His eyes well up and he looks away.
“I’m not leaving you, Pax,” I tell him over my shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He doesn’t answer. When I look over my shoulder, as the door closes, he is still, his lashes on his cheek, and Zuzu’s picture clutched to his chest.
31
Chapter Thirty
Pax
Watching Mila walk away is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
Pushing the button for the nurse was hard.
But shaking her off my arm, and sending her out… that was excruciating. The rejection on her face…
It’s for the best, I tell myself. It’s for the best.
I live in a place now that is unsuitable for them. I live in the dark, in the oblivion, and I’ll never be safe from it. I’ll never be able to say that I’m impermeable to slipping.
I never thought I would. But I did.
I’ll never make that arrogant mistake again.
I’ll never think I’m stronger than I am. I’ll never doubt my ability to fall. I’ve fallen hard. And I’m not sure if I’m getting back up. I don’t deserve it.
The paper in my hand is fragile, and it’s priceless. I gaze at it, and I feel the tears start to swell. Me, Mila and Zuzu stare back from the page in crayon form. Zu had made Mila’s belly round, to show the baby that will be growing there, and I can’t swallow. I can barely breathe.
I prop it up on the stand next to the table, and I fall asleep again, because sleep is medicine.
It heals my broken body, and when I sleep, the pain of sending Mila away is dulled. It’s always there, buried in my heart, but when I’m not conscious, it’s not as sharp. It’s not as real.
I’m resentful when I wake to find my father standing above me.
He’s troubled, concerned, and he’s holding my hand. He hasn’t done that since I was a child.
“I was afraid,” he says simply.
I nod. “I was too.”
“You’re ok.” He says it as a statement. I shrug. I don’t know about that.
“You’re ok,” he says again, more firmly this time. As if saying so will make it true.
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I’m an addict. Remember telling me that years ago? I denied it then. I said I was just a user. But I’m not. I’m an addict. I lied to myself then, and I lied to you. I buried it instead of dealing with it, and now here we are.”
“This isn’t your fault,” he says and his voice is soft. I pull my hand away.
“On the surface, no. It isn’t. But deep down, it is. If I had dealt with my shit years ago, I mean, truly dealt with it, I wouldn’t be here now. I wouldn’t be hooked to a methadone drip. I wouldn’t have just crushed my wife. But I didn’t. And so here I am, and I did.”
My father’s face is pained, and he tries to reason with me, but he loves me. He’s trying to shield me.
“I need you to take care of Alexander Holdings,” I tell him. “Can you do that? Can you work with Peter and figure something out? I’m obviously not in the right frame of mind for it right now.”
“Of course,” he says quickly. “That’s not a problem. I’m more worried about you than the business…”
“Don’t be,” I tell him abruptly. “I’m going to handle it.”
“You and Mila have both been through so much,” he finally answers. “Mila has too. She thought they had killed you. She’s hurting too, son.”
God, that hurts. It stabs me deep in the heart and the knife twists round and round.
“It’s better that I hurt her this one last time than to keep hurting her forever,” I manage to say.
“You’re wrong,” he says.
“You don’t get it,” I tell him sharply. “If I’d admitted to myself years ago that I was an addict, I could’ve learned to deal with it. With the issues that made me use. Instead, I just stopped using, and I pretended that it wasn’t an issue. It was. And it is. And here I am.”
“Pax. You stopped using. That was what you were supposed to do,” my father says. “You did the right thing. Sometimes, people have latent issues that rear their heads later. You didn’t know. You had no way of knowing that you had other things to deal with. But what… what exactly do you feel you didn’t deal with?”
I can’t answer.
I can’t tell him that after all of those hours of therapy, I still feel at fault for my mother’s death. That I can’t understand the fact that I was a kid and I was just trying to protect my mother. My head knows it, but my heart… my heart isn’t listening. And my heart is what drives the addiction.
So I don’t answer him. I close my eyes instead.
After a long time, my father’s voice is quiet.
“There are a lot of people who love you, son. All of us stand behind you. You’re not alone.”
He leaves. I hear the door close, and I open my eyes.
I am alone.
I’m in a hospital room alone, and I chose this.
It’s a hell of my own making.
* * *
I spend a week in the hospital recuperating. They do the surgery on my knee, and I’m up and doing PT the very next day. I refuse any kind of pain medication, and the pain is excruciating.
I push through it.
It reminds me that I’m alive. It’s punishing. I deserve it.
After I’m released, I go straight to a rehab facility. My father arranged it, and Roger drives me.
“Thank you for saving my wife,” I tell him, because this is the first time I’ve seen him since everything happened. “We owe our lives to you. It’s a debt that I can never repay.”
Roger dismisses it. “Anyone would’ve done the same,” he tells me. “You’re a good man, sir. Just like your grandfather. It’s my honor to help.”
“Please drive my wife wherever she needs to go, ok?” I ask him as he pulls up to the facility. “Look out for her. Will you do that?”
“Of course, sir. Again, it’s my honor. I’ll watch out for her like you would yourself… right up until you come home.”
I don’t tell him that I’m not coming home.
“Thank you,” I say quietly instead. “You’re a good man.”
I limp into rehab, leaning on a cane.
I breathe in the pain, and breathe out the anger. I am a dragon, and my air is fire.
