Steadfast (True North #2)

by Sarina Bowen

  And I couldn’t.

  So when Sophie burst into my room, I was right in the middle of the worst of it. At least I hoped so. I was lying on my back in a pool of my own sweat, my broken arm throbbing, the wound in my side burning. I was trying to stay quiet, but it wasn’t easy. Sometimes my teeth chattered, and sometimes I could swear there were bugs crawling over my skin.

  “Oh my God,” she whimpered, her slender hand landing on my good elbow.

  Instinctively I turned my head away from her. “Not now,” I said through a clenched jaw.

  “Who did this?” she gasped.

  Me.

  “Please. Tell me what I can do?” She put a hand in my nasty, sweaty hair.

  God. I reached up and pushed it off. “Please go,” I said, my voice like gravel. I knew I was being an asshole. But I did not want her to see me this way. This right here—this was the reason I’d hid my problem in the first place. She was the one person in my life who thought I was somebody worth knowing. I never wanted to show her the truth.

  And now a new wave of nausea threatened me. Bile rose hot and bitter in my throat. I choked it back, and Sophie touched my face. “Jude?”

  My stomach lurched. “GET OUT,” I hollered. Then I used my good hand to push her away from the bed. I grabbed the shallow little plastic tub the nurse had left beside me and I gagged over the edge of it.

  “Oh,” Sophie gasped. “Poor baby.”

  The nurse—Angela was her name—ran into the room, and stepped on the button that elevated my bed a little bit. “Are you choking?” she asked me, and I shook my head. We’d done this a few times already. She turned her head over her shoulder. “Wait in the hallway, sweetie,” she said to Sophie.

  I spit into the little tub. “Don’t let her in here,” I bit out.

  Angela looked me over with worried eyes. Then she offered me my cup of water. “Rinse.” After I spit again, she carried the tub away and washed it. When she came back, she sponged off my face with a cool cloth until I shivered. “This can’t go on,” she whispered. “I’m worried for your stitches.”

  “They’re fine,” I mumbled.

  She moved my sheet down and pushed the fabric of my gown aside to see my bandage dressing. “Okay. How’s your pain?”

  “Who knows?”

  Angela sighed. “I don’t like this. You’re in too much distress.”

  “Not your problem,” I said, flopping my head back on the pillow.

  “Actually, it is. Try to sleep?” she suggested. “Can I pull the blinds?”

  “Why not?” I didn’t know if it mattered. Nothing mattered. I was surly to Angela because I was pissed off at the hospital. Which made no sense.

  But nothing did.

  I closed my eyes to try to nap a little. Even if I only got fifteen minutes, it would be a blessing.

  As always, my sleep was fitful. The crawling sensation kept returning, which meant I did a certain amount of thrashing around. But I locked my eyelids down tightly and tried to sleep. What I wanted to do was curl up in a ball, but I couldn’t roll onto my right because of my broken arm. And I couldn’t roll left because of my surgical incision.

  I was in hell, pure and simple.

  When I next opened my eyes, there was someone sitting in my darkened room. Sophie? I lifted my head to try to see.

  My visitor cleared his throat, and it was definitely not Sophie. It was, of all people, Denny from the church. Sophie’s coworker.

  I flopped my head back again. I’d told Sophie to leave, and I’d meant it. But I was still disappointed. The heart wants what it wants. And mine wanted both Sophie and opiates. An impossible combination.

  Denny got up and came to stand beside me. “Hi. I know I’m not the person you were hoping to see.”

  “There’s nobody I’m hoping to see,” I said, my mouth dry. I didn’t want him to give Sophie the all clear. Because I was never going to be all clear.

  He grabbed the styrofoam cup off the table beside me and angled the straw toward my mouth. I needed water, so I took a sip even though I had no idea why he was here.

  “Sophie cares about you,” he said.

  “Really?” I rasped. “You’re here to chew me out for refusing to talk to her before?”

  He shook his head. “No, although that would be fun.” He set the cup down again. “I’m here because it’s my job.”

