Lifeline

by Abbey Lee Nash

  Several guys in the circle nod. I try to picture this straight-laced group leader toking a blunt or, for that matter, even drinking a beer that didn’t come in a frosted glass.

  “A couple things stood out to me during Cynthia’s testimony this morning,” Howard begins. He crosses one leg over the other, thick brown hair peeking out over the hem of a navy-blue tube sock. “Primarily what she said about finally facing her fears without relying on drugs as a crutch, and how that was a turning point in her recovery. Can any of you relate to that idea? Can you recognize any of Cynthia’s avoidance behaviors in your own life?”

  At this point, I go deaf. I don’t know who Cynthia is, I didn’t hear her “testimony,” and I don’t give a crap what she’s afraid of. Mo raises his hand to answer Howard’s question, and I let my mind wander. I think about Savannah, who’s probably sitting in second period Anatomy right about now, and I wonder if she’s thinking about me. I wonder what kind of hoops I have to jump through to get to use the phone.

  And then I think about Libby.

  What was in that notebook she was holding onto so tight? And what was so important that she couldn’t wait a couple hours to talk to Richard about it? And, most of all, why the hell do I care?

  “Eli?” An annoyingly nasal voice interrupts my thoughts. The whole group is staring at me, waiting for the answer to a question I didn’t even hear.

  I sit up straighter in my chair, feeling like I just got busted sexting Savannah in Pre-Calc. “Huh?”

  Will snickers into his coffee.

  Howard gives me a thin smile. “Seeing as this is your first time joining us, it’d be nice if we could get to know you a bit. Would you be willing to share your story with the group?

  “My story?” My mouth has gone dry, and my tongue feels like beef jerky.

  “Yes,” Howard urges. “Tell us about the journey that brought you to LakeShore.”

  My journey? Is this guy for real? Who talks like this? I glance around at the room full of strangers waiting for me to speak.

  I hunch my shoulders and shake my head. “No, thanks,” I say. “I’ll pass.”

  “Sharing is an important part of the recovery process,” Howard presses.

  I shift forward in my chair and meet Howard’s gaze, my voice a hard line that I dare him to cross. “I said I’ll pass.”

  Howard blinks. “Maybe next time,” he says.

  After group, I carry my half-empty cup of now cold coffee back to my room. I should dump it, but it feels good to have something in my hand, like the red Solo cup at a party that magically makes you feel less like a loser and more like you belong.

  Red’s leaving our room when I get there. He looks more awake than I’ve ever seen him; his legs are sturdier, and he’s shaking a little less. “I’ve gotta check in with the doc,” he tells me. “Hopefully for the last time. I think he’s gonna clear me for Phase Two any day now.”

  “There’s no rush,” I tell him. “It’s no party up there, trust me.”

  Red laughs, bumps my shoulder with a loose fist. “Isn’t that kinda the point?”

  He shuffles down the hall, and I head into our empty room. The quiet is stifling, and the last place I want to be is alone. But there’s nowhere else to go.

  I drop onto my bed, prop a few pillows between my back and the headboard, and stare at the Step One folder in my hand. Might as well flip through it.

  The Twelve Steps, written in the same cheese ball language as the books in the detox lounge, are printed right inside the front cover: Step One: We admitted that we were powerless over drugs and that our lives had become unmanageable.

  I consider ditching the packet and hitting up that Ping-Pong table instead, but I promised Richard Fisher I’d do the stupid questionnaire. So I read on.

  It’s a load of psychobabble bullshit; the papers inside the folder read the way Howard talks. I can almost hear his post nasal drip as I skim a paragraph about the importance of answering the questions honestly. “This packet is an opportunity to explore the effects of drugs on the various areas in your life,” Howard/the folder says. “Be honest in your answers. The only person you hurt by lying is yourself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I say out loud as I rifle in the drawer of my bedside table for a pencil. The packet is several pages long, broken up into sections with headings like Taking Risks, Self-worth, Relationships, and School. The first section lists every drug under the sun (some I’ve never even heard of) and wants to know whether you’ve tried it, when you tried it, how old you were, and (my favorite question) how often you use it.

