Scorched

“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked.

Folding my arms across my chest, I shrugged a shoulder. “Okay. I guess.”

“Okay? Today is your first day in treatment. You’re going to be here for at least thirty days,” he said, shooting me a look of disbelief. “And you’re okay?”

I shuddered. Well, when he put it that way… “I’m a little freaked.”

“That’s completely understandable. You probably feel like your life is out of control. You’re where you never thought you’d be.” He stopped in front of a dark-colored door while I wondered if he was able to read my mind. “Most, if not all, feel that way at first. Come on in.”

Dave led me into a small office with shelves overflowing with books. As I sat in a chair, I looked over the titles. None of them appeared to be medical tomes. I squinted. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be…a slew of romance novels. What the…?

“You’ve noticed my books.” He dropped into the chair behind the desk and shrugged unapologetically. “I love me a happily-ever-after.”

Okay.

“You’re welcome to borrow as many as you like,” he offered.

With no television or internet, I would so be taking him up on that offer with a startling quickness.

“Alright, I’m going to give you a little background on who I am and what we do here.” Leaning forward, he picked up a baseball. “I’m a clinical psychologist who specializes in addiction counseling and treatment. Sounds spiffy, huh? Now, The Brook treats a whole wide variety of things. After all, variety is the spice of life, or so they say.” He tossed the ball up and caught it.

Okay. This guy was kind of weird. Cute. But weird.

“We have people who are addicted to drugs and alcohol. We also have people here due to eating disorders and some who have depression. We’ve even had some who have extreme phobias and some quite random addictions. But what does this all mean to you?”

He tossed the ball again, catching it. “Some just do drugs. Some people just drink. We treat the addiction in those cases. But in others, we treat the disorder driving those addictions. If we don’t, then all we are doing is treating the symptoms, but never the cause.” Catching the ball once more, he put it aside and then tapped a slip of paper on his desk. “Now, based on your answers to our generic-as-hell questio

My fingers were digging into the skin of my arms. “Yes.”

“Are you lying, Andrea?”

I blinked. “No.”

“But you drove drunk. Most people who drink occasionally do not drink and drive.”

“I…I drink—”

“Don’t answer that question yet,” he cut in, and I frowned. “Answer this. Was that the first time you drove while under the influence or have you done it before, but were not that drunk?”

I shook my head a little. “I’ve never driven…” Pausing, I wetted my lips as my gaze shifted to the window behind him. “I might have done it before, after one or two beers, but I normally wait at least an hour or so.”

“Normally? What made you not wait this time?”

My muscles were tensing up as my face heated. “There was this guy there, at the bar, who I didn’t recognize at first, but he knew me. We must’ve hooked up, and I wanted to get out of there.”

“Did you do that all the time, hooking up while drinking?” he asked.

I shrugged again as my face continued to burn.

“Andrea, I need your answers. Your real answers. Or this is an absolute waste of time.” His stare met mine. “I need you to be honest. Sometimes painfully and embarrassingly honest. It’s the only way I’m going to help you. In a way, I’m going to break you, because that’s the only way I can really help you.”

Wow. This sounded like fun.

“Do you want to change?” he asked.

I suddenly thought back to those moments before I left the bar, when I realized that the change I needed wasn’t something external but all inside me. I’d recognized that before I’d gotten in the car.

Lifting my gaze, it was hard to hold his. “Yes. I want to change.”

Dave smiled.

I didn’t feel like smiling. “I’ve hooked up with guys when I’ve been drunk. There are times that I…” My face was seriously on fire. “That I don’t remember the details. I don’t even know what I’ve done or didn’t do.” Once I started speaking, the words kept pouring out. “I don’t even know if I wanted to be with them or if I thought it was expected. Or because I’d been drinking. I’ve done it a lot.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s been two or two thousand, Andrea.” He spread his arms wide. “There’s no judgment here.”

“That’s…”

He waited. “What?”

It was hard to get the words out. “No judging? That’s a… unique concept.”

“Get used to it,” he replied, flashing a quick grin. “Is that the only time you’ve had sexual relations?”

Goodness, this conversation got awkward quick. Totally no breaking me in, but I wanted…I wanted to change more than I cared about being embarrassed.

“No. Not every time,” I whispered, staring at the front of his desk. There was a Baltimore Orioles sticker plastered across the center. “There was this one guy. He didn’t like that I drank like…like I did, and I think…he really liked me.”

Over the next couple of weeks, Dave became a magician when it came to getting me to put a voice to all my thoughts and fears and the random crap that sort of just came out of my mouth. There was a lot of talking and a lot of listening.

Sometimes we walked. Sometimes we talked in his office. Other times he made me talk in the art studio while I sat in front of a blank canvas. I had no idea what in the hell that was supposed to symbolize, but Dave…yeah, he was weird in a really effective way.

I didn’t have withdrawal symptoms from alcohol, something that didn’t seem to surprise Dave or the staff, but I did have a problem. I was a binge drinker, possibly one of the most dangerous forms of alcohol abuse. Where some…some alcoholics drank every day, a little here and a little more there, I drank until I was so drunk I couldn’t say my name. I drank to the point that the alcohol in my blood could kill me. I drank until I was unable to think, every single time. I didn’t have whatever people had in their heads that made them stop.

I couldn’t.

That wasn’t the only diagnosis. There were a couple more. An understanding that came two days after I’d told Dave how I had a habit of rearranging my furniture and painting the walls during those quiet moments. Of course, it wasn’t the only thing that led to the diagnosis. Years worth of stuff had led to it.

Depression and Anxiety.

The…the diagnosis didn’t surprise me either, not if I were being truthful. Maybe part of me had always known. Interesting enough, it would be a while before the role that alcohol played in my…my illness was known.

There was also an emphasis on physical activity. Besides the fact I was a little weak and a lot sore from surgery, there was a stress on staying healthy. I was lucky, though. I didn’t need physical therapy.

After the third week, I was allowed visitors twice a week for an hour each time. My parents came the first time, along with my brother, and that was hard. Syd came the second time, and that had been even harder.

Syd had told me that Ta

Ta

The room wasn’t bad. It had a couch and two chairs, a table in the corner, and it was painted a pretty robin-egg blue, but I figured the room was monitored. Made sense. No one who worked here wanted people passing drugs or something to the patients.