“Do you understand?” he asked.
I completely understood.
Before I’d left the bar, I had realized that I needed to change, and now more than ever I knew this. I wasn’t going to fight this. Not now. I met my father’s blue eyes and then his face blurred.
“Dad…” The tears rushed me, heedless of the sting they caused when they hit the incredibly raw splotches on my face. “There’s something really wrong with me.”
“I’m really proud of you.”
My gaze shifted away from where Syd was perched on the edge of my bed. It was a day after I’d woken up in the hospital. I still hurt something fierce. “You shouldn’t…be proud of me.”
“Why not?”
I stared at the ceiling. “I drank and then I drove. I could’ve…” Absolutely disgusted with myself, I pressed my lips together and shook my head.
“I’m not proud that you did that,” she said. “But I’m proud that you’re getting help.”
Closing my eyes, I sort of wished I was asleep. “It was my dad’s idea.”
“You could’ve fought it.”
“He threatened to cut me off if I did,” I told her, also wishing I had another blanket. It was chilly in there. “You know me. I like all my perks. Can’t have that—”
“Knock it off,” Syd snapped, drawing my attention. Her cheeks flushed with anger. “I talked to your dad. You didn’t even try to fight it. Not one second. You know you need help. I’m proud that you’re making that decision, so why are you acting this way?”
Why? Because I didn’t deserve her kind words, and I sure as hell didn’t deserve anyone to be proud of me. “I drank and I drove. I totaled my car. I don’t…have a spleen anymore. I’m a loser. I’m going to have to go to court and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my license. I’m not complaining. I deserve that.”
My ass actually deserved to be in jail, and who knew, I might just end up there.
“Andrea…” She sighed as she tilted her head. A long length of dark hair fell over her shoulder. “You’re not a loser. You—”
“I need help. I know.” The wall I’d erected since my father left crumbled a smidgen. “I know.”
Her lower lip trembled as she patted my hand. “When Tanner called and told us what’d happened, I thought my heart had stopped.”
Tanner.
Now my heart stopped. This morning when my brother stopped by, he’d told me he’d seen Tanner the night I was brought in. At first, I’d thought that Tanner had responded to the accident, but Brody had ended up talking to him. Tanner had heard the call go out, but didn’t realize until later that it had been me. When he had, he’d come straight to the hospital.
“I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered, her voice wavering.
I squeezed my eyes shut again.
Several moments passed. “Kyler would’ve come with me, but I figured you probably didn’t want a whole party in here.” She paused. “Tanner wants to see you.”
“I don’t want to see him,” I said immediately.
“He is so—”
“I can’t.” I looked at her then. “Please. I can’t see him right now. I don’t want to see him right now. I can’t…I can’t deal with that.”
It was bad enough that Tanner had already been there. According to Brody, he’d actually been in this room while I’d been asleep. Embarrassment and hopelessness were an ugly, dark mixture inside me. Seeing him would break me, and I was barely holding it together. I knew I had disappointed my family. Severely. And even though Syd said she was proud of me, I knew she was also dismayed.
Syd smiled weakly. “Okay. I can respect that. I know he will.”
And he would. Tanner was a good guy. He wouldn’t push it. If Syd told him I didn’t want to see him, he wouldn’t show. Now more than ever I knew I wasn’t…I wasn’t worthy of someone like him. I was pretty sure my actions put me in the lowest of the low, like pond scum. Except pond scum probably had a purpose, and what was my purpose? To screw stuff up?
If so, I was exceeding expectations.
The morning I was discharged from the hospital, it was so hot that I swore I saw steam wafting off the asphalt. It was a typical August morning, except nothing was normal about that day.
I wasn’t sure if anything would be normal again.
Only my dad and mom were present as I was wheeled out. No balloons or smiling faces. There really wasn’t anything to celebrate, and I wasn’t going home. I guessed it was a good thing I hadn’t gotten a pet.
Getting into the backseat was harder than I thought since my tummy was still sore. On the seat beside me was my suitcase. Mom had packed for me. We wouldn’t even be stopping at my apartment.
The ride to the treatment center was quiet, and I was okay with that. I didn’t want to make small talk, to pretend that everything was okay. And I don’t think my parents wanted to pretend either.
The center was outside the city, near Frederick, and in the middle of a long stretch of nothing. We took an exit I’d never even paid attention to before in any of my travels, and it took a good twenty minutes before the car hung a right. We passed a large sign with the words THE BROOK inscribed in the stone.
My first impression of the treatment center when we crested a hill was that my dad got the place wrong. This didn’t look like a rehab. Oh hell no. With the rolling, manicured hills surrounding a massive, rancher-style complex, the visible tennis court, and what appeared to be a pool the size of a house, it screamed country club and not rock bottom.
Dad followed the road up and under a large awning. The entry reminded me of a hotel. Taking a deep breath, I glanced at my dad. His gaze met mine in the rearview mirror. He nodded, and I suddenly wanted to cry—wanted to throw myself on the seat and not move. But Mom climbed out of the car and opened the back door. There would be no throwing myself on the seat.
