Rehab Run

by Barbra Leslie

  “Sorry about the mess,” Mary said.

  “Oh God, Mary, no,” I said. She was looking at the bottle on the counter but didn’t open it. “Do you want me to make us some coffee? Or do you want a drink?”

  “There’s 7-Up in the fridge,” she said. “Lots of ice, please.” She lit a cigarette and looked at the table. I wondered again whether the vodka was the right idea, but too late now.

  I found the glasses, put a few ice cubes in each, and filled them three-quarters of the way with 7-Up. When I brought Mary hers, she took a long draw of the soft drink, then topped up the glass with vodka, and stirred it with a finger. I poured a bit in mine to be sociable, but hard liquor was never my bag. The vodka was Laurence’s buy. Not to mention, I was driving.

  “My sister’s son,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “Oh, Mary, I am so sorry.”

  “Des said he didn’t suffer.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said. “He never knew what hit him.” We drank in silence for a minute, and then I plucked a pack of cigarettes out of my bag.

  “Your husband not around?” I said. He should be here with her, I thought, but then again, he’d gotten in some kind of fight with one of the cops last night. Maybe he was off licking his wounds, or maybe she’d kicked him out.

  “Working,” she said. “He does odd jobs for people. When he’s having a good day, he has to take advantage of it and get out and work. The good days are getting fewer.” I remembered what Janet had said about Mary’s husband being in a wheelchair, and sure enough, I glanced into the hallway and saw one outside the door to what must be a bedroom. People have pain. More and more, I was reminded that I wasn’t the only one with troubles. When you’re in the midst of active addiction, all you can think about is getting more of your drug of choice, and planning when, where, and how you’ll do it. Then in the white-hot grief after losing Ginger and Jack, all I could think of was revenge. No one else’s pain had felt real to me. Active addiction is the most selfish state in the world.

  I had wanted to talk to Mary about any theories she might have about who was doing this, about anything that may have occurred to her after going through the old files from Rose’s Place with the police. But it seemed a tricky subject to bring up.

  “When was he diagnosed? Geoffrey, that is?”

  “Must be about six, seven years ago now,” she said. “He was getting numbness in his hands and feet that wouldn’t quit. Couple of times he fell. Anyway, that was the start.”

  “Does he have any family around, or is it all down to you?”

  “He’s got a mother, but she comes and goes. Doesn’t spend too much time around here. Rest of his family is dead. Cousins somewhere, I think, but…” She waved her hand, indicating that they were far away, maybe geographically or just far removed, not in the picture. “He’s a good man, though, is Geoffrey,” she said, as though I had said he wasn’t.

  “He must be, if he caught you,” I said. “You’re one in a million, Mary.” I put my hand over hers, and for a second she let it stay there, then patted my hand with her other hand and pulled away.

  “Thank you, Danny,” she said. “I’m so sorry you had to come here while this is all happening. It’s a beautiful area, around here. I liked the other night, when you were talking about buying a place here. That would be nice.” She drained her drink, tipped a bit more vodka into my glass, and filled hers about halfway with it. I got up to get the 7-Up. “Don’t bother,” she said. She looked at me. “I know what you’re thinking. All you addicts do. You’re probably thinking I’m a drunk, right?”

  “No,” I said. I was lying, of course. She looked at that bottle the way I looked at a pretty rock of crack. “If you didn’t want to get a buzz on while you’re grieving, then I’d be worried.”

  “Damn straight,” she said. “Damn fucking straight.” She took another swig, and so did I. One thing I am not a fan of is being the only sober person in a room. If anything would make me want to get crack, it would be that. “Tell that to Geoffrey, though. You’d think I was, I don’t know, shooting kittens, the way he carries on if I want so much as a beer, lately.” Her voice rose at the end. This sounded more like the Mary I knew.

  “Ah,” I said. “Is he a recovering addict or something? Can’t stand to be around it?” Lots were like that. Former addicts are like former smokers – buzzkills if you want to have a little fun.

