Steadfast (True North #2)

by Sarina Bowen

  Cravings Meter: 1 for drugs. 9 for Sophie

  I stayed at the Shipleys’ only a few more days. A doctor gave me permission to start using my arm and a more versatile cast, so I asked Griff to drop me off at home again.

  “You sure, man? You can stay longer. You’re not in the way.”

  That was bullshit, of course. “It will be good to get back in the garage,” I told him. And that was almost true. As usual, I needed to keep my hands busy. But this time I needed the busy work to prevent me from thinking about Sophie.

  Just getting through the day was a lot of effort. With a bum arm and a sore body, it took me four times as long to do things like eat breakfast or take a shower. I did some hours in the garage, basically keeping the lights on so that people would still come to us with their problem dents and their dings.

  Strangely enough my father rose to the occasion. His MO had always been to put in the bare minimum of effort. But with my right arm in a cast, the bare minimum was a little more work than it used to be. I don’t know what Father Peters said to him, but every time I knocked on the door for help with a job, he’d turn the TV off and come outside to hold a rod or the lug wrench when I couldn’t manage it myself.

  “I got an offer,” he said one day into the silence between us.

  “On what?”

  “The property. Guy wants to pay me six hundred grand for the house and the garage together.”

  “Shit.” I fumbled the wrench I was holding and it fell to the concrete floor with a clatter. “That’s a lot of money. Who wants to pay that?”

  “Fella who owns the doggy daycare in Montpelier. He wants to expand. Apparently people pay a lot for that shit.”

  I laughed, because it was either that or cry. If he sold the garage, I’d have literally no place to go.

  “I won’t say yes until you have a plan for yourself.”

  That startled me into locking eyes with my father for the first time all day. We generally avoided eye contact whenever possible. “It’s your property,” I said. “You can do what you want with it.”

  He looked away, uncomfortable. “You keep the place afloat lately, though.”

  True enough. “Would it be, uh, good for you to be retired?” Six hundred g’s would buy a lot of hooch. He might just go on a big bender until it killed him.

  “I’ll have to think about that,” he said quietly. “Seems like I need someplace to go every morning. Maybe I’ll get a part-time job somewhere just to get me out of the house.”

  That sounded like a hell of a plan. I’d get one myself if I thought anyone would have me.

  The phone rang then, and I crossed the garage to answer it, because answering phones was a good job for the one-armed repairman. “Nickel Auto Body,” I said into the receiver.

  Now the place would never be Nickel and Son.

  The rest of the week went slowly. It was January and bitter cold. My drafty bedroom over the garage never got warmer than sixty-five degrees, and the garage was even chillier.

  To keep myself busy, I sorted through our entire collection of exterior paints, throwing away the ones that were too old to use, and labeling the ones that were still good. A month ago I’d assumed the cleaning jobs I did would contribute to the future marketability of the place. Now nothing mattered, and it was depressing as hell.

  Every minute I didn’t worry about my future I spent worrying about Sophie. I wondered where she was and what she was doing.

  On Wednesday, I went to the NA meeting in the church. The others fussed over my arm and asked me where I’d been. I spared them the tricky details and told them I’d gotten jumped. They made sympathetic noises when I told them all about the unwitting fix they gave me at the hospital and how awful the withdrawal had been.

  “And I had seven months clean,” I grumbled.

  “You still fucking do,” the Harley dude argued. “It doesn’t count unless you did it to yourself.”

  “On the bright side,” I added, “I’m on Suboxone, and that shit works.”

  Some of them had taken it before so I got some tips. “And when they start to wean you off it, ask us for help,” Harley dude insisted.

  “Will do,” I said. And I meant it, too. I felt shored up by this group of people, even if I wished I’d lived my whole life without knowing what meetings were like. I both loved and hated meetings, which is funny because I both loved and hated heroin, too. But one of those things wouldn’t leave me homeless and toothless within a decade. So I guess meetings were it for me.

