Wavering Convictions

by Erin Dutton

  “Do you have your wallet?”

  She patted her pockets. “No.”

  “Go get it. I’ll find your keys.”

  She ran down the hallway to her bedroom and grabbed her wallet off the nightstand and shoved it into her pocket. Back in the living room, Kathi held out her keys and a light jacket.

  “Call us if you need anything at all.” Kathi squeezed her in a quick embrace, then guided her toward the door.

  * * *

  During the entire drive to the hospital, she tried to imagine what she would encounter when she arrived. Carey had overdosed, the woman had said. Accidental. What did that mean? How did one accidentally overdose? She supposed it meant he hadn’t been trying to kill himself. That was good news. But he had to have been trying to get high, right? The panic in her mother’s voice reverberated in her head, but, she reminded herself, the nurse had said he was stable. Certainly the odds for him taking a bad turn now were slim, weren’t they?

  At the hospital, she followed the signs to the emergency department. She gave Carey’s name at a desk near the waiting room and was directed through a set of double doors to a treatment room. She’d just passed through the doors when she saw Shirley, nearly collapsed against the wall in the hallway. A tall man in a white coat held her arm and bent to speak to her.

  “Ma,” Ally called as she approached.

  Shirley turned and practically sobbed. “Ally, thank God.” She looked at the benevolent man, still hovering beside her. “This is my daughter, Ally.”

  “I’m Dr. Wilson. I’ve been treating your brother.” He offered his hand, and Ally grasped it. His handshake was firm and warm, and his eyes held the perfect amount of sympathy and intelligence. She immediately trusted his medical opinion, then wondered if he’d learned that skill in medical school or came by it naturally.

  “What happened?” Ally directed her question to Dr. Wilson, but Shirley began speaking instead.

  “I thought he was napping. I went to tell him dinner was ready, and he wouldn’t wake up. I called 9-1-1.”

  Ally shoved her reaction to Shirley’s words into a box to examine later. She turned, shielding herself slightly from Shirley, and addressed the doctor. “The nurse on the phone said he was okay.”

  “Okay is a relative term. He ingested opioids that were probably cut with fentanyl. He’s lucky your mother found him when she did, or this could have been much worse. He’s stable. He’s awake and mostly lucid. But this incident should be taken very seriously.”

  “I understand.”

  “An addiction counselor will come by in a little while.”

  “He doesn’t need that,” Shirley said.

  “Ma’am, the counselor can talk to you as well. Families of addicts—”

  “I said, we’re fine. Just get my son well so we can take him home.”

  He was right. About Carey. And about their family. But Ally didn’t give him any indication that she held a different opinion than Shirley. For some reason, she didn’t want this man—this doctor—to think of them as the kind of family for whom overdosing on illicit drugs was commonplace. But they were, now, weren’t they? Carey was an addict, and if the statistics she’d been reading were correct, he was likely to lose the struggle to maintain his sobriety several times during his recovery process. She didn’t know how to handle this realization.

  “Can we see him?”

  He nodded and glanced at his watch. “Certainly. I’ll be back to check on him in a little bit. We’re going to admit him. If we can get him a room upstairs, you’ll be allowed to go up there with him as well.”

  “I don’t think she’s leaving his side.” Ally tilted her head in Shirley’s direction.

  “Let the nurse know if you need a cot for her to sleep on.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  He nodded and gave her a sympathetic smile that seemed genuine—or maybe he’d practiced it with a lot of patients’ families before her. He gestured to the security guard to open the doors leading to the emergency department. “Go through those doors. He’s in the second room on the right.”

  Shirley hurried into Carey’s room, and Ally followed more slowly. He lay on a hospital gurney, a light sheet over his body. Several machines seemed to be standing by in case he took a turn for the worse, but nothing appeared hooked up to him. Maybe they just stocked all the rooms with that equipment. She took inventory of the medical devices for several more seconds to avoid looking at Carey.