  “No,” she said. “He used to enjoy a drink now and again, but never extreme. Nowadays, though…”

  “Did he get religion or something?” I remembered that phrase from Maine. Mom and Dad used to talk about people “getting religion” as though it was the flu. They sent us to Jesuit Catholic schools for the good education, but neither of them were believers.

  “No, he just turned judgmental. I blame the pain he’s in. And his medication is expensive, I don’t get benefits, and God forbid he should apply for assistance so he could get them. Well, if he did I’d have to quit my job anyway. Even though I don’t make that much, he wouldn’t qualify for benefits if I’m working.”

  I closed my eyes. This made sense. People had problems. It had been a long time since I had really had to worry about money, other than for crack. If I hadn’t spent all my money on it, I would have been quite comfortable. But I never went without the things I needed. And now, of course, I was in a position to do something. I took a breath. “Let me help you,” I said. “You helped me so much, Mary, when I got to Rose’s. I was a mess. Meeting you was what kept me there.”

  She smiled at me, but there was a lot of sadness behind that smile. “Well then, I wish you’d never met me. Hasn’t exactly worked out for you, has it?”

  “Got me there,” I said. “But, you know my husband died. He left me money. I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do with it, and I figured I might as well try to do some good. I caused a lot of pain, back when I was using.” I took a long swallow of the vodka, and wondered why I’d never appreciated it before. It felt clean, going down, but with a bit of a burn so you knew it was doing its job. For me, alcohol would never be a replacement for crack cocaine, but just at the moment, it was good enough. “That’s why my sister died, you know. Was because of me. And my husband, too.” I realized my voice was too loud. Vodka and grief. And I wanted, I needed her to understand why I wanted to help her.

  “Don’t say that, Danny,” Mary said. Her voice was raised, and she looked almost alarmed. “All addicts feel that way. It’s just the guilt talking.” She waved her hands as if to shut me up. “I won’t hear it. And whatever happened, you did the right thing. You got yourself together and got yourself clean.” She stood up and went to the sink and started taking things out of it, piling them on the stove, making what seemed like a deliberate racket. She definitely didn’t want to hear my troubles, not today.

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” I said. “You sit down. I’ll do that. I love doing dishes. I’ll top your drink up, and you put your feet up.” I approached her at the sink, and very quickly she turned and hugged me tight.

  “Run,” she whispered in my ear. In my right ear, my bad ear. I thought I had heard wrong.

  “What did you say?”

  “Get in the car and go. Run. Now. Please, quickly.”

  I pulled back and looked into her face. She looked terrified. Sweat started along my hairline, and adrenaline was pounding through me.

  “You’re coming with me,” I said. I grabbed my bag and pulled her arm.

  Someone was in the house. I couldn’t tell where the noise was coming from with my bad ear and the pounding in my chest.

  “No, I won’t,” she said, loudly. “Just go, Danny. We need to be alone.”

  I grabbed my bag from the floor and headed to the door. Someone was walking behind me, but didn’t seem to be hurrying. Still, I didn’t have time to fumble around for the gun in my bag. Why hadn’t I carried it on my body? What kind of idiot was I?

  Dixie ran outside with me, excited and bounding, thinking we were goi
ng to play. Not today, puppy. Not today.

  The Mustang’s hood was up. Why was the hood up? I had my keys in my hand and as I started across the lawn, away from the car – I couldn’t see who or what might be on the other side of the hood – I threaded them through my fingers to use as a weapon.

  Then something hit me in the head from behind; something large and heavy hit me harder than I have ever been hit. I saw the ground coming at me, and that was all I knew.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I was freezing cold. I was outside, and I was freezing cold.

  And, as far as I could tell, my right hand was missing.

  Before I was able to open my eyes, I started to panic. I couldn’t breathe. Be calm, Danny. Be calm. Ginger’s voice, not mine. I slowed my breathing, four counts on inhale, four on exhale. My mouth was taped shut. If I panicked and started to cry, my nose might get stuffed. Suffocation was one of my biggest fears. I breathed in four counts through my nose, and out for four counts, until I was calm enough to open my eyes.

