Lifeline

by Abbey Lee Nash

  “Yeah, except, that’s like a pretty decent drive, and I’m kinda tight on funds right now . . .”

  “I’ll give you money for gas,” I promise hurriedly, my hot breath collecting steam on the receiver. “Whatever you want, just get me out of here.”

  I tell him to come on Sunday and make a mental note to add him to my list of approved visitors. With the constant coming and going of Visitation Day, no one would even notice I was missing.

  There’s muffled laughter in the background; I think I hear Alex’s voice. I grit my teeth, my fingers tightening around the receiver. Someone un-pauses the game, and Chase breathes heavy into the phone.

  “Chase? You still there?”

  “Yeah, look, Eli, I’m kinda in the middle of something.” His voice is muffled, the phone probably hooked between his cheek and shoulder as his fingers nimbly maneuver the controller. “I’ll see what I can do, okay?”

  “Sunday,” I tell him. “Anytime after ten, but Visitation ends at five. Chase?”

  The phone’s silent on the other end. Chase has already hung up.

  Day 19

  When my alarm wakes me up, I yank the plug out of the wall and toss the clock across the room. I can’t go to group. I can’t face Richard Fisher. I don’t want to talk about how I’m feeling. I don’t want to think about it. Right now, I don’t even want to exist.

  I bury my head under my pillow and beg my brain to shut up. Two hours later, an orderly shakes me awake.

  “Get up,” he commands.

  I crack open one eye and peer up at him. “Dick sent you, didn’t he?”

  The orderly’s mouth twitches. “You’re twenty minutes late for your session. Mr. Fisher asked that I come check on you.”

  “I’m taking a sick day.” I cover my head with my pillow, but the orderly picks it up, leaving my whole head exposed.

  “This is rehab, not kindergarten, kid,” he says. “There’s no such thing. Get your ass up.”

  I don’t bother getting dressed. I add a t-shirt and hoodie to the sweats I slept in and follow the thick-necked orderly (who apparently doesn’t trust me to get there on my own) to Richard Fisher’s office.

  Richard Fisher glances up at me over a steaming cup of fresh coffee.

  “Morning, sunshine,” I mutter, releasing a cloud of stale morning breath.

  “Thanks, Nathan,” Richard Fisher says to the orderly, who nods and shuts the door behind him.

  He picks up his coffee and takes a big swig. The steam fogs his glasses. “Okay, Eli. What’s up?”

  I sink into my favorite spot on Fisher’s crummy old couch. “I want to go home.”

  Richard Fisher puts down his coffee. “I see.”

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I tell him. “I’ve said this before. And then it was only because I didn’t want to share at group or whatever. And you told me that if I left, I’d have to face the judge. So I decided to stay.”

  Richard Fisher nods, one hand resting on the side of his mug.

  “Only this time, I already know all that. And I don’t care. I want to go home anyway.”

  Richard leans back in his chair, propping the mug on his belly. “You’ve really thought this through.” It’s a question, disguised as an approving statement, strategically designed to make me ask myself, wait, have I really thought this through?

  “You’re damn right I’ve thought it through,” I tell him. “There’s nothing for me here.”

  “Libby left.” Richard Fisher drops those two words in front of me like bait.

  I flop backward on the couch and fold my arms across my chest. “So?”

  “I know you two were . . . close. You’re probably having some challenging emotions about her leaving.”

  I bark out a bitter laugh. Challenging emotions? All I’ve felt since the day I got here was confusion and hurt and pain. Libby leaving was the cherry on the crap sundae I’ve been nursing for the last 18 days. “It’s not only that.”

  “What then?”

  “It’s not working.” The words catch at the back of my throat, and my eyes burn. “I’m not ‘better.’ Talking about everything makes it all worse.”

  Richard Fisher gives me a sad smile. “Healing can be a painful process, Eli. Some of us have deeper wounds than others, and it takes a long time for them to heal. I imagine Libby leaving was like a fresh scab getting ripped off. Now you’re hurting all over again.”

  “Everybody leaves,” I tell him. “I should be used to it by now.”

