Title: Day 29
Author: GatorGrrrl
Fandom: Drake & Josh
Pairing: None. Gen fic.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,270
Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. No profit being made, no offense intended.
Spoilers: None.
Notes/Warnings: angst, implied drug use, more angst, bad words, even more angst
Summary: The day he leaves rehab, it rains.
A/N: I can't sleep. This is the result. You have been warned.
Day 29
The day he leaves rehab, it rains.
He can hear it against the glass and on the roof when he wakes up. The light filtering in around the curtains is gray and washes the worn linoleum in a hue of sickly beige that reminds him of one of Dr. Benson's emotion exercises.
If your feelings were a color, what color would they be?
He'd snorted at that one. Baby shit yellow, he'd told her. With just a hint of vomit puce.
That had been Day 8.
*
He gets high the day he checks into the Williamson Clinic. Shoots up in the tiny bathroom on the train, finishing the last of his stash as the tracks vibrate beneath his feet. It's a long ride to Arizona and he doesn't really feel like sliding into the beginning throes of withdrawal next to a little old lady in a cat sweater reading a battered Danielle Steele novel.
The cab ride leaves him nearly broke and a man named Evan meets him at the front door. Smiles at him like they're old friends, like his arrival at the clinic is all the guy needs to make his day complete.
He wants to bolt, but Evan's grip on his elbow is firm and unyielding.
He wants to get high. He's already feeling shaky—the hum of need like white noise at the base of his brain. Marty's number rattles around inside his skull and he fingers his cell phone inside his pocket.
Lori takes it from him. First thing.
*
The sheets are smooth. Not a crease in sight. He's tempted to bounce his lucky quarter off them just for shits and giggles, but doesn't. They're just going to strip the bed anyway, after he's gone. Haul the sheets down to the laundry room and bleach the fuck out of them. As if addiction is contagious.
Maybe it is. Sometimes it feels like a virus.
"Come on, man. A little bit won't kill you."
No. But a lot will. And almost did. More than once.
*
He can't sit still. That's how it starts.
Lamar, his first roommate, is on Day 18. He wears a blue wristband to show his progress. Different colors mean different privileges, apparently. Blue means free use of the commissary.
Munching on a bag of Cheetos, Lamar watches wordlessly as the first stages of withdrawal begin, a knowing look settling behind his green eyes.
His own wristband is white. White paper. White powder. White plunger on the hypodermic.
*
Nate pops his head in the room and gives him a toothy smile. "I hear you're getting paroled today," he says. "Lucky fuck."
Parole. Is that what this is? Feels more like being cut loose and left to drift on an endless sea.
There are sharks everywhere.
*
He's dying. Or at least, he wishes he would. Both ends. It's coming out both ends. And he wonders how that's even possible since he can't remember ingesting anything beyond tepid water and smack for the last two weeks.
Maybe his insides are melting and slowly leaking out.
The white wristband is splashed with puke.
*
Marnie, the daytime nurse, drops in to take his blood pressure. Makes him sit down in the straight-backed wooden chair next to the now empty dresser and roll up his left sleeve.
Her hands are cold, just like always, and he smiles at the familiarity of it.
Cold hands, warm heart, he thinks, and nearly rolls his eyes at the Hallmark sentimentality of it.
He stares at his duffel bag full of clothes that finally fit him again and hears his stomach growl.
*
By Day 6, he's over the worst of it. His bones still ache and there are three blankets on his bed, but he eats the bowl of chicken soup they bring him and manages to keep it down.
Progress, he thinks, and recites Marty's number again. Just in case.
*
"Dr. Benson wants to see you before you leave," Marnie tells him.
This time he does roll his eyes. "What does she want to know now?" he asks. " 'If I could be any kitchen utensil, which one would I be and why?' "
Marnie laughs. "Don't let her hear you talk like that," she says. "She still has to sign off on your chart before you can be discharged."
"Maybe I don't want to leave," he says, only half-joking. "Maybe I want to stay here with you. I remember you giving me one hell of a sponge bath."
Marnie pushes him playfully, her small hand pressing into his chest. "That was Chuck," she says. "Not me."
He laughs and hopes she can't hear the panic behind it. "A funnel."
She wrinkles her forehead at him.
