Great, I thought. An angry thumb, a drunk granny, and a thief. What was wrong with this picture? The fact that I was in it.

“Excuse me,” I said politely, and walked to the door.

Darnton glared at me. “Orientation’s until ten-fifteen. Then you have Equine.”

“Equine? Yeah, no,” I said. “I need to speak to someone now.” I exited the room. Margo, the woman from the breakfast hour, had been replaced by another young woman in the same outfit. This one had a mustache, faint but discernible. The Big Book was open on her computer keyboard. Underneath it, I could see People magazine—“The Bachelor’s Women Tell All!”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m going to miss the Fantasy Suites.”

The woman flashed a quick smile. She wore a pin, instead of a nametag on a lanyard around her neck, which read WANDA. “Yeah, sorry. No TV for you guys, just recovery-related movies.”

“How will I live,” I wondered, “if I don’t know whether he picks Kelly S. or Kelly D.?” As I spoke, I remembered all the episodes I’d watched with Ellie snuggled on the bed beside me, a bowl of popcorn between us, her head on my shoulder as she slipped into sleep. Normal. (Sort of.) Happy. God, what had happened to take me away from that and bring me here?

The woman lowered her voice. “Can you actually tell them apart?”

“One’s a hairdresser, and the other one’s a former NBA dancer,” I said.

“Okay, but they look exactly the same.”

“All the women on that show look exactly the same.” I could talk about this forever and had, in fact, written several well-received blog posts on the homogeneity of The Bachelor’s ladies.

“Tell you what,” said the woman. “I can’t sneak in a DVD. But I’ll tell you who got roses.”

“Deal,” I said, feeling incrementally relieved that not everyone in this place was a monster. Just then, a new Meadowcrest employee cruised into view. Wanda shoved her People magazine out of sight, as the new woman—middle-aged, blonde hair in a bob, tired blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses—looked me over.

“Hi there,” I said, sounding professional and polite. “Can you help me find my counselor?”

“Who is it?”

“Well, I’m hoping you can help me with that. I actually don’t have a name yet. I just finished orientation.” As far as I was concerned, that was true.

“Normally, you aren’t assigned a counselor until your third or fourth day.”

“Can I use the phone?”

“If you just came, you’re on your seven-day blackout. You need to get permission to use the phone from your counselor.”

“But you just told me I don’t have a counselor.” This conversation was beginning to feel like a tired Abbott and Costello routine.

“Then,” said the woman, her voice smug, “you’ll just have to be patient, won’t you?”

“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “This is a mistake. I don’t need to be in rehab. I’m not a drug addict. I was taking painkillers that were prescribed to me by a doctor. Now I’m fine, and I want to go home.”

“You can sign yourself out AMA—that’s ‘against medical advice’—but your counselor needs to sign your paperwork.”

“But I don’t have a counselor!”

She stared at me for a minute. I stared right back, my feet planted firmly.

“Hold on,” she finally grumbled. Bending over the telephone, she muttered something I couldn’t catch. A minute later, a very large woman with lank brown hair, pale skin, and pale, bulging eyes came waddling around the corner. Her khaki pants swished with each step; her lanyard flapped and flopped against the lolloping rolls of her flesh.

“Allison? I’m Michelle. I understand that there’s a problem?” Her voice was high and singsongy. She sounded a lot like Miss Katie, who taught kindergarten at Stonefield.

I followed her into a closet-sized office dominated by a desk. A fan clipped to the doorframe pushed the air around, along with the smell of microwaved pizza. The Twelve Steps hung on the wall. Michelle settled herself into her chair, which squeaked in protest. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

I explained it all: the heroin addicts at breakfast, the condescending little man at orientation, how I understood that I was having problems managing my medication—“but not, you know, rehab-level problems.”

Michelle turned to her computer, tapped briefly on the keyboard, and then turned to stare at me with her bulgy eyes. “You were taking six hundred milligrams of OxyContin a day?”

I shrugged, trying not to squirm. “Only on really bad days. Normally it wasn’t that many,” I lied.

She picked up a cheap plastic pen and tapped it against her desk. “My guess, Allison, is that the pills were a way for you to self-medicate. To remove yourself from painful situations without actually going anywhere.”