  “You’re talking about your father.”

  “No,” I snap, and it comes out louder than I mean for it to. “I mean Savannah and Libby and . . .” I press my knuckles into my eye sockets. “Yeah, I guess I mean him, too.”

  “Why do they leave, Eli?”

  My knuckles are wet, and I hate that I came here, hate that I’m having this conversation. But it’s like something’s cracked open inside me, and my insides are spilling out, and the only way to stop the flow is to wait until I’m empty again. I pull my hood up and sink inside the fleece cocoon. “Because of me,” I whisper.

  “Come again?” Richard Fisher presses.

  “Because of me!” The words explode with involuntary force, propelling me to my feet. I pace the floor in front of Richard Fisher’s desk. “They leave because of me, okay?”

  Because I can’t make them stay.

  Because I’m not good enough for them to stay.

  Richard Fisher leans forward on his desk, his elbows pressing into the wood. “Eli, your father leaving didn’t have anything to do with you. He loved you, just like I loved my wife. But love doesn’t matter to addiction.”

  “But that’s the thing.” I spin around to face Richard Fisher. The question inside me claws to the surface, desperate for answers. “If you love someone, really love them, how can you do that? How can you choose drugs over them?”

  Richard Fisher peers up into my searching eyes. “Who are we talking about here, Eli? Your father? Or you?”

  His question is a fluorescent light bulb in a pitch-black room. I blink, stunned. “I would never do that,” I tell him. “I would never pick drugs over my own kid.”

  “But you chose drugs over lacrosse. Over your family. Over Savannah.”

  “That’s different . . .” I stutter.

  “Is it?” Richard Fisher asks. When I don’t answer, he continues. “When we let our addiction run the show, who or what we love doesn’t matter. Our disease makes our choices for us, choices we can’t undo. Some people we don’t get back.”

  I think of Richard Fisher’s wife, of the baby in the red bandana. I think of the park, the tang of cherry water ice on my tongue. Starched hospital sheets and Mom’s soft fingers on my scar. And Benny, asleep in the car with his head on his chest, his favorite blue crayon still clutched in his hand.

  I shake my head furiously, refusing to accept the connection Richard is trying to make. “No. This is different. We’re talking about a father here. About a little boy. If he loved me, really loved me . . .” I sink back down onto the beat-up couch. Its edges reach up in a broken embrace. “How could he leave me? How could he leave his own son?”

  Richard Fisher sighs. He rises from his chair and steps out from behind his desk. The brown clunker groans with his weight as he drops down beside me. For a second I think he’s going to hug me. My spine goes rigid, and I pull the drawstrings on my hood even tighter.

  “Look at me, Eli.”

  I shake my head. I can’t. Not with my insides on display all over the floor. I don’t want to be seen.

  Richard Fisher’s crotchety voice is a firm hand on my chin, turning me toward him. “Eli. Look at me.”

  I peer out at him from the circle of protective fleece. My face is wet, and I feel completely ridiculous. But the moment holds me tightly, and I search Richard Fisher’s weathered face.

  “You are good enough,” he says, and the words are like stepping into a hot showe
r after playing in the snow. They burn at first, and I recoil from the pain.

  “You are worthy of love. You are worth sticking around for. The only one who doesn’t believe that is you.” Richard Fisher places his hand on my shoulder, and the weight of it roots me to the couch, the floor, the moment. It’s like I’ve been hollowed out inside, and I feel everything all at once—the aching grief and fear, the anger, the pain.

  “But . . . how?” I ask.

  Richard Fisher smiles at me. “One day at a time, Eli. It might sound a little cheesy, but this community, your group, we can be your believing eyes. We can love you until you can love yourself.”

  I swipe my arm across my face, drying my cheeks with my hoodie sleeve, and give Richard Fisher a sideways glance. “So what now?”

  He squeezes my shoulder, then stands up and walks back to his desk. “If it were up to me, I’d tell you to keep doing the hard work you’ve started. Keep showing up and sharing at group. Keep writing in your journal. I’d tell you that I’d like to get your mom and stepdad in here for another family session and to set up an after-care plan. But it’s not up to me. When you came in this morning, you told me you were ready to leave. So you tell me, Eli. What happens next?”