  When she finally did, she had trouble meeting his gaze. He looked exhausted. Dark smudges colored the sunken half-moons under his eyes. He’d gained a little weight since she’d seen him last, but his skin was pale. His hair curled at his temples and around his ears like it did when he’d been sweating.

  Shirley grasped his hand and half draped herself over his bed.

  “Hey, Ma.”

  “Okay. Let’s let him breathe.” Ally pushed a chair closer to his bedside. “Sit here with him.” Ally paced to the window and leaned against the sill. Now that the initial shock had faded, and she could see he was awake and presumably all right, her anger at him was building at a furious pace. Her face felt hot, and she was certain that spot on her left cheek that got red when she was mad would be glowing by now.

  “How’re you feeling?” Shirley asked.

  “The doc says I can expect to feel like crap for a couple of days. Some of that’s from the Narcan the paramedics gave me, and some from going through withdrawal again. Though it shouldn’t be as bad as last time.”

  “How long are they keeping you here?”

  “Probably just overnight. But that’s not the worst of it.”

  “What do you mean?” Shirley raised her head.

  “When Ma called 9-1-1 they sent the police, too. One of them was in here with me while you were talking to the doctor.”

  “Makes sense. They probably don’t want you getting violent with the paramedics.” Ally didn’t blame the paramedics. With the rise in opioid abuse, they likely had a protocol that triggered a police response on any drug-related calls.

  “I wasn’t violent.”

  “I mean in general—as a policy. They would send police, too—I get it.”

  He looked like he still wanted to argue about his own personal situation. “Anyway, the cop said once the judge finds out about this, he’ll probably revoke my bond. I’ll have to go back to jail until the trial.”

  Two months. And that’s if the court date stood. Jorge had told her there was always the chance their trial could get bumped from the courtroom for a higher-priority case. If that happened, they would get a new date, but it could be several months more or longer.

  “I told you we should have hired him a better attorney.” Shirley straightened and leveled an accusatory glare at Ally.

  “Me? This is my fault?” She waved her hand at the room around them. Ally whipped her eyes to Carey, but he didn’t look like he was ready to jump in. “I can’t—do this right now.” She made it as far as the door before Carey spoke up.

  “Ma? Can you go find a vending machine and get me a soda?”

  “Just ring the thing and ask the nurse for one.”

  “Please, Ma.”

  Shirley sighed and dug through her purse. “I don’t have any cash.”

  Ally pulled several bills out of her pocket, two ones and a five, and shoved them into Shirley’s hand. She waited until Shirley had gone before turning on Carey. She’d make him regret that he kept her from leaving just now.

  “What the fuck happened?” She strode across the room and grasped the rail at the side of his bed until her knuckles glowed white against the back of her hand.

  He shook his head and looked away.

  “If you wanted to ignore me, you could have let me leave.” She moved to stand in his sight line. “What did you take?”

  “That isn’t your business.”

  “The hell it isn’t. When I get called to the hospital because you’ve overdosed, it becomes my business.”
>
  “I didn’t ask you to come down here.”

  She scoffed. “Yeah, ’cause she wouldn’t have made my life hell if I didn’t come running when she called.”

  “That’s your deal with Ma. Not mine. I got my own shit to deal with.”

  “You can’t separate the two of you. She expects me to take care of you and her both.”

  “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

  She tilted her head and pointedly looked him up and down, lying in his hospital bed. “All evidence to the contrary.”

  “I was doing just fine. Reuben was giving me some work, under the table, until the trial. Them someone narced to his boss. He said he couldn’t have me on a job site for liability reasons.”

  “So that’s it? You lose a job, and that justifies throwing your sobriety away?”

  “You don’t know how hard this is.” He raised his voice to match hers, but his was hoarser.

  “You’ve stolen from your family, lost your job, been arrested for armed robbery, and now you’re in the hospital from an overdose. Do you actually have to die before you’ll wake up?”

