Girl Walks Out of a Bar (21 page)

Several patients had meals much different from mine. They had a stir-fry with sliced chicken and broccoli over rice that looked like it could have come from a real restaurant. “It's the Mandarin menu,” a nurse said. “It's for Asian patients who are happier with familiar food.” The higher food quality was lost on the patients. Many wore parts of their meals on their chins, shirts, noses, and cheeks. A few had food in their hair.

My head became fuzzy and I felt myself slouch lower down my chair. It was the Librium! Praise God for Librium! How do I get more Librium?

Afraid I might pass out in my food and suffocate, I waved for a nurse. “I just took Librium,” I mumbled. Without a word, she walked me to my room, holding my elbow as if she were helping an old lady across a street. My knees hit the bed first and then the rest of my body flopped onto the mattress in a helpless heap. I had barely slipped under the sheet before I fell into a long, deep sleep. My first alcohol-free sleep in ten years.

17

Where am I ?
I blinked my heavy eyelids open and saw my brother sitting near me in the wooden chair that usually sat at the foot of the bed. He was hunched forward, reading a book. Years earlier, Lou had worn his brown hair in long beautiful curls, but for several years now he'd kept it law-firm cropped.

A pool of drool had formed on the pillow as I slowly emerged from my stupor. He glanced up.

“Hey!” he said. His brows furrowed as he sat up and pushed his eyeglasses up on the bridge of his nose. “How are you doing?”

“I'm OK,” I said quietly. I wanted to be brave and nonchalant for my brother. “Pretty awful around here, huh?”

“It's not so bad,” he said. “I couldn't find you. Why are you on this floor? It's not detox.”

Holy shit, I hadn't given them a thought—my family. What if they'd shown up to hear, “Sorry, no Lisa Smith in detox. Maybe you have the wrong hospital?”

“I messed up,” I said to Lou, closing my eyes. “This probably wasn't the right place to go. The detox floor was really scary, but they put me up here and it's OK.”

“Are you sure? You don't have to stay here,” he said.

“No, no. I'm already this far.” I curled up tight into a ball and fought to keep my eyes open. “I think . . . I thi—” I mumbled and then I fell asleep with my brother still by my side.

When I woke up again, my parents were also in the room. With hazy thoughts, I wondered about what must be going through the minds of the family members who had known me all my life, the people who had watched me learn to walk and ride a bike and graduate from high school. But I quickly turned away from those thoughts. I couldn't handle another sobbing bout.

My mom sat in the chair, her hands clasped in her lap, leaning forward with her mouth slightly open, as if she was trying to unscramble a secret code on my face. I reached toward her, and she took my hand and squeezed it.

My dad stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder. “Are we OK?” he asked. He walked over to the bed, kissed my cheek, and rubbed my hair. I smiled weakly and stayed curled in the fetal position.

“Yeah, we're OK,” I said. That did it. The tears started falling, but my body was too tired to sob with any energy, so I whimpered like a little girl trying to be brave as her mother applied bandages after a bike accident. They all sat there in silence and let me cry. Finally, I calmed down and said, “I'm so sorry about all this.”

“Hey, it's OK. Last year it was Mom,” Dad said, referring to a car accident that had landed her in the hospital with a wrecked ankle. “This year, it's you. We get through it!” Ever the optimist. And ever confident that I could do anything I set my mind to. But quit drinking? He had no idea how bad it had gotten.

“This place is really skuzzy, Lisa,” my mom said. In her cotton khakis and matching sweater set, she was the most put-together
person I'd seen since check-in. She was looking out the door into the hallway, and I hoped the pacers wouldn't pass by. “Don't you want to go somewhere else? We can get you into a nicer place if you really need this kind of thing. You don't have to stay here.”

“No, really. I'm OK. I went through all these tests and then I took that Librium stuff and it really knocked me out. I feel a lot better than I did this morning. I just want to get through this. I don't want to move.”

“Shirley, leave her alone. She said she's OK. Let her get some help here. Why crap around to start the whole thing over?” my dad said.

I waved my left hand, bandaged from the stabbing. “I'm this far along. I might as well just do it here. Besides, the food here sucks and I might come out a supermodel.” My father and brother laughed. Mom didn't.

“So how long did the doctors say you should be here?” my dad asked.

“I think since I started the Librium today, the earliest I would leave is Friday. Maybe you guys could pick me up on Friday? I can spend the weekend with you. Then I'll go back to work Monday.”

“Of course. We'll come get you Friday, whatever time they tell you,” my mom said. It felt good to have an exit strategy. My eyes were closing again.

“Alright, let's get out of here and let her rest,” my dad said. He rubbed my head again. Lou came over and kissed my forehead, then he hugged Dad while Mom bent down to the cot and hugged me.

“Can you call us every day?” my mom asked. “It doesn't seem like we can call you.”

“Yes. I can call. I have a phone card. There's a pay phone.”

As they left, I started crying harder, heavy with guilt as I pictured them driving back to New Jersey. Then I was asleep again before the tears could dry on the pillow.

I woke up on Wednesday to Jane and her blood pressure contraption. “Do you feel better yet, Lisa? You have a busy day today. The doctor will check you after breakfast. Then you'll go to the meeting on the third floor,” she said.

“Meeting? What are you talking about?” I was trying to sit up straight in the bed without a headboard.

“Twelllve Stepsss!” she sang. “You're still a detox patient. You cried your way up to this floor, but you're still a detox patient. Meeting at ten thirty on the third floor.”

“No, no,” I shook my head and laughed. “I didn't sign up for any 12-step program. I'm just doing the detox to get clean. I can explain it to the doctor.”

