my love, I thank Paula, Andy, Logan and Nate. For their friendship, I thank Juan Delgado, Frank Ferro, Chet Hower, Art Monterastelli, Manuel Palacios, Gary Stebbings, and the fellowship of the Blue Jay Alano Club. Special appreciation goes to Orlando Ramirez, who along with his help, loyalty and support, also lived a few of these stories.
Copyright © 2010 James Brown
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN : 978-1-582-43874-0
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