Lola Carlyle's 12-Step Romance

by Danielle Younge-Ullman

  “It is a Level One…as far as anyone needs to know.”

  “But it acts like a Level Two.”

  “Yes. Please come to me for anything you need and I will do what I can. All I ask is you be discreet. We don’t want the other patients or the staff thinking you’re getting special treatment.”

  “Even though I am?”

  “Of course not,” he says, and then winks.

  I’m all for special treatment and everything, but suddenly I want to take a shower.

  Speaking of showers, now that all this arrival business is taken care of, it’s time to find Sydney and get to the spa, because if possible, I’d like to be relaxed when I finally see Wade again.

  Chapter Four

  To my surprise, the arrival business is not, in fact, fully taken care of, and soon I am the opposite of relaxed and am instead thinking about strangling Sydney.

  After a dramatic good-bye from my mother and a warm one from Elise, Dr. Koch takes me to a suite of rooms that looks like a doctor’s office, and introduces me to a Grinch-faced woman…who turns out to be a doctor of the medical variety.

  “Nice to meet you,” I say with what I hope is a friendly wave.

  “And this,” Dr. Koch says, turning toward a guy who’s just come into the room behind us, “is Adam.”

  “H-hi…” I squint at Adam, trying to figure out if he’s a fellow “guest” or what. He’s young—early twenties at the most—too young to be a doctor, that’s for sure. Unless he’s some kind of prodigy. But he doesn’t look like a prodigy. He looks like a Jonas brother—medium height; thick, dark brown hair; brown eyes; broad shoulders; wears the hell out of a pair of jeans without seeming to know it. without seeming to know it. But he’s not cute; he’s intense, stern-looking for his age, and could probably eat a Jonas brother for breakfast.

  “Adam is one of our summer placements,” Dr. Koch says. “A college student on track to become a social worker.”

  “Cool,” I say, giving what I think of as a winning smile, but receiving nothing but a deadpan gaze in return.

  “As part of his duties, he has been assigned to you.”

  Uh-oh. “Assigned to me?” The somber demeanor is getting to me already, and I decide to poke him a little and see what happens. “Oh, you mean like a valet?”

  Ha—now he looks like he’s going to choke.

  “Not exactly,” Dr. Koch says, looking mildly amused. “He is your adviser, your mentor.”

  “Too bad,” I say to him. “Because I have a lot of stuff to carry.”

  “Speaking of which,” Dr. Koch says, glancing at my suitcases, sitting just inside the door, “I’ll let you get to it.”

  He glides out, leaving me with the doctor, who is busy making notes on her laptop, and Adam, who looks like he’s swallowed a cactus.

  “I was only kidding,” I tell him.

  “You think you’re funny,” he says.

  “I try.”

  “Well, don’t.” Then he turns to the doctor. “You ready for her?”

  “Mmm-hmm…” she says absently. “Just…get on the table, please.”

  “What?”

  Adam points to the examining table, then looks me up and down, presumably taking in my outfit. I am wearing a lacy pale green slip dress that matches my eyes, and ankle boots. It’s a cute outfit, and looking in the mirror back at home, I thought it gave a sort of…curvy elfin waif vibe. But with him looking at me I suddenly feel self-conscious and a bit ridiculous, like I should be in something more serious, more substantial, less…flimsy, for entering rehab. And then, as I contemplate climbing up on the table, I realize the dress is really short, and the lace parts are a little see-through, and maybe I should have added leggings.

  I turn and walk over to the table.

  “You need help getting up?” Adam says when I stop in front of it.

  “Nope,” I say, then look around for a step stool of some kind, because if I have to jump or climb, I’m going to be giving him a free show.

  “No?”

  “No, I just need…”

  “People don’t usually dress up to come to rehab,” he says, confirming my suspicions.

  “I wasn’t…I didn’t consider this to be dressed up,” I reply, feeling heat rise in my cheeks.

  “Here,” he says, and then before I can process what’s happening, he’s crossed the distance between us, picked me up, and deposited me, none too gently, on the table.

  “Wha— I was going to…” I rub my arms where his hands were and face him. “That wasn’t necessary.”

  He grins. Which makes no sense because I don’t see anything funny going on.

  “Why do I need to be up here anyway?”

  “Physical,” he says.

  The doctor clears her throat, comes over, tells me to lie down.

  “I’ll be over there if you need anything,” Adam says, then points to a chair a few feet away, pulls a curtain around the examining area, and then I hear him plunking down onto the chair.

  What follows starts as a fairly typical physical exam—blood pressure; bright lights in my eyes, ears, throat; all my glands palpated; stomach pressed on; reflexes checked; lungs and heart listened to. I don’t know if there’s a way for me to fake any of this to seem more like an alcoholic, so I just do my best to be cooperative.

  But then it gets personal. She runs her hands up the insides of my arms, looks closely at my wrists, and then inspects my inner thighs.

  “Isn’t this a little…intrusive?”

  “Drug addicts find many ways to hide injection sites,” she says in a creepy monotone.

  “Oh.”

  “Have you ever given yourself an injection?’

  “Gross. No.”

  “Are you sexually active?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a simple question.”

