“Who is it?”
“Well, I’m hoping you can help me with that. I actually don’t have a name yet. I just finished orientation.” As far as I was concerned, that was true.
“Normally, you aren’t assigned a counselor until your third or fourth day.”
“Can I use the phone?”
“If you just came, you’re on your seven-day blackout. You need to get permission to use the phone from your counselor.”
“But you just told me I don’t have a counselor.” This conversation was beginning to feel like a tired Abbott and Costello routine.
“Then,” said the woman, her voice smug, “you’ll just have to be patient, won’t you?”
“I don’t think you understand,” I said. “This is a mistake. I don’t need to be in rehab. I’m not a drug addict. I was taking painkillers that were prescribed to me by a doctor. Now I’m fine, and I want to go home.”
“You can sign yourself out AMA—that’s ‘against medical advice’—but your counselor needs to sign your paperwork.”
“But I don’t have a counselor!”
She stared at me for a minute. I stared right back, my feet planted firmly.
“Hold on,” she finally grumbled. Bending over the telephone, she muttered something I couldn’t catch. A minute later, a very large woman with lank brown hair, pale skin, and pale, bulging eyes came waddling around the corner. Her khaki pants swished with each step; her lanyard flapped and flopped against the lolloping rolls of her flesh.
“Allison? I’m Michelle. I understand that there’s a problem?” Her voice was high and singsongy. She sounded a lot like Miss Katie, who taught kindergarten at Stonefield.
I followed her into a closet-sized office dominated by a desk. A fan clipped to the doorframe pushed the air around, along with the smell of microwaved pizza. The Twelve Steps hung on the wall. Michelle settled herself into her chair, which squeaked in protest. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
I explained it all: the heroin addicts at breakfast, the condescending little man at orientation, how I understood that I was having problems managing my medication—“but not, you know, rehab-level problems.”
Michelle turned to her computer, tapped briefly on the keyboard, and then turned to stare at me with her bulgy eyes. “You were taking six hundred milligrams of OxyContin a day?”
I shrugged, trying not to squirm. “Only on really bad days. Normally it wasn’t that many,” I lied.
She picked up a cheap plastic pen and tapped it against her desk. “My guess, Allison, is that the pills were a way for you to self-medicate. To remove yourself from painful situations without actually going anywhere.”
It sounded reasonable, but I wouldn’t let myself nod or give any other indication that she might be right.
“So I think . . .” She raised a hand, as if I’d tried to interrupt her. “No, just hear me out. I think that you really do need to be here.”
“Maybe I do need help,” I said. “But I don’t think this is the place for me. No offense, but I think I’m here because my husband thought I’d change my mind before he got me in the car. I bet he found this place in five minutes on the Internet. I didn’t leave him time for lots of research. And I think there are probably places that might be a better fit. Where the”—I searched for an institutional-sounding word—“population might be more like me.”
An alarmed expression flitted across Michelle’s face. It was quickly replaced by the tranquil look she’d been wearing since our conversation began. “Why do you feel that way?”
“Well, for starters, I’m old enough to be most of the other girls’ mother.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “There are quite a few women your age or older.”
“I’ll give you ‘a few,’ but not ‘quite a few,’ ” I said. “Unless you’re hiding them somewhere. Besides, these girls were doing street drugs.”
“And you weren’t?”
I shook my head. “No. I had prescriptions.” Except for the ones I ordered online, but never mind that.
“Do you think that makes you different from the rest of the ladies here?”
I hesitated, sensing a trap. “Yes,” I finally said. “I do think I’m different.”
“Do you think you’re better?” I didn’t answer. “I think,” said Michelle, “that what I’m hearing is your disease talking. You know, addiction is the only disease that tells you that you don’t have a disease.”