by Tanya Chris
I returned to the bedroom, my steps growing more ponderous as I neared it. God, I didn’t want to go back in there. Only the fact that I couldn’t leave Lissie to handle this alone kept me moving forward.
“Really?” Lissie asked, swinging around to confront me as soon as I walked in. “You two have been ... ”
“Fucking,” Deb supplied.
“For four years?”
“She filled you in, huh?”
“Are you going to deny it?”
“Why would I deny it? I never wanted to deny it. That was her.”
I gestured towards where Deb had been sitting a moment ago but she was back on the rampage, pulling clothes out of her laundry basket like a rabid gopher digging for the gopher equivalent of gold. With a triumphant squeal of gopher success, she pulled out a bottle.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
I advanced towards her, holding my arms out wide to corral her into the corner. She took a quick swig from the bottle, which I saw now was already partly empty, so I could add that to her total, and then ducked under my arm with the agility of someone more animal than human. Thinking before acting put me at a disadvantage when Deb was running on pure instinct.
She bounded onto the bed, nearly toppled as it gave under her weight—liquid splashing from the bottle over the sheets and clothes and miscellaneous debris piled in the center—and then somehow righted herself and the bottle.
“Why?” Lissie asked from behind me as I strategically circled around to the far side of the bed.
“Is that really the issue at hand? Could you help me get that away from her?”
“Don’t even bother. Who knows how many more there are.” Lissie exhaled a loud, long breath, then the sound of her voice turned away from me and towards Deb. “How about we take a ride together? You can bring the bottle.”
“Lissie,” I said, but Lissie continued to address Deb in the same patient, reasonable tone, as though Deb were capable of being reasoned with.
“If you come with us, you can bring the bottle. If you don’t, I’m going to help Nate take it from you. You know we can. So let’s take a ride, OK?”
“Where to?” Deb asked, taking advantage of the break in action to suck down another greedy gulp.
“The hospital.”
“Don’t want to go to the hospital.”
“I know, but those are your choices. Take the bottle to the hospital or stay here without it.” Lissie said it with great certainty, as though there couldn’t be any choices other than those two. Deb looked at the bottle in her hand and then at me on one side of the bed and Lissie on the other.
“OK.”
“OK, let’s go.” Lissie held out her hand to Deb. Deb didn’t take it but she did walk to the edge of the bed and sit down on it. She tilted the bottle up for another pull. She’d put a decent dent in it already.
“Should we put some clothes on her?”
“Too complicated. She’s fine.”
Deb had on a long t-shirt and no bra, but I was pretty sure I’d caught a flash of panties beneath the shirt when she’d jumped up on the bed, so it was no worse than beach wear in terms of exposure.
“Any idea where her pocket book is?” Lissie asked Gillian when we had Deb out in the living room, guardedly between us. “It’ll have her insurance cards and stuff,” she clarified to me as Gillian went in search for it.
Eventually, Lissie went to help in the search through the debris in the bedroom. Deb stood, lightly swaying, calm now that no one was trying to take her bottle, and drank and drank.
I was about to call out to Lissie to forget it—how could it be humanly possible to drink this much?—when she finally emerged with a small leather bag swung over her shoulder. She draped a raincoat around Deb and we steered her out of the building and into my car.
At the hospital, the bottle was quickly confiscated, but the fact that we’d walked in with it, and Deb’s shrieks when it was torn from her, seemed to convey the severity of the problem better than our words could have. We were taken into an exam room where Deb’s frantic thrashings got her restrained, though that didn’t stop her from being vocally abusive. From the waiting room to which Lissie and I were banished once we got Deb settled, I could hear her voice above the din of the emergency room.
Lissie bent her head over the clipboard full of forms we’d been handed, filling them out as best she could from the various identity cards in Deb’s wallet.
“Any of it say who her emergency contact is?” I asked.
“Not that I’ve found yet. I suppose the insurance company must have something on record.”
