“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 there 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?”