When One Door Opens

by Ruskin, JD

  Caleb sobbed into his hand, refusing to look at Logan. The sight of his tears tugged strings Logan didn’t know he had. “You’re okay,” Logan said into the side of Caleb’s throat, kissing his warm skin.

  A few minutes later, Logan heard loud knocking and the sound of voices from the main room. The paramedics move fast in this neighborhood. He could hear Klass’s voice, likely explaining about the panic attacks.

  Logan felt faintly embarrassed when the paramedics and Klass stopped in the doorway, eyes wide as they took in the sight of Caleb cradled in his lap. His glare compelled the guys to get moving. He slid Caleb to the ground, but stayed close by. The paramedics traded info back and forth that meant nothing to Logan as they assessed Caleb’s condition. Heart rate one-fifty. Blood pressure one-forty over ninety. Sweating but not diaphoretic. “We’re here to help you, sir,” said the paramedic on blood pressure duty. “I need you to tell me what happened, Caleb.”

  The other paramedic turned to Logan. “Can you get us some more light?”

  Logan leaped to his feet, glad to have something to do. He took two steps toward the window before Caleb made a low keening sound. Turning, Logan saw the paramedics scramble to keep Caleb from moving.

  “You’re hurting him,” Logan said, and it came out in a snarl that surprised even him. Caleb twitched violently and the paramedic holding his arms looked warily over his shoulder. Logan sighed and made an effort to lower his voice again. “His wrist looks broken.” Something caught his eye and he angled his head to see into the bathroom. “The shower curtain’s been torn off the rod.”

  The paramedic’s expression changed, looking chagrined and then crossing over into concerned. “If he fell, there’s a possibility he hit his head as well. He could be suffering from a head injury in addition to the anxiety.” He shared a look with his partner, and Logan’s gut rolled. “Sir, when you fell in the shower, did you hit your head?” the paramedic asked as his partner rose and walked to the bathroom. “Did you lose consciousness?” He moved his hand slowly over Caleb’s scalp.

  Caleb froze, and his eyes grew distant. “It hurt and then time got all slippery like the soap.”

  The partner came back into the room, looking grim. “There’s some blood and vomit on the floor.” Looking behind Logan, the man said, “We need to prep him for transport.”

  Logan had forgotten Klass was in the room until he spoke. “Are you sure that’s necessary?”

  Logan valiantly resisted the urge to strangle the man.

  Seemingly unfazed by Klass’s question, the paramedic said, “He has obvious physical signs of trauma in addition to the psychological. He needs to see a doctor and we’re more likely to get him to the hospital quickly and safely than you can. But he needs to consent before we can take him, unless you’re his medical proxy.”

  Caleb vigorously shook his head. “No hospital.” He struggled into a sitting position. “They’ll chop, chop, chop. Not going.” His faced went even paler, and he swallowed hard.

  While Klass stood there waffling, Logan kneeled in front of Caleb. “You need to go to the hospital.” When Caleb turned away, Logan grabbed his face, forcing their eyes to meet. “I won’t let nobody hurt you. Do you hear me?”

  “Promise?” Caleb asked, sounding like a child desperate to learn that monsters weren’t real.

  Logan brushed a hand across Caleb’s stubbled jaw. “I’ll squash their tiny heads with my size twelves.” He kissed Caleb’s forehead. “I promise.” Klass’s clearing his throat caused Logan to pull back and stand. Logan stared straight at the wall, not wanting to see the expression on his boss’s face. I’ll be lucky if I still have a job after all this. He knew he should be more upset about the prospect of unemployment. His focus was entirely on the man struggling to his feet. The paramedics moved to either side of Caleb, walking him into the main room and lowering him onto the stretcher.

  Logan walked in front of the paramedics, wanting to be in place if Caleb reacted badly while they negotiated the stairs. The last thing Caleb needed was to take another tumble.

  As they loaded Caleb into the ambulance, Logan asked, “Which hospital are you taking him to?”

  “Mr. Sellers,” Klass said, putting his hand on Logan’s arm. “Thank you for your help, but I can handle it from here.” When Logan opened his mouth to protest, he said, “I’ll speak with you tomorrow at work.”

