by Shandi Boyes
While pacing to the large white double doors, I suck in some deep breaths, praying they will settle my nerves. I don’t know if I can do this. Three months I’m stuck here. Three… long… motherfucking… months!
Just as I break through the double doors, the receptionist shouts, “Make sure you knock before entering.”
The horrible sanitary smell every hospital and dentist’s office has smacks me in the face when I merge into a long white corridor with several doors on each side, each with a plaque with the doctor’s name and the rehabilitation service they specialize in.
I take a left and walk four paces before stopping at the door with “Dr. R. Miller, Anger Management Counselor” on the front. I saunter into the office, only remembering once I’m halfway in that I'm supposed to knock. With a grimace, I pivot back around.
“You’re already in, so you may as well keep entering,” murmurs a female voice from a red leather seat butted up against a wooden desk covered with papers.
My brow cocks when Dr. Miller swivels her chair to face me. She’s a lot younger than anticipated. I've never been overly good at guessing ages; Emily was living proof of that, but I’d say Dr. Miller is in her late twenties, maybe early thirties. Her straight light brown hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, and she has wispy side bangs. Her skin is flawlessly white, contrasting with her thick-rimmed glasses, and she has a V-shaped groove between her green eyes.
The reason for the sickly smell in her office is revealed when she squirts a sterile solution into her hands. Once she has finished rubbing it in, she does a one-handed clap, requesting the piece of paper I’m holding. When I hand it to her, she gestures for me to take a seat in the chair opposite her, which I do, albeit disgruntledly.
“Noah Taylor, singer, twenty-three years old, anger management and alcohol rehabilitation.” She peers at me over the paper, unable to miss her disdain. “Aggravated assault on a cameraman, three-month conviction, yada, yada, yada.”
She drops the paper onto the desk before sinking into her chair. “Why don’t you tell me why you're here...” She checks the document to ensure she calls me by my correct name before finishing, “...Noah?”
I shrug. “The footage the judge saw didn’t show what actually happened.”
The footage streamed live around the world didn’t capture what the cameraman said before I kicked him. To the public, it appeared as if I attacked him without being provoked, which only I know isn’t true. It probably didn’t help that I knocked him out cold on live TV, but that fucker got what he deserved.
Dr. Miller balances her elbows on her desk before clasping her hands together. “So you don’t have any problems with anger?”
I shake my head. If you don’t piss me off, I’m as soft as a teddy bear.
“Of course you don’t.” She peers down at an open day planner on her desk. “Your first counseling session will commence at 3 PM in Room 32. Don’t be late.”
I drop my eyes to my watch. It’s a little after 2 PM.
She doesn’t mess around, does she?
Standing up, I push back from her desk before realizing I don’t have a clue where I'm going.
Like she can read my mind, Dr. Miller says, “The orderly will show you to your room.”
When I exit her office, one of the orderlies who searched my bag jerks his chin up. I follow his anal march down one of many corridors. They appear to sprout in all directions from the one I was originally in. For its size, this compound should be busier than it is. Its eerie quietness has me more than panicked. I can’t stand silence.
This side of the building has patients’ names on the doors instead of doctors. I nearly crash into the orderly when he stops in front of one that has my name scrawled across it. “Your clothes are in the closet. You’ll be expected to wear them during your stay. I need you to remove your boots; they’ll be returned once your rehabilitation period is over.”
He waves his hand across his body, signaling for me to enter my new living quarters for the next three months. My room is pretty bland. There’s no surprise that the walls are white. A twin bed is pressed against one wall, and a desk and set of drawers are opposite it. There are two doors on the far wall. I assume one is a closet, and another may be a bathroom?
After dumping my bag on my bed, the orderly glares at my boots. Gritting my teeth, I undo my laces, remove my beloved black stomping boots, then shove them into his chest. My toes wiggle when I peer down at my sock-covered feet. Who knew you could feel naked while fully clothed?
As he exits my room, the orderly shocks me one final time. “There are slippers in the closet.”
Slippers? He can’t be serious, can he?
Curious, I stride over and open one of the doors. The one on the left is the bathroom. It’s finished with white tiles, a standard vanity, an upright shower, and a toilet. The door next to the bathroom is a closet, and just as advised, three pairs of hard-soled slippers still in their protective plastic are nestled beneath three pairs of light gray cargo pants and three plain white v-neck shirts.
After yanking down a pair of cargo pants and a shirt with more force than needed, I head into the bathroom to get changed. As I slip my shirt over my head, my eyes stray to the man in the vanity mirror. The thick, scraggly beard on my chin and my dark, sunken eyes make me barely recognizable. I haven’t shaved since Emily’s funeral, and I’ve lost pounds of muscle the past two months, making me not only look gaunt, but sick as well.
When I step out of the bathroom, the orderly who brought me to my room marches over to yank on the drawstring in my pants.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I step away from him. The elastic in my pants keep them in place even without their drawstring, but I don’t like him touching me.
“I forgot you're on suicide watch, so no cords, strings, shoelaces, belts, razors or any other device you could use to harm yourself are allowed.”
Drawstrings? Does he seriously believe I could kill myself with drawstrings?
