I still don’t get it. How did I end up in the tub? Last thing I remember was sitting on my bed. Good God, I’m more far gone than I realized.
“Maddie, what the hell were you thinking? Were you trying to kill yourself? I need to know. You have to give me some answers here. I’m your brother, your family. Let me help you.”
“I honestly don’t know, Landon. I don’t remember any of it,” I tell him as I rub my eyes.
I almost drowned. In a damn bathtub.
“You had a lot of drugs in your system. Downers and uppers mixed. They had to pump your stomach.” I look away again, my eyes focusing on the trees that are now covered in snow. I feel so distant. So far away from everyone. I’ve spent my nights alone—the only things to keep me company are the drugs and my own shadow. They comfort me, and they never let me go.
“You need help, B.” I look away from the window and back at my brother.
“I know,” I finally say. “I know.”
***
I was in the hospital a few more days after that. They monitored me and made sure I wasn’t going to off myself. I had to agree to go to rehab, which was okay. I knew I needed help. I couldn’t do it alone anymore. I wasn’t dealing with any of my past. I needed to face it all, but I needed professional help with the shit in my head and the drugs that had taken over me.
Mascara runs down my best girl’s face as I hug her goodbye. I know I won’t see her anymore because I have to get away from here, and she is a small-town girl. She will never leave, and I will never come back. I know that now.
“I love you, Maddie B. Callaway,” she tells me as she wipes the makeup away from her cheek.
“I love you, too.”
“You get better and come back.”
“I don’t know if I can do that, Cali. This might be the last time we see each other.”
She bites her lip and looks away from me. A strange feeling of nostalgia passes over me as thoughts of my childhood run through my mind—glitter makeup, chipped nail polish, red-lipped kisses, and doing things we were too young to do. I take a deep breath and look to the waves. They are big today, and Cali grabs my hand in hers.
“You’ll be more than all of this,” she tells me, and I look over at her. She smiles sadly, and I look away again. The wind blows as she lays her head on my shoulder.
“You’ll be free like the ocean, B.”
“Yeah,” I say solemnly and look to the sky when I hear the birds above us. We stay like that until the sun goes down, and then we part ways.
***
Blue plastic metal-like chairs from old school science classrooms surround me on both sides, curved and filled with people a little like me. One shifts across the dotted tile floor and makes a loud screeching sound, causing me to clench my back teeth. The smell of propane hits my nose as the small heater in the corner of the dank basement kicks on, and my eyes look around the once white walls. Aged and stained, yellowish from too many cigarettes, time and people have made them dirty. The wobbly, gold-chained ceiling fan above me moves a mixture of cool air and smelly heat across my bare knee, and I pick at the fray around the hole in my faded blue jeans. Brown eyes like my father’s look down at my dirty untied shoestring, and I wish I had kept my Chucks cleaner. My thumbnail gets demolished as my teeth chew anxiously at brittle keratin. I’m just passing through until they get me checked into my room at a nicer place than this, but strangely, I feel okay here and not judged. The dirtiness isn’t below me. I am dirty, full of filth, which will be cleaned out soon.
And the people here don’t make me nervous, but that’s the thing about a place filled with people who took the wrong path in life. They can’t judge you, because they’ve done the same or worse than you. Or not quite as bad as you, but they were smarter and got help sooner. I look over when the tall skinny man calls on me to say who I am and why I’m here. Brown blazer, white button-up shirt, and some age around his eyes. I can tell he has been down that wrong path also, and I hope I can look through clean eyes like him one day, without the twitch in my shoulders and the monsters in my head. One ankle over his knee, he loosely holds on to his clipboard, and I hear the heater kick off behind me. I stand up because everyone else did. Wringing my hands and clearing my throat, I try to get my mind to wrap around that second question.
Why am I here?
