I look around nervously at the small but clean and tidy reception area of Malevolent Creations Rehabilitation Center as I walk up to the short front desk where a small lady with short dark hair and wire-rimmed glasses is sitting, typing away diligently at a computer. I pause awkwardly and stand in front of her, shifting my weight from one foot to another, waiting for her to look up from the small screen in front of her. After several minutes of fidgeting with my bags and trying to keep my patience in check, my arms start to become numb. Not to mention I'm craving in the worst way. If I don't get checked in now, I know that will walk out that door and never come back. It took me over a year to get here, I could only imagine how long it would take to get me back if I left. I clear my throat and the receptionist glances up for a second, looks back down, then up again.
"Oh, yes?" she asks. "How can I help you today?" Then she flashes me a dazzling smile, one so full of straight, white teeth that I momentarily forget about what I'm doing there and instead focus on her mouth.
How did her teeth get so white? I think to myself, flabbergasted. The only way to get them like that is to bleach them, but even then you'd have to, like, never eat again in your entire life. I eye the woman up all shiftily, checking out her weight. The smile is still on her face, but beneath it's cracking slightly. I pretend to not notice, though. It's far more important to me to figure out what the hell is going on with her mouth!
Okay, so, she's thin, maybe she keeps her teeth so white because she's bulimic? I frown. Wait, no, because the enamel would be all worn away and I don't think they let you bleach your teeth if you have worn enamel, because bleaching gets rid of more of it. Or maybe they don't care about your enamel? Yeah, right,I scoff silently to myself. A dentist that doesn't care about teeth? That's about as likely as finding a lion who won't eat a warthog after starving to death in the desert. I giggle softly. Oh, God, Simba was so damn cute. But Mufasa... Tears begin to well up in my eyes. That was the saddest part of like the whole movie! I should watch that again sometime...
Meanwhile, as I'm contemplating The Lion King and kind of making plans to watch it, the receptionist is getting more and more frustrated. She coughs a few times, which has the desired effect: I snap out of my reverie and look around wildly, wondering what made the noise. My eyes drift down to the lady. Betty, I think to myself. She looks like a Betty. She looks like a pissed off Betty. I smile and laugh.
"I'm sorry," I say, shuffling my feet on the thick carpet. "But I'm, um-" I swallow hard- "I'm here to check myself in." I wince as soon as the words are out of my mouth, wishing that I could gather them up and run, run far away from here and not have to come back. I don't want to feel this woman's eyes drilling holes into my face and know that she is judging me on something that, yes, is my fault, but I am not to blame for. My eyes close as I wait for that awkward silence, the one that occurred each time I told a friend, or a family member, or a coworker that I was going to check myself into rehab. The pause of stale air before they fumbled for any face that didn't look contemptuous and tried to make their voices ooze as much sympathy as humanly possible. Whenever they'd tell me how brave I was, or how hard they understood it must be, I knew that if I just picked them up and squeezed, I could get a lot of sugary glaze to put on my Toaster Strudels. And then they'd pause, thinking about how to phrase "What are you addicted to?" in classy way. Then I would answer and no amount of quick thinking would be able to cover the look of disgust that would cross their faces. And, my own face burning with shame, I would nod and try to chuckle nonchalantly before bidding them a good day and making a hasty retreat to the nearest exit.
I'm fully prepared for this to happen. Everyone reacts the same. Who cares if this woman works at a rehab clinic? She probably judges more than anyone else because she sees how bad everyone really is. But the woman doesn't miss a beat. She doesn't even blink. She just keeps smiling at me. It's creeping me out a little bit and I think she realizes this, because the blinding grin lessens to a kinder, smaller smile. "Of course," she says, and I find myself smiling back slightly, thinking for the first time that maybe this experience won't be absolutely awful.
The woman reaches a hand out across the desk."My name is Susan," she says warmly. I stare at her hand. Slowly, I raise my own and grasp hers firmly.
"Jackie," I reply, my brain concentrating on shaking her hand and remembering my own name. "Jackie," I repeat, dazed. I shake my head slightly to clear it and smile at Susan in apology. "Jackie Quinn. Sorry about that. I drift off into my head sometimes."
"Quite alright," Susan reassures me. She begins typing and asking me questions about what brings me to them and how long do I plan on staying, things like that. I answer honestly, my face heating up with shame at several points. My brain flashes to Susan's first small smile and I remember what I felt when she smiled at me. Hope. For the first time in a very long while, I felt hope.
When Susan is done with filling out everything she needs, she calls over a tall black man with a mustache and hands him a key. "Please escort Jackie to her room," she orders pleasantly. The man smiles in response and nods to me.