  “I don’t have to answer that,” I say to her. “Adam? Do I have to answer that?”

  “Yes,” he says from behind the curtain.

  “Have you ever been sexually active?” she asks again.

  “I’m seventeen,” I say.

  “So, yes?”

  “So, nothing. It’s none of your business.”

  “So your answer is no?”

  “If you need an answer, that’s correct. No.”

  “Have you ever been pregnant?”

  “Oh, so I could somehow have been pregnant without having been sexually active? No.”

  “Have you ever been treated for a sexually transmitted disease?”

  “Uh, refer to my previous two answers, please.”

  “Respond to the question, please.”

  “No. No sex, no pregnancy, no STDs. God.”

  Next, maybe because she doesn’t believe me, I have to give a urine sample. Then I give blood for blood work.

  “Are you using any drugs?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been using any drugs recently?” she says in her same grating monotone.

  “No. I mean, well, I probably inhaled some secondhand pot at a party last week. In fact I’m sure I did, but I’m here for my alcohol problem.” I can tell, as she types out my answer, that she thinks I’m lying. I would think I’m lying, too. It totally sounds like I am. But that’s probably okay, considering.

  “How often do you smoke marijuana?”

  “Oh, come on. Is this another trick question? Is this your brilliant way of smoking out the secret pot smokers, so to speak? Well, guess what? Their brains are working slower than mine.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I don’t smoke marijuana.”

  “How often do you take prescription drugs?”

  “Um…every couple of years? You know, when the doctor prescribes them?”

  “What kind of drugs does your doctor prescribe?”

  “Antibiotics, usually. What kind does yours prescribe?”

  At this, I could swear I hear Adam trying not to laugh behind the curtain.

  “How often do you drink
alcohol?”

  Here we go.

  “A lot. Uh…” Sydney coached me on this—it doesn’t have to be that I drink every day; it can be binge drinking, which is considered an equally serious addiction. “There might be a few days when I don’t drink at all, but then when I get going, it’s a binge. It’s a lot and I can’t stop. I totally lose control and do…stupid things.”

  “What kind of alcohol do you consume?”

  “Any kind.”

  “How much do you consume on a given day?”

  “A lot. I lose track. But definitely…like, I could drink a couple of bottles of vodka over the course of a day…and then start with more first thing the next morning.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because I need to get help or I’m afraid something bad will happen,” I say, doing my best to look tremulous and fragile, which is challenging because she’s pissed me off with all the badgering, and I have no desire to show her any vulnerability. “I can’t control it.”

  It goes on like this for what feels like ages, with the doctor occasionally looping back to a question she’s already asked, to see if my answer will be different.

  Finally she lets me go and hands me over to Adam while she goes to take the urine and blood to a lab at the back.

  He sits me at a small table.

  “Shouldn’t she be nicer?” I whisper to him.

  “Why do you think she should be nicer?” he whispers back.

  “Like, to make people feel welcome? And safe?”

  “Sometimes she is nicer,” he says.

  “Oh! So it’s just me?”

  “I think it depends on what the situation requires,” he says, and then hands me a questionnaire. “Here. You have to fill this out.”

  “You’re kidding me,” I say, looking down at it. “This thing is—what—ten pages long? And this first page is all the same questions! Plus more questions!”

  “This is more to assess your mental health, Lola.”

  “My mental health? Well, I can just tell you myself—it’s rapidly deteriorating.”

  I fill out the form. It takes forever and includes a bunch of tricky multiple-choice questions that are obviously there to ferret out sociopaths, depressives, narcissists, et cetera. This is the hardest part, because I have to keep myself in the zone of being an unhappy, addicted person, without coming across like I need a straitjacket.

  Midway through, as my brain threatens to break, I ask Adam if I might have a coffee.

  “You’ll have to get that from the valet,” he says.

  “Awesome. Where is said valet?” I ask, although I think I already know the answer.

  Adam reaches across the table, puts his index finger to my forehead, and taps. “Right…there,” he says.

  “Look, I’ll get it myself. I just need you to tell me where to go.”

  “Finish the questionnaire.”

  I get back to work, and Adam stands up and crosses the room to confer with the doctor, who is presumably showing him the test results and who knows what else. I have no idea, for example, whether the secondhand pot smoke will show up in my urine or blood work. It’s something I should have researched. And in general, it makes me itchy knowing they’re talking about me but there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I finish, and Adam hands me another stack of papers, but this is just for signatures—giving myself into their care, committing to the program, stating I’ve come of my own free will, yada yada. I skim them and sign.

  “Okay!” I pop up from the chair. “We’re done here, right?”

  “Not quite,” he says, and goes to get my suitcases, rolling them over to the examining table.

  “Oh no.”

  “This is the one time I’m going to lift these for you,” he says, and then hoists each one up to the table and unzips it. Grouch Doctor comes to stand on the other side, bringing two rolling carts with her, and they begin to empty my suitcases, inspecting each item, and placing it on one of the two carts.

  “Let me save you the trouble,” I say. “I am not smuggling any drugs or alcohol. And I already figured I’d have to surrender my phone—I’ll just give it to you.”