Because I’m messed up. I’m a drug addict. Because the one person I thought would always be by my side decided he no longer wanted to be. Love is nothing but pain and suffering. Love is nothing but useless hopes and futile dreams. Pointless conversations about the future and wasted time thinking it will all actually happen. My once full heart is now empty, and the craving of something to numb the pain tries to claw itself out from under my skin. A cold sweat breaks out across my forehead, and I feel a tremble in my fingers as my body begs me to give it what it wants.
What it needs.
But I suck it up and take a shaky breath as I slide my hoodie off my head and hide my twitching from withdrawals, hands into the black pockets of my pullover.
“My name is Maddie B. Callaway,” I say. “I’m an addict, a loner, and scared shitless.” A few people chuckle, and I lick my dry lips as my chestnut eyes go to their drawn-in faces. They aren’t laughing at me. No, they are laughing with me. Because they know, and half of them look just as bad as I do.
“But you’re here, Maddie, and you’re not a loner anymore.”
My eyes go to the man with the clipboard, and for the first time in months, my smile isn’t drugged.
Chapter Two
Cold sweat covers my body while razor blades swim through my veins. Anxiety spreads inside my chest, and I feel how off my heartbeat is.
“I just need one more,” I call out to whomever the fuck is listening. “Please!” I yell as my stomach cramps harder than it did yesterday. They say it will get better, easier, but hell if it is. I grab my knees, curling up into the fetal position. The sheets feel like sandpaper against my skin, and I kick them off the bed. “Fuck!” I scream, turning and kicking my food tray across the tiny room. Bouncing off the wall, it flips upside down, spilling all the shit I didn’t eat onto the floor. I hear a beep, and my door clicks open.
“Maddie, you have to stop. We know it hurts, but we promise you, it will get better,” the nurse who has been in my room more times than I care to keep count tells me. She’s in black and gray scrubs, and red-framed glasses sit on top of her long strawberry-blonde hair.
“When?” I cry because I’m so tired of this already.
“I understand what you’re going through.” She hands me a tissue and sets a cup of pills down on my bedside table. I look up at her face and take the tissue from her reached out hand. Silky soft brushes across my cheek, removing the tears, and I sigh.
“If you knew what I was going through, then you would give me one more,” I say.
“It’s because I know what you’re going through that I won’t,” she replies, getting up off the white cotton fitted sheet. She picks up my other sheet off the floor and begins folding it. I close my eyes and lay my head back down on my too hot one minute, too cold the next pillow. “Here, take some of this for your stomach cramps,” strawberry blonde tells me, and I open my eyes and sit up as she tries to hand me the pills.
“I don’t want those,” I say, running an irritated hand through my knotted-up bed hair. They know what I want, and it’s the one thing I can’t have. But my body yearns to be numb again. A tremble moves from my shoulders, down my arms, and into my hands.
“I’ll leave them here for you. Don’t throw them,” she says, putting the small cup back down that’s filled with drugs I don’t crave. I lie back down, and my eyes drift shut. I hear her clean up the mess my foot made, and I slowly pick at the skin beside my thumbnail, trying to stop the shakes. Small steps toward the door tell me she is leaving before I hear the sound of the door clicking open and then shut. I’m left alone again. Sleep drifting, I roll from side to side too many times, and now the unfold
ed sheet is on the floor again. Tired isn’t the right word to describe how I feel. Broken on the inside and out, my body is working hard to repair itself, scrambling with my brain to regain balance after relying so long on a chemical interference. It makes me feel heavy and weak as hell. I wish I could sleep forever.
Tossing and more turning, I give up on trying to find sleep again and lie on my stomach. I watch the sunlight stretch out across the white tile floor, my eyes slowly blinking as it moves, showing me time is passing. Eventually, the orange-yellow light disappears, and it's replaced by moonlight. My door opens several more times as I get checked on. I’m told to take this and to eat that.