“How about her phone?”
Lissie searched through Deb’s purse and came up empty. “Must be at the apartment. Would she want us to call them anyway?”
“Maybe not, but what are we supposed to do about her? It’s not like we’re in a position to make decisions for her.”
Lissie brought the forms up to the counter. I trailed behind her, restless and unsettled.
The woman behind the counter gave the forms a quick once over. “Who’s the emergency contact?” she asked with her pen poised.
“We don’t know,” Lissie admitted.
“Neither of you is related to her?”
Lissie shook her head.
The woman said “I see” and wrote something on the form, then looked back up at the two of us. “If you want to wait, someone will be out to talk to you.”
“Should we wait?” I didn’t know what time it was, but somewhere well past midnight. The broken sleep I’d gotten the night before had led into a day that had only gone from bad to worse.
“Doctor might have questions.” The woman nodded at the seats we’d come from and we returned obediently to them.
I paced while Lissie sat, an uncomfortable silence separating us. The sound of Deb’s wails broke through the walls to wash periodically over us. When the racket stopped, I panicked. She hadn’t died, had she?
“They must be treating her somehow,” Lissie said, so that I knew the silence worried her as well. I nodded, not because I knew it to be true but because I wanted it to be. I stopped pacing and sat down next to Lissie. I looked over at her, wanting to take her hand or hug her or something so that we’d feel connected, like we were fighting this together.
“So you want to fill me in on what the hell was going on between you and her?”
I flinched. Connected was apparently not what Lissie was feeling. “What’s to say? We’ve been in some kind of a relationship basically since we met.”
“What kind?”
“Sexual, but more than that. We were compatible in a lot of ways, but not enough of them. She couldn’t deal with being non-exclusive. Any time she realized I was with someone else, there’d be a scene. She’d end things, for a time, then start them up again, and I kept letting her. I guess because I wanted to be with her. She could be pretty persuasive.” I remembered with a guilty flush some of the ways she had been persuasive.
“You were with her when you were with me?”
I glanced over at Lissie to see if she was angry or hurt and decided she was both.
“In the beginning. When she realized you and I were getting serious, she broke up with me, per usual. We started seeing each other again when you ended things with me.” That’d been my only consolation for the dissolution of the Lissie/Derek triangle. “Then she saw me kiss Jenny and there was another scene and I’d just had enough, I guess. For the first time, I was the one who ended it. That’s when all this started.” I waved my hand at the antiseptic white walls and floors surrounding us. I hadn’t imagined, that day I’d ended it, that my actions would lead us here.
“You really are an asshole, aren’t you? People tried to tell me that, but I wouldn’t believe them.”
“What people?”
“Deb.”
I shrugged. That wasn’t in question.
“Derek.”
OK, that hurt. “I’ve never lied to anyone, never made any pro
mises I didn’t keep.”
“And never cared how that made anyone feel. If I tell you I’m going to punch you in the face and then I do it, does that let me off the hook? That I warned you first?”
“Is that how you think of our relationship, Lissie? Like a punch in the face?”
She glared at me, her face not giving any quarter. “Sometimes. Sometimes it felt like that.”
Fuck. I walked away from her, not knowing where I was going, only needing to be away.
Derek thought I was an asshole, Lissie recalled our relationship with regretful hurt. And that was the period of my life I looked back on fondly as the closest I’d come to getting what I wanted. Fuck. No wonder Joshua wouldn’t make eye contact with me anymore. I was a romantic piranha, a black widow. I struck where I doth love.
Minute stretched into minute while neither of us spoke. Finally, I couldn’t tolerate the silence anymore. I’d rather Lissie lay into me than ignore me. I turned back to her only to see from the angle of her neck that she was sleeping, her body mostly upright, her head tucked into her chest like a chicken’s beneath its wing. I sat down next to her and leaned into her shoulder so that she unconsciously leaned into mine, her head finding a place to nest, then I closed my eyes and tried to sleep as well.
