Some Are Sicker Than Others

by Andrew Seaward

  He didn’t waste any time and dove right into the sausage, cramming it into his mouth almost as fast as he could swallow. When he was finished with the sausage, he went for the bacon, then the eggs, and then the pancakes, which he smothered with hot butter and drenched in maple syrup. It was all so good. Every single bite was delicious. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate a breakfast like this. It was probably back when he was still running races.

  Once he finished with his plate, he went back up and grabbed another, but this time instead of eggs and pancakes, he got twice the serving of bacon and sausage. It looked like a whole dead pig was on his plate, all cut up and processed, the steam from the grease rising up like the pig’s deceased spirit. As he sat back down, he bent over the plate and took a deep breath inward, letting the hot grease fill up his lungs and nostrils. Then, he arranged his can of orange juice directly in front of him, grabbed his plastic fork and knife and went to work again savoring every single morsel.

  Once he was finished, he took his plate, cup, and napkins and threw them all in the trash. Then he got a fresh cup of coffee and took it with him outside to the back porch patio. There was a small group of patients out there huddled together. They were under the red glow of two umbrella-shaped space heaters playing a game of Monopoly that was set up on one of the green picnic tables.

  Dave tried not to look at them as he grabbed a metal folding chair and propped it open beside the payphones. Unfortunately, one of the patients got up, walked over, and asked if he wanted to play Monopoly. He told them no, because he didn’t really like board games. Of course, what he really meant was that he didn’t like any of them. He still couldn’t understand why these people would elect to be here and why they seemed so damn happy about it. His roommate even said this was a vacation for him. A vacation? Really? Was he serious? This place was a shit hole. If he wasn’t court ordered, he’d be fucking out of here.

  After two cigarettes and two cups of coffee, Dave decided to go for a walk around the backyard’s perimeter. He took his cigarettes and lighter and stuffed them into his jacket pockets and was about to get up when Dexter, the black counselor from yesterday, poked his head through the sliding glass doors and said, “Come on peeps. It’s time for morning group. Let’s get this thing started.”

  The patients all groaned as they began packing up the Monopoly pieces then stuffed the game board into the box and shuffled by Dave back into the cafeteria. Oh great, Dave thought, guess he had to go in there with them. Another group? Christ—how many more of these things did he have to go through?

  After tossing his two coffee Styrofoam cups into the trash can, Dave followed the procession of patients back inside the cafeteria. But the cafeteria tables were gone—stacked up by the windows—and all the chairs had been put away except for a dozen or so sitting in a circle in the middle of the meeting room.

  Before he sat down, Dave grabbed two more cups of coffee and loaded them each up with two packets of Sweet’n Low and two miniature cartons of half and half Mini Moo’s. He picked a spot on the outer edge of the circle and grabbed a chair for himself and one for his bad leg. After setting his cups on the carpet, he positioned the extra chair directly in front of him then propped his bad leg up on the seat and folded his hands behind his head. There. Now, he was set. Now, he was ready. He was ready for whatever bullshit group therapy he had to listen to today.

  A couple minutes later, Dexter appeared at the top of the kitchen staircase with a pen in his mouth and clipboard tucked under his armpit. “Good morning everybody,” he said, as he trotted down the staircase, clapping his hands together like a seal at Sea World.

  “Good morning Dexter,” the group chimed like a cult following, entranced by their leader’s demonic swagger.

  Dexter smiled and grabbed a chair from the stack against the back windows and plopped it open right in the center of the circle. “How’s everybody doing today?”

  “Good.”

  “Looks like we got some fresh faces today. That’s great.” He started pumping his fist and chanting like a frat guy at a toga party. “Fresh fish! Fresh fish! Fresh fish!” He was all teeth and bright, white eyeballs, his head black and glossy like a freshly waxed bowling ball. “Alright peeps,” he said, then dropped his clipboard and slid it with his heel underneath his chair. “It’s nearly nine o’clock, so let’s go ahead and get started. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Dexter and I am a grateful, recovering heroin addict.”

  “Hi Dexter.”

  “Hi everybody. This is my group. The nine o’clock group therapy group, for lack of a better name.”