  Under the column titled I’ve used, I check the boxes next to pot, alcohol, cigarettes, acid, and opiates. It’s weird thinking back to the first time I tried all that stuff—it’s like trying to remember your first kiss or the first girl you ever had a crush on. Twelve years old for cigarettes and alcohol, if the time Chase snuck a half-empty box of pink wine from his parents’ fridge counts, and thirteen, I think, for pot. Fifteen for acid (that one terrible night when I freaked out at my own reflection, green-skinned with horns, and then watched South Park reruns for the next fourteen hours because I was afraid to fall asleep). But it’s the opiates section that makes my chest get all tight.

  My mind flashes back to the morning after Winter Formal, after the phone call from Savannah’s dad, when Mom realized, maybe for the first time, that I was doing more than drinking. “Where are you even getting this stuff?” she’d shrieked, gripping my neck beside the bathroom sink and splashing cold water into my bleary, red eyes.

  “Around,” I’d told her. Had it been that long since Mom had been in high school? You only have to go to one party before you figure out exactly which lunchroom table to visit anytime you want to score. Once Chase ran into a supply-and-demand issue with his mom’s medicine cabinet, he started tapping the neighborhood resources and went into business on his own. Lucky for me, Chase offers a Friends and Family discount.

  The first time I’d tried pills had been in Chase’s basement. I remember the chalky taste of the pills on my tongue, the burn of vodka as I washed them down with a swig from Chase’s Red Bull can.

  The fuzzy warmth that crept up my body like a plush blanket until every inch of my skin tingled with bliss.

  I write ‘14’ next to the word opiates. That time’s not hard to remember at all.

  It’s almost noon when an orderly sticks his head through the doorway and tells me it’s time to pack up so I can move to my new room. I glance down at the page, where I’ve checked the box marked “occasional usage” next to opiates. I flip the pencil over and erase it, my hand hovering over the box that says “regular usage.”

  “I’m kind of working on something,” I tell the orderly. “Can you come back later?”

  “Sorry,” he answers, wheeling a service cart into my room. He hands me a black plastic bag for wet towels and dirty clothes. “Doc says you’re good to go, and we need the bed. Got a rush case coming in this afternoon.”

  A rush case. An image of my hospital room flashes through my head, my mom hovering over me, and later, Savannah’s tears. I wonder if I was a “rush case.” I check the box marked “regular usage” and tell myself I’ll explain to Richard later.

  I glance over at Red’s side of the room. He hasn’t made it back from the doctor’s, and I won’t get the chance to tell him I’m changing rooms.

  “Do you have a piece of paper I can use?” I ask the orderly. He’s in the bathroom, gathering my “personal effects,” and emerges with a bottle of shampoo and a toothbrush.

  “What for?” he asks suspiciously.

  I roll my eyes. “Unless there’s a drug craze I haven’t had the pleasure of trying, I doubt paper’s contraband. I just want to write a note.”

  The orderly drops my stuff on the bed. “Pack up,” he says. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  By the time he’s returned, my zippered duffel’s waiting on the floor beside the trash bag with
my dirty clothes. He hands me a piece of printer paper. “Will this work?”

  I snatch the paper, scribble a hurried note that I leave on Red’s bed before following the orderly out of the room.

  No more nightmares, ok?

  See you soon-

  E

  My new room looks a whole lot like the first. Both beds are neatly made, and clothes hang in a color-coordinated row inside the narrow closet beside the dresser. No sign of my new roommate, but he’s obviously a neat freak.

  The orderly drops my stuff on the second bed and tells me I better hurry up and unpack if I want to make it to lunch. I empty the black trash bag of dirty clothes and wet towels onto the floor of my own closet. The picture mom sent along stares up at me atop the pile of clean clothes in my duffel. I set the picture on my dresser, then dump the rest of my stuff into a single drawer.

