29 days.
She hates this.
Hates that she's here, that she has to be here.
Hates that she has this weakness. This disease.
But she's here. She's here, because she killed someone. She's a killer now. A murderer. And if she has to sit in a room with a bunch of strangers and talk (God, she'd rather cut off her own hand), to make sure it doesn't happen again, well… she'll do it.
And besides, Big Daddy is outside in the car, and if she leaves here without a chip of some kind, he'll just drive her across town to the next available meeting, and make her do it all over again.
He will. He promised. He has a list.
He's had it in hand since he picked her up from rehab this morning, 28 days after he frog-marched her in. A list of every Narcotics Anonymous meeting in the Santa Monica area — because that's where she lives now. Santa Monica.
She hasn't been home yet — she hasn't even seen her home yet, but she lives here now. Two weeks into rehab, she'd called her chief at Methodist and asked if he could help her transfer to another hospital.
She can't go back there. Can't go back into that place where she killed someone. That place where she became… the way she was. Can't look at it, can't think about it.
Can't look. Can't think.
She's not sure how much anyone at Methodist knows about why she took her leave, but Chief Carter was surprisingly agreeable about helping her transfer, so she thinks they might know more than she'd prefer.
So now, she's expected to report on Monday to St. Ambrose Hospital in Santa Monica. Day one of a new job. A new life.
That's what she wants now - to start over, to do better.
So she's here. At this meeting. Staring at this stupid pamphlet, reading the words over and over again as people drone on about their own problems all around her.
She's read the words a dozen times, it seems, but she reads them one more:
1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being—
"We have a new face here today," the moderator says, and Charlotte freezes. Her whole body flushes — goes cold and then hot. God, not her. Please don't be talking about her. Please, let there be another person here who's new today.
She keeps her head down, but glances up through her bangs, and sure enough the woman's looking right at her.
Crap.
"Do you want to share anything?"
No. God, no.
But then she thinks of Big Daddy. Out in that car. Big Daddy who took the last month off from work to be here with her. Who visited her every day of rehab. Who bought her a new place, who moved all her stuff. Who tells her that she's strong, and beautiful, and worth saving despite everything she's done. That he's proud of her for getting help the way her Momma refuses to.
And she thinks of a woman, on a car, covered in blood, and glass, and rain.
She can't afford to keep her mouth shut.
So she nods, finally, and clears her throat. "I'm uh… I'm Charlotte. And I'm… an addict."
God, this is horrible.
She takes a deep breath, and continues, looking at her nails and not at anyone else.
"I left rehab this mornin'. And now I'm here. I'm, uh…" She picks at her cuticles as she talks. They're already scabbed from her doing it for the last three weeks — hell, at this point, she's pretty much just peeling off the skin around 'em. Another habit she'll have to kick. "I don't… know… what I'm doin'. I start work at a new job on Monday, and I'm terrified. I haven't been to work, since…" Blood. Glass. Rain. Deep breath. "I did somethin' bad. I hurt someone, that's why I, uh… That's why I went… to rehab. And now… I have to start over. And it seems impossible. Bein' on my own seems impossible. Startin' over seems… impossible." She takes another breath, spreads her hands flat on the table, and says, "So I am here."
There's silence for a good thirty seconds and then a girl across the table speaks up, and tells her, "It gets easier. It's never easy, but… it gets easier. And the meetings help. It might seem stupid and hokey right now — I thought it was when I started, but they do help. So being here is good."
Charlotte nods, slowly. "I'm not a talker. I don't know if this is… I'm not a talker."
"So be a listener," another person tells her. "Just show up. Just keep showing up."
Charlotte thinks about it, swipes her tongue over the back of her teeth, and nods.
She doesn't speak again for the rest of the meeting, but as they're leaving, the girl who spoke up taps her on the shoulder. She can't be more than about 25, but she seems somehow older. Like she's been through the wringer, and come out the other side. "Hey. I know you probably don't want to talk or anything, but Jason is right. You should keep coming, even if you don't talk."
Charlotte scowls, adjusts her purse on her shoulder, and lowers her voice to say, "I don't, uh… I don't see how sittin' in a room talkin' about things is gonna make it easier to look at myself in the mirror every mornin'. So unless you can help me with that..."
"Change what you see," the girl tells her with a little shrug. "It might seem superficial and stupid, but… it worked for me. I did bad things, too. I hated the sight of myself, too. So, I became a redhead." She fingers the end of her fiery red curls with a wry smirk, and says, "It didn't change what I did. It didn't change what I wanted to do. But when I looked in the mirror… at least I wasn't looking at the same person who did those things. Those bad things. I looked in the mirror, and I saw Beth the sober redhead, not Beth the blonde heroin addict, and it helped me." She shrugs again, and tells Charlotte, "Maybe it'll work for you. And maybe it won't, but either way…" She hands her a slip of paper — it's a torn page of the NA handbook with a phone number written on it, "Beth" written above in loopy letters. "If you need to talk, you can call. I mean, I'm not, like, a sponsor or anything, but… you can call."
Charlotte takes the paper numbly, nodding, frowning. "Thanks," she murmurs. "I've gotta go."
She doesn't wait for Beth to answer, just leaves. She beelines for the door, sees Big Daddy waiting outside in her car.
She hands him her newcomer's chip, and says, "Sat through the whole thing, Daddy. Just like you asked."
He smiles at her, cups a hand behind her neck and gives her a squeeze. "Good. Now, let's go see that new place of yours, hmm?"
"Not yet."
The words are out of her mouth before she's really thought them through, but once she says them, she knows they're right.
"I wanna make a stop first," she tells her father, and he nods, shifts the car into drive.
Two and a half hours later, she's standing in her new apartment. In her new bathroom, looking at her new self in the mirror.
She's blonde again. Just like she was before she moved out here. Before Los Angeles, before Billy, before the pills, and the death.
Charlie Douglas has been dyed and trimmed into oblivion, and the woman she's lookin' at now is Charlotte King.
The same Charlotte King who won nineteen equestrian trophies by the time she graduated high school. Who won the Monroe County spelling bee in fourth, fifth, and sixth grade. Who finished her undergrad a year early, and graduated top of her class in med school. Smart. Capable. Clean. Sober. Charlotte King.
She stands in front of her mirror and looks at herself, and thinks it's a start.
She'll never be the same. She'll never be that person again.
But at least she sees her when she looks in the mirror, and that's something. That's enough.
It'll do for now.
She's twenty-nine days sober. She's been to her first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
She'll go again tomorrow.
She'll get through this.
She will get through this.
She will.