I eased out of the car, my wide eyes focused on the glass doors. My heart was pounding. Mom reached between us, threading her fingers through mine. I shuffled forward, my steps slow as my father joined us, my suitcase in his hand.
Cool air greeted us as we stepped inside a large atrium. Up ahead was a reception desk, again reminding me of a hotel. My father walked forward, stopping to speak with the woman.
“It’s going to be okay,” my mom whispered.
Doubtful.
I dragged in a deep breath and dull pain flared across my bruised ribs. A tremor rolled through me, and my knees shook as Dad wheeled around. His eyes met mine. To the left of the reception area, a door opened and a man stepped out.
He looked like he was in his mid-thirties, and he was rocking a mad pair of hipster, black-rimmed glasses that were as dark as his hair. He wasn’t dressed like someone who worked here, not with his khaki shorts and sandaled feet.
“Andrea Walters?” He smiled at me in a pleasant way.
I jerked and glanced at my dad, then my mom. “Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Yes.”
“My name is Dave Proby. Please follow me.” He glanced at my parents. “You may also come.”
My fingers were numb and tingly as we followed him into a small room beyond the door. There was another exit on the other side, the window glazed over. We weren’t alone.
A nurse was waiting. In her hands was a blood pressure cuff.
Holy crap, this was like an episode of Intervention.
“Sit.” Dave gestured at the green upholstered chair next to the desk.
Nervous, I did as he requested. My parents remained just inside the room. The nurse approached me, smiling gently. “I just need to take your blood pressure, hon.”
I had no idea if that was normal or not, but I stuck out my arm as she asked, “Do you take any medication?”
Mouth dry, I nodded as Mom spoke up. “I brought her purse. She has sleeping pills and anxiety medication.” She opened the purse and rummaged around until she found the three bottles. The nurse took them while I sat there, feeling like…well, a thousand different things. “And ther
e are the meds the hospital has her on.”
I felt incredibly small as the nurse looked over the bottles. My skin was uncomfortable and itchy as she placed them on the desk, stacking them up like a three-person red-bottled army. I wanted to shoot out of my chair and grab the bottles, throwing them through the little window, even the antibiotics.
Dave didn’t speak until the nurse scribbled down my results and then handed them over to him. He sat in a small desk chair and picked up a pen. Twirling it between his fingers, he glanced over a file. “Do you have a cellphone with you?”
“Yes.”
Without looking at me, he extended his arm and wiggled his fingers. “Hand it over.”
I stared at his hand for a moment.
He wiggled his fingers again. “Sorry. For the first two weeks, you will have absolutely no contact with the outside world—no internet, no phone.”
My eyes widened. I was going to go stir crazy. “It’s…it’s in my purse.”
A second later, Mom had it and dropped it in Dave’s hand. I glanced up at her, seeing lines around her eyes I’d never noticed before. Dave put my phone next to the bottles. Then he swiveled his chair toward me. “Do you know why you’re here, Andrea?” he asked finally.
I thought that was a pointless question. “I…” I closed my eyes briefly. My cheeks stung. “I have…a drinking problem.”
He inclined his head. “Is that the only problem you have?”
Pressing my lips together, I shook my head no.
“Do you know why you drink?”
Mute, I shook my head again, but it felt like a lie.
Dave looked at me and then turned a pointed stare on the bottles lined up on the desk. “I think you do, Andrea, but you’re not ready to say those words. That’s okay. My job is to get you to not only say them, but to understand and accept them.” He leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees. “Are you ready to do this? To accept help?”
I sucked in a shaky breath and my voice cracked when I spoke. “Yes.”
“Perfect. That’s all I need to hear,” he said, his bespectacled stare holding mine. “You’ve fought bravely this entire time, but you’ve lost this fight, Andrea. The good news is that you haven’t lost the war. And you’ll no longer have to fight this war alone.”
Chapter 23
Andrea
As expected, things sucked at first.
With no phone, no internet, and limited access to TV, it was an immediate shock to my system. Heck, even my little room with its single bed and dresser was a huge change, but these things weren’t the biggest differences in my life.
Crying. Dear sweet Lord, there were a lot of tears. I cried when my parents left. I cried when I had to take the inpatient survey and got to the question: have you had thoughts of self-harm? I cried when I was shown my room after the tour of the facility and the grounds. I cried myself to sleep that night, and that took hours, because the sleeping pills had been taken from me. I cried in the morning, because it was the first morning there, and I realized my life had spun completely out of control.
I was in treatment.
And I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was supposed to be a doctor. No. Scratch that. I was supposed to be a teacher. I was supposed to be a daughter and a sister, a friend and maybe…maybe even a girlfriend, and now, I was none of these things.
A nurse served breakfast in my room after she took my blood pressure and temperature. The utensils were plastic. Plastic. As was the plate. What did they expect me to do? I ate some of the eggs and a piece of bacon, but it tasted like sawdust to me.
Dave showed up about half an hour later. “Walk with me.”