  I pull my hands inside the arms of my hoodie and finger the frayed fleece at the cuffs. If I’m ever going to go back home, I’ll have to talk to Mom, and it’ll be a hell of a lot easier with Richard Fisher in my corner. “I guess . . . I mean, there’s only a week left. I might as well stay, right?”

  “Might as well.”

  I plunk my lunch tray beside Red’s and sit down next to him. He raises his brow over a mouthful of egg salad sandwich.

  I wince at the memory of the scene I made last night, the hurtful things I said. “Look, about last night . . . I was a total asshole.”

  Will opens his mouth to say something, but Red gives him a swift kick under the table. “Dude!” Will exclaims, dropping his sandwich.

  Red flashes a crooked grin over the rim of his glass. “Water under the bridge, bro,” he says. “We’re just glad to have you back.”

  “That’s all I was going to say,” Will complains.

  Red tosses his napkin at Will. It bounces off his half-eaten sandwich. “It was!” Will protests, and I crack up.

  It’s an unfamiliar feeling, showing up like this, with all my cracks and scars exposed. It’s uncomfortable, like a new pair of jeans that needs to be worn a few times until they soften, until they sag like second skin. Thanks, I want to say, except it’d be awkward. Will’s chewing with his mouth open, and Red’s talking about something that happened in the morning meeting. And I realize that I don’t have to explain anything. Because maybe that’s what this whole recovery thing is: breaking down, picking yourself back up. Showing up anyway.

  Red takes another bite of his sandwich and talks out of the side of his mouth. “Howard’s taking the van to an NA meeting tonight. You in?”

  I think about the last NA meeting I went to with Libby. Red didn’t go to that one. He said he wasn’t ready. Things have changed over the last few weeks, I realize. In big ways and some that seem invisible, everything has changed. Red has changed. I’ve changed, too.

  “Sure,” I tell him.

  The speaker tonight is a hunkered man who leans heavily on a wooden cane as he walks to his chair at the front of the room. He’s been clean for 45 years. As he speaks, shoulders soften; people sit lighter on their chairs. Everybody hears something in his story, some part of their own experience. It’s not the specifics of his drug use; it’s the common thread of deep suffering that weaves the group together. I wonder if this is what Mo meant when he talked about “turning it over.” I wonder if saying it out loud is enough.

  The speaker finishes, and the meeting facilitator (a tightly pinched woman with black corkscrew curls) opens the floor for shares. My arm shoots up without asking my brain’s permission. Before I can snatch it out of the air, the facilitator’s beady eyes land on me. She nods, and suddenly the whole room’s looking at me. I open my mouth, hoping that whatever invisible force lifted my arm in the first place can string together a few words for the crowd.

  “I, uh, I’m Eli.”

  “Hi, Eli,” the group resonates.

  I scan the expectant faces around me. Howard sits a few seats ahead of me. He’s twisted around in his chair, and he nods encouragingly. I take a deep breath.

  “I, uh, I guess you could say I’ve been using since I was about fourteen. For fun, at first, and then because I needed it. Because I didn’t feel like myself without it. Because I didn’t want to feel anything at all.”

  My voice gets stronger as my confidence grows. “Anyway, I overdosed about three weeks ago.” The word catches in my throat—it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud. Overdosed. I suck in air so hard it hurts and stare out at the sea of faces around me. “I guess I’m pretty lucky to be alive.”

  I blink back tears that burn behind my eyes and tug at the arms of my sweatshirt, hiding my balled fists inside them. “I lost my girlfriend. And all my friends. And when I go home next week, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I recently found out that my dad was an addict, too. He died of an overdose. And I guess the only thing I know for sure, is that I don’t want to end up like him.”

  I glance around the room. “Anyway, thanks, or whatever.”

  “Thanks for sharing,” the group answers. It’s so weird, the way the group talks as one, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to it. But I feel lighter somehow, like the load I’ve been carrying around isn’t quite as heavy. Like for the space of the next few minutes, this group is helping me carry it.

