Determination (20 page)

I didn’t want either of us to hurt anymore.

“Will you lay with me for a while?” I asked in a whisper. He nodded, stood up, and unbuttoned his jeans awkwardly after taking his arm out of the sling. Once the jeans were on the floor, he slid his arm back into the sling and walked around to the other side of the bed. He relaxed back against the pillow and opened his good arm to me. I rolled over to lay right up against him with my face buried in his neck.

We didn’t move again until the nurse came in at midnight to check my stuff and give me my pills. Brian never woke while the nurse worked, and I caught a sweet smile on her face when I kissed Brian’s forehead. I loved him so much, and the thought of just being his friend for the rest of our lives tormented me. It wasn’t right to hope because he deserved so much better, but I couldn’t help it.

One day, I wanted to be worthy of his love again.

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Ten

“JAMIE, I’m going to go pull the car around. I’ll meet you out front,”

Dad said as he grabbed my bag and headed for the door. I appreciated him for being sensitive to the need Brian and I had to be alone for a minute before we went into our uncertain future. The quiet click of the hospital door was the only sound in the awkward silence. Brian stood near the window, which had become his preferred place to be in the small hospital room. The haunted expression on his face as he stared into the distance through the rain-streaked panes of glass tore at me, but I stayed quiet, unwilling to hasten our parting.

The orderly would be there soon to take me down to my father’s waiting car. Not wanting the moment to be wasted, I stood up from the recliner chair where I’d sat to put on my shoes. He turned, and the tears in his eyes startled me. With three large, purposeful steps, he was there, and he wrapped a warm hand around the back of my neck. One tear fell as he pulled my face to his. The kiss, full of sorrow and love, lasted just long enough for my heart to break before he put his lips to my ear.

“I love you,” he said softly. While I listened to the words carefully, what I heard in them was “good-bye.”

He left without another word.

My tears were dry by the time the orderly brought the wheelchair that would take me to my new life. As he wheeled me through the winding corridors, I kept my eyes down and just waited for the ride to be over. When we reached the front doors, I saw my father standing next to a white Lexus sedan with the door open as he waited for me to 128

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arrive. His expression remained hopeful and patient while the orderly transferred me to the front seat.

“Ready to go home?” he asked after getting behind the wheel. As much as I wanted to tell him that my home was a tiny studio apartment with Brian, I nodded. I’d allow myself to grieve that night, but then I would focus on the chance my father had given me. I’d let him help me with rehab and maybe some kind of future because after the hell I’d been through in the last two years, I deserved it, even if it couldn’t happen with Brian.

When we reached the upscale home I barely remembered, I told my father I wanted to lie down for a while just to get out of his eternally optimistic company. Aside from the placement of the windows and the different-color paint on the walls, the room at the San Diego house looked a lot like my old room had in Alabama. I stood in the doorway when the wave of nostalgia hit. Brian seemed to be everywhere in the room. If I could just put that inflatable mattress down on the floor, he could stay the night just as he had back home. But we weren’t back home, and Brian didn’t want to stay the night. He had a new home, with new friends and a new life.

I sat on the bed for a while and just looked around at all the little things I’d forgotten about myself in the last two years. My baseball trophies sat on a shelf over the dresser. A notebook with half-doodled pictures of Brian lay on top of the desk. A list of colleges Brian and I had planned to apply to was pinned to the corkboard above the desk.

Even the band posters remained hanging on the walls as a reminder of what my life had been like before my mother decided to ruin it by taking me to the center.

Stir-crazy and a little depressed, I decided to go through the clothes in my closet to see what fit and what I wanted to keep. Staying busy and wearing myself out might help on my first night back in the house. I pulled out hanger after hanger and kept most of the jeans, though they were too big. I kept a lot of the T-shirts that I still liked. I tossed my Sunday clothes because I no longer had a need for them. As I started to go through the dresser, I decided to let my father take me shopping for a few things I wanted. It would make him happy, which I discovered, at least right then, was important to me.

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I’d just spotted my favorite tennis shoes at the bottom of my closet when the room lurched and its contents seemed to melt before my eyes. For a minute, I panicked as the preseizure symptoms hit me without warning. My legs trembled, and I tried to call for my dad, but I couldn’t make anything work. Losing control of my entire body was truly the most terrifying experience I’d ever had, and the worst part was it could just continue to happen at any time. My head hit the desk as I fell, and I tasted blood as the hard wooden edge busted my lip. I managed to land on my side as the nice nurse at the hospital had instructed. Vomit pooled on the hardwood floor in front of my face, and the smell made the nausea worse.

A scream tore through the room just as the seizure took over.

“JAMIE, honey, it’s okay. I’m right here.” The voice seemed unfamiliar at first, until I opened my eyes and saw my father as he knelt next to me and stroked my hair. The pillow he’d put under my head reeked of regurgitated Chinese food, and I tried to sit up to get away from the smell before it made me sick again.

“Take it slow,” he said and tossed the pillow, which landed in the hall. “Thank you,” I murmured, and my voice sounded like I’d swallowed shards of broken glass. I tried to stand, but my tired and sore muscles just wouldn’t support me. The exhaustion felt almost like a next-day hangover, only I hadn’t gotten the peace of being drunk first.

“Let’s get you to the bathroom,” my father said as he put one of my arms around his shoulders and helped me stand. Ashamed of the vomit on my face and my piss-soaked jeans, I closed my eyes and felt a tear slide down my face. After a dozen slow, agonizing steps, I stood propped against the sink while my father helped me get undressed. At nineteen years old, I was mortified to need his help. He threw my soiled clothes onto the floor and handed me one warm washrag after another to wash my face and body so I felt almost human by the time he helped me dress in cartoon pajama bottoms I had forgotten even existed.