  I nose around the room to see if I can figure out who my roommate is. The small mirror hanging over the dresser is covered in pictures. They look to be pictures of a big family. A big Hawaiian family.

  Oh. Hell. No.

  Day 5

  “MO is my roommate?” I launch myself through Richard Fisher’s doorway like my heels are on fire. When Mo found out we were roommates, he HUGGED me. It was all I could do not to punch him right then and there. At group this morning, he kept calling me “Roomie,” and I’m 99.9% sure this is all Richard Fisher’s doing.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Richard says coolly. He gestures for me to take a seat, but I refuse.

  “Don’t even try to tell me this isn’t part of your plan!” I growl, hovering over Richard’s desk.

  His mouth twitches slightly. “My plan?”

  “Yeah, your plan! What is this—Sneaky Shrink 101? Put the kid who can’t deal with his feelings with a roommate who can’t NOT deal with them? You think that’s going to make me talk? If anything, it’s pissing me off!”

  Richard peers at me over the upper rim of his reading glasses. “Can we ditch the paranoid conspiracy theories, please? No one’s trying to make you talk. This isn’t an interrogation.”

  “It sure as hell feels like one!” I drop onto the worn-out old couch, immediately arching back up because the frame pokes me in the ribs. “All anybody’s done since I got here is ask me what I think and how I feel. I’m over it already. You said I have to do the work so I can get better, but all this talking makes me want to do is use.”

  The words stain the floor in front of me like blood spray from a punch in the nose. I’ve never said out loud that I want to use, not to anyone, not even Chase. I wait for Richard’s A-ha! I told you so! But he gives me a soft smile instead. “That’s called avoidance, Eli. Any idea why you avoid talking about your feelings?”

  Here we go with the program-ese. I brush off the question, follow it with a question of my own. “You got kids?”

  Richard Fisher blinks. “A son.”

  “Do you analyze him all the time or is that a special skill you reserve for your rehab captives?”

  Richard Fisher folds his thick arms across his t-shirt, one of those Coexist jobbies, like the bumper stickers on the backs of Volkswagens. I take in his charcoal hair, the leather jacket slung on the tilting coat rack behind his desk, and wonder if he’s got grandkids, and what his son thinks of this obvious midlife crisis thing Richard’s got going on.

  “What about your wife?” I press. “Does she let you screw around inside her head whenever you feel like it?”

  A tight ball forms at the base of Richard Fisher’s jaw, and for a second, I almost regret running my mouth. But then he clears his throat and leans back in his chair. “How about it’s my turn to ask the questions, okay?”

  “Hey, man, I’m just trying to make conversation.”

  “Are you?” Richard Fisher asks. “Or are you avoiding my question?”

  “You’re the shrink,” I snap. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  Richard Fisher takes off his glasses, wipes them on the corner of his shirt. “Let’s get something straight—first of all, I am not a shrink. I’m a board-certified substance abuse counselor, which is different. Second of all, I can’t tell you why you’re afraid to face your feelings. Only you can figure that out. What I can tell you, and I’m speaking from personal experience here, is that feelings are like zits. They usually show up when you least want them to, but you can’t ignore them, and you can’t cover them up. The deeper they are, the more they hurt, but one way or the other, they have to come out.”

  I wonder if Richard can even remember being a teenager, or if this acne analogy came right out of the latest edition of Counseling Teens for Dummies. “Wow,” I seethe, sarcasm sizzling like raindrops on a hot sidewalk, “those most be some deep, dark issues you got there. What happened, Mr. Fisher? Your wife leave you?”

  Fisher flinches, and I know I’ve struck a nerve. I press harder. “Did you fuck an intern or something? Or did your wife get sick of you shrinking her head all the time?”

  “My wife left shortly after our son passed away. He was three.”

  “Jesus,” I inhale, suddenly feeling like a first-class asshole.

  Richard Fisher’s tone is flat and emotionless, like he’s telling someone else’s story, reading it from one of those beige folders in the messy stack that hangs over the edge of his desk. “Viral meningitis. He was in a coma for two weeks.”