  It was dark. The kind of dark that felt like it was going to be light soon. Which meant that I had been out for maybe twelve hours or more. Good. People would be looking for me.

  I was sitting on a rock, and I could smell water, and hear it lapping, close to me. Then a light went on somewhere not far away – a business or a house, or even a lighthouse? A boat? My arms were chained to something behind me, something I was leaning against. I was sitting up, my legs stretched out in front of me, tied together with duct tape. Lots of it. My right shoulder hurt like hell, but I was going to ignore it. I couldn’t give in to pain; I had to think quickly.

  I was tied to something hard and immovable behind me, and I was pretty sure I didn’t have my right hand. I could wiggle the fingers of my left hand, but not my right. But no. I had to have my hand, because otherwise I would be able to slip out of the chains that were binding me to… something. I just couldn’t feel it. It was asleep. If it had been cut off, I would be in pain. More pain than I was in, even, with my shoulder, and the cold, and a head injury that was making it difficult to see, even leaving aside the dark. I was wearing Debbie MacLean’s jeans still and just a t-shirt.

  I was on a rocky shoreline, and there was something above me, some structure. It was rough and hard, and as hard as I pulled, it wasn’t going to give. My feet were bare, and the water was lapping at them. More than it had been a couple of minutes ago.

  A pier. I was tied under a pier.

  I watched as my feet became submerged.

  The Bay of Fundy. I had read that it had the fastest moving tides in the world, rising a few metres in an hour in some spots.

  I was tied to a pier of some sort, a dock, and the tide was coming in quickly. Sitting up as I was, if the tide was moving as fast as it seemed, I probably had twenty or thirty minutes before I would be immersed. That’s what I figured, doing some crude math in my head, and watching the water. I had never thought of water as alive before, but this water was, and rising as surely as the sun rises in the morning. And much quicker.

  I was going to drown.

  People would be looking in the woods, probably, not along shorelines. And who knew how far I had been taken, in all that time? It was a blank; I hadn’t come to once, as far as I could remember.

  I thought of Laurence and how unutterably horrible this would be for him. I had wanted to leave, and he had insisted that he, at least, was staying. He would never get over this. And my nephews, Ginger’s boys Matthew and Luke – they had been through so much trauma already. This would scar them even more, having their auntie murdered, just like their mother was, like their uncle Jack was. You don’t get over that. Nobody gets over that.

  Fuck that. No. No fucking way. Nobody gets to do that to them.

  In that moment, if the person who had been doing this – who had done this to me – had been standing in front of me, I think I would have been able to burst through the chains, I felt such rage. I screamed, made as much noise as I could somewhere deep in my chest, my throat, but even if there was someone around, nobody would hear me over the water. Not to mention through the duct tape.

  Then I realized I was starting to cry, which would mean less air, a clogged nose. I sat for a while eyes closed, and breathed as evenly as I could, trying to be calm. Trying to think over the pain and the panic.

  The water was past my waist.

  I thought about Ginger and her boys, and about Jack, but just for a minute. I couldn’t let myself think about Jack.

  Instead I thought about my brothers.

  And then I thought about what I wanted to do to the person who had done this. Mary’s husband. I wanted to tie him to a tree and watch him die. I waited for the water to rise.

  When the water was high enough, I took a breath and stuck my face in it. I came up a second later, panicking, trying to blow saltwater out of my nose. I breathed again, trying to be calm. Then I leaned over as far as I could and let the water run over the bottom part of my face. I did that four or five times, each time thinking this was the one that was going to kill me, where I wouldn’t be able to breathe air when I came up.

  Then I raised my good shoulder and rubbed my chin, as hard as I could, back and forth across it. The pain in my other shoulder nearly caused me to pass out, but I was lucky. The cold water kept me conscious.