While removing the drawstrings from the pants hanging in my closet, he arches his brow. “Yes, it’s happened before.” He stuffs them into his pocket for safekeeping before turning around to face me. “You better get a wiggle on. You don’t want to be late for an appointment with Dr. Miller.”
"I've got plenty of time. It's barely past two..." My words stop when my eyes drop to my watch. I've got two minutes to get over to the other side of the compound. "Shit!"
My socks fail to gain traction when I skid out of my room. I have no clue where the past hour went, but it disappeared faster than groupies’ morals when invited backstage at a concert.
“You’re late!” Dr. Miller chides when I enter the counseling room five minutes later.
She’s pissed, but I’m impressed I’m only a few minutes late. My room is located in the west wing; the counseling sessions take place in the east wing. You can’t get more impressive than that. When Dr. Miller glares at me, I mumble an apology under my breath.
“Tardiness is not acceptable. I have a hectic schedule. If all my patients arrived five minutes late, I’d lose precious hours every day.”
When she yanks off her glasses to get her point across, I wonder if she is as old as I first thought. She may be closer to mid-twenties than late. She’s attractive, if you like the dorky schoolteacher look. Her white blouse tucked into her pencil skirt shows off her curvy body, and she has long, lean legs.
My throat works hard to swallow when I return my eyes to her face. She noticed my perusal of her body. Her brows are pulled together, and her eyes are narrowed into thin slits. Although she’s uncomfortable with my stare, she keeps things professional.
“You may wrongly believe rehab is a waste of time, but this is my job, so the least you can do is be respectful enough not to waste my time.” She paces around her desk to pick up a form on the edge. “If you can’t do that, you’ll leave me no choice but to sign this form stating you do not wish to participate in the rehabilitation program
I’ve designed for you. If I do that, you’ll be incarcerated in a medium-security prison for the next three months. Is that what you want, Noah?”
I shake my head without thought. Rehab will be hard, but I'd rather be here than left rotting in a four by four cell with nothing but memories to occupy my time.
Gratitude flares through her eyes as her shoulders slacken. “Okay. Good. Then don’t be late again. Do as instructed, and the next three months will be over before you know it.”
She sits in a recliner before motioning for me to sit opposite her. When I do, she pulls a yellow notepad and pen out of a briefcase resting next to her chair. “Now, how about you tell me about yourself? There has to be more to you than what’s on your admission forms.”
I cross my right ankle over my left as I scrub at my beard. This is as uncomfortable for me as it gets. If there’s one thing I hate more than sitting down and talking, it’s being forced to talk about myself.
Dr. Miller gnaws on the end of her pen as she impatiently waits for me to answer. “Anything?”
When I remain quiet, she chomps down on her pen so firmly, it looks seconds from snapping. “Alright, if you don’t want to talk, I guess we’ll just read what they have down here.” Her exhale flutters her hair out of her eyes. “You’re the twenty-three-year-old singer of a band called Rise Up. You’re unmarried, have no kids, an issue with alcohol, and need to learn how to control your anger issues.” She does a little chuckle that makes my spine bristle with anger. “Nothing out of the ordinary here, is there?”
“You don’t fucking know me.”
“No, I don’t. That was the point in me asking you to tell me about yourself. All I know is what is written on this form.” She hands the document to me. It’s the standard admission form every hospital has stating my name, address, occupation, age, marital status, and the reason I'm being forced into rehab: aggravated assault.
My eyes lift from the paper when Dr. Miller says, “Tell me you don’t read that in the exact manner I just did. Another spoiled, rich, little rock star who thinks he can do whatever he wants, and once the law finally catches up with him, he’ll say how sorry he is before he goes running off to rehab.”
I throw the admission form back at her side of the desk before leaping to my feet. “Fuck you! I don’t need to put up with this shit.”
My long strides to the door slow when she shouts, “If you leave, I’ll be forced to sign the document stating you're refusing to follow your rehabilitation program.”
Sweat slicks my body when I stomp back to stand in front of her. She’s no longer sitting in her seat; she’s facing me eye to eye. “You don’t know a thing about me. You don’t know the fucking hell I’ve been through, yet you feel you have the right to judge me.”
“And there’s that uncontrollable anger you say you don't have a problem with," she replies, not once backing down on her firm stance. "You can't beat people up because they say something you don’t like.”
“You don’t know what he fucking said!” I point to the door like the man I assaulted is standing behind it. “You don’t know what he said about her!”
“Then tell me. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s going on!”
“She was my everything.”
The sternness in Dr. Miller’s eyes softens. “Who was your everything?”
“No one knew how much she meant to me. She didn’t even know how much she meant to me.”
Not willing to let the tears brimming in my eyes fall in front of a witness, I spin on my heels and stalk down the long, isolated hallway, where I spend the next two hours lying on my lumpy mattress in my cold rehabilitation room.
I stop running my thumb over my favorite photo of Emily when a cough breaks through the silence surrounding me. When I lift my gaze, Dr. Miller hesitantly strolls into my room. She waits for me to sit up before dropping her eyes to Emily’s photo.
“She’s very beautiful.”
