He parked the car, took my duffel bag out of the backseat, and walked me inside, where a woman behind a receptionist’s desk led us to the comfortable, well-appointed waiting room, with leather couches and baskets of hundred-calorie snack packs and a wide-screen TV.
They’d been showing Jeopardy! The categories were World History, English Literature, Ends in “Y,” Famous Faces, and—ha—Potent Potables. Curled on the couch in my Jasmine blanket, I answered every question right. “Do I really need to be here?” I’d asked Dave.
“Yes, Allie,” said Dave, sounding distant and tired. “You do.” I could see wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a few grayish patches in the beard that had grown in since that morning, and the cuff of one pant leg was tucked into his sock. How must these last few days have been for him? I wondered, before deciding it was better not to think about it.
I’d tried to tell him that I felt much better, that, clearly, I’d had some kind of bad reaction to Suboxone, but now I was fine and, as Jeopardy! indicated, clearheaded, that it would be all right for him to take me home, and I remembered him not-too-gently removing (prying might have been a better word) my fingers from his forearms and delivering me into the care of a short, bald male nurse who’d hummed Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory” while he’d taken my blood and medical history, before handing me a plastic pee cup and directing me to the bathroom. “Gotta pat you down,” he’d said when I came out, handing me a robe and telling me to take everything off. “And we’re gonna do the old squat-and-cough.” I stared at him until I realized he was serious. Then, shaking my head in disbelief, I squatted. And coughed.
Once my exam was done, I’d joined Dave in a cubicle, where a young woman with doughy features and too much blue eyeliner sat behind a computer and asked me embarrassing questions. When I didn’t answer, or couldn’t, Dave stepped in. “I think she’s been abusing painkillers for about a year,” he’d said, and, “Yes, she has prescriptions, but she’s also been buying things online,” and, finally, most terrifyingly, “Yes, I’ll pay out of pocket for what insurance doesn’t cover.” I’d grabbed his sleeve again and leaned close, whispering, “Dave . . .”
He’d pulled his arm away and given me a look that could only be called cold. “You need to get yourself together,” he’d said. “If not for your own sake, then for Ellie’s.”
So here I was. I looked around, running my hands down my body. My jeans felt greasy; the waistband had slipped down my hips, the way it did when I’d worn them for too long without a wash. My clogs, resting by the side of the bed, were stained with something I didn’t want to examine too closely. My T-shirt smelled bad, and there was a smear of the same offensive something on its sleeve. I had clean clothes in the duffel Dave had packed, but I’d last seen it on the other side of the receptionist’s desk. “We’ll just hang on to it up here until one of the staffers has time to search it, ’kay?” she’d said.
“Good morning, Meadowcrest!” a voice blared from the ceiling. I bolted upright with my heart thudding in my chest. I still felt weak, and sick, and I ached all over. I wasn’t sure whether that was related to precipitated withdrawal, or how much was the result of the phenobarbital they were giving me to get me through the worst of the lingering withdrawal symptoms.
“It is now seven a.m.,” said the ceiling. “Ladies, please head down to get your morning meds. Breakfast will begin at seven-thirty. Gentlemen, you’ll eat at eight o’clock. Room inspections will commence at nine. Riiiiiise and shiiiine!”
I collapsed on my back. My head hit the pillow with a crackling sound. Investigation revealed that both the pillow and the mattress were thin, sad-looking affairs encased in crinkly, stained plastic. Lovely.
Swinging my feet onto the floor, I took my first good look at my room: a narrow, cell-like space with a bed, a desk, a scarred wooden wardrobe, and a tattered poster reading ONE DAY AT A TIME stuck to the wall with a scrap of Scotch tape. My duffel bag, which now had a construction-paper label bearing the words ALLISON W. and SEARCHED attached to one strap with a garbage bag twist-tie, sat on the floor beside me.
I took one shuffling step, then two, then crossed the room to the door, where a man in a khaki uniform was pushing a mop. “Excuse me,” I said.
He looked at me blankly.
“Is there someone here I can talk to?”
The blank look continued.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I said, enunciating each word clearly. “I need to talk to someone so I can go home.”