  “Oh.” Now I felt stupid. He was a social worker in this hospital, and so was Sophie. And now I knew how she’d figured out I was here.

  “Yeah. You’re my case.”

  “Lucky you.”

  He shook his head. “I told Sophie that you’d relapse.”

  “I think I just did.”

  “No, you didn’t.” His tone was sharp. “I understand why you feel sorry for yourself right now. But I think you’re the toughest person I’ve met. A hopeless case lets the hospital medicate him. Because the doctor ordered it, right?”

  “It was a doctor who gave me my first pills. ”

  Denny shrugged. “Still. There are more opiates in this building than you can shake a bedpan at. And you turned them down. You’re a B.A.”

  “A what?”

  “A—” He dropped his voice. “—a badass.”

  I snorted, but when I did, it tugged on my surgical wound. And I felt cold all of a sudden. A chill usually preceded a new bout of nausea. I eyed the plastic tub on the table, measuring its distance from me. “I’m glad we had this chat. But what do you want?”

  He shifted his weight. “Two things. Sophie has been calling around, trying to figure out your next move.”

  I grunted in surprise. I hated the idea of Sophie having to bail me out. And I couldn’t imagine what my “next move” was. Moving made me ache or it made me puke.

  “Ruth Shipley wants you to stay at her place when you’re released from here.”

  Closing my eyes, I tried to picture it. When I’d landed on their farm last July, I was fresh from a thirty-day inpatient drug treatment program. I was finished detoxing, and I’d buried my cravings under ten or twelve hours of hard physical labor a day.

  This time I’d be sweating on a bed in the bunkhouse, trying not to claw through the walls. And the hole in my gut meant I’d be nearly helpless. “I can’t go there,” I said.

  “You don’t have a lot of options,” he said quietly. “You don’t carry health insurance, which is illegal by the way.”

  “Thanks for the update.”

  “You could go to a nursing home that charges on a sliding scale. But some of them aren’t so nice.”

  “I don’t want to puke on Ruthie Shipley,” I said honestly. And just saying the word made me feel green. My feet were hot and my hands were cold. I was disgusting even to myself. So I’d rather be alone.

  “Well, that’s why I need you to listen to my second idea,” Denny said. “I came up here to suggest that you try some Suboxone,” he said, surprising me. “Sophie said you didn’t love the idea, but she’s been calling around. She found a doctor who will prescribe for you after you leave the hospital. And that doctor will consult for you right now. You could have your first dose today.”

  “Nobody here said anything to me about Suboxone.” And they’d all had their prescription pads handy. I’d assumed that I couldn’t have it because of the surgery, or something.

  Denny shook his head. “The hospitalist is young, and it’s a controversial drug. But Sophie and the doctor she reached think you could really be helped.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Denny blinked at me. “Okay? You mean you’ll try it?”

  “I wanted to do this without another drug. But I can’t take it anymore.” Even now I was fighting off another wave of nausea. I needed to stop puking and start healing.

  “You have done it, fool. This setback is not your fault. Sophie warned me that you were a stubborn a-hole.”

  “I am.”

  “Let the doctor help the stubborn asshole, okay? I’m going to make a call,” Denny said, edgi
ng for the door. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  As if.

  A while later, Teen Doctor and Nurse Angela brought me this strange little strip which I was supposed to dissolve in my mouth. It made my throat feel disgusting, and I nearly yarfed up the medicine.

  Nothing happened. I was still cursing life.

  So after fifteen minutes they gave me another one. “It’s not working,” I mumbled. And didn’t it just figure?

  “Just wait,” Nurse Angela said while I made grumpy faces at her.

  And then, at around the thirty-minute mark, all my symptoms suddenly just…leveled off. It was as if the roar of a jet engine had been powered down, leaving me in a peaceful silence. My stomach still felt empty, but the waves of nausea subsided. My hands weren’t shaking anymore, and the crawling skin was gone.

  I was not high, though. Not at all.

  The Suboxone was some serious juju.