  When the meeting ended, though, I snuck out of the church and went home alone. Instant buzz kill. I ate some take-out food and listened to the radio just to hear other voices.

  And I tried like hell not to wonder what they were serving at the Community Dinner and whether they needed any help. Now that I’d finally done the wise thing and distanced myself from Sophie, I knew I couldn’t go there anymore.

  Having somewhere to go on Wednesday nights had been good while it lasted.

  The next day, May drove all the way to Colebury to pick me up for Thursday Dinner. I didn’t want her to go to the trouble, but if I skipped it they’d worry. I brought a big, beautiful cheesecake and did my best to look cheerful and healthy. I let little Maeve Abraham draw on my cast with her crayons.

  Friday afternoon I had a doctor’s appointment a few miles from home. So I got into the Avenger for the first time in weeks and drove it very carefully to the medical center. Shifting gears with my broken arm was a little clunky, but I got better at it by the time I reached the parking lot.

  This clinic was new to me. It was a drug treatment center where they’d prescribe my Suboxone on an ongoing basis. Every two weeks I’d have to submit to a urine test and show up for a counseling session, or they wouldn’t give me the next installment of my prescription.

  I was happy to pee into a cup if it meant that I could keep feeling mostly normal.

  The low-slung building was nothing special. It didn’t scream BEWARE OF JUNKIES.

  The receptionist handed me a clipboard and directed me toward an empty plastic chair. There were six or eight people in the waiting room. Except for one woman who held a sleeping baby, all the patients were men, most younger than thirty.

  People think they know what an addict looks like—they think he’s shaking in a gutter somewhere and missing all his teeth. It’s possible to end up that way. But the addicts I’ve met look like the guys in this waiting room—ordinary. You can’t tell from their T-shirt choices or their shoes that they have a problem. (Maybe the per-capita tattoo and piercing ratio is a little higher than the general population, because addicts aren’t afraid to do shit to their bodies. But that’s just a theory I have.)

  You can’t detect anyone’s addiction by looking at the outside. The guy sitting next to me might have done crank or ket or vikes, but it didn’t show on his face. Maybe if I got up close and looked into each pair of eyes I’d recognize something familiar. A flicker of shame. The shadow of mistrust. The memory of a loss or a heartbreak that was numbed with chemicals instead of human interaction.

  I took the pen and began filling out my details. Name. Address. Depressingly, the form actually had to ask, “Do you have a permanent address?”

  Why yes I do, but maybe not for long.

  What followed was an ordinary medical history, including a laundry list of conditions I might have. The only boxes I checked were for drug addiction and family history of alcoholism.

  “Nickel?”

  Looking up, I found a square-jawed woman with a blue buzz cut scanning the room. When I stood, she beckoned to me. I followed her down a long hallway and into a small room with a table and two chairs.

  “Good morning,” she said. “I’m your counselor, Delilah. Can we just get one thing out of the way—can I see some ID?”

  “Sure.” I pulled out my wallet. They’d need to know for sure who they were handing drugs to.

  She squinted at my driver’s license, writing the number down on a for
m. “Thank you, Jude. Have a seat.”

  When she sat down, she explained that Denny had filled her in on my unwitting return to opiates at the hospital. “And I understand that you were prescribed Suboxone, too. Had you ever taken it before?”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you on any other medication at all?”

  “I’m taking Advil while my arm heals, but only when it starts to throb.”

  “All right.” Her brow furrowed. “Please be very accurate when you answer this question, because your health depends on it. Before the hospital gave you opiates during surgery, when was the last time that you used any narcotic?”

  “Um…” I paused to get the math just right. “I went to detox when I was released from prison and that was seven months ago.”

  Her eyes widened slightly. “And…” She cleared her throat. “What substances did you use after your stay in detox?”

  “Nothing. Well, caffeine and sugar. I have a Pepsi problem.”