  Logan gritted his teeth. “I promised him.”

  The paramedic put a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “He’s going to be okay, but we need to get moving.”

  Not wanting to delay treatment, Logan stepped back.

  Hand clutching the ambulance door, Klass asked, “Did we lock the door?”

  Logan shook his head. “I had to bust the chain to get in, but I can fix it no problem.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I will arrange to have the door repaired and the locks upgraded. Could you lock the door in the meanwhile?”

  “Yeah.” Logan ground the word out between his teeth.

  “Thank you, Mr. Sellers,” Klass said, scrambling into the back of the ambulance.

  Logan watched them secure the door and pull off, hating how helpless it made him feel. He reentered the apartment complex, adrenaline draining away with each step he took. The trip back to the fourth floor felt like he was walking up the wrong way on an escalator. He wanted to stop resisting the flow and let it take him out of the building, away from the crushing weight on his chest. He found himself standing in front of Caleb’s bathroom. Forcing himself to step inside, the sharp smell of sickness and fear hit him. The blue-checkered curtain hung by only one plastic ring and covered the floor like a painter’s tarp. A smear of blood stained the pine cabinet below the sink. The fall was bad, but it coulda been worse, Logan thought, fingers tracing the corner of the granite countertop. He coulda been bleeding out while I walked away like a fucking coward. His knees buckled at the thought, dumping him on the floor. He felt a sharp jab of pain on his ass, and he reached into the back pocket of his cargo pants. He’d retrieved the bottle of booze from under the bed this morning with the intention of tossing it out. Liar. Just don’t want Dabb to find it. Looking at it now, he noticed the plastic seal was frayed from the times he’d fingered it this weekend, but it remained unbroken. Logan closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. He couldn’t afford to fall apart now.

  His fingers felt fat and clumsy as he took out his cell phone and pulled up the number. He heard murmuring voices and phones ringing in the background when Michael answered.

  Tapping the bottle against his bottom lip, Logan said, “I need you to remind me of what it was like.”

  “What do you mean?” The sound broke a little as if Michael were on the move. “Is everything okay with Caleb?”

  Logan smacked the back of his head against the wall. “Tell me what it was like to have a drunk for a best friend.”

  “What’s going on?” Michael asked, his voice echoing.

  Logan guessed where Michael was headed. The ambient noise of traffic and howling wind in the background confirmed that he had escaped to the roof for a nic fix. Michael swore under his breath, and Logan pictured him with his hand cupped around the lighter as the wind conspired to steal his flame.

  “I’ve been carrying a minibottle of booze around in my pocket for the past three days. I bought it off a panhandler before I ran into you.”

  Michael made a noise of disgust. “You shook my hand after touching something a homeless guy touched.”

  Logan snorted. “Way to focus on the important part, OCD man.”

  Michael cleared his throat. “Right, did you drink it?”

  “I haven’t had a drop of liquor since detox and I need to remember why.”

  For a dozen heartbeats, Michael didn’t speak. When the words finally came, his voice didn’t break. It shattered. “You were a cruel drunk,” he said, his breath hitching. “You seemed to get off on rooting out people’s insecurities. You’d pick at their scabs until they bled.�
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  Logan couldn’t remember when a few drinks became a bottle and then two bottles every night. He couldn’t point to one single moment or event as the cause. From his first drink at fourteen, alcohol began soaking into his skin, the moisture rotting him on the inside. Every few years he’d use a chisel to hack away all the wet, unsound wood without trying to find the source of the moisture. The rot always came back, stronger than before.

  “That night in the bar was the first time I was afraid of you instead of for you. You grabbed my wrist and honest to God snarled at me. It was like there was nothing human left in you. You were going to kill that man and anyone who got in the way.”

  Logan threw the bottle into the cabinet and slammed it shut. He didn’t trust himself to pour the contents into the sink instead of down his suddenly dry throat. Leaning his forehead against the door, he asked, “Why would you want anything to do with me after going through all that?”