"Follow me, Jackie, if you would be so kind." I turn to Susan and thank her before picking up my bags and walking after the man.
"Lionel, my name is," he says when I catch up to him.
"Hi, Lionel," I respond awkwardly. I bite my lip and gaze sideways at him. He isn't really my type, but right now, honestly anyone would do. We reach a door marked "2112" and Lionel inserts the key and turns it, then gives the door a slight push to open it. He gestures for me to enter first, so I do, and he follows.
The room is nice. It's small, but clean and tidy, much like the reception area. There's a chest of drawers with a mirror on top to the left of the door. Directly across there's a window with a single bed underneath it, and to the right of the door I walked in is another door. I set my bags down by the bed and walk over to the door and open it. Inside is a shower, sink, and toilet, with hardly any room left in between them to walk. I nod to myself. Small, but functionable. I back out and close the door, turning to see Lionel unzipping one of my two bags.
"Hey!" I cry. "What are you doing?" I rush over to him and try to snatch the suitcase away, but he blocks me with ease.
"Protocol, miss," he apologizes sympathetically. "We have to make sure that you don't have anything that is against the rules." He chuckles to himself. "Staying here is kind of like being at boarding school. You can't have anything deemed inappropriate or you'll get kicked out, we tell you when to eat, sleep, and what to do all day, and even if you hate it here and want to leave, we all know it will benefit you in the long run." He glances at me as he begins unpacking the first bag. "What are you here for, anyway?" He eyes my body up and down. "You look too healthy."
I blush scarlet and mumble a response. "What was that?" he asks. "Didn't quite catch it." My face turns even redder and I raise my voice slightly and repeat myself. Lionel grins momentarily before switching his giddy expression to a more neutral one. "Ah, now, that makes much more sense than you being a junkie." And in what would seem to be a perfectly natural movement, he twitches his arm so that the loose sleeve of his scrubs moves to reveal his thick biceps. My mouth goes dry and I tear my eyes away. Lionel chuckles again and pulls his sleeve back into place. "Oh, yes, this will be fun."
Twenty minutes later, I'm sitting on my bed and reading a pamphlet on the rules and regulations of the rehab place, when the door opens and an orderly with light brown hair and glasses pokes his head in. "Just to let you know," he says, "group therapy session starts in ten minutes. You're expected to be there." He pauses to let me speak, but I don't say anything. "Right," he continues. "Um, the room we'll be in today is down the hall and to the right. It says 'Room 3' in bold letters, you can't miss it." A loud shout from down the hallway catches his attention, followed by the sounds of something heavy falling to the ground. "Now what in the hell..." The man hurries away, and, curiosity peaked, I stand up and walk after him.
The sight I'm greeted with makes me laugh, for obvious reasons. A man with red dreadlocks and thin combover of four dreadlocks is fighting Lionel with a lamp. A freakin' lamp. He has two piercings in each of his eyebrows, sideburns, and a bright red goatee. He is also completely naked save for a blue elastic band on each wrist, with a shock of red pubic hair that looks scarily like his beard. I clamp a hand down over my mouth in an attempt to stifle my laughter.
The man who told me when to get to group rushes over to the red-haired man and attempts to grab the lamp from him, but he instead gets bashed in the face. Redhead raises it above his head and shouts what seems to be a war cry. The orderly stands up, blood gushing out of his nose.
"Come on now, Pickles," he yells frustratedly to the other man. "Put the fucking lamp down!"
"NO!" Pickles screams, "Naht until you geht me sum fuckin' booze!"
Pickles? I think to myself. That's a weird name. I notice that he has a strong Northern accent and wonder how the hell he ever got here.
While Pickles is being distracted by the brown-haired man, Lionel is inching his way across the floor to him, taser in hand. He reaches Pickles and jabs the taser into his leg, sending waves of electric current into his thin body. Pickles shrieks and collapses.
Lionel grabs a tissue and hands it to the man. "Thanks, Lionel," he says breathlessly as he twists it up and sticks it in his nose. Pickles stirs, recovering from the taser.
"No problem, Greg." Gazing down at Pickles' twitching form, Lionel sighs and says, "We should take him to his room and get him cleaned up, shouldn't we? Then he'll get to group in time." Greg nods and hoists him up. This jars Pickles awake and he instantly begins to flail around. Lionel grabs his other side and he and Greg half carry, half drag him down the hall, with him screaming and kicking all the while. He passes my door and for a split second our eyes make contact. I'm surprised and kind of scared by all the emotion I see in his bright green gaze. Even though he looks insane, it's obvious he's not. Unsettled, I close the door and go sit back on my bed and wait to go to group therapy session.