  She drummed her fingernails on the clipboard, and I noticed that they were navy blue. “But you still had cravings?”

  “Every day. The Suboxone I started taking on Christmas Eve really nipped that in the bud, though.”

  “Okay. And before Suboxone, what did you do about those cravings?” She squinted at me.

  Was this a trick question? “I didn’t know there was anything to do about them. That’s why I’m here.” Actually, I was no longer sure why I was here.

  “You’re an interesting patient,” she said. “At the initial consultation when I ask how long ago people have used, I usually hear seven hours, not seven months.”

  “Well, it wasn’t a walk in the park.” Am I taking home a trophy or something? This whole experience was giving me the itch, to be honest. I wanted out from under her stare.

  “Very impressive, sir. Now let’s go over some details about the drug regimen, because I don’t want to assume that the hospital gave you all the right information.”

  She explained the bi-weekly drug tests and the dosing. “After a couple of months we’ll begin to taper your dose down so that someday you won’t need it anymore. In the meantime, it’s a pretty special drug. It dampens cravings in the majority of people who take it. And those who fall off the wagon and try to use often find that they can no longer get high.”

  I’d heard all this before, but I nodded politely.

  “Did you eat breakfast and lunch today?”

  “Sure.”

  She grinned at me from across the table. “Can you be more specific?”

  “Oh, uh, I had bread and jam for breakfast.” Ruthie Shipley had sent me home from dinner last night with what she called “leftovers” but that looked suspiciously like a big shopping bag full of food. Her homemade bread was divine. “And egg salad for lunch.” I’d put her plastic containers out on my top step to keep them cool. Luckily, no raccoons had found my Shipley stash.

  “Good. If you eat regularly—and don’t skip meals—it’s easier for the Suboxone to work properly. So keep it up. There are a lot of people passing through this office who will tell you that the drug is the only thing that helped them pull their lives back together.”

  “That’s cool,” I said. But no drug in the world could undo all the shitty things I’d done. “It’s made my cravings all but disappear. I can only feel them now when I’m stressed out.”

  “Tell me about that. What’s stressing you out these past couple of weeks?”

  “Well, everything. My broken arm means I can’t do my job. My father might sell our shop. And…” How truthful did I want to be? “I broke up with my girlfriend.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said quickly.

  “It’s for the best.”

  She seemed to consider that idea. “Well, when you’re trying to stay clean, it’s important to keep away from the toxic relationships in your life. Does your girlfriend use drugs?”

  I laughed out loud. “God, no.”

  “Oh,” she said softly. “Then does she blame you for using? Guilt isn’t helpful, either, if you’re trying to forgive yourself and move on.”

  “Uh, no.” Sophie was perfect. It was me who was the problem. “We’re just not very compatible.”

  Delilah studied me again, her smile calm. “Breakups are always hard. But they’re especially rough on someone who’s trying to get a handle on his addiction. Do you feel sad?”

  “Of course,” I admitted.

  “Depressed?”

  “I don’t know. It hasn’t been anything I can’t handle, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  She pushed a business card toward me on the desk. “Here’s our main number, and also our emergency line. If you think you might do something you’d regret, I’d like you to call us first. Can you do that?”

  “Sure,” I said slowly. But as I pulled the card across the wooden tabletop, something important occurred to me.

  I’d removed myself from Sophie’s life because I was convinced that I was always one bad day away from falling off the wagon. That I couldn’t be trusted. This week had sucked, and I missed her like crazy, but I hadn’t been truly tempted to use. Not even once.

  And that’s the thing—losing Sophie was pretty much the worst thing that could happen to me. Yet I wasn’t cruising the streets of Colebury for a hit right now. I was handling my bitterness the same way other people did. By being a grumpy asshole, basically.

  “Be kind to yourself, okay?” my counselor said. “Get some exercise and do something that makes you feel good, as long as it doesn’t involve chemicals.”