Jane tipped her head back and let out a full, heavy laugh. “Ha! That's not how it works. If you come here for detox, you go to meetings on the third floor every day. I don't think you'll get out of
that
one with the doctor.”

After breakfast, the doctor on duty confirmed my fear. “Every patient being treated for substance abuse is required to go to 12-step meetings.” He spoke respectfully, but I couldn't help but feel he wanted to end his statement with, “Duh!” He added, “This is not negotiable.”

“I don't like those programs,” I protested. “They seem, I don't know. . . creepy, like some religious thing . . . or you know—culty.” Thanks to the Librium, I no longer sounded like a lawyer. I sounded more like a gauzy-headed girl on her third day at Woodstock.

“Come on, Lisa,” he said. “Where else are you going today? Take a shower. You'll feel better. Then just go sit there. You
don't have to say anything. Just sit and listen. Who knows? You might hear something interesting.”

That was tough to argue with. I rolled my eyes. “OK, OK.” Jane winked at me and smiled as she led me back to my room. The Librium had made me feel dramatically better than the day before, but I still wished that I'd find a pint of vodka between the mattress and the bedspring, left behind by the last patient in my room. I wanted a drink very badly. How was I supposed to go to a 12-step meeting without drinking?

The doctor had been right about the shower part. I smelled like a high school football player after a summer practice—if he'd then rolled in a dumpster shared by a cheese shop and a chemical plant. I figured it was mass amounts of toxins finally seeping from my long-suffering body. The lack of light in the bathroom was a blessing because I was sure that dark and furry things were growing on the walls. Unfortunately, neither Devon, the most hygienic person I knew, nor I had thought of flip-flops for the shower when packing. We thought we were packing for a spa rehab where Robert Downey Jr. would give me a sponge bath and then Ben Affleck would wrap me in a warm towel.

To make the shower bearable, I pretended I had just seen a janitor scrub the floor, then I took the fastest shower of my life and dried off with a stained and dingy sandpaper towel.

Ashley took me to the meeting in the day room on the detox floor. The Librium had knocked me back to a slow shuffle, so we were a little late. About thirty pink plastic chairs formed a circle and almost every one had a patient already planted in it. I settled into one of the few empty chairs and was grateful not to see the guy who had threatened to fuck me up.

A short Latino man with thick, black hair and a thick, black mustache lectured sternly at the front of the room. Wearing a tan, button-down shirt tucked into jeans, he paced back
and forth and waved his arms as he spoke. “Man, you keep this shit up, you ain't gonna be so lucky next time to end up in here. You're gonna end up with your ass in jail or lying dead in the street. That's what's gonna happen to you, man. This shit ain't funny. If you ain't lost 'em already, you're gonna lose your job, your house, your car, your family, and your whole life. This shit ain't funny. Do not laugh. I am serious.”

As his words banged around in my head I became scared and mesmerized at the same time. He was passionate, he was firm, and he was right. Holy shit, he was right. If I got lucky enough next time and didn't kill myself or land in jail, I would be right back in rehab. I couldn't stop drinking without help and if I didn't stop drinking, I'd lose my job and alienate everyone I loved. I rocked my head back and rubbed my face with my hands. Dr. Landry was right. This guy was right. If I didn't clean myself up I was fucked.

I surveyed the detox crowd. There were more tattoos than teeth in the room, but almost every one of the guys wore expensive running shoes. The group included people of all ages, sizes, and colors—about twice as many men as women. Some of the people might have been in their teens while others clearly qualified for social security. Stripped down to sweatpants and hospital robes and slouched in their chairs, they looked like a bunch of pissed off delinquents sentenced to detention.

It was obvious that most of these people were not here by choice. I doubted that any of them had awakened one morning in a beautiful apartment and realized that they simply couldn't go to their six-figure jobs that day. The vast majority of them had probably been arrested and thrown in here or dragged in under protest by weary loved ones who prayed that this time it would stick. Maybe some of them had been signed in under threat of being fired.

On the wall directly across from me was the detox unit's equivalent to the white schedule board. Across the top of it, in big, green Magic Marker capital letters, it read: “GET UP. GET DRESSED. GET WITH THE PROGRAM.” It looked like the only thing on the board that wasn't erased or updated each day. This was a permanent command.

The Latino lecturer went on, getting louder. “You do not pick up,
no matter what
. That's it. I am serious. It is the one rule. If you pick up, you will lose everything. I was in your chair. I don't ever want to ever sit in it again. That's why I do not pick up no matter what. My life today is real good. When I was using, I had nothing, inside or out. If I pick up, I go right back to what I had before and worse. Believe it. YOU DO NOT PICK UP NO MATTER WHAT.”

OK, geez
, I thought.
I get the idea: “pick up” means to start using again, and you don't do it “no matter what
!”

What if I gave all this 12-step thinking a shot? This guy was saying—proclaiming, actually—that his life sober was better than ever, not worse. Could that be true? He certainly seemed genuine. And what would be the reason to try to sell us bullshit?
Maybe I should view “Get up, get dressed, and get with the program,” as a challenge
, I thought.
I'm nothing if not competitive
. I was already pretty good at the first two out of three.

At the end of the meeting, I started toward the door when everyone began to join hands around the circle. Did I have to join hands? Was the soap in my bathroom antibacterial? The man to my left looked to be about three hundred pounds and wore a pastel, floral housedress. I was too busy staring at him with a slack Librium jaw to notice whoever was on my right. Oh well, what the fuck. We all joined hands and bowed our heads and they chanted some kind of prayer.

Dr. Landry came by shortly after lunch. I was curled up in bed, half-asleep. He stood in the doorway, folder in hand. He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and then adjusted his glasses,