Time drew out slowly. The emergency room commotion around us—sometimes growing, sometimes fading—folded itself into whatever half-dreams I had. Deb and Lissie and Joshua, an angry panel of judges, became broken bodies rushing by on gurneys washed in blue and red strobing lights. I didn’t think that I slept, but I wasn’t aware of how much time had passed either. Then there were shoes beneath my fluttering eyelids and a man wearing a white coat in front of my slowly opening eyes.
“You brought in Debra Halik?” The man referred to the clipboard in his hands as he spoke.
Beside me, Lissie struggled upright and ran a hand across the back of her mouth.
“I’m Doctor Aleut. I’m treating your friend.”
“Is she OK?” Lissie asked.
The man referred to the clipboard again. “Since you’re not related to her, here’s what I can tell you: she’s stable and in no danger, but we’re keeping her overnight. Can you answer some questions for me? We’re trying to get an idea of what to expect. Would you say that your friend has a problem with alcohol?”
I nodded.
“Is this a typical amount of alcohol for her?”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s usually more controlled.”
“Do you know what a typical quantity would be?”
I shook my head.
“Is she a daily drinker?”
“I think so, at times. She’s been trying to quit lately.”
“With any success?”
“I thought so. I don’t know.” I wondered, now. “She was very private and no one was ... watching her.”
Doctor Aleut smiled unexpectedly. “I understand. But you’d say you’ve seen periods of time where she appeared to be sober?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s going to happen to her?” Lissie asked.
“Well, that’s up to her. By the time she wakes up tomorrow— today,” he corrected, raising his eyes to the bank of windows behind us, “she’ll have a blood alcohol content low enough to be legally entitled to make her own decisions. If she wants to be released, she’ll be released.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“I can tell you what some options are. One option, which is the one we’ll recommend, is a five day monitored detox. Alcohol withdrawal can have symptoms ranging from inconvenient to fatal. Based on the information you’ve given me, she’s probably not at high risk for seizures, but we’ll recommend detox anyway. People who struggle with alcohol tend to relieve the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal by drinking.”
I remembered Joshua telling me that alcoholics actually felt better—functioned better—when they were drinking.
“So we like to give them a head start on beating those symptoms,” the doctor continued. “Most insurance plans will cover detox when someone comes in with a BAC as high as your friend’s. Following detox—insurance allowing—she might have the option to go into an inpatient treatment facility of some kind.”
“Rehab,” I said.
“Right. They have outpatient programs too. Some people prefer to live at home during treatment and insurance prefers outpatient because it’s cheaper.”
“But isn’t inpatient more effective?” Lissie asked.
“I wish either one of them were more effective. Sorry. I didn’t say that. Studies haven’t shown any appreciable difference. The choice of facility will be up to your friend and her insurance company. Her recovery will be up to her. And God.”
It seemed an odd thing for a doctor to say. It reminded me of the way Joshua sometimes talked about God. I wondered if this authority figure in a white coat could be an alcoholic too. It gave me hope.
“But if she chooses to walk out of here tomorrow ...” Lissie said.
“Then she walks out, unless you can find a relative who wants to fight the battle of keeping her committed against her will.”
Lissie shook her head. “Can we see her? Maybe we can explain to her why she should stay.”
Like Lissie, I had a sinking feeling Deb would wake up and walk out.
“No point now,” Doctor Aleut said. “We’ve got her pretty well sedated. Even if she heard you, she wouldn’t remember hearing you. But you could stop in around noon or so. She should be awake by then. Good luck.” He held out his hand to each of us and we shook it in turn. When he’d left, we turned to each other.
“You’d better let me talk to her,” Lissie said. “There’s no point in you trying.”
Agreed.
I drove her back to Deb’s to pick up her car in a harsh silence.
“Lissie,” I said, when her hand was on the door handle.
