On Thin Ice 1 (2 page)

“Daniel, would you like
to tell us about the impact sports has had on your life?”

Daniel nodded. When he
spoke, his low, manly voice sent shivers running through me.

“Sports has affected
every part of my life. I guess like most guys, I grew up playing
sports. I think sports, more than school or anything else, has
turned me into the person I am today.”

I wondered if that
meant his addiction as well. I began to wonder about Daniel. What
brought him here? Was he going to stay long? What happened in his
life that led to his addiction? This was a center for people who
could afford to come here. This wasn’t a center for the poor. I was
lucky that my parents were willing to pay the bills, although I was
too ashamed to face them. I wondered what Daniel did in his other
life. Was he a lawyer? A doctor, like I had studied to be? Somehow,
none of those seemed to fit.

For the first time
since I’d come here, I wasn’t happy that Doctor Emma let us go. I
wanted to stay in the circle, hear more about this Daniel guy. I
had no idea why my body reacted the way it did at him. That wasn’t
like me at all. I hadn’t had a boyfriend in years now. Hell, I
hadn’t ever had a reaction like this to a man, even when I was
dating. What was my problem?

Doctor Emma encouraged
us to come and see her whenever we needed, as she always did,
before we all stood up and left. I didn’t wait for Fiona as I
usually did, instead I immediately left the room and went back into
the sterile, beige hallway. I needed to go to my room and figure
out what the hell was going on with me. I needed to figure out why
my body reacted like this.

“Excuse me, wait!” I
suddenly heard a voice behind me, as fingers tapped my shoulders
lightly, and I froze. I turned around slowly, and found myself
staring into Daniel’s chest. That perfectly formed, muscular chest.
Looking up I found his face, my eyes looking directly into his deep
brown ones. There was pain in those eyes, but also curiosity.

“I just wanted to tell
you, I really liked your story,” Daniel told me, shooting me that
smile that sent fire running through me once more. Standing now, my
legs felt like jelly, like I was going to faint just from being in
Daniel’s presence.

“Thanks,” I told him,
trying to smile.

“Kylie,” Daniel
repeated, slowly, as though trying on the name for the first time.
The way he had just said my name, it sounded so different coming
from his mouth. It sounded so pure, so sexy somehow, not the plain
Jane name I always thought of it as.

“That was your name,
right? It’s nice to meet you Kylie” Daniel told me, flashing me
another smile as he held out his hand.

“Yeah. You too,” were
the only words I could muster in reply, and even they sounded dumb
and hollow coming from my mouth. I stood there in silence I watched
Daniel continue down the hallway. I wondered what his story was,
where he came from. There was something about him, something that I
couldn’t quite place my finger on it but that made my body react in
ways I just wasn’t used to when he was around me. I wasn’t
comfortable with it, I didn’t like it.
I could really use a
drink right now
I thought to myself, but I quickly forced the
thought from my brain. I wasn’t going there. Absolutely not. Not
again. I might not want to heal, but I also didn’t want to depend
on alcohol to make the pain go away again.

“Hey, new guy’s pretty
hot, don’t you think?” Fiona asked as she came up next to me.

“I guess he’s okay. I
hadn’t really noticed,” I lied in reply, not really wanting to
confide with anybody as to what I had just felt.

“Bullshit! Don’t think
I didn’t notice you spent the entire group therapy section staring
at the guy, not to mention you actually said something for the
first time ever.”

“I did not!” I
protested, but I knew my words were falling on empty ears. “I just
figured I’d tell my story because Doctor Emma’s been on my case
about letting my feelings out, about trying to heal, and that story
about me jumping off my bike has absolutely nothing to do with my
life now.”

“Whatever you say
dear,” Fiona replied, obviously not believing my terrible excuses.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing, personally. Boys are fun, just
don’t get too attached to them.”

“You’re impossible.
Where is he from anyways?”

“I don’t know. I
haven’t heard anything about him at all. My guess is some rich kid
who played lacrosse in college.”

“Really? You think he’s
that young?” I would’ve placed Daniel’s age at closer to 30, which
would have made him a full six years older than me.

