Her (19 page)

Not wanting to hear any more of the torturous menstruation stories about this other Kristen, I looked away from Janine and lay down on my back. Staring up at the ceiling, I tried to divert my thoughts away from the topic by searching for Mr. Sharp in my head.

“Are you going back to sleep?” she asked.

Annoyed, I said, “I don’t know.”

I could not reach him without my butterfly. I began to feel lonely, and the thought of poor Kristen in that bathroom stall would not go away. All I could picture was a little girl’s face looking up from a bathroom stall and crying. I imagined her to look like what I used to look like in the fifth grade. We had the same sad eyes and frown.

“You should know that Saturdays are the best day here. We get to sleep until eight-thirty, and we all get to have breakfast on the unit with everyone. We can watch TV and talk on the phone longer. It’s kind of like a free day. If you get to Level Three, you can leave the unit, do your laundry, and go outside. The only thing that sucks is that we still have group meetings.”

I nodded.  A few minutes of complete silence went by until Janine finally started speaking again. I was just getting comfortable and was trying to fall back to sleep.

“Is your Mom coming to visit today?”

“I don’t know.”

Janine sighed. “My dad is coming. He’s going to bring my little brother.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“Daniel might be going home because he has a family session,” she said. “That is going to suck if he leaves.” Janine rolled over on her side, turning away from me.

I closed my eyes, remembering the way he had looked at her when he wiped the caramel from her chin. Then I pictured Lexus and John. I had to open my eyes quickly to stop myself. When I opened my eyes, Janine turned on her side, faced me, and stared at me strangely.

“Are you okay?”

“I am fine,” I told her.

She frowned and said, “Do you like Daniel?”

I didn’t answer.

“Can you believe he doesn’t have a girlfriend? He used to have a girlfriend, but she like killed herself or something. It was stupid. If I was with Daniel, I wouldn’t feel the need to kill myself.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?” I asked.

She smiled and looked up at the ceiling.

“Sometimes,” she said while still smiling.

Of course, you do, I thought to myself.

“I am really glad we get to sleep late on Saturdays.”

Janine closed her eyes. She turned away from me, and this time she didn’t open her mouth again. Getting that last hour of sleep wasn’t hard for me. I couldn’t stop thinking, but I was able to drift off in my thoughts. It felt good to be clean on the outside, but I still felt sick inside.

CHAPTER 16

Eight-thirty came faster than the minute I had closed my eyes and fallen asleep. It felt like only two minutes had passed since I had closed my eyes when Ms. Mosley came in to wake us up. She gently tugged at my fingers, and I heard her calling my name. I opened my eyes and saw her deep brown eyes looking down at me.

When she saw that I was awake, she smiled and said, “It’s time to get up.”

I lifted myself out of bed. I looked down at my body, remembering earlier this morning when Ms. Mosley had helped me clean up. I saw the black and blue bruises on my arms, and quickly threw a sweater over them. It was a normal habit to cover my bruises and scars since Mr. Sharp had come into my life. I looked over and noticed that Janine was not in the room. She wasn’t in the bathroom either.

“Come on,” Ms. Mosley hurried.

I had gotten the impression from Janine that Saturdays were laid back at Bent Creek. So it confused me when, immediately after breakfast, we had Group Therapy. This Group Therapy meeting was for the whole Adolescent Unit. We weren’t broken into small groups. Instead, Geoffrey set up a bunch of chairs in the main room to make a circle. The room was full of other patients from the Adolescent Unit. Our groups were mixed together for this meeting.

Cadence seemed tired of picking on the new guy named Rocky. She’d moved on to someone else. Rocky was sitting next to the small guy that hated Janine. The small guy was still gaunt-looking. He and Rocky were talking about smoking marijuana and popping all kinds of pills. There was an open seat next to them, but I didn’t feel comfortable enough to sit there. Janine and Tai wanted to sit on the love seat, but Geoffrey made them get up and join the circle.

