Dear Friend, I’ve come to visit once again. I love to see you suffer mentally, physically, spiritually, and socially. I want to have you restless so you can never relax. I want you jumpy and nervous and anxious. I want to make you agitated and irritable so everything and everybody makes you uncomfortable. I want you to be depressed and confused so that you can’t think clearly or positively. I want to make you hate everything and everybody—especially yourself. I want you to feel guilty and remorseful for the things you have done in the past that you’ll never be able to let go. I want to make you angry and hateful toward the world for the way it is and the way you are. I want you to feel sorry for yourself and blame everything but your addiction for the way things are. I want you to be deceitful and untrustworthy, and to manipulate and con as many people as possible. I want to make you fearful and paranoid for no reason at all and I want you to wake up during all hours of the night screaming for me. You know you can’t sleep without me; I’m even in your dreams.

“Excuse me,” I said, aiming a smile at Margo. “I’m hoping I can speak to someone about leaving.”

She looked up at me. “Where’s your tag?”

“Tag?”

“Tag,” she repeated, pointing to my chest in a way I might have found a little forward if I hadn’t been such a wreck. “When you’re admitted, they give you a nametag with your welcome binder and your schedule. You need to wear it at all times.”

“Right. But I’m not staying. I’m not supposed to—”

She lifted her hand. “Honey, I can’t even talk to you till you’ve got your tag on. Check your room.”

“Fine.” I went back to my room as more women drifted out into the hallway. Most of them appeared to be Aubrey’s age, but I saw a few thirty- and fortysomethings, and some who were even older. The young girls wore tight jeans, high heels, faces full of makeup. The women my age wore looser pants, less paint, and, inevitably, Dansko clogs. The official shoe of playgrounds, operating rooms, restaurant kitchens, and rehab. “Excuse me,” said a sad, frail, hunched-over woman who looked even older than Mary, as she used a walker to make her way toward the desk. I shuddered, thinking that if I were an eighty-year-old addict, I would hope my friends and my children would leave me alone to drink and drug in peace.

Sure enough, back in my cell of a room, on top of the desk, I found a beige plastic nametag clipped to a black lanyard with my name—ALLISON W.—typed on the front. Beside it was a binder and schedule. I spared my single bed a longing glance, wishing I could just go back to sleep, then looped the tag over my neck and proceeded back down the hall.

SEVENTEEN

The scent of mass-produced food was seeping from behind the cafeteria’s double doors. Even if I hadn’t been so nauseous, I couldn’t imagine eating anything. I felt like Persephone in the underworld—one bite, one sip, a single pomegranate seed, and I’d be stuck here forever.

I walked back to the desk and flapped my nametag at Margo, the desk drone. “I’d like to call home.”

“Morning meds,” she said, without looking up.

I went to the nurse’s counter, stood in line for twenty minutes, swallowed what was in the little white paper cup she gave me, and then returned.

“I took my medicine,” I said, showing Margo the empty cup, feeling grateful she hadn’t asked to see my empty mouth, the way the nurse had. “May I please use the phone?”

“You’re on a seven-day blackout,” she recited without looking past my chin. “No visits, no phone calls.”

“Excuse me? I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

Margo heaved a mighty sigh. “If you’re here, then you signed a contract agreeing to follow our rules.”

“May I see that contract, please?” I remembered signing my name to all kinds of things—releases for my doctor to share my medical history, releases for Meadowcrest to talk to my insurance company—but it seemed unlikely that I’d sign something promising I wouldn’t call home for a week. Nor did it seem reasonable that they’d expect parents with young children to go that long between calls. Besides, could a contract be legally binding if the person who signed it was fresh out of the ER and still going through withdrawal?

Margo yawned without bothering to cover her mouth. “You can ask your counselor.”

“Who is my counselor?”

“You’ll be assigned one after orientation.”

“When’s that?”

“After breakfast.”

“I’m not planning on staying for breakfast.” I made myself smile and lowered my voice. “This isn’t the right place for me. I just want to go home.”

“You need to discuss that with your—”

Before she could say “counselor,” I pointed toward the front of the building—the nice desk, the clean waiting room with its wide-screen TV and baskets of snacks, the door—and said, “What happens if I just walk out of here right now?”