  Dexter smiled and nodded in Dave’s direction. What the hell was he smiling at? What was he, gay or something?

  “Since we have some new faces with us today, I want to go over the ground rules real quick.”

  Grumbles rippled from around the circle. Dexter frowned and leaned forward, pointy elbows on top of pointy kneecaps. “Alright, pipe down. If you already know the rules then you don’t gotta listen. This is for the new folks, alright?”

  The grumbles turned to nods then to sounds of approval. Dexter waited for the room to settle then cleared his throat. “Alright, rule number one: No Cross Talk. What does that mean? That means if someone else in the circle is speaking, you shouldn’t be. Everyone in this room will have a chance to share, and when it’s your turn to do so, I do not want you to direct it towards anyone else in the group but yourself. You are here to work on your own recovery and not somebody else’s, okay?”

  Yeah right, recovery? What a bunch of horseshit. What was he supposed to be recovering from? What was he, sick or something?

  “Rule number two: Surrender. If the topic of conversation is making you uneasy and you just can’t bear to hear anymore, you are permitted to leave the group. Touch your knee to the floor, like this”—Dexter got down on one knee and stuck his right hand up in the air—“and say, I surrender. This lets me know that you are surrendering and leaving the group. Now, if you do this, you must go sit in the front foyer and notify the other counselors that you have left the group. Under no circumstances are you permitted to go outside and have a smoke while group is going on. Understood?”

  Damn, in that case, he may as well get down on one knee right now and just get it over with. He’d rather sit up in the foyer than have to listen to this bullshit.

  “Alright, last one. Rule number three: The Foot Rule. Your feet must be touching the floor at all times while you’re in here. I want you listening and paying close attention to what’s going on and not slouching backwards in your chair with your feet propped up.” Dexter lowered his glasses and looked around the circle. He stopped and stared at Dave. Oh great, just when he was starting to get comfortable. “That means you sir. One foot on the ground please.”

  “Me?” Dave said, trying to sound innocent, seeing if he could work the pity card on him.

  “Yes, you. I need both feet on the floor, please.”

  “But I have a medical condition,” Dave said, pursing his lips together. “I have to keep this leg elevated or I’ll lose blood flow and I won’t be able to stand for like an hour. See, look, look.” Dave rolled up his pant leg, revealing the long red scar that began at his thigh and ended at his ankle.

  The patients around the circle all gasped and starting making gagging noises. One of ‘em even got down on one knee and tried to surrender.

  “Alright, alright, everybody just calm down,” Dexter said. “There’s no need to flip out. It’s just a leg.” Dexter turned to Dave and scowled, shielding his eyes as if he was blocking out the sunlight. “Alright, you can keep it propped up. But I want the other foot to remain on the floor. Deal?”

  “Deal.” Dave smiled to himself as he rolled down his pant leg. Yes, another victory. He was actually starting to enjoy himself.

  “Alright good. Is everybody else good?”

  “Yes Dexter.”

  “Alright then. Let’s go ahead and get started.”

 
Dexter clapped his hands and turned towards one of the patients—a good-looking woman, probably in her late forties, with long, sexy legs and a big ol’ set of D size titties. “Angie, sweetie? Are you ready?”

  The woman smiled shyly and reached behind her then pulled out a poster board and made her way to the center of the circle.

  Dave was absolutely mesmerized. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her. The woman was a ten—no, scratch that, an eleven, maybe a little old, but in a mature Kim Basinger kind of way. She had a long, graceful neck and a pair of full, luscious lips as red as the skin of a Red Delicious apple, with a wild mane of dirty blond hair that seemed to roll in waves over her skin tight, white sweater. The only flaw he could see were the little red dots speckled across her forehead, but, that was okay—she was probably just having a bad pimple break-out or something.

  As the woman pulled her hair back, Dave craned his head forward and suddenly realized that he’d seen this woman somewhere before. But, it wasn’t just her face—even her physique looked somewhat familiar. Those long, sexy legs, those broad, swimmer-like shoulders—he’d seen them somewhere, but where? Where had he seen them? Was she one of Cheryl’s friends? No, Cheryl wouldn’t know anyone in here. What about a teacher from the high school? No, of course not. They wouldn’t hire anyone who was this sexy. Then where? Where had he seen her?