"Welcome," Dr. Meyers, an older man with a lined face and white hair, says when we're all seated in a semicircle around him. Lionel and Greg are also there behind him, lurking in the shadows. Probably there to make sure that none of us snap and try to kill each other- or worse, the doctor. I sneak a glance at Pickles sitting almost directly across from me. He's clothed now, in a cut off black t-shirt and black jeans, with black sneakers that have grungy white laces. He still has his dark blue wrist bands on. His arms are folded sullenly across his chest and he's glaring at the floor, clearly peeved by what happened earlier. Lionel and Greg are staring daggers at him though. I look away from him when Dr. Meyers begins to speak, before he notices me staring.
"You have several steps you need to complete," the doctor says, rushing on in to his speech without any preamble, "so you can get clean- get back on your feet."
"I don't need this; I don't need your fucking help," says a man sitting to the left of Pickles. He's wearing bright pink pajama bottoms and what looks like a woman's black camisole. "You are all stupid idiots, you can all go to hell."
Quickly, before the man's even finished saying it, Dr. Meyers is answering, "Shock 'em now!" Greg reaches forward and zaps the man with a taser. He twitches and falls out of his chair, crumpled into a little ball on the ground. "There is no escape. The same goes for all of you until I let you out of this place!"
I know my shocked look must show on my face, but I'm not the only one. Pickles looks at the doctor in surprise before his eyes narrow into a glare. Meyers keeps going, either not noticing or pretending he can't see the looks on our faces.
"Now, you all have problems, that the truth. You're narcissistic parasites but we can save you." He stands up and turns to Pickles. "But you gotta tell us why: all the reasons you got high. The reason that you used. The cause for your abuse! If we could could find out why, we could treat you inside. The action that we'll take! The way that you'll be saved!" He points a finger at Pickles. "Why did you drink?"
Pickles' face twists in concentration. "I drank because it's cool!" he yells.
"Why did you drink?!" the doctor asks again, more insistent.
"I drank because it tastes good!"
"Why did you abuse?!"
Pickles seems to frantically search his brain for an answer. "I really like the flavor!" he blurts out.
"That answer just won't do," Meyers says angrily.
"It'll have to do!" Pickles cries. He falls out of his chair and onto his knees, and raises his arms up into the air, his hands clenched into fists. "It'll have to do! It'll have to do!"
Meyers and the orderlies glare at him. "If you don't tell me what I need to hear, you'll never get clean, you'll always live in fear. You'll never go home, you'll be replaced in your band-"
"No!" Pickles cries.
(Band? I think. What band?)
"-Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes, I understand!"
"Tell me," the doctor says as Pickles begins to talk.
He has a look of pain on his face. "When I was a boy, I was traumatized. I was six years old, and my brother lied. He burned down the garage and he blamed it on me, and that was the first time I ever had a drink. I drank, I drank, I drank it all away. It's my brother's fault! It's my brother's fault! That's the reason that I drink!" Pickles slumps over in a defeated sort of way, and Dr. Meyers reaches forward and pats the redhead on his shoulder.
"You must forgive your brother," he says softly, with a note of finality.
Pickles looks up, a look of surprise on his face. "No way!" He stands up and looks around the room sheepishly. He rubs the back of his head with a hand. "I, uh, kinda fergaht that all of you guys were in here too. Please dohn't think of me as some sorta douchebahg." He stiffly nods to the group and sits back down in his chair.
Dr. Meyers, rubbing his temples wearily, asks, "Okay, so, does anyone volunteer?" When no one raises their hand, he sighs. "Okay, fine." He points to me. "You're new, right?" I nod and he continues, "Good. Show and tell." He drops into his chair.
I slowly stand up, breathing deeply. Everyone is staring at me curiously and I smile to them in what I hope is a friendly way. "Hi, I'm Jackie Quinn." I wave weakly.
"Welcome, Jackie," the group says in a collective monotone. One voice, though, rises above the rest, its strangeness a song. I glance at Pickles.
He's staring at me intently, he even leaned forward in his chair. Our eyes connect for the second time that day and once again the emotion I see surprises me. I feel like a wire has zapped my spine. It's almost like he can sense how nervous I am. He smiles slightly in a reassuring way and nods his head, giving me the okay. I nod back.
"So, my name is Jackie," I say again. My voice has lost its shakiness. "My name is Jackie, and I decided to check myself into rehab because I have a sex addiction." I pause and let the words sink in.
To my surprise though, no one even bats an eyelash.