Page 103 of The River Is Waiting

“That’s right. Friday, February the seventh. You know, Ledbetter, I still can’t wrap my head around it. Why would you sabotage yourself when you already had one foot out the door?”

Shame and fury rip through me again. “Because in my head, I already hadbothfeet out the door. My family was waiting for me in the parking lot.Hadbeen waiting for a couple of hours by then. I’d jumped through every hoop, signed everything they told me to, answered all their questions. All that had to happen was for them to open the gate and let me walk out. So when they said theyweren’tletting me out because I had a dirty urine, I thought they were fucking with me and I lost my shit. Because I knew I was clean.”

“Except you weren’t, Corby. Your test results came back from the lab yesterday afternoon and confirmed that you had benzodiazepine in your system.”

I shake my head. “Not possible. I hadn’t taken anything in two weeks. Fourteen days. I kept track.”

“Okay, back up,” she says. “You have a history with benzos. Why were you taking them?”

I can’t tell her the real reason: because of what those two did to me in that storage room. “I’d been feeling anxious, okay? Having trouble sleeping. So I saw Doctor What’s-His-Name and he gave me a prescription for Klonopin.”

“Dr. Blankenship,” she says. “When I spoke with him yesterday, he didn’t seem to know you had a drug problem. Why didn’t you tell him?”

“Because he didn’t ask.” I look away from her disapproval, then look back.

“The circumstances were totally different than before. I was taking them temporarily under regulated conditions. Standing in the med linetwice a day, then once a day, then every other day. Then I stopped taking them. It was all under control.”

“There are other kinds of medications that address those symptoms, Corby. Why didn’t you request something nonaddictive?”

“I don’t know. Klonopin was the first one he suggested so I just went with it. And the way it was going to be dispensed, it’s not like I’d be able to abuse it. There’s plenty of opportunity around here to go that route if you want, which Ididn’t. I just needed to deal with my anxiety and get some sleep.… What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I can’t decide if you’re trying to convince me or yourself.” We stare at each other for the next several seconds, no words between us.

“Okay, moving on,” she says. “Blankenship checked his notes and said you and he had made a plan so that you’d be totally clean prior to your release, and that that was a priority for you. But his notes also said you weren’t scheduled to be discharged until August. Didn’t you get back to him when you found out you were being released six months earlier?”

I explain that I tried to make an appointment with him but got the other shrink instead. “I didn’t want to go over the whole thing with him, too, so I just began tapering off myself. You can ask them over at med line. I had a lot left on that prescription when I stopped taking them.… And okay, full disclosure: when I said I hadn’t taken anything for fourteen days? I took a couple of pills during that time because my symptoms were coming back a little.”

“A couple? How many is that?”

“Three, I think. Maybe four. But not right near the end. And not enough for me to have tested positive.”

When she asks whether Blankenship told me about the “half-life” of drugs in the benzodiazepine family, I shake my head. “I’m guessing that’s why you tested positive. You rolled the dice and the Klonopin was taking its sweet time leaving your system. I think you need to own up to it, Corby. This is on you.”

I turn away from her. “Which makes me a fucking loser, doesn’t it? Foralmost three years I’ve tried so hard in here to get better. Tobebetter. And now, because there might have been a trace of something in my system, I’m staying stuck in here on a technicality and everyone’s going to assume the worst.”

“Well, Corby, the thing is—”

“My wife’s probably saying to herself, ‘Our son’s death wasn’t incentive enough for him to stay clean?’ And now I’m probably going to lose my daughter, too, because I flunked a fucking pee test.”

“It’s not about the pee test,” she says. “That could have been straightened out in a few days. This is about assault and battery. You took a swing at one officer and broke the nose of another.”

“Jesus, her nose got broken?”

“In two places. She needed realignment surgery and will be on medical leave for a couple of weeks.”

“Oh, man. She didn’t deserve that. She’s actually pretty decent.”

“Okay, so it’s a given that they’re revoking those six months they gave you for early release. You have to serve the rest of your sentence. The warden might have taken into account the stressful circumstances that made you lose control. But Custody’s up in arms about Officer Stickley’s injury, so they’re demanding that the department press charges. That will most likely mean you’ll be sentenced to more time in here.”

I’m afraid to ask, but I need to know. “How much more time?”

She shrugs. “Six more months? A year? I don’t really know. If you’re represented by a lawyer, they might negotiate. Reduce a year down to nine months, say. I’ll do what I can, but it’s out of my hands. I’m really sorry, Corby.”

I shrug. “Well, like you said, it’s on me.”

She says she has a few pieces of good news for me. “They were going to move you to D Block, but I checked and your bunk in B hasn’t been reassigned yet, so I made a call and you’ll be going back there. You’ve told me you and your bunkie get along, and I assume some of the others onyour tier will be sympathetic about what happened. At least you won’t have to deal with strangers in a different building.”

“Yeah, good,” I tell her. “Thanks. What’s the other news?”

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