  And it was totally fucking odd to be suddenly transported to a state of sobriety even though I knew all too well the sensation of quickly getting high.

  I took several deep breaths in a row, because breathing had just gotten easier.

  “It’s working, isn’t it?” Angela had snuck up on me. “You look calmer.” She fastened the blood pressure cuff around my arm and shifted the stethoscope to her ears. After a minute of silence, she ripped the velcro off. “That’s impressive.”

  I thought so, too. “You know what’s weird? I’m kind of hungry.”

  She smiled. “They might green-light you for some food. Let me check.”

  It wasn’t mealtime, though. I’d lost all track of the hour, but apparently lunch was over and dinner wasn’t happening soon. But Angela brought me something resembling Gatorade. And when Denny turned up again, he brought me a small bag of pretzels—the kind you could buy out of a vending machine.

  “Thanks,” I said, eyeing them. Not only did I still feel like a heel, I couldn’t open the bag one-handed.

  Denny watched me for a second. Then he picked up the bag and pulled it open, setting it down on the table beside me. “Sophie needs to speak to you.”

  Shit. “I was such a dick to her this morning. Or last night. Whenever that was.”

  Denny perched on the doctor’s stool. “She understands. And she’s not coming up here again until you tell her that it’s okay.”

  It wasn’t okay. I was still a disgusting mess. And I didn’t even know whether this moment of relative comfort would last. For all I knew I’d be sweating and hurling again in a half hour. That was the whole problem with me. It was never over. Sophie needed to understand that. She was a smart girl. She should get the hell away from me.

  I grabbed a pretzel and tossed it in my mouth. When I chewed, it tasted like the best goddamn thing I’d ever eaten. Seriously. Like ambrosia. Could a guy get high on a pretzel? “Thank you for this.”

  “It’s nothing. Is there anything else you need?”

  Unfortunately there was. Now that I was able to think straight, I was going to have to deal with the police. “I need to report my attack to the police.”

  Denny nodded. “All right, that’s something I can help with. Do you want me to call them?”

  “I do,” I said slowly. “If you make that call, they’re more likely to respond.” Sophie’s father would probably throw a parade if someone managed to kill me. It was no surprise that they hadn’t shown up to ask me what happened. And it’s not like I expected them to bring me justice.

  But the drug dealers who’d tried to shake me down might get the crazy notion that Sophie knew something. And I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Okay. I’ll do it before I leave tonight. Do you need a lawyer?”

  “What for?”

  Denny studied me. “I don’t know. If you were mixed up in something…”

  My head gave a throb. I almost opened my mouth and told him that I’d never been mixed up in anything illegal. But the truth was that I used to steal car parts from an old man and sell them on eBay. My righteous anger shriveled pretty fast when I remembered that. “All I’m involved with these days is car repair,” I said instead. “But I do have to tell the police that the assholes who beat me mentioned Sophie’s name.”

  Denny paled right before my eyes. “Really? Why?”

  “To get under my skin,” I said. “They want something from me that I don’t have. They were trying to motivate me, which won’t work. So they mentioned her name. And that’s why her father needs to hear about it, even though he doesn’t care if I hang.”

  “Jesus. You’re going to get Sophie in trouble,” he said.

  “Not if I’m careful. Nobody has to know that we…” I sighed.

  Denny looked miserable. “Will you please call her? Once I tell her the Suboxone helped you, she’ll be waiting to hear from you.”

  That was probably true. But I’d just proven myself to be not worth the wait. “I’ll call her eventually,” I said. I’d done her wrong again—and not just by yelling at her to get out of my hospital room. My real crime had been carrying on with her these past few weeks. It’s just sex, she’d said. But that wasn’t true. If I kept her in my life, she wouldn’t go off and find someone better. Someone who wasn’t one bad day away from repeating detox.

  Denny stood quietly, appraising me. “She has some things to tell you.”

  “But I thought you were my social worker?” And now I was being a dick again.

  Denny rolled his eyes at me. “I am. But what Sophie wants to tell you is personal.”