  “Allison Marie Becker.” Shirley stood in the doorway, holding a can of soda and looking shocked to find her practically screaming.

  “Ma—”

  “Carey is sick. You shouldn’t be shouting at him.”

  Ally looked from her mother back to Carey. He at least looked embarrassed. “He overdosed on God-knows-what drugs, no doubt laced with something equally dangerous. And you’re not doing him any favors by pretending he has the flu.”

  She strode out of his room, ignoring Shirley when she called her name again. Shirley could find her own ride home. Ally was tired of babysitting the two of them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How come your friend isn’t here to show me how to do the carrots?”

  “She’s very busy. But I’m sure she wishes she was.” Dani smoothed a hand over June’s hair and met Ally’s eyes over the top of June’s head.

  Ally nodded but didn’t say anything. She hadn’t heard from Maggie in a month, and she’d been miserable. At one point, the heartbroken part of her had decided to let the garden boxes go to weeds, as if proving that abandoning Maggie’s project meant she could also let Maggie go. But she didn’t want to tarnish the memory of Maggie’s enthusiasm about the garden and her gratitude for using the space. So she faithfully watered the plants and pulled the weeds, and found she enjoyed watching the tomatoes grow and ripen. And that tiny, petty part enjoyed her tomato-and-mayonnaise sandwiches a little more thinking, Maggie is missing out on this.

  Grayson yanked a carrot free from the ground, flinging soil as he waved it victoriously over his head. “Mommy, I pulled the carrot all by myself.”

  “Let me see it.” June moved quickly to his side. She rubbed her hands together, brushing the dirt off the purple gardening gloves Ally had bought for her. Grayson’s were lime-green. They bent their matching honey-blond heads together and studied the vegetable. “Mama, they do look like the kind we buy in the store. Only dirtier.”

  “Put it in the basket, sweetie.”

  He dropped it alongside the bounty that Kathi, Dani, and Ally had already helped them pick.

  “You guys should take some of this stuff home. I’ll never eat this many cucumbers, and I don’t even like carrots.”

  “I don’t like carrots either,” Grayson said in solidarity.

  “Yes, you do, sweetie.” Kathi touched his shoulder. “And these will be extra tasty because you picked them yourself.” She gave Ally a stern look.

  “You know, you’re right. They probably will taste better than store-bought ones. Maybe I’ll keep some, and you can take the rest.”

  Dani picked another cucumber and added it to the pile. “I’m already looking forward to a fresh cucumber-and-tomato salad.”

  “Salad? Ew.” June wrinkled her nose as she grasped a carrot stalk and tugged.

  “Why do I get the feeling that you and I are going to be eating all these delicious veggies by ourselves?” Kathi asked Dani.

  They finished harvesting, then went inside to divide up their haul. Dani stood at the sink, carefully washing each vegetable. Ally dug a medium-sized bowl out of the cabinet for her share and put the rest in a reusable grocery bag for Kathi and Dani to take home.

  “Can we talk?” Ally asked Dani as she moved next to her and leaned against the counter.

  Dani and Kathi exchanged a look that was so communicative Ally had to turn away. Would she ever share a bond like that with another person?

  “Hey, Grayson, do you still have that dinosaur card game in your backpack?” Kathi asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s go in the living room and play. Junie, do you want to come with us?”

  She nodded and followed them out of the room. Ally was so grateful to have them in her life. She’d never had the urge for kids, but she really did adore those two. And Dani and Kathi were the best friends she’d ever had.

  “Those are some great kids you have there,” she said.

  “We like to think so.” Dani dried her hands on a towel, then set it on the counter and gave Ally her full attention. “What’s going on?”

  Ally didn’t know how to wade into the conversation, so she cannonballed into the middle. “How did you forgive your mom?”