“I guess not. When you
get old like me, Kylie, it becomes a lot harder to tell people’s
ages. You’ll know one day.”

“You’re ancient Fiona,
I guess late 30s is the new late 70s,” I told her, rolling my
eyes.

“Whatever. I have a
date with Sam to play Monopoly in the lounge, because unlike you
I’m not afraid of boys and just because I’m an alcoholic doesn’t
mean I can’t have some fun.”

“You and I both know
that you cheat at Monopoly and that this place has a strict no
dating policy. Sam’s about to be disappointed on two levels.”

“Sure, but as long as
it’s only pretend, there’s no problem!”

I laughed to myself as
I watched Fiona walk down the hall. She was looking good. I was
already here when Fiona arrived, I’d been at the clinic for around
a month. She had looked like the perfect suburban housewife then,
well dressed, healthy looking. I never would have guessed she had a
drinking problem if I’d seen her in the street.

The next few weeks had
been hard on her. She lost a lot of weight, I knew she wasn’t
eating, the bags under her eyes indicated that she wasn’t sleeping
either. We never talked about our problems, but slowly she began to
get better, and I realized as she walked down the hall that she was
looking a lot better. I wondered if it wasn’t going to be too long
before she would be discharged, going back to her family, her two
kids in college still not knowing that she was here. They both went
to colleges out of state, and seeing as it was the middle of the
school year, as long as Fiona was out of here sometime in the next
two months they would never even know she had been gone.

It was selfish, but a
part of me wanted her to stay. I knew I had gone through the same
withdrawal symptoms as she had. I had lost all the weight, I had
the insomnia, I also went through depression, fatigue, anxiety and
tremors. In the first week after I had completely given up the
alcohol, I stayed in bed for days without getting out at all. I
wanted to curl up and die.

I knew I looked better
too. I had put back on all of the weight that I had lost, so I now
looked like a normal sized young woman again rather than the
almost-anorexic look I had before, my brain was no longer foggy, I
sometimes experienced a good night’s sleep, although nightmares
frequently interrupted that, and my anxiety and tremors were gone
completely. From a physical point of view, I was healed. But the
reason why I stayed, the reason why I had to stay, was that
mentally I wasn’t even close to being able to face the real world.
I didn’t know if I would relapse if I had to go back out there. It
was easy to think that I would be fine, that I would go to AA
meetings and live my life, but I also knew my problems were deeper
than the alcohol, and those deeper problems were nowhere near being
resolved. That was mostly my fault though, I didn’t want to resolve
them.

I had actually come to
accept my reality. I was probably going to stay here forever, or at
least until my parents got tired of paying for it. I knew they’d
never stop though, I knew they would spend every last dime they had
if it meant the possibility of their only daughter being ‘fixed’,
as they put it.

Unfortunately I knew
that I would never heal. Nothing could change what I had done,
nothing would ever change it. That night in June, just over a year
ago now, changed my life completely. I should have died, and quite
frankly I wish I did. My life was pointless now, an empty shell
waiting for enough ticks of the clock to pass before my body gave
away at last and let me die.

Sometimes I wished I
had the courage to take my own life. It would be so much easier,
just to slip away from this earth and leave all of the feelings of
guilt behind. But I could never bring myself to do it. Something
always stopped me. No matter how depressed I got, no matter how
much I wished I had died that night, no matter how much I convinced
myself that my life was pointless, I could never bring myself to
end it. I had to live with this pain, this guilt, this punishment
and advancing my death was taking the easy way out.

I went back to my room
and lay down on my bed. My room was basically the only part of this
building that I actually liked. It wasn’t white and steril, it was
homely and it was mine. The walls were painted a pale blue, the
Queen size bed in the middle of the room with its brown wooden
headboard had a lovely navy blue comforter. The antique style
cabinet in the corner which held my clothes also held a few photos
that were dear to me. Against the far wall was a small desk with my
laptop and a few books. It’s funny, when I was in pre-med and then
medical school I was always surrounded by books, most of them so
heavy to lug around that it was easier to do my workouts at home
rather than in the gym. Yet now I only had a single copy of Gray’s
Anatomy and a couple Agatha Christie novels on my shelf. A round
rug in the center of the floor finished the room, which was simple
but elegant. Just the way I liked it.