Janine sat next to Daniel, and Tai sat next to Janine. Feeling left out, I sat next to Geoffrey. Most everyone was sitting in the circle next to their friends and chatting when a large, redheaded man walked into the room and sat down next to Geoffrey. When he sat down and looked up, most everyone quieted down.

“Hello,” said the man. “It’s nice to see you again, Kristen.”

He remembered my name. I couldn’t remember his name. I did remember Geoffrey being in awe of this man.

“You remember Dr. Pelchat, don’t you?” Geoffrey asked me quietly. “He’s the head of Bent Creek, and he’s also a doctor here.”

“I need everyone to please be quiet,” the man demanded. “I’m Dr. Pelchat, for those of you who do not know me. I hope everyone is having a good morning. I know it is Saturday, and most of you want to get on with your day and do your thing, but as you know, we have to get through your group meeting with
me
for today.”

There were random moans and sighs throughout the room.

“Today we are going to discuss drugs and alcohol.”

A kid from Chris’ group hooted and got some of the other kids in the room to cheer with him. “Did you bring enough for everybody, Doc?” asked Chris, who I assumed was Jake at that moment.

Dr. Pelchat waved a hand at him. “All right, sit down. Let’s get down to business.”

The room quieted back down. Dr. Pelchat looked at Geoffrey, and they both laughed.

At least he has a sense of humor, I thought.

“This is Alcohol and Drug Abuse Counseling Group. Here we will talk about good drugs, bad drugs, drugs that you take home, drugs that you sniff, drugs that you eat, and drugs that you drink. It’ll be a real party in here.”

I laughed along with everyone else.

Dr. Pelchat smiled at us. He looked at Rocky and said, “Hey man.”

“Hey,” Rocky said.

“Weren’t you just about to tell me what you took two nights ago?” Dr. Pelchat suddenly asked him.

Rocky looked around, confused. “Uh, no, I wasn’t.”

“Oh, yes, yes, you were. I heard you over there talking, and I heard you say something about what you’d taken the night before you came here, and didn’t you say something about being able to score any kind of drugs for anybody in here?”

Rocky’s face went from pink to pale. He rubbed his palms together roughly and stared down at the floor with his face twisted in anger. He stayed silent and didn’t say a word to Dr. Pelchat.

“I listened to every word you said when I was walking into this room. I heard you talk about how you have pot and acid, and I even think I heard you say something about heroin. Is that right?”

“Come on, man,” Rocky whined.

“No, you listen to me.” Dr. Pelchat stood up and went over to Rocky.

Everyone stared at Dr. Pelchat as he made Rocky look up at him. He was so tall that Rocky had to back his chair up to look at him. Or he could have just done that because he was afraid that Dr. Pelchat was going to hurt him.

“Let’s get something straight. It is okay to talk about drugs here.  In fact, I encourage it. Talk about it with your counselors, talk about it with your doctors.  Hell, go ahead and talk about it with your peers, but
do not talk about dealing drugs in this hospital
. Do you understand?”

“Okay, get out of my face!” Rocky yelled.

Tai covered her mouth and closed her eyes, as if she was afraid for Rocky.

Dr. Pelchat bent down and put his face and his index finger in Rocky’s face.

Dr. Pelchat said, “Now I am in your face! I want you to get it! I want you to know that you can’t do that in here! If you want to brag and impress everyone in here, come up with something better. Okay? Now, listen to me. If I catch you using, dealing, or even offering to get drugs for anybody in here again, I will see to it that you are out of here and sent to jail. You can mess up your own life out there, but you are not going to do it in here to yourself or anybody else. Now, do you understand me?”

Rocky had his face turned with his arms folded across his chest. His eyes were focused away from Dr. Pelchat’s, which were burning holes through him.

“Do you understand?” Dr. Pelchat repeated, this time yelling at the poor kid.