Beautiful is too simple of a word to describe Emily. She was beyond perfect.
My head slants to the side when Dr. Miller starts our conversation in a way I wasn’t anticipating. “I’m sorry for the way I judged you earlier. I’ve just returned to my position after having twelve months off. With social media not being my thing, I was unaware of what had happened.”
When she takes a second glance at Emily’s photo, the real reason for her visit is exposed. She must have researched me the last two hours, and if my intuition is anything to go by, I’m sure the first thing that pops up when you type my name into the search engine is Emily. She’s everywhere at the moment.
After squeezing my hand, Dr. Miller makes her way out of my room. “I want to start your counseling again tomorrow morning. Meet me in Room 32 at 10 AM.” When she enters the hallway, she cranks her neck back to peer at me. “Please don’t be late. Our sessions are more vital to you than you realize.”
Chapter 52
Noah
“Say anything that makes you comfortable, anything at all.”
Dr. Miller pushes her bangs out of her eyes before biting down on her pen. We’re currently halfway through my sixth counseling session on day three of my three-month sentence. I won’t lie. The past three days have been the longest days of my life. I have two one-hour counseling sessions per day, and every day Dr. Miller asks me the exact question she just did. It’s getting really tiring really fast.
Wanting to keep the focus off me, I shift it to Dr. Miller. “How long have you been married?”
She smiles warily while lowering her gaze to the rings on her wedding finger. I take note of the way her eyes sparkle when she smiles. Emily’s did the same thing. “A little over three years.”
“You must have gotten married young?”
Her smile grows before she nods. “Yes, we did. I was just shy of turning twenty-five; he was twenty-six.”
Her answer reveals my original guess of her age was right. She’s twenty-eight.
After spinning the diamond ring around her finger to ensure it’s correctly aligned, she returns the ball to my side of the court. “Although I’m glad you’re speaking up, our sessions are supposed to be about you, Noah, not me.” An understanding glint brightens her eyes when she asks, “Would you like to talk about Emily?”
Just hearing her name spikes my heart rate. I’d give anything to talk about her, but sometimes, no matter how hard you pray, not all your dreams come true.
When I shake my head, Dr. Miller's shoulders slump. The words we exchanged today are the first we’ve shared since our initial altercation. Clearly, she was hoping it was the start of a confession avalanche.
She’s across the room, but her voice projects so well, it feels like her lips are pressed against my ear when she assures me, “Talking helps. It won’t take away your pain, but it will help you heal.”
“I’ll never get over losing Emily.”
“I won’t pretend it’s easy, but your pain will lessen over time,” Dr. Miller replies, making me realize I said my last statement out loud instead of in my thoughts. “How did you meet Emily?”
While scraping my hand along my unshaven jaw, memories of the night Emily busted me laughing at her family portrait filter through my mind. Her leaning against her bedroom doorframe. The jersey she wore. Her beautiful smile. I see it all in crystal clear detail.
“The instant my eyes landed on her, I knew my life would never be the same again.”
She was so under my skin, I begged Jacob for her number during our drive home. Jacob, forever being an ass, pretended he didn’t feel right giving her personal information to a stranger. Only a few months ago, I found out he and Lola were conspiring to get us together all along.
“I tried hard to stay away from her.”
I even went out with Nick a few weekends to try and forget her sparkling brown eyes and sexy tanned legs. It did me no good. When I was making out with a girl in my truck, Emily’s beautiful face kept interrupting my thoughts. Because the girl I was occupying my
time with had long brown hair similar to Emily’s, I pretended it was her kissing a trail from my chest to the crotch of my jeans. I was so fucking hard, I nearly made a mess of my jeans when she slid down my zipper. It was only when she lifted her eyes did my excitement crash and burn. Her eyes were blue, and her face was nothing like Emily’s.
I felt like an ass, but I yanked up my zipper, planted her backside in the passenger seat, then drove her home. I’d only met Emily once, but it felt wrong occupying my time with another girl. Furthermore, no one could compete with her, so why settle for second best?
“Emily deserved better than me.”
I was a broken man, but even I knew burdening her with the task of mending my shattered heart and blackened soul was wrong. I hadn’t gotten over losing Michael when Chris’s grief became too much to bear.
To this day, I still don’t understand what happened with Chris; he seemed to be doing well. He was helping me rebuild my truck and had picked up some work at a garage in town. He wasn’t living the best life, but he was doing okay... then he overdosed in his bathtub on the fourth anniversary of Michael’s death.
I sink low before folding my arms in front of my chest. I've done enough talking for one day. When the sleeve of my sweater tugs up high, I notice we still have fifteen minutes left in our session.
I put the time to good use. “How did you meet your husband?”
“Oh...umm...” Dr. Miller chuckles. She was so caught up listening, she didn’t anticipate my return serve back to her side of the court. “It was at a college party.” Her hand clamps over her mouth when she smiles a full-toothed grin. “We were freshmen with no interests in dating, so what happens...? Boom—here it is! Love straight out of the gates.”
I laugh at her description of insta-love. I always thought it was something people made up to excuse acting on lust outside of the norm. Emily proved me wrong. She knocked me on my ass in under a second.