  Dexter popped up from his chair and took the poster board from the woman then set it up on the seat cushion and dragged the chair more towards the center. “Okay,” he said with one eye closed and his hands raised outward, like he was a director appraising the next shot of a movie, “why don’t we all move our chairs this way so we can see Angie’s poster?”

  Everyone got up and shifted in closer, making a kind of distorted horseshoe in front of Angie and her poster. “Alright, can everybody see now?”

  “Yes, Dexter.”

  “Alright good.” Dexter got another chair from the stack against the back windows and sat down in it at the head of the horseshoe. “Okay, so today, we’re gonna do Angie’s first step. The first step is probably—no wait, scratch that”—Dexter slapped his lips as if he’d said something inappropriate—“The first step is without a doubt the most important step that you all will take in here. It is an affirmation of the powerlessness that each of you have over your disease. Everyone in here will have the opportunity to put a life collage together, like the one Angie has so marvelously constructed, and present it to your fellow addicts and alcoholics. As you can see, your life collage is a quick summary of the events of your life in visual representation. Each of you will get a poster board, just like this one, and use the hundreds of magazines and newspapers we have over there on the counter to cut out pictures or words or phrases that describe your life up to this point in time. You can arrange it any way you like. Some people, the type A personalities, like to arrange theirs in linear form. Others, the type B personalities, like me, usually just scatter them all over the place in no particular order. It is completely up to you how you want to present it. The key to making a successful life collage is to pick out things that show the powerlessness you have over your addiction. For instance, I once had a guy who found a picture of a Ford truck that was all bent up and twisted. He explained that not only could he not stop drinking, but he also couldn’t stop from driving around drunk. He admitted his powerlessness and said that if he didn’t stop drinking, he’d end up like the guy in that truck. So, that’s what we’re after here people, an affirmation of your powerlessness. I’m sure every single person in here can give a specific example that shows exactly what that is.”

  Dave’s mind flashed back to images of his blue Volkswagen, the right fender smashed in and the side mirror knocked off. He never did figure out what in the hell had happened. Maybe he hit a deer. Those fuckers were all over the place in Boulder. But would a deer explain that red shit smeared all across the side panels? Yeah, it was probably just dried up deer blood. Stupid animals. They oughta make ‘em extinct or something.

  “Okay, Angie,” Dexter said, as he picked up his clipboard and pulled the cap off his ballpoint. “Are you ready?”

  Angie nodded and smiled timidly, revealing a pair of shiny, metallic braces. Damn, strike two, Dave thought. What else was she hiding? Oh well, at least her body was still pretty damn flawless. Her tits were definitely D’s, maybe even double D’s, if he wasn’t mistaken.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Dexter said.

  Angie took a deep breath then pulled her long, blond hair back behind her. “Hi everyone,” she said, a bit shaky, lifting her hand in a shy, little wave. “My name’s Angie.”

  “Hi Angie.”

  “Um, hi.” She cleared her throat and turned toward the poster, pointing to a picture of the U.S. map, right around southern Wyoming. “So, I grew up in a little town called Rock Springs, Wyoming.” There was a green thumbtack stuck to the southwest quadrant of Wyoming, just north of the border between Colorado and Utah. “This is my mom, Laurie and my childhood dog, Ralphie.” Her hand moved down to a couple photographs that were all chewed up, like they’d been pulled out of a fire. “I was an only child. My dad died when I was real little. His name was Doug.”

  She pointed to an old, grainy black and white photo of a man posing in front of a Chevy Camaro. He looked Greek, maybe Italian, kind of handsome, like Robert Deniro, with dark, wavy hair and a little mole on his right cheek.

  “He was an alcoholic and a schizophrenic and he shot himself in the head when I was only three.” Below the photo was a cutout of a cartoon revolver that had hand-drawn smoke curling up from the barrel. “My mom’s also an alcoholic—a recovering alcoholic—and she’s been sober for like five years now.” Beside the revolver were some crude, hand drawn pictures of bottles of booze with skull and cross bones emblazoned on the front label. Dave had to strain his eyes and scoot his chair forward so he could read the penciled-in lettering underneath. It read Poison.