I stared at the ceiling
as I thought about my reaction to Daniel. Was this another
withdrawal symptom, one that I hadn’t experienced? It had been a
long time since I had any alcohol, a bit over three months I
suppose. Doctor Emma told me that most of the physical symptoms
would be gone by now, though everybody was different and there was
a possibility that I would be susceptible to more physical symptoms
in the future.

What if it wasn’t a
withdrawal symptom? What if it was just my body dealing with the
physical attraction to another human being of the opposite sex?
God, even thinking those words reminded me of medical school. That
was such a clinical way of putting the fact that I was ridiculously
turned on by Daniel. What was strange about it was I didn’t
understand why. I have never reacted like that any man before, and
I had serious boyfriends in my life. There weren’t many, of course,
but I had fantasized about marrying two of them one day, which was
my own personal litmus test as to whether or not I considered a
relationship serious.

My thoughts were
suddenly interrupted by knock the door. I rolled my eyes as I got
out of bed, figuring it must be Doctor Emma.
I hope she’s not
coming in here to congratulate me on talking in today’s therapy
session
. I opened the door and found myself looking at
Amanda.

“Hey, what are you
doing here?” I asked. Amanda was nice and all, but we never really
spoke and she certainly had never come to my room before.

“I was in the lounge
and found Fiona and Sam playing Monopoly, and Fiona mentioned that
you wanted to know about Daniel’s history. You know, the new
guy.”

“Oh yeah, I did,” I
replied, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Kevin told me who he
was. You know how Kevin loves hockey? Well, turns out Daniel is
actually Daniel Ross, the captain of the Seattle Sea Lions hockey
team.”

“Shit, really?”

Amanda nodded. “Yeah, I
looked it up on the Internet after Kevin told me. It’s all
definitely true, it’s him.”

“That’s pretty cool, I
didn’t think he was the lawyer type we usually get around
here.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I gotta
get back.”

“Of course, no problem.
Thanks for the info Amanda.”

Without knowing why, I
immediately moved to my computer and open the lid. My laptop burst
into life, and I quickly typed in the password and waited for it to
load. I rapped my fingers against the desk with impatience as the
old machine creaked and groaned its way into function.

I finally opened
Google, and typed in the name. Daniel Mallard. His Wikipedia entry
came up first, and I clicked on it. This was exciting, I had never
actually met anybody in my life who had their own Wikipedia page.
When I was in high school my friends and I would look people up on
Facebook, but that was it.

I slowly read the words
on the page, devouring the clinical biography on the page like it
was the most sensational novel I’d ever read. Daniel grew up in
Canada, starting to play hockey when he was four years old. He made
his way into the junior leagues and was drafted in the first round,
making his debut in the NHL that year.

Four years later he was
made captain of his team, making him the youngest captain in the
history of the Seattle Sea Lions. He was a goal scorer, having
scored 37 in his last season. Then, I got to the section about his
injury.

That was where I
stopped reading. A part of my brain complained.
It’s written on
the internet. It’s public information. You aren’t really snooping
or anything, you’re reading Wikipedia. Just scroll down the page
and see what happened.
Another part of me, however, stopped me.
Even though it was public info, even though that sort of thing was
on the internet for everyone to see, I wasn’t really part of the
public anymore. I was in a rehab center, a place where people are
trying to get better. Well, except me. I don’t want to get better,
ever. But I can understand that others do, and I know all too well
the desire for privacy.

It wasn’t my place to
read about Daniel’s injury like this. Maybe after he left the
clinic, I would read about it for myself, and see what had happened
to him. But for now, that was his story, and I didn’t want to
intrude on his privacy. I closed the window and thought about him.
Whatever happened, it must have been incredibly difficult for him,
seeing as he ended up addicted to the pills. I felt a pang of pity
in my heart for him, an emotion I had never really felt so strongly
with anyone else in here, even Fiona.