Rocky bravely turned his face slowly to Dr. Pelchat’s and looked him in the eyes. “Yes,” Rocky finally said through clenched teeth.

Dr. Pelchat suddenly smiled. “Good.”

He stood up straight, turned around, and sat back down in his seat next to Geoffrey. Rocky let out a sigh of relief when Dr. Pelchat sat down. We all sighed in relief for Rocky. I even felt afraid for him. Tai’s face was flushed white. She looked like she was the one who had been scolded.

“Did you ever really try any of those drugs?” Dr. Pelchat asked.

Rocky looked up from his sweaty hands. We’d all thought that Dr. Pelchat had gotten off his back.

“Well? Have you?” Dr. Pelchat asked, looking away from Rocky and turning his head to someone else. “Tai?” he called out to her.

Tai took a deep breath and nodded at him. “Uh- yes, just not- I mean, I haven’t tried heroin, but you know. It was some bad stuff. I mean, I don’t really know- it was kind of-”

Dr. Pelchat cut her off. “What did doing those drugs do to you? Why did you feel like you had to do it?”

This question proved easier to answer. When he asked her that question, his tone had softened, and he looked deep into her eyes. She thought for a moment and then responded.

“Well, it took me away. For those moments when I was high, it was, well, it was exhilarating. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t get angry. I couldn’t feel those things that made me human. I didn’t want to be human if I had to feel those things. The people that I did drugs with would just let me be. They wouldn’t bother me or make me talk about anything.”

The thin boy sitting next to Rocky pulled his shirt over his mouth, and I could tell that he was laughing. He was trying to use the top of his shirt to cover it up. Dr. Pelchat and everyone else ignored him.

“When I came down,” Tai continued with deep thought. “When I came down, all those problems that I was trying to smoke away were right there with me, except they felt ten times as worse.” Tears were falling from her eyes. “So I tried to make that feeling stop. I did take that heroin, Dr. Pelchat. They gave it to me, and they left me alone. When I tried to tell them that I needed them to call my dad, they just laughed. I got so scared. I felt my lungs swell up like balloons, and they put all this pressure on my chest. I thought my lungs were going to explode.

“I don’t remember much after I passed out, but the doctor said that my liver had collapsed, and that my right lung had stopped working. I have to get surgery, and I am not sure if I will be able to, since this will be my second time getting a new liver. The first time was when I was a baby. I was born with a bad liver, not because of drugs or anything.  So, I was given another liver to save my life.  The doctor said that I might have a hard time getting another liver because I had already been given one to save my life. It’s like I just didn’t care, and I wanted to mess up or something, but that’s not it. It was because I couldn’t get rid of it, not even by doing more. I just couldn’t make it stop. There seems like there’s just no way to make it stop.  I’m a coward. That is why I did it.”

“Tai,” Dr. Pelchat said. “Honestly, I think that you are the bravest person in this room right now.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You know why,” he told her.

“Tell me why,” she pleaded.

“No, Tai,” he said softly, “Tell us why.”

“Because I lived through it,” she said. “And because I am here.”

Dr. Pelchat said, “You said it.  Not me, not Dr. Bent, not anyone else. You said it, Tai.”

Geoffrey passed Tai a box of tissues. Tai wiped her eyes and smiled at Dr. Pelchat. Janine smiled and gave her a warm hug.

Dr. Pelchat looked over at Rocky and said, “Are you impressed? Does she have a better story?”

Rocky didn’t look at Dr. Pelchat. He kept his eyes down, looking at his hands as he rubbed them together.

Geoffrey cleared his throat and leaned forward. He saw that Rocky was not going to respond, so he said, “Hey Rocky, I know that it seems like we’re busting your chops here. The thing is that we don’t encourage illegal drug use. You can’t come in here and use drugs or offer them to other people. If you are caught doing either of those things, you will be sent to jail. We don’t want that. We want you here so that you can actually get some help.”