  “Let’s see,” Angie said, glancing back at her poster, nervously wringing the tips of her fingers.

  “Um…I was a pretty bad student. I was always getting into trouble at school, breaking the rules, skipping class, and smoking weed out by the jungle gym.” She laughed nervously, her eyes cast down towards the floor. “My mom sent me to a shrink when I was in the eighth grade. I guess I was fourteen at the time, or around there. The doctor told my mom that I had attention deficit disorder and that I needed medication to calm me down. So, he prescribed me a bunch of Ritalin, and when that didn’t work he prescribed me Xanax, and when that didn’t work, Dexedrine. I started taking a whole bunch at a time, and even started stealing my mom’s pain pills from her medicine cabinet. My mom was still drinking a lot then, and so I’d steal her liquor and take a bunch of her pain pills up to school and sell them and use the money to buy weed. I started getting really, really messed up when I was…I guess a sophomore in high school. Sometimes I’d just start crying in the middle of class for no particular reason and the teacher would make me go down to the principal’s office and all the kids would laugh at me and call me names, like crazy Angie, or loopy Angie, or just basket case. Then, one day I got caught smoking weed with some friends—” She paused and looked up, a sad smirk on her face—“well, I mean, I don’t know if you could call them friends. They only hung out with me because I could get them high. Anyway, we were in the park smoking weed and some patrol cars drove by. My friends took off running, but I just sat there and finished my joint, then swallowed a whole bunch of pills and washed it down with some vodka. At that point, I didn’t really give a damn. So, the cops picked me up and I had to spend a couple of nights in the juvenile detention center while my mom was passed out drunk at the house. It took her five days just to sober up so she could come get me. I remember the ride home. It was cold and rainy and she didn’t say a single word to me. She just went back inside and polished off a box of wine. The next week, I was on my way to an all girls reform school at some place in northern Wyoming.” Angie paused and t
ook a deep breath inward, tears beginning to form at the base of her eyes.

  “That was the worst,” she said, wiping her eyelids, “being trapped in that hell hole. The teachers there were so messed up. They would beat us with leather belts and lock us in our rooms. We hardly ever got to go outside. We lived in these cramped little spaces, like ten girls to one bathroom. It was awful. I’ve tried to block out most of the memories, but there was one that I could never forget. There was this teacher named James. He was the only guy in that place. The rest were nuns. He was like thirty, maybe thirty-five, and he taught our history and geography classes. He was really smart and funny and even kind of cute, but he would always single me out and yell at me in front of everyone in class. I never knew why, until one day after class, he sat me down in front of him and told me that the only reason he was making an example out of me was because he liked me and wanted to see me succeed in life.” She paused for a moment and looked down at the carpet, twisting her finger like she was trying to pull off a ring.

  “It’s okay,” Dexter said. “You can do it. Go on, Angie. Tell us what happened.”

  She lifted her head and looked up at the horseshoe. Tears streamed down her face and dripped to the carpet.

  “Come on, Angie,” Dexter said. “Tell us what happened. Don’t be afraid.”

  What an asshole, Dave thought. Why was he pushing her? It was obvious she didn’t want to tell the god damn story.

  “Well,” Angie said, wiping her eyelids, pushing her hair back away from her face, “he started getting really close to me. He put one hand on my shoulder and slid the other in between my knees. Then, he started undoing my blouse and breathing on my cheek. I was frozen. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. He got up for a minute and shut the classroom door. Then, he came back and forced me down on top of his desk. He put all his weight on top of me, pulled off my underwear, and unzipped his pants. It hurt so much. I just shut my eyes and cried and prayed for it to be over. Once it was over, I ran back to my room, and cried into my pillow until I fell asleep. I didn’t go to class, I didn’t go to the cafeteria, I just stayed in my room and cried and cried and cried. No one knew what was wrong with me. They all just thought I was crazy. The nuns tried to make me come out but I didn’t want to, so they dragged me out of there and locked me in confinement. I tried to tell them what happened but no one believed me. They all said I was making it up to try and get attention. They all said I was evil and crazy. I guess I don’t blame them. I mean, why would anyone believe me? I was a bad kid, a rotten apple.”