I didn’t really have a choice, so I pulled myself off the bed and followed him out into the wide hall. There were other doors that I guessed led to rooms like mine. As we passed them, a girl who appeared younger than me smiled at Dave, but looked away when her gaze met mine. She disappeared into one of the rooms, and all I could think was how thin she was—so thin that she appeared ill.
“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked.
Folding my arms across my chest, I shrugged a shoulder. “Okay. I guess.”
“Okay? Today is your first day in treatment. You’re going to be here for at least thirty days,” he said, shooting me a look of disbelief. “And you’re okay?”
I shuddered. Well, when he put it that way… “I’m a little freaked.”
“That’s completely understandable. You probably feel like your life is out of control. You’re where you never thought you’d be.” He stopped in front of a dark-colored door while I wondered if he was able to read my mind. “Most, if not all, feel that way at first. Come on in.”
Dave led me into a small office with shelves overflowing with books. As I sat in a chair, I looked over the titles. None of them appeared to be medical tomes. I squinted. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be…a slew of romance novels. What the…?
“You’ve noticed my books.” He dropped into the chair behind the desk and shrugged unapologetically. “I love me a happily-ever-after.”
Okay.
“You’re welcome to borrow as many as you like,” he offered.
With no television or internet, I would so be taking him up on that offer with a startling quickness.
“Alright, I’m going to give you a little background on who I am and what we do here.” Leaning forward, he picked up a baseball. “I’m a clinical psychologist who specializes in addiction counseling and treatment. Sounds spiffy, huh? Now, The Brook treats a whole wide variety of things. After all, variety is the spice of life, or so they say.” He tossed the ball up and caught it.
Okay. This guy was kind of weird. Cute. But weird.
“We have people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. We also have people here due to eating disorders and some who have depression. We’ve even had some who have extreme phobias and some quite random addictions. But what does this all mean to you?”
He tossed the ball again, catching it. “Some just do drugs. Some people just drink. We treat the addiction in those cases. But in others, we treat the disorder driving those addictions. If we don’t, then all we are doing is treating the symptoms, but never the cause.” Catching the ball once more, he put it aside and then tapped a slip of paper on his desk. “Now, based on your answers to our generic-as-hell questionnaire, you say you don’t drink all the time. Is that the truth?”
My fingers were digging into the skin of my arms. “Yes.”
“Are you lying, Andrea?”
I blinked. “No.”
“But you drove drunk. Most people who drink occasionally do not drink and drive.”
“I…I drink—”
“Don’t answer that question yet,” he cut in, and I frowned. “Answer this. Was that the first time you drove while under the influence or have you done it before, but were not that drunk?”
I shook my head a little. “I’ve never driven…” Pausing, I wetted my lips as my gaze shifted to the window behind him. “I might have done it before, after one or two beers, but I normally wait at least an hour or so.”
“Normally? What made you not wait this time?”
My muscles were tensing up as my face heated. “There was this guy there, at the bar, who I didn’t recognize at first, but he knew me. We must’ve hooked up, and I wanted to get out of there.”
“Did you do that all the time, hooking up while drinking?” he asked.
I shrugged again as my face continued to burn.
“Andrea, I need your answers. Your real answers. Or this is an absolute waste of time.” His stare met mine. “I need you to be honest. Sometimes painfully and embarrassingly honest. It’s the only way I’m going to help you. In a way, I’m going to break you, because that’s the only way I can really help you.”
Wow. This sounded like fun.
“Do you want to change?” he asked.
I suddenly thought back to those moments before I left the bar, when I realized that the
change I needed wasn’t something external but all inside me. I’d recognized that before I’d gotten in the car.
Lifting my gaze, it was hard to hold his. “Yes. I want to change.”
Dave smiled.
I didn’t feel like smiling. “I’ve hooked up with guys when I’ve been drunk. There are times that I…” My face was seriously on fire. “That I don’t remember the details. I don’t even know what I’ve done or didn’t do.” Once I started speaking, the words kept pouring out. “I don’t even know if I wanted to be with them or if I thought it was expected. Or because I’d been drinking. I’ve done it a lot.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s been two or two thousand, Andrea.” He spread his arms wide. “There’s no judgment here.”
“That’s…”
He waited. “What?”
It was hard to get the words out. “No judging? That’s a… unique concept.”
“Get used to it,” he replied, flashing a quick grin. “Is that the only time you’ve had sexual relations?”
Goodness, this conversation got awkward quick. Totally no breaking me in, but I wanted…I wanted to change more than I cared about being embarrassed.
“No. Not every time,” I whispered, staring at the front of his desk. There was a Baltimore Orioles sticker plastered across the center. “There was this one guy. He didn’t like that I drank like…like I did, and I think…he really liked me.”
Over the next couple of weeks, Dave became a magician when it came to getting me to put a voice to all my thoughts and fears and the random crap that sort of just came out of my mouth. There was a lot of talking and a lot of listening.
Sometimes we walked. Sometimes we talked in his office. Other times he made me talk in the art studio while I sat in front of a blank canvas. I had no idea what in the hell that was supposed to symbolize, but Dave…yeah, he was weird in a really effective way.