  Great. “In a couple of days, then.”

  He gave me an unhappy look. “Just do it.” He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. “That’s our office number. Call her. Or call her cell. She said you’d know the number.” He tossed the card onto the table and walked out.

  After he was gone I finished the pretzels. But I did not call Sophie. She’d be better off if I never ever called her.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sophie

  Internal DJ: A manic version of Jingle Bells

  Denny came back down to our office at about six o’clock, where I was still at my desk pretending to work. On Christmas Eve. I’m sure I was very convincing.

  He stood in front of my desk, his arms crossed, a thoughtful look on his face.

  And I sat there holding my breath, hoping he’d tell me Jude was okay. I’d been a wreck all day. First thing in the morning I’d come into work as a favor for our boss, who was traveling. The whole point of showing up today was just to check the roster of new admissions, to make sure there weren’t any new patients who needed help from the social work department.

  When I’d seen Jude’s name on the list, I’d stopped breathing.

  Denny was here today because I’d called him in. A social worker can’t take a case if the patient has a personal connection to her. After I found Jude and realized that he’d been given narcotics against his will, I’d called Denny in a panic.

  “Suboxone works,” Denny said now. “It’s pretty cool, actually.”

  “Yeah?” I felt my shoulders begin to unclench. “He looks better?”

  He nodded, his face grave. “He looks like himself again.”

  “That’s amazing.” I felt the sudden urge to cry. When I saw what the hospital had done to him—giving him the very substance he’d spent six months avoiding—I’d just wanted to break something.

  “He knows all the things you’re doing for him.” Denny frowned, chewing his lip. He seemed to be biting back some sort of criticism. Quelle surprise. There was no planet on which Denny and Jude would understand each other.

  “…but he was an asshole to you?” I guessed. “You can tell me. I won’t even be surprised.”

  Denny shook his head. “He was polite to me.”

  “Then why do you look like you just ate a vomit-flavored jellybean?”

  A disgusted grimace crossed his face. “Is that a thing?”

  “It’s a thing. Now what are you trying not to say?”


  He shrugged. “I asked him to call you and he said he would ‘eventually.’”

  Well, ouch. “Jude is probably in a lot of pain,” I said to cover my reaction.

  “I’m sure he is,” Denny quickly agreed.

  “He doesn’t want me to see him that way.”

  His face softened. “Truthfully, if I spent the day puking, I wouldn’t really want you to witness it, either.”

  Aw. I was just going to put my disappointment out of my mind for one more night. So I changed the subject. “Did he tell you who beat him up?”

  Denny flinched. “Let’s go get some dinner somewhere and we’ll talk about it. It’s late and I’m starved.”

  It was Christmas Eve. No doubt my parents were at home wondering when I would turn up to make dinner. To keep the charade alive for one more day. But tonight I just didn’t have it in me. “Sure,” I agreed. “Let’s do it.

  We drove back to Colebury for dinner, parking our separate cars on the street by the church, then convening on the cold sidewalk to decide where to eat.

  Neither Denny nor I was willing to suggest Pete’s Tavern, because that was where we’d been headed on the night of our disaster date. So we ended up at our town’s burrito joint. Nobody called it a Mexican restaurant, because everyone knows you can’t get real Mexican food in Vermont. Case in point: Denny ordered the Thai wrap.

  When we were finished, Denny tried to pay but I’d already handed my credit card to the waitress.

  “How did you do that?” he asked. “She hadn’t even brought the check.”

  I wiggled my fingers in the air. “Fast hands. Now tell me already—who beat up Jude?”

  Denny wiped his mouth carefully and sighed. “It’s not clear. But the men were looking for some kind of drug stash that’s been missing for three years. Jude doesn’t have a clue who they are, but he told them once already that he didn’t know a thing about it.”

  “And they beat him up anyway?”

  “I guess they thought he was lying.” He cleared his throat. “Jude is going to report his assault to the police. Whoever put him in the hospital is looking for something that he doesn’t have. But here’s the thing—he thinks they know who you are, too.”