It sounded reasonable, but I wouldn’t let myself nod or give any other indication that she might be right.

“So I think . . .” She raised a hand, as if I’d tried to interrupt her. “No, just hear me out. I think that you really do need to be here.”

“Maybe I do need help,” I said. “But I don’t think this is the place for me. No offense, but I think I’m here because my husband thought I’d change my mind before he got me in the car. I bet he found this place in five minutes on the Internet. I didn’t leave him time for lots of research. And I think there are probably places that might be a better fit. Where the”—I searched for an institutional-sounding word—“population might be more like me.”

An alarmed expression flitted across Michelle’s face. It was quickly replaced by the tranquil look she’d been wearing since our conversation began. “Why do you feel that way?”

“Well, for starters, I’m old enough to be most of the other girls’ mother.”

“That’s not true,” she said. “There are quite a few women your age or older.”

“I’ll give you ‘a few,’ but not ‘quite a few,’ ” I said. “Unless you’re hiding them somewhere. Besides, these girls were doing street drugs.”

“And you weren’t?”

I shook my head. “No. I had prescriptions.” Except for the ones I ordered online, but never mind that.

“Do you think that makes you different from the rest of the ladies here?”

I hesitated, sensing a trap. “Yes,” I finally said. “I do think I’m different.”

“Do you think you’re better?” I didn’t answer. “I think,” said Michelle, “that what I’m hearing is your disease talking. You know, addiction is the only disease that tells you that you don’t have a disease.”

“I’m not sure I actually believe that addiction is a disease,” said, but Michelle was on a roll.

“Your disease is telling you that you don’t belong here. Your disease is saying that you didn’t even have a problem, or that if you did, it wasn’t that bad. Your disease is saying, ‘I can handle this. I’ll do it on my own. I can cut back. I don’t need the Twelve Steps, and I definitely don’t need rehab.’ ” I was quiet. This, of course, was exactly what I’d been thinking.

“But your best thinking is what got you here. Think about that for a minute.” This, of course, was exactly what Darnton had told me. Another trite slogan, one they probably recited to every patient who was giving them trouble.

“I’d like to speak to my husband and my mom. I need to know how my daughter is doing.”

“Your counselor can help you to arrange that.”

“But I don’t have a counselor!” I closed my mouth. I was shouting again. “Look, you don’t understand,” I said, and knotted my fingers together so my hands would stop shaking. “I didn’t have time to make any arrangements for my daughter or my mom. My father just moved into an assisted-living facility, and my mom moved in with us.”

“Well, then,” said Michelle, with a simper, “it sounds like your husband will have plenty of help at home.”

Under other circumstances, I would have laughed. “If my mother was a normal person, that would be true,” I told her. “But my mother’s basically another child. She doesn’t drive, and even if she did, she doesn’t know Ellie’s schedule, and Ellie won’t be her priority. She’ll be worried about my dad.” I was getting overwhelmed just thinking about the mess I’d left behind, the assignments I hadn’t completed, the comments I hadn’t approved, the dentist’s appointment I hadn’t made for Ellie, the checkup that I’d postponed for myself, the visit from the roofers that I’d never gotten around to scheduling. “I can’t stay here,” I told Michelle. “It’s impossible. There are too many things I need to take care of.”

She nodded. “So many of us women feel like we’re the ones holding up the world. Like it’s all going to fall down without us.”

“I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my case, that’s actually true,” I offered. Michelle appeared not to hear.

“Acceptance is hard,” she said.

I frowned. “Acceptance of what?”

“Why don’t you tell me, Allison? What are you having a hard time accepting?”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “For starters, that you won’t let me talk to my daughter and explain why I’m not home. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable request. Please,” I said. Maybe it was withdrawal, the exhaustion of what my body had been through over the past few days, but I was too tired and too sad to keep arguing. “I just want to talk to someone at my home.”

Michelle swiped her mouse back and forth, peered at her computer screen, and then spent a minute typing. “The head of our counseling department has an opening at noon. His name is Nicholas.”

“Thank you. I appreciate your help.” There. I could be reasonable, I could be polite . . . and I was feeling encouraged.