They show me to my room, and it’s nicer than I had wanted, a corner room with a view of gardens. I hadn’t wanted anything fancy. I wanted a cot and a toilet. Leave it my father to ensure my comfort.
I toss my bag into the closet and I flop onto the bed, face-down into the pillows.
I stay this way for a long time. I don’t even know how long.
“Are you ok?”
There is a muffled voice, and I wave my hand for them to go away. They don’t.
“Are you ok?” They are more insistent now.
I sit up.
It’s a woman.
“I thought this was a men’s only facility,” I tell her, rubbing my face. She’s middle-aged, soft-spoken. She’s dressed well, classy. Hounds-tooth slacks and a cream-colored turtleneck. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail at the nape of her neck.
“It is,” she answered. “So don’t tell on me.”
She comes in, and pours a glass of water from a pitcher, then hands it to me. “You need to drink this. It flushes out toxins.”
I snort. “It’s going to take more than that,” I say, but I take the glass and gulp the liquid down. I set the glass down, and then it occurs to me. “You’re my therapist?” I guess.
She sits in the chair next to the bed.
“What if I am? Will you talk to me?”
“Not today,” I answer. “I’m very tired.”
“You’ve been through a lot,” she agrees. “Why don’t you rest tonight, get something to eat, and I’ll be back in the morning.”
It’s a firm suggestion, said gently.
“Ok. We’ll see how I feel in the morning.”
&
nbsp; She nods and slips out the door.
I pull Zuzu’s drawing out of my bag, and prop it on my nightstand.
Then I fall back asleep.
32
Chapter Thirty-One
My therapist is back in the morning, this time with two cups of coffee. She hands me one.
I sip at it, and I rub my face. She hadn’t even given me time to wake-up.
“This is an early session,” I point out. She smiles.
“I work best in the morning.”
“I don’t,” I reply honestly. She smiles.
“Tell me about you,” she suggests.
I pause. I don’t want to. But I know that until I get this over-with, it’s going to be like this every day.
“Where do you want me to start?”
“The beginning is always good.”
So that’s where I begin.
I tell her about everything. From my mother’s murder, to my childhood with my father, to my relationship with Mila, to my marriage, and through my captivity.
“That leaves us with today,” she points out. We’ve been talking for two hours already.
“Yeah.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because I don’t know what else to do. I have this… monster inside of me. And it will rear its head from now until eternity if I don’t figure something out.”
“If we can figure it out, will you go back to Mila?” she asks gently.
I stare straight ahead. “I’ll never risk her safety again.”
“You know, Pax. Bad things happen in the world. They aren’t all tied to you. Meaning… you don’t cause them. You don’t control them. You understand that, don’t you?”
“You’re kidding, right? The bad things that have happened to us have been directly tied to me, and decisions that I have made.”
“That’s how life is, though,” she says. Her voice is gentle and soothing, and I wonder how much training that entailed… to master just the right tone. “Sometimes, things happen that are out of our control. We must deal with those things, but we shouldn’t push our loved ones away.”
“You don’t understand,” I tell her.
“So help me,” she counters.
“Later. I can’t right now. I’ve had enough today.”
She stands up.
“You have a group therapy meeting in thirty minutes.”
I nod, and she’s gone. She takes the empty coffee cups with her, and leaves me with troubled thoughts.
I miss my wife.
I miss my daughter.
I miss my life.
I sigh, and lay my head down on the pillow.
I don’t mean to fall asleep, but I do, because my body is ragged and exhausted and needs to heal. While I sleep, I dream.
I dream of my wife. My dreams are rich and colorful and filled with her.
When I wake, I feel emptier than I ever have before.
* * *
Group therapy feels pretty useless today, because I don’t feel like I belong.
I sit back and observe, and listen to the other addicts share their issues, their triggers. None of it seems to apply to me. For years, I didn’t have the urge to use.
Talking about it though, with them, it makes me ache for the sting of the needle. It’s ironic. The very thing that is supposed to heal me, is making me want the poison all the more.
When it’s my turn, they wait for me to speak. I look around the circle, and they’re all waiting, and I have nothing to say.
“I’m Pax, and I’m an addict,” I say slowly. “I was held against my will, and forced to take drugs. The guy who arranged the whole thing wanted to take everything important in my life. My sobriety was just one of those things.”
I can tell that some don’t believe me. I get it. A lot of addicts make excuses and even make up stories to excuse their drug use. They don’t want to admit that they themselves are at fault, because then they themselves will have to fix it.
I understand.
That used to be me.
“Why do you want to get clean?” someone asks, and I know it’s an important question. You have to have a reason, in order to do it. That’s true of every goal in life. I shake my head.
“I’m tired of being chased by demons. I’m tired of being a danger to everyone around me. I’m a ticking time bomb.”
They accept that, and move on to the next person. I sit like a piece of wood for the rest of the meeting. I feel out of place here, and I don’t know why. I guess it’s because I don’t want to identify as an addict.
But it’s what I am.
* * *
“That’s normal,” my therapist tells me the next morning. “Your addiction is a part of you that you don’t completely understand. Let’s work through it together, shall we?”
I nod, and she continues.
“Your childhood. You’ve told me that you felt like your father didn’t like you.”
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