The days pass by in a blur of pain and feeling everything. Tremors move through my body, as night sweats and too much anxiousness let me know my body is fighting and seems to be winning this chemical battle I have put it through. I sleep as much as my mind will let me, and on the tenth day here, I get out of bed and walk to the window. I feel better today, and I climb into the large windowsill and soak up the rays the sun is giving me. It warms my cool-to-the- touch skin, and I sigh at the comfort it brings. My door opens and in walks my caretaker.
“Good morning,” she says, smiling at the sight of me out of bed.
“Morning,” I reply, smelling the pancakes she has in her hand. My stomach growls, and for the first time in days, I actually have an appetite, but I’ll wait until she leaves.
“Your therapy begins today.”
“I’ll pass.” I watch her set my food down and straighten my bed. I don’t know why she feels the need to do that. It’s just going to get messed up again.
“I’m afraid you don’t have a choice, Maddie.” She’s tucking and smoothing while my teeth are working on yet another fingernail.
“I’m not ready to talk to a stranger about the shit in my head,” I tell her. She looks up at me and gives me a sympathetic smile. I wish she wouldn’t.
“Maddie, it’s all part of the healing process. You have to get this stuff out, or you won’t get any better.” I watch her walk toward me, and she leans her hip against the wall near the window I am seated in. “How are you feeling today?” she asks with narrowed eyes and a sincere tone.
“Better.”
“Good.” She nods and crosses her arms.
Is she gonna stay and chat?
I look down at another black shirt and see she has a small nametag on. She obviously likes black, and Grace is what the tag reads. I think I remember her telling me that.
My pancakes are getting cold. She reads my mind. “I’ll let you eat. Then take a shower. I’ll come get you for therapy,” she says, patting my leg before she starts to walk, and this time she asks me if I want my door left open.
“No,” I tell her. She nods and shuts it as she exits.
***
The pancakes were filling, and the shower has cleared my head. I brush a comb through my dark hair and attempt to blow-dry it before I decide to just throw it up. I climb into the windowsill again and stare out at the melting snow on the ground. Sunshine warms my face, and I still taste powdered sugar on my tongue from breakfast. My door clicks open again, and I see Grace with a high ponytail. This time her red-framed glasses are on her face.
“You ready?”
“I don’t have a choice, right?”
“Nope,” she says and shrugs as she holds open the door.
I sigh and jump down from the window. I slip my black flats on and grab my cardigan from my bed. Sliding one arm through before the other, I follow her out and cross my arms as we walk down the stretch of hallway, passing by open and closed doors. I hear a TV playing in the small social room and see people sitting out back with lit filters in their hands. When we walk outside, I squint from the sunshine and pull my sweater closer to my body. It’s cold out, but the air is refreshing, and I breathe in deep. We walk down the sidewalk until we come to another building. Grace opens the door and allows me to go inside first. I stop and wait for her to show me the way. We walk up to a brown door, and she knocks before the person on the other side tells her to come in.
A woman in a white T-shirt and dark jeans comes into view when Grace turns the door handle and pushes open the brown wood.
“Hello,” dark jeans says as we walk in.
“Dr. White,” Grace greets. “This is Maddie B. Callaway.”
“Hi, Maddie.”
“Hey,” I say, wringing my hands.
“Thanks, Grace. We should be good from here,” Dr. White says.
“Sure,” Grace replies and gives me her reassuring smile before she exits. I’m left standing awkwardly in the room while Dr. White takes a seat on the light cream chair.
“Please, Maddie, have a seat,” she says, smiling up at me. I walk over to the matching couch and feel how soft it is, as I place my hand on the arm and sit down.
“Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like for you to call me Ellie. I don’t care too much for Dr. White. It sounds like my father. Unlike him, I shave my mustache, and my hair is shorter. He is an old hippie.” She grins, and I realize she is trying to break the ice and make a joke. A small laugh expels from me, and it takes me a second to notice I’m grinning, too. “Ahh, you have a great smile,” Ellie says. “We will have to see it more often.”