  “Because you stopped,” Michael said quietly.

  Logan sat up. “Stopped drinking?”

  “The girlfriend of the man crawled over broken glass to get in your way and to put her hand on your arm. And I remember thinking that if you hit her, then you really had become your old man and there’d be no saving you.” Michael took a long indrawn breath before expelling it. “But you didn’t hurt her. She begged you to stop and you did.”

  Logan remembered almost nothing about that night, but he was sure of one thing. “I didn’t give a shit about that girl. I was thinking they didn’t serve shots in lockup. I don’t want that drink any less now than I did then.”

  “You’ve changed, Logan. You may not be able to see it, but you have. You might have wanted that drink today, but you picked up the phone instead. Shouldn’t that count for something?”

  “You sure you don’t want me to lose your number?”

  “I want you to get off your ass and go wash your hands before you get hepatitis.”

  Logan’s mouth curled unwillingly into a smile. “The AA meeting I go to meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00 pm. They have an Al-Anon meeting that goes on at the same time down the hall. You up for it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ending the call, Logan realized what Michael must have felt. The feeling of wanting to help someone and being powerless to do it. Looking around the bathroom, he decided there was something he could do.

  In the kitchen, Logan rooted around until he found a trash bag, paper towels, and cleaner. Detaching the torn curtain from the pole, he folded it up roughly before shoving it into the trash bag. After scrubbing the mess on the cabinet and floor, he tossed the paper towels away. He doubted his efforts were up to Caleb’s standards, since he was a bigger neat freak than Michael, but at least Caleb wouldn’t have to come home from the hospital and clean up his own blood and vomit.

  WHEN he entered the warehouse, Logan headed straight for Klass’s office. He’d spent last night in anxious misery. None of the local hospitals would tell him if Caleb was even a patient, let alone how he was doing. His attempts to call Klass and Caleb had gone unanswered. Dabb stopped by just long enough to tuck Logan into bed and tell him to be nicer to his supervisor in the future. Since he was a cryptic bastard, Logan couldn’t tell if his PO believed whatever Foster told him or not. Eventually, he collapsed into a troubled sleep.

  Before Logan could get through the doorway, Klass said, “I want to thank you for your help with Caleb, Mr. Sellers.” He sat behind the desk with his hands pressed flat against the wood like he was using it to hold himself upright.

  Logan counted to five in his head before he spoke. “Is he doing okay?”

  Klass looked like he was debating what to say. “The doctors diagnosed him with a broken wrist, a mild concussion, and dehydration. He’s been treated and is resting at home.”

  Home. It wasn’t a home; it was a prison. And Klass might not be Caleb’s warden, but he wasn’t making it any easier for Caleb to escape.

  Klass pinched the bridge of his nose, like he was getting a headache. He sat like that for a few long moments before he dropped his hand and spoke. “Caleb will no longer need your services and he has asked me to pay you four weeks’ severance pay. Also, a full-time position will be available next month when Hank Nelson retires, and in light of your efforts on behalf of my nephew, I would like to offer you the position.”

  Logan swallowed hard. It was obvious Klass wanted him away from Caleb, and Logan wanted to tell him where to shove his pathetic excuse for a bribe. The smart thing to do would be to just thank the little weasel and walk away. He couldn’t afford to lose his job. Instead he asked, “Are you planning on hiring another ex-con for him?”

  Klass pursed his lips. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but Caleb has decided to switch to a courier service and do his shopping at an online grocery.”

  Solitary confinement. Logan stared at his boss long and hard, and for a moment, something raw and naked touched Klass’s eyes before it disappeared. Stepping right in front of the desk, Logan said, “You think you’re helping him. You’re not.”

  Klass’s shoulders stiffened and his eyes narrowed. “And you think a couple of weeks being his errand boy makes you qualified to know what’s best for my nephew?”

  Logan knew the signs all too well. Klass wasn’t angry; he was afraid. So terrified of failing his dead sister he’d rather do nothing than the wrong thing. He wanted to help Caleb, but was doing the opposite. “I know nobody ever got over being afraid of the dark by never turning off the lights.” He turned and walked out before Klass could respond.