  Somebody else raises a hand, and the group’s attention shifts away from me. Beside me, Red quietly offers his fist. I bump it with my own, not bothering to hide the smile that springs to my face.

  Afterwards, as NA regulars fold up and put away the chairs, the LakeShore kids head out into the parking lot. There are five of us, not counting Will, who offered to help stack chairs: Me, Red, Cheerleader, and two kids I haven’t met—a reed thin chick with charcoal eyeliner and hoop earrings and a prep-school flunk-out who looks a couple years younger than me. The street lamps illuminate the lot with circles of soft white light that fade into shadow at the edges. We huddle together in the dusky light beside the locked van, waiting for Howard, who stayed behind to chat with a newcomer.

  Leave it to Howard to track down the one dude that probably doesn’t want anybody to talk to him. His face nearly hidden under a cap and hood, the kid didn’t say a word in the meeting, other than raise his hand when the facilitator asked if anybody was new. He was probably hoping to get back to his car without having to say a word to anybody. Not if Howard has anything to do with it. That kid’s not going anywhere without an armload of pamphlets.

  “What’s taking so long?” Cheerleader grumbles. She’s got her arms wrapped up inside her sweater like we’ve been abandoned in the Arctic. It’s not even that cold. The chill of early April has nearly passed, and the air carries the warm, wet feel of spring. With a start, I realize that Sunday’s Easter. For the first time ever, I won’t be spending the holiday with my mom. I haven’t even spoken to her since I told her not to come for Visitation. It strikes me that by the time I get home, a whole season will have passed, and I wonder what else will have changed.

  “You know Howard.” Red’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “We’re probably taking that poor kid back to LakeShore with us.”

  I snort. NA regulars are heading out of the meeting in groups of two and three. The parking lot is a chorus of cars unlocking, crisscrossed by blinking headlights. I recognize the new kid as he steps out into the parking lot. But it’s not Howard he’s talking to. It’s Will.

  “Over here, dude,” I holler, but Will doesn’t seem to hear me. He follows the new kid to a jalopy on the shadowed side of the lot. The inside light flickers as the kid unlocks and opens the door.

  “What t
he . . .” Red mutters under his breath. We exchange worried glances.

  “Maybe they’re just talking,” I offer. “Or maybe he’s bumming a smoke.”

  “Yeah,” Red licks his dry lips. “Maybe.”

  Howard’s voice carries across the lot. He’s heading out of the meeting, deep in conversation with the man who shared his testimony. My stomach clenches. Whatever Will’s doing, he’d better hurry up.

  “Will,” Red whispers in this pathetic hiss that Will can’t possibly hear. “Will!” It’s louder this time, urgent.

  “Shhh!” I elbow him. Howard’s midway between the church and the van, helping the old man into a 400-year-old Chrysler.

  Like a scene in a movie that you keep rewinding because you’re pretty sure you missed something, what happens next is all at once. The Chrysler cranks to life in a cloud of exhaust and flickering headlights. Howard steps away from the car and scans the parking lot. In the dull light cast from the new kid’s car, we all see it: the subtle exchange of hands, swift, like a magician’s, and Will slips something into his pocket.

  Red exhales, and the sound is an audible word: “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.”

  A shadow crosses Howard’s face. He flicks up the collar of his jacket, shoves his hands into his pockets, and heads toward the van. “If you’re going to LakeShore,” he announces, loud enough for everyone in the parking lot to hear, “your ride leaves in thirty seconds.” He shoves through our huddled group, unlocks the van, and clambers up into the driver’s seat. For a second, his eyes meet mine, and I know he sees the question there. “Get in,” he says gruffly.

  Cheerleader pushes her way into the van first, followed by the two other kids. Red casts a worried look in Will’s direction before climbing into the van. I’m the last one in. Howard cranks the engine, and cold air floods out of the vents onto our already chilled faces. “I’m going to give it a second to warm up,” Howard mutters. His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror. “Shut the door.”