Shedding my remaining scraps of dignity, I crawled into the captain’s bed I’d slept in since I was a child. For a moment, I wished I 130

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could bury my face in the pillow and smell coconuts as I had at the apartment. Closing my eyes, I tried to imagine Brian lying next to me in our big bed. He used to be less than an arm’s length from me, but he wasn’t there. I curled up into a ball under the covers as my heart ached for him.

“WE NEED to meet with the administrator at the clinic at two; let’s stop for lunch on the way.” Dad’s voice had a forced casualness I hated. It sounded as if he were taking me golfing rather than to be knocked out and treated for opiate addiction. I’m not sure what I expected, maybe for him to be disappointed in me for the drugs or yell at me, but certainly not to be a buddy. It left me off-balance, though I had to admit nothing in my life was too balanced right then.

“Sure, Dad, whatever you want,” I said as I stared out my new bedroom window overlooking the perfectly landscaped backyard. It didn’t look anything like the fun, kid-friendly yard we had in Alabama.

There were no worn spots in the grass caused by boys’ spontaneous baseball games. There were no bikes thrown casually up against the fence, and of course, there was no tree house in the tall oak near the garage. I was sure I’d get used to the view, no matter how much it differed from the one I remembered. It hurt to think I’d be here, away from Brian, long enough for it to feel familiar.

“It’s eleven now. Why don’t you jump in the shower and we can leave by noon,” he said as he sidestepped any meaningful conversation we should have about going to the detox clinic. I didn’t know if I wanted to talk about it, but I guess I wanted him to ask. Jesus, I sounded like a teenage girl.

“Can you hang out in here while I take a shower, just in case I…

have problems?” Having to ask that question humiliated me, but the thought of having a seizure in the shower scared me. At the hospital, the shower was open, and a nurse stayed to help me.

“I’d planned to, son,” he said quietly and put a hand on my shoulder. Looking up at him, I saw the warm smile and felt a little better. As I was growing up, Dad had worked a lot to build his career, and we were never particularly close. Though I didn’t want to hope, I Determination

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thought maybe since it was just the two of us, we could deepen that bond. But there were so many things he didn’t know. Any one of them could push him away again. He would leave me, and then I’d be completely alone. I didn’t want to think about that, so I got up off the bed, grabbed my clothes, and headed for the shower.

The hot water felt good as I stood under the spray, so I closed my eyes and let it saturate my hair. It had grown out since Steven had chopped it all those months before. The curls at the end were even starting to come back and hung in my face sometimes, but I didn’t want to cut them off. Brian loved my hair long, and even though things were strained right then, I refused to give up the hope that one day he and I could be together again.

After I got cleaned up, thankfully without any seizures, I dried off and dressed with the door mostly closed. It bugged me that I couldn’t lock it, but I just couldn’t afford privacy in exchange for safety. If I had a problem, my dad needed to be able to get in quickly. One more sacrifice in my life I would have to make. I guess that meant no more jacking off in the shower.

“Dad, where is the rehab place?” I asked as he drove us to the restaurant. As he pulled onto the highway, it occurred to me that having uncontrolled seizures meant I’d never be able to drive again. The realization made my stomach hurt, but I tried not to think about it too much. At that point in my life, each day was just one more small step toward where I needed to go. Right then, I had to get clean. I’d worry about the rest later.

“It’s about fifteen minutes from the house if traffic isn’t bad,”

Dad said brightly. I didn’t know if his cheerfulness was a front to hide how he really felt, or if he truly enjoyed taking his son to rehab. Since the rehab place ended up being so close to the house, hopefully that meant Dad would be able to take me and pick me up. I didn’t want to take a cab.

“In the mood for Mexican?” Dad asked, and I agreed. It didn’t matter where we went for lunch. I wanted today to be over. When he’d come into my room the night before and told me about the appointment, I thought it would be for the actual detox, but it was just a meeting to make sure the facility would be the right one. I didn’t understand what difference it made. Didn’t they all do the same thing?

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The enchiladas ended up being some of the best I’d ever had. The light, comfortable atmosphere in the restaurant relaxed me. Nothing would happen at the rehab place, and the hospital had prescribed enough meds for a few days, so I had nothing to be afraid of. However, the anxious feeling in my stomach refused to go away.

WHEN we pulled into the parking lot of an office building, I thought maybe we were in the wrong place. It didn’t look like what I thought a rehab center would be. Though unsure exactly why, I thought it would look like some kind of detention center, with bars on the windows and barbed-wire fences. The fact that it looked like a doctor’s office surprised me. The building had several floors, and I wondered if they all belonged to the rehab center. Dad parked the car in the adjoining lot, and we walked up to the door together. I trailed just a bit, intimidated by the imposing building, but not so much that I looked reluctant.

An attractive guy in a dress shirt and tie sat behind a desk in the reception area. I got a little lost in his vibrant green eyes as he asked if he could help us.

“We have an appointment with Dr. Lindman,” my father informed him, and he asked us to sit in the plush, oversized chairs that littered the large, handsome waiting area. The décor included a muted, earthy color scheme that felt almost calming, scenic landscapes, and oceanic murals. I didn’t have a lot of time to look around because almost as soon as we sat down, a thin, academic-looking man had appeared from the door behind the reception desk.

“Mr. Mayfield?” he asked, and I assumed he was speaking to my father, so I just stood meekly off to the side. Dad shook hands with the man, who continued to watch me out of the corner of his eye. I wondered if working with addicts had made him wary or if he was naturally guarded.