“Not right now, Nate. I’m dead tired.”
“You’ll be OK to drive? I could take you home.”
“I’m fine,” she said, and without looking back at me, without thanking me for the offer, without saying goodnight, she left.
Chapter 24
Joshua’s car sat alone in the driveway, which meant Sherry must be at wedding band rehearsal. I turned off the car but didn’t take my keys from the ignition.
On the drive over, I’d only had one thought: Joshua. Now, here, I balked, unable to find the courage to get out of my car and walk up to the front door. I sat long enough that the early May sun raised the temperature in my car to an uncomfortable level, and still I sat.
It was a beautiful morning. In a parallel universe, Joshua and I would be hiking out to the stream at King’s Forest, maybe holding hands on the wide sections of the trail, stopping to steal a kiss before letting go of each other when the trail narrowed. My eyes wouldn’t ache from sleeplessness and my shoulders wouldn’t ache from trying not to let them shake.
In a parallel universe, we’d had a good show last night and Deb had gone out to the bar after, not to drink, but because someone in the cast had caught her eye and they were feeling each other out. No one had called me an asshole or a heartless snake. No one was in the hospital. No one was angry. In a parallel universe, Joshua would be glad to see me.
That thought made me raise my eyes to the house, and there he was, standing in the open doorway leaning against it, his arms folded across his chest and his expression guarded.
Caught, I pulled the keys from the ignition and pocketed them. I got out of the car and crossed to the house, not even able to say hi, not missing the fact that he didn’t greet me either.
His face was stern, unforgiving. I swallowed and met his eyes, at a loss to explain why I was there, but when I looked deeper, I saw that those sherry-colored eyes weren’t stern at all. They were merely cautious. He wasn’t unforgiving. He’d already forgiven. I’d hurt this man and I didn’t want to have hurt him—didn’t want to have hurt anyone—didn’t know ho
w to fix it, and couldn’t bear it alone another moment.
“Josh—” I couldn’t. I threw myself into his arms, sobs choking out of me when words wouldn’t.
His arms came quickly and tightly around me. “Nate?”
I pulled back to explain but hated the space between us and caved even harder into him.
“Shh,” he murmured into my hair. “Don’t cry. It’s all right. I’m not mad at you.”
“Not you,” I managed. “Deb. Lissie.” I choked, my sobs pouring out the harder for trying to talk through them. I hadn’t cried like this—not out loud—since my father died.
“Shh. OK. You don’t have to explain right now.”
He maneuvered me inside the door, then shut it behind us. He put an arm beneath my legs and lifted and carried me into the living room. When he got to the couch, I feared I’d be dumped there, alone, but he sat us down together, my legs draped over his thighs, my arms wrapped around his neck, my head cradled against his chest. He dropped kisses onto my forehead and scalp—kissing, stroking, rubbing his cheek against the top of my head and saying, “It’s OK. I’ll make it OK,” over and over.
I knew Joshua couldn’t make it OK, but the words seeped slowly into my heart until my sobs stopped. I didn’t want to leave this cocoon he’d had made for me, this warm, soft place where it was OK, but eventually I knew it was time to talk and I did.
I told him everything that had happened, about the hospital and the long night, about the words that had been said.
“You didn’t make this happen,” Joshua said when I’d poured it all out. “I told you this was coming, and I told you it wouldn’t be your fault.”
“Deb thinks it’s my fault. Lissie thinks it’s my fault.”
“Lissie doesn’t know shit, OK? She doesn’t know shit about alcoholism and apparently she doesn’t know shit about you.”
“I thought she did.”
“Well, that sucks. It sucks when someone we think knows us turns out not to, but that doesn’t make her right and you wrong. And as for Deb, Deb is telling herself what she has to tell herself right now. Someday she’ll understand it better, but you can’t take responsibility for her sickness in the meantime. You did a good thing getting her to detox, but next time, call me.”