Page 72 of Steadfast
I closed my eyes to try to nap a little. Even if I only got fifteen minutes, it would be a blessing.
* * *
As always, my sleep was fitful. The crawling sensation kept returning, which meant I did a certain amount of thrashing around. But I locked my eyelids down tightly and tried to sleep. What I wanted to do was curl up in a ball, but I couldn’t roll onto my right because of my broken arm. And I couldn’t roll left because of my surgical incision.
I was in hell, pure and simple.
When I next opened my eyes, there was someone sitting in my darkened room.Sophie?I lifted my head to try to see.
My visitor cleared his throat, and it was definitely not Sophie. It was, of all people, Denny from the church. Sophie’s coworker.
I flopped my head back again. I’d told Sophie to leave, and I’d meant it. But I was still disappointed. The heart wants what it wants. And mine wanted both Sophie and opiates. An impossible combination.
Denny got up and came to stand beside me. “Hi. I know I’m not the person you were hoping to see.”
“There’s nobody I’m hoping to see,” I said, my mouth dry. I didn’t want him to give Sophie the all clear. Because I was never going to be all clear.
He grabbed the styrofoam cup off the table beside me and angled the straw toward my mouth. I needed water, so I took a sip even though I had no idea why he was here.
“Sophie cares about you,” he said.
“Really?” I rasped. “You’re here to chew me out for refusing to talk to her before?”
He shook his head. “No, although that would be fun.” He set the cup down again. “I’m here because it’s my job.”
“Oh.” Now I felt stupid. He was a social worker in this hospital, and so was Sophie. And now I knew how she’d figured out I was here.
“Yeah. You’re my case.”
“Lucky you.”
He shook his head. “I told Sophie that you’d relapse.”
“I think I just did.”
“No, you didn’t.” His tone was sharp. “I understand why you feel sorry for yourself right now. But I think you’re the toughest person I’ve met. A hopeless case lets the hospital medicate him. Because the doctor ordered it, right?”
“It was a doctor who gave me my first pills. ”
Denny shrugged. “Still. There are more opiates in this building than you can shake a bedpan at. And you turned them down. You’re a B.A.”
“A what?”
“A—” He dropped his voice. “—a badass.”
I snorted, but when I did, it tugged on my surgical wound. And I felt cold all of a sudden. A chill usually preceded a new bout of nausea. I eyed the plastic tub on the table, measuring its distance from me. “I’m glad we had this chat. But what do you want?”
He shifted his weight. “Two things. Sophie has been calling around, trying to figure out your next move.”
I grunted in surprise. I hated the idea of Sophie having to bail me out. And I couldn’t imagine what my “next move” was. Moving made me ache or it made me puke.
“Ruth Shipley wants you to stay at her place when you’re released from here.”
Closing my eyes, I tried to picture it. When I’d landed on their farm last July, I was fresh from a thirty-day inpatient drug treatment program. I was finished detoxing, and I’d buried my cravings under ten or twelve hours of hard physical labor a day.
This time I’d be sweating on a bed in the bunkhouse, trying not to claw through the walls. And the hole in my gut meant I’d be nearly helpless. “I can’t go there,” I said.
“You don’t have a lot of options,” he said quietly. “You don’t carry health insurance, which is illegal by the way.”