  “I’m sorry,” I mutter, my anger doused like water over sizzling coals.

  Richard waves my apology away. “You haven’t cornered the market on pain, Eli. Everybody suffers. It’s how you deal with your pain that matters. Honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness, remember?”

  I stare down at my empty hands; the cuffs of my hoodie are dingy, and I rub at a spot that’s darker than the others.

  “Tell you what . . .” Richard swivels around in his chair and slides open a creaky metal desk drawer. He pulls out a purple spiral bound notebook, like the one I’d seen in Libby’s arms. “You don’t have to talk about your feelings until you’re ready,” he says. “But I do want you to start acknowledging them.” He hands me the notebook. “Write them down. When you’re in group, when you’re doing your step work, even when you’re at meals if you have to. Write it all down. And if something comes up that you want to talk about, that’s what I’m here for.”

  I stare down at the notebook in my hand, flip through the stark white paper. Like Howard, the empty pages ask me to share my story, only this time without an audience. No one to listen. No one to judge.

  I think about the notebook Benny’s teacher gave him over spring break, the crayoned pages filled with pictures of Disney. Maybe I’ll make up a story for Benny, My Week at Disney Camp. Bitterness burns the back of my throat like acid. The Story of My Break(down).

  I toss the notebook onto the couch beside me. “I’ll think about it.”

  Richard Fisher sighs. “That’s all I can ask. Now let’s take a look at your step work.”

  I hand him my nearly completed Step One packet. He flips through the pages, asking me questions about my answers and taking notes.

  I’d worked on it yesterday, in the crevices of time between lectures and group. Like I said, this stuff weasels into your head quick when it’s all everybody around you is talking about. Each check box I marked held a kind of subtle relief, like ripping off a bandage. After schooling Will in Ping-Pong last night, I’d left the rec room to finish. It hadn’t been until the section titled Family, that I quit.

  “Why did you stop here?” Richard asks. He’s pointing to a section that wanted me to write about the way using has affected my relationship with my family.

  I shrug. “You can’t affect a relationship you don’t have. My mom’s always busy with my brother, and my stepdad doesn’t give a shit.”

  “Your stepdad doesn’t give a shit, but he puts you in rehab to keep you out of jail? Your mom spends three days by your hospital bed, and you think she’s not affected by your choices?” />
  I fold my arms across my chest. “It’s complicated.”

  “We shrinks like to think of the ‘complicated stuff’ as gold.”

  “I thought you said you weren’t a shrink,” I shoot back.

  Richard ignores the jab. “What about your father?”

  Here we go. It’s taken Richard Fisher all of thirty minutes to start asking questions about my dead dad. Figures. “He died when I was ten. Motorcycle accident.”

  “That’s terrible,” Fisher says. “It must’ve been very hard to lose a parent when you were so young.”

  I pick at the edges of a fresh scab on my wrist as memories of the funeral pour in. The closed casket so glossy I could almost see my reflection. The chill of the cold wood against my cheek and the overpowering smell of lilies. Mom’s hand in mine, pulling me away.

  “I survived,” I say. Bright red blood oozes from the scab; I lick my thumb and swipe away the blood. “I don’t really like talking about it.”

  “I see.” Richard Fisher leans back in his chair, tucks his hands behind his head. “Tell you what—I’m going to give you a homework assignment for tonight. Finish up the packet, but when you’re done,” he gestures to the purple notebook on the couch beside me, “I want you to write about the worst thing that has ever happened to you. Write about it in detail and try to fully explore every feeling that comes up.”

  I scowl at him. “Do you actually get paid to torture people like this?”

  Richard’s mouth presses into a thin smile. “I know it hurts, but if you want to figure out why you’re making the choices you are, the darkest places in your mind usually hold the most answers.”

  I let out a groan. “I don’t write.”

  “Well, now’s a good time to start.” Richard glances up at the clock on the wall behind me. “Better get going. You’ve got art in five minutes.”