That got her attention. She sat up straighter and looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “If you choose to sign yourself out AMA, you can leave after twenty-four hours,” she recited. “We can’t let you go right now. You still have detox drugs in your system. It would be a liability.”

“Even if I have someone pick me up? And I go right to a hospital or something?” A hospital sounded good. I’d get a private room, and I’d bring my own bedding, of course. I pictured an IV in my arm, delivering whatever drugs would make this process more bearable. Then maybe I’d take myself to a spa for a few days. Fresh air, long hikes, nothing stronger than aspirin and iced tea. That was the ticket.

“Twenty-four hours. That’s the rule.”

“Okay.” I could endure anything for twenty-four hours. I’d been in labor that long, having Eloise. I went back down the hall and found Mary and Aubrey waiting in line.

“Where’d you cop?” I heard a statuesque brunette, who could have been a model except for her acne-ravaged complexion, ask a petite blonde girl in a see-through top. I didn’t hear the girl’s answer, but the brunette gave a squeal. “Ohmygod, no way! Who was your dealer?”

The petite girl gave a shrug. “He just said to call him Money.” She must have noticed me staring, because she turned toward me, eyes narrowed. “You work here?”

“Me? No, . . .” Now there were a few young girls staring at me.

“Booze?” asked the tall brunette.

“Pills,” I said, deciding to keep it short and sweet.

“Yeah,” the brunette said wistfully. “That’s how I started.” I was beginning to get the impression that pills were how everyone started, and that when you couldn’t afford or find the pills anymore, you moved on to heroin.

“Come on,” said Aubrey, as the herd of girls and women began moving down the hall. “Breakfast.”

I bypassed the limp slices of French toast and greasy discs of sausage in stainless steel pans on steam tables, with jugs of flavored corn syrup masquerading as maple, and made a mug of tea. The room was chilly and cavernous, a high-school cafeteria from hell with unflattering lights, worn linoleum, and aged inspirational posters, including the inevitable kitten-on-a-branch “Hang In There!” thumbtacked to walls painted a washed-out yellow. Six long plastic-topped tables with bolted-on benches took up most of the room’s space. Each one was adorned with a tiny ceramic vase of plastic flowers—someone’s sad attempt at making the place look pretty. The air smelled like the ghosts of a thousand departed high-school cafeteria lunches—steamed burgers and stale French fries, cut-up iceberg lettuce birthed from a bag and served with preservative-laden croutons hard enough to crack a tooth. I sat at the end of a table, numb and aching for my pills, listening as the conversation between the tall, dark-haired girl and the petite blonde continued.

“. . . parents found my works underneath my mattress and, like, hired an interventionist . . .”

“You had an intervention? That is so cool! Shit, my mom said she was taking me to the movies, and then she dropped me off here . . .”

I sipped my tea and watched the clock. I would say as little as possible for as long as I could. I’d sit through their orientation and endure the mandatory twenty-four hours. Then I’d find a supervisor, explain the situation, and get Dave or Janet or someone to come pick me up.

I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t like these women. I didn’t have any DUIs that needed to be expunged, a judge hadn’t ordered me to stay, and I hadn’t flunked a drug test at work. Nobody named D-Block had ever stuck a needle in my arm, and I wasn’t sure I could find Kensington even with my GPS. Heroin, I thought, and shuddered. These girls had done IV drugs, and probably worse things to get the drugs. All I’d done was swallow a few too many pills, all of which (except the ones I’d ordered online) had been legitimately prescribed. I didn’t belong here, and all I needed to do was figure out how quickly I could leave. My daughter needed me. So did my readers. How on earth had I let Dave convince me, even for a minute, that I could just check out of all of my responsibilities to come to a place like this?

“What’s your damage?” asked the girl next to me. She was in her twenties, broad-shouldered and solid, with no makeup on her pale skin and long brown hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She wore gray sweatpants and an Eagles jersey and a nametag that read LENA.

“Excuse me?”

“Your stuff. Your drug of choice,” she explained in a flat, nasal voice, as Mary sat down across from me.

“Pills. But I don’t really . . . I mean, I don’t think that I’m . . .” I shut my mouth and tried again. “I’m not actually planning on staying. I don’t think this is the right place for me.”