  “Okay,” I agreed.

  “I mean, for heartbreak, binge-watching Netflix is a good place to start.”

  I didn’t have Netflix or any way to watch it. But I wasn’t looking for pity, so I kept that to myself.

  After Delilah asked me a few more questions and made sure I knew about every NA meeting in a twenty-mile radius, it was time to pee in a cup.

  She led me to the sample room. There was no sink, and the toilet water was dyed blue, just in case someone was tempted to dilute his sample. I did my thing and turned in the evidence. It’s weird to hand a cup of your warm pee to a woman. What’s one more slightly humiliating moment in the life of an addict?

  Afterward Delilah dispensed two weeks’ worth of Suboxone strips with a smile. “You’re doing great, Jude. Keep up the good work.”

  “Thanks.” God, it was embarrassing how much I enjoyed hearing that praise. “See you next time,” I said.

  When I left the clinic it was after five PM. I drove slowly through Montpelier just to amuse myself, and the movie theater came into view. The marquee promised a showing of the latest Marvel superhero movie.

  I found myself pulling the Avenger into a parking spot and checking my wallet. Seventeen bucks, plus a credit card.

  Be kind to yourself, the counselor had said.

  Tonight that meant a mindless action movie and a bucket of popcorn. Sophie should be here next to you, my asshole brain suggested as I settled into my seat in the theater. Even if it was true, I needed this. Sophie might not be happy with me right now, but I needed to know if I could trust myself without her.

  Tonight, at least, the answer was yes.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Sophie

  Internal DJ soundtrack: “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, the Jeff Buckley version

  The first week of January crawled by while I looked for Jude in the grocery store and in line at Crumbs. I watched for him at the gas station and at the bank ATM.

  It had been two consecutive Wednesdays now that Jude didn’t come to work at the church dinner. Father Peters assured me that Jude was still going to his NA meeting, though. “He’ll be okay, Sophie. Give him some space.”

  The one place I found him was the only one I wouldn’t have expected: my email inbox. Jude wasn’t an emailer. But one cloudy January afternoon I found a PayPal notification. “Jude Nickel has sent you $2147.” There was one line of text to explain. He’d written,
“From Porsche parts sold. For your music school fund.”

  That was it.

  I wanted to tip my head back and scream at the heavens, and maybe I would have, except I was at work and still hoping against all logic to get a full-time job at the hospital.

  And yet Jude wanted to ship me off to New York. That asshole!

  For a few minutes I sat at my desk thinking up angry replies, telling Jude exactly what he could do with his money.

  “Sophie?”

  I lifted my head quickly to see Denny watching me. “Yes?”

  “Your eleven o’clock appointment is here.”

  I jumped up from behind my desk, finally noticing that my client Mary and her daughter Samantha were standing behind Denny. “Hi!” I said quickly to the mom, adding a wave at her toddler. “Thank you for coming in today.”

  “Anytime,” the young mother said, putting a hand on her daughter’s silken head. “She’s all healed up from the procedure. It took her only a day to feel better, I swear.”

  “Children are amazing,” I agreed. “Shall we step into the conference room and talk?”

  “Sure.”

  I led the way, feeling gloomy because I’d failed this family. I’d found them some funding for the follow-up care for Samantha’s cochlear implant, but not enough. We were still a few thousand dollars short. The only news I had to share with Mary today was yet another entry on another foundation’s waiting list. Until something came through, the young mother would face mounting interest payments on her credit cards.

  That’s when a wonderful idea occurred to me.

  I whirled around. “Good news! I’ve found a private donor to help cover your out-of-pocket costs.” From across the room I saw Denny’s head pop up in curiosity. But I just ushered Mary and Samantha past him, closing the conference room door. “Let’s schedule Samantha’s activation date!”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Denny asked the next evening as he put on his overcoat at the end of the day.

  “About what?” I asked, looking up from my computer screen.