I stop, though, and my eyes wander around her office. Comfortable is the best word to describe it. A throw blanket is behind her on the chair she sits in, and in time I learn she actually uses it because she is cold a lot. Her desk is a light rustic wood filled with pictures and papers. She introduces smiling faces of her nieces and nephews and her girlfriend of five years. She has a bookshelf that is packed with mystery novels and only one or two books about therapy. I also learn that she has read all of them, and she owns a small fortune in books at home. Her girlfriend, Samantha, doesn’t like to read and doesn’t understand her fetish, but Ellie says there is nothing like a good book to take you out of reality for a while. All of this I learn before she knows anything about me. I don’t speak much to her. I listen to her talk, and it gives my mind a break from my reality.
***
Later that day, when I return to my room, I notice a green cushion placed on my windowsill. A smile tugs at the corners of my lips, and I think it’s the first moment I believe everything just might be okay.
***
Weeks pass, and the weather starts to grow warmer. I walk outside a lot, and Landon and Frankie have been approved to visit. Landon’s hair has grown out, and Frankie looks the same. I don’t dare ask them about the boy who ripped my heart out, and they don’t bring him up. But deep down, I want to know everything.
The leaves in the trees grow greener, and birds chirp around me as I sit in the swing that’s attached to an old oak. I kick away from the ground and smile when the warmer-than-a-few-days ago’s wind brushes across my face. Holding on tight to the thick rope, I stretch my legs out and tuck them back in again, pushing myself to go higher. It feels like I’m flying, and when I close my eyes, I pretend that’s exactly what I’m doing.
Chapter Three
“Okay, Maddie, today is the day. I’ve let you have your space, and you’ve learned everything there is to know about me, and then some.” Ellie laughs as she moves across the room. She opens the blinds, and little dust particles float in the sunlight as she walks back around her desk. “So now,” she says as she leans against the rustic wood and crosses her ankles, “it’s your turn. You have to talk to heal. Sometimes, to understand a person’s present, we have to go back to their past.” I pick a piece of lint off my black leggings and slide my gray sleeves up to my elbows.
“Can we take a walk?” I ask.
“Sure,” Ellie says, and I stand up and open the door she has leading outside. I look up at the crisp blue sky and walk past the only plant Ellie has ever kept alive. Patience and understanding walks beside me quietly as I try to gather my thoughts.
“I was nine years old when my parents were murdered in front of me,” I begin, crossing my arms and look
ing off into the distance. “My dad had gotten an awesome job opportunity he couldn’t turn down in a city across the country, so he and my mom packed up everything we could fit into our car, and we took off. ‘A new adventure for all of us,’ my dad had said. And I was excited. I loved my parents. We had such a great relationship. Unlike most kids my age, I always wanted to be around my folks. Brown eyes like mine and the same dark hair I have, my dad was just like me or I was just like him.” I grin, thinking about him. “He could draw anything. He was an architect, and my best friend,” I say, my grin disappearing as I think of how I miss him.
“My mom was gorgeous. She had blonde hair and amazing blue eyes. She was Grace Kelly pretty and Katharine Hepburn funny. We laughed every day in my house. You two would have gotten along well,” I tell Ellie when I look over and see her studying me closely. She smiles and urges me with her eyes to continue, so I do. “It was late, and we needed gas. My dad also needed some smokes. I remember him saying he was running low. We got off the exit ramp not too far from where I live now and pulled up at the first twenty-four hour store we could find. The parking lot was empty except one car was parked away from the store and gas pumps. My dad went inside to pay for the gas and grab his cigarettes, and my mom needed to use the restroom, so I stayed in the car and waited. Everything changed in the blink of an eye,” I say those last words more to myself than to her. “One minute I was in the backseat, the next I was jumping out of the car as my parents ran out of the store. A man followed close behind them, and in one second, the sound of a gun fired, once and then twice. I watched outside of myself as the two people I loved the most fell to the ground.” I don’t say anything for a minute after that, and Ellie doesn’t either.
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