  Rather than finishing his shift, Logan decided to leave work. Exiting the warehouse, he knew he needed to call his sponsor, Stacy. He didn’t trust himself to keep it together, and he couldn’t help Caleb if he was passed-out drunk.

  LOGAN looked up at the sound of the bell as his sponsor entered the cafe. Stacy was wearing a tailored black suit, white shirt open at the neck, revealing enough cleavage to turn heads as she joined him.

  After they exchanged greetings, she said, “You sounded frazzled on the phone. What’s going on?”

  Just as Logan was about to reply, the waitress appeared with a coffeepot in one hand and menus in the other. “Today’s soup is chicken noodle and our lunch special is a toasted Reuben with fries.” She dropped the menus in front of them. “Coffee?” She held up the pot, and when they both nodded, she filled their crockery mugs and deposited a handful of creamers on the table. “Be back in a jiff.” She spun away to answer the sharp ping of the pick-up bell from the kitchen.

  Logan delayed the conversation by swirling cream and sugar into his mug and sipping the hot coffee. “I screwed up and I don’t know how to make it right.”

  “Tell me what happened.” She reached across the table and covered his clenched fist with her hand. “Does it involve the guy you told me about? Caleb?”

  Logan nodded. He then told her an abbreviated version of what happened to Caleb and his conversation with Klass.

  “Are you ready to order, folks?”

  Stacy shot Logan an apologetic glance and turned to the menu. “I’d like a bowl of today’s soup and a side salad.”

  The woman jotted down Stacy’s order and glanced at Logan.

  “Just the coffee.”

  Another quick notation, a gathering of menus, and their waitress disappeared.

  Stacy took a deep sip of coffee. “I take it Caleb is refusing to speak to you.”

  “Yeah, he doesn’t answer when I call.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I’m guessing he’s pissed at me for breaking in and calling his uncle.”

  “It’s possible, but I doubt it. If he’s refusing to talk to you, it’s not because you got him the medical treatment he needed.”

  “Then why?”

  “From what you’ve told me there are a lot of similarities between addiction and anxiety disorders. They both have the potential to control a person’s life and there’s a lot of shame in allowing it to happen.” She took a sip of her coff
ee. “Shame makes it worse. Making you more likely to sink further.”

  Logan rolled his shoulders, tilted his head from side to side to pop his neck and to ease his tension, trying to force himself to relax. He was too familiar with that vicious cycle. “I shouldn’t be bothering you with this and dragging you away from your job.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said, loud enough to turn heads. She sighed and continued more quietly. “I told you I went three years on the program before I relapsed, but not what happened. One lousy fight with my then girlfriend and all that work was gone. My sponsor was a crotchety old lady named Gertrude. She came by my place and found me worshiping the porcelain god, reeking of booze and vomit. She looked at me and said, ‘I think it’s time you sponsored someone.’” Stacy grinned as if lost in the memory. “That crazy bat was right. Helping you helps me. I haven’t had a relapse since I started being a sponsor three years ago.”

  “I don’t know how to help him, Stacy. And I need to find a way.”

  “It sounds like your friend is sinking hard, but you can’t save him. You can try to be his friend if he lets you, but the only way off that boat is for him to take that first step. It’s not easy to talk about personal struggles, but I believe it’s necessary to move beyond them.”

  Logan rubbed the back of his neck, realizing they weren’t just talking about Caleb anymore. “I haven’t missed a single AA meeting and I’ve completed more homework in the past month than my senior year of high school.”

  The waitress returned, bringing a wilted pile of lettuce and one solitary slice of tomato. Stacy thanked her and proceeded to drown the salad with sharp jabs to a bottle of low-fat Italian dressing. “You attend, but you’re not an active participant. That’s not unusual when you first join a new group, but eventually you need to start sharing.”

  “I’m not required to speak or share with the group. I just gotta show up.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, smacking the bottle of dressing against the table hard enough to make the dishes rattle. “There are some people who can never say a word at meetings and still see improvements in their lives just by going and listening. You’re not one of them.”