  I don’t know how long it had been. And I was tired. So tired. It hurt to move my head. My shoulder was broken. It hurt to try to move anything.

  I put my face in the water one last time – easier now, as the water was higher – and then rubbed my face raw along my shoulder.

  The duct tape that had been covering my mouth came away. On one side only, but enough that I could make noise.

  I took a deep breath and screamed, as loudly as I ever have. I don’t know what words I said, but I know I used words.

  And because Mary’s husband wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, some men who were getting ready to go out lobster fishing heard me.

  They got me free, even before the water had reached my chin.

  If Mary’s husband had used better quality duct tape, the saltwater and rubbing probably wouldn’t have loosened the adhesive enough.

  If the fishermen hadn’t had those rusty bolt cutters on their boat, finding me wouldn’t have done any good. They would have just had to watch me drown; the tide was coming in too quickly.

  All I remember about the following time is panic, and pain, and cold. Panic because I still couldn’t feel my right hand, even though I could see it. Pain, excruciating pain, as my body was warmed carefully in the ambulance. They didn’t give me anything for pain then, because of the head injury and my confusion. I screamed when they moved me into the ambulance, when someone tried to pick me up by my shoulder to put me on the gurney.

  At some point at the hospital, before I drifted away on a morphine cloud, I told someone who I was, and that Mary’s husband was the killer. But nothing else mattered, because I was warm and alive and there was no more panic or pain.

  You’re missing something, I thought, or heard, but then, merciful sleep.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The headache of my life. That’s what I felt when I woke up.

  Laurence was sitting beside my bed, chin on chest, sound asleep. It was bright outside, and it was nice to have the curtains open. That’s one of the first things I thought – the curtains are open; they must have caught him. They’re not worried we’ll be shot at through the windows.

  Debbie MacLean was there too, in street clothes. She smiled at me when I looked at her, then jumped out of her chair and ran out into the hallway. She came back with a woman in scrubs and a white coat.

  Laurence was standing next to me then, kissing my forehead. His eyes were swollen and he hadn’t shaved.

  “You look like shit,” I said, and found I was raspy.

  “You aren’t going to win any pageants today either,” he said quietly. He was crying, and one of his tears dropped onto my face.

  T
he doctor told me I had a concussion from whatever hit the back of my head and kept me knocked out for the better part of a day, a dislocated shoulder which would be sore for a while, mild hypothermia from the time in the water, and I was covered in abrasions. Especially my wrists, which had been tied very tightly.

  “I still don’t really feel my right hand,” I said. I didn’t want to talk. It hurt my throat, and my head hurt even more. But I must have been on some kind of happy drug, because the idea of having no feeling in my dominant hand didn’t seem to bother me too much.

  Then again, escaping a horrible death by drowning will put things in perspective.

  “You may have some compressed nerves,” the doctor said. “You managed to get through your ordeal with no broken bones, but your shoulder was dislocated when they brought you in.” In a raspy whisper I told them about dunking my head in the saltwater and working my face against my shoulder to get the tape off so I could make some noise.

  The doctor looked at me, and then at Laurence and Debbie. “That’s remarkable,” she said. “The pain must have been – how did you do it?”

  Laurence saw that I couldn’t speak any longer, or didn’t want to. “My sister is well-trained in self-defence and, uh, survival,” he said. “I think she’s able to put her pain to one side until later.” I closed my eyes. Everybody was staring at me. The pain was bad. The thirst was even worse.

  I moved my arm and pointed at the water next to the bed, and whispered something about my head. Laurence brought the water and a bendy straw, and the doctor said she’d send a nurse in with some more pain meds.

  “Go back to sleep, Danielle,” the doctor said. “Your body has a lot of healing to do.”

  I looked at Debbie. “Mary?”

  She nodded. “Everything is fine, Danny. You just sleep, okay? It’s over. Mary is alive and well.”

  I turned toward Laurence and stuck out my hand. He sat back down and held it, and I drifted off again.