  Dani grimaced. “Partly time. And recognizing that I had to stop trying to make her who I wanted her to be and accept who she was. I didn’t have a mom who baked cookies and went to my school functions. As an adult I was very aware of what I had missed out on. But she got sober. And she was trying to make her life better. And if she and I were going to salvage a healthy relationship, I had to let go of the things I wished I’d had in childhood, because I sure as hell couldn’t change it.”

  “Why did you have to do all the letting go and changing? It was her mess.”

  “She did her share, too. We reached a point where I realized that she was doing her part and I was holding us back. Mom and I had a long talk once about where everything went wrong for her. She had a rough start in life, too—worse than mine. But that’s her story to tell. Nobody taught her how moms are supposed to love their kids. Once I figured out she started drinking because she hated herself, and not because she hated me, it was easier to forgive her. And to realize that I wanted to do better for my own kids, and that wasn’t going to happen if I carried all the dark stuff everywhere I went.”

  “You’re an amazing mother.”

  “Well, I owe that partly to my psychiatrist, but mostly to Kathi. She was the first person in my life to show me selfless love.”

  Ally chuckled. “Yeah. Me, too.”

  “Are you thinking about forgiving Shirley?”

  “It’s not like she’s asking for forgiveness. What do you think you would have done if your mother hadn’t gotten sober?”

  Dani shrugged. “That’s a tough one. Our adult relationships with our parents are tricky. On the one hand, they’re our moms. Aren’t we supposed to love them unconditionally? But when there’s drama and conflict, you might not keep around a friend you had that kind of relationship with. So where do you draw the line?”

  “That’s a good question. I don’t think she sees anything wrong with our relationship, as long as I’m doing things her way. So, it’s on me to change it.” Shirley wasn’t helpless, but the less she did for herself, the less she wanted to do.

  “I don’t think it’s wrong for you to ask for respect for who you are and what you need.”

  “I don’t have any real memories of her with my dad. But with Carey’s—he never hit her, or us. Yet he was a very controlling dude. She didn’t do anything without his say-so. And I’m just realizing that I blamed her for being a doormat. But he had her so convinced that she was nothing without him. When he left her, she was depressed for over a year. She never really recovered. Now she depends on me and Carey for everything—mostly me.”

  “And you’ve resented her for it.” Dani
didn’t ask. Because she didn’t have to.

  “I’ve lived my entire life just trying not to turn into her.” The admission wasn’t as difficult as Ally might have thought. “But right now, I’m struggling more with my relationship with Carey.”

  “And Maggie complicated that.”

  Ally nodded. “Absolutely. But now that’s a non-issue. Either way, I’m not ready to write my brother off forever.”

  “Understandable. But your relationship with him will never be the same. It can’t be if it’s going to work. He’s an addict—for the rest of his life. His first priority now has to be staying sober.”

  “And mine should be to support that attempt, at least where he and I are concerned.”

  Dani’s smile carried a trace of the sadness Ally had been drowning in. “It feels a little like he gets a pass for infinity, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.”

  “It took me a while to figure out it’s just the opposite. You still need to hold him accountable, maybe even more so than ever.” Dani squeezed Ally’s shoulder. “And even if you don’t always see it. Everything he does is more difficult for him now. If he truly wants to stay sober and be healthy, he’s going to work harder than he ever has at anything.”

  “What do you think his chances are of being successful if they send him back to jail until the trial? Not to mention the fact that he’s probably going to do time in prison.”

  “I don’t know, hon. But I do think you need to let both him and your mother be responsible for what their own lives have become. I hate to see you keep sacrificing your own happiness to be the peacemaker for people who don’t appreciate how wonderful you are.”

  They were treading dangerously close to Maggie again, and Ally didn’t think she could go there.

  “All of this letting go and acceptance you’re preaching.” She waved a hand in Dani’s direction. “Do you know how hard that is?”

  Dani nodded solemnly. “I do.”

  “Okay.” Ally shook her hands out, as if she could fling free the heaviness of the conversation. “That’s enough serious talk. Thanks for the therapy.”