  They ignore me.

  “Well, how about you let me help?”

  “Sit in the chair and wait, please,” the doctor says.

  “I think I’ll stand.”

  So I stand, mortified and furious, and watch. They unroll every pair of socks and turn each sock inside out. They study the sole of every shoe, open every tube of lip gloss, page through all six of the novels I brought with me, shake every piece of clothing.

  “If you give me some scissors, I should really cut off those tags,” I say as the clothing pile mushrooms, obscuring the surface of the cart.

  “You bought an entire new wardrobe for this, I see,” Adam says, rolling his eyes. “Or do you just have a bunch of clothes with tags in your closet all the time?”

  “They’re not all new,” I say weakly. “Hey, don’t touch my underwear, people!”

  Adam looks down, realizes he’s holding a bra, and drops it like a hot potato.

  “Doctor, why don’t we trade,” he says, going to the other suitcase where she’s working. “I’ll finish this one.”

  I stalk away, face burning, and slump into the chair.

  The doctor gets quickly to the bottom of the suitcase with the underwear, and begins to feel around like she’s checking for secret compartments. Meanwhile, Adam is almost finished too.

  “Whoa—what do we have here?” Adam says, and the doctor and I both look at him.

  He is holding up a bar of dark chocolate and acting like it’s crack cocaine.

  “It’s chocolate,” I say. “And it’s sealed—nothing nefarious.”

  “Looks all right to me,” the doctor says, and for the first time, I like her a little bit.

  “But Doctor, look at this,” Adam says, and she looks. “She’s got, like, a hundred of them.”

  “Fifty, actually,” I say. “All safely packaged.”

  The doctor turns and gives me a penetrating look. “Why did you pack fifty chocolate bars?”

  I blink. “Because I like chocolate…?”

  They both stare at me now.

  “It’s gourmet. And organic.”

  They start opening the chocolate bars.

  “What is wrong with you people? That’s seventy percent dark chocolate—it’s a freaking antioxidant.”

  Adam breaks off a piece, sniffs it, and passes it to the doctor, who takes a small bite.

  I clench my fists.

  The doctor nods. “It’s chocolate.”

  Adam takes a bite, nods, then puts the bar down.

  “Please tell me you’re not going to open every one of them,” I say. “They’ll dry out. I can’t eat them fast enough to keep them from drying out…”

  Adam and the doctor exchange a glance, then start putting the bars off to the side, on a tray.

  “What, are you going to x-ray them or something?” I say, arms crossed and glaring.

  “No, we’re going to pack them up with the other stuff,” Adam says, pointing to my phone and a bottle of toner and some hairspray I can’t take in because it contains alcohol. “You can’t bring these into the dorms.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “There are people here with eating disorders,” he says, gazing pointedly at me like I might be one of them. “For some people this could be an addictive substance.”

  “Of course it’s an addictive substance—it’s chocolate.”

  “You can have it back when you leave.”

  “Can’t I keep just a couple? The ones you opened?”

  “No.”

  “Well, that’s just great,” I say, shaking my head.

  If I’d known I could check into rehab for chocolate addiction, I’d have skipped the tequila.

  “Almost done,” Adam says a few minutes later when my suitcases have been (messily) repacked and my forbidden items have been locke
d in a bin and taken away. “There’s just one more thing.”

  “Yay.” I am in a full sulk at this point.

  “Doctor?” Adam says, gesturing her toward me.

  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that she frisks me, then makes me take off my shoes and socks, hands them to Adam for inspection, and proceeds to look between my toes.

  “When’s the anal probe?” I say darkly.

  She looks up from my feet, expression flat.

  “Because, you know, I might be smuggling in a few M&M’s.”

  She doesn’t even crack a smile.

  “Don’t press your luck,” Adam says, and hands me a shoe.

  Chapter Five

  Adam leads me back out to the entrance foyer and stops near the fountain.

  “Done,” he says. “Was that so bad?”

  “Um, yes,” I say, wheeling my suitcases up and stopping beside him. “Listen, I need you to book me a massage for this afternoon.”

  He tilts his head and narrows his eyes.

  “Please,” I say.

  “I’m not the concierge, either,” he says.

  “Well, what good are you? I mean, what do you do besides force me into stuff I don’t want and give me shit and confiscate my things?”

  He just looks at me.

  “Fine. Tell me where to go and who to talk to and I’ll book it myself. I’m very stressed out.”

  “No massages on the first day,” he says.

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m not the expert on this, but apparently your energy may be too fragile at first for body treatments.”

  “I assure you, my energy is not fragile,” I say, walking closer to him as if to prove it. “I have very tough energy.”

  “None of that on day one,” he says, refusing to back away, which leaves me standing awkwardly close to him—close enough to see he’s had his nose broken at some point, and not reset quite right. “Period.”

  “Well then, I’ll take a pedicure or manicure—whatever you recommend.”

  “I said no.” Suddenly, his eyes get kind of fierce and wolfish, and in spite of myself, I take a step back.

  “Okay.” I put my hands up in surrender. “Sorry.”

  “You need to establish a rapport with your therapist first,” he says. “And your roommates.”