"I'd be a funnel," he says. " 'Cause it helps direct fluids through a small opening." Then he winks at her.
*
His wristband is green. Greens means go. As in to the bathroom by himself. He never thought it would be such a big deal to take a piss by himself, but the slide of the lock on the stall door sounds like a symphony to his ears.
Even when he's done, he just stands there, staring into the bowl.
Back at his apartment, there's a bag of heroin taped to the inside of the toilet tank lid.
It's Day 10.
*
DR. SANDRA BENSON, it says in neat white lettering on the nameplate perched on the edge of her desk. He's stared at the letters a thousand times, tracing them with his eyes, forming words from the various letters, like an anagram.
BAD RAN NERD SONS
SANDBAR ENDS NOR
BARON DARN SENDS
"Are you ready to go home?" she asks into the silence.
He snaps his head up to look at her across the neat expanse of her Ikea desk. It's all clean lines and shabby chic and he realizes he's never actually looked at it before. Just the nameplate. Trying to make something new out of something that already exists.
"I'm clean," he says.
"For now," she says.
He feels anger beneath the panic. His heart thumps in his chest. "It's been twenty-eight days," he says.
She tilts her head. "And counting."
There's heroin in his toilet at home and Marty's number inside his head. Still. Area code 323.
*
A red wristband means phone privileges. Lori watches him pick up the phone—one of those standard ones with a short twisted cord so he can't wander off and talk in private. Nothing's private in this place.
He dials the first number he thinks of. 3-2-3…
Hangs up. Looks at Lori and tries to smile. She knows. He knows she knows.
He tries again, the receiver heavy against his sweaty palm. Thinks about calling his brother but can't remember the number. It's just as well.
*
"Who's coming to pick you up?" Dr. Benson asks.
"Yellow Cab," he answers. "Door-to-door service." He plays it off like it doesn't mean anything that he's walking back into the world alone.
The doctor frowns, the action deepening the laugh lines around her mouth. He supposes they're really frown lines, then, but he's not sure. He wants to ask her what she thinks, but doesn't.
"How do you feel?" she asks.
He thinks about it for a moment. Finally says, "Vermillion."
*
Rodney's pacing, wearing a trail in the linoleum from one end of the room to the other. He's got a white wristband.
His own is blue. Blue is better. Blue means pretzels. And cheese puffs. And Mountain Fizz in crack-like quantities. He likes blue. It's his favorite color.
He asks Tyrell if he wants to play poker. Texas hold 'em. Pretzels are worth five dollars. Cheese puffs, ten. Tyrell smiles and settles his gigantic body down across the table. Grabs the cards and starts to deal.
Rodney can't sit down.
*
"Yo, man," Tyrell says, clapping one meaty hand on his back. His sweatshirt says 'Phoenix Suns' across the chest. "I hear you're leaving us today."
"So they tell me," he says. "But I demand a recount."
Ty's thousand-watt smile flickers a little at the corners. "You'll do fine. Just take it one day at a time, you know? Put one foot in front of the other."
" 'The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step'?"
Ty's grin widens again. "Something like that."
*
Day 17 is a Monday. Group session. Sharing and caring and all that shit.
"I never thought I'd ever be an addict," Veronica says. She has red hair the color of old pennies and freckles that look painted on. She reminds him of the girl on the Wendy's sign.
Frosty, he thinks. He could go for one of those.
When it's his turn, he looks around the circle. He finally settles his gaze on Jacob, the meth head who sucked cock for drug money.
He wants to think he's better than all of them. But he's not.
"I stole my mom's engagement ring on Christmas Day and pawned it to buy heroin," he tells them. It's the first real truth he's shared with the group.
Something uncoils a little inside his chest.
*
The porch roof is metal and the rain pings sharply above his head as he waits for the cab. The clinic is set far back from the road and he lets his eyes scan the long drive towards the road that lies beyond. The road. He hasn't seen it for twenty-eight days.
Maybe, he thinks, it's just a mirage. Like trees in a desert.
*
He's puking again. He feels shaky inside, like a snow globe in the hands of a four-year-old, and he huddles on the tile floor, the rim of the porcelain bowl cool against his palms. He can feel the grout lines through his jeans and the yellow wristband is a slash of color in his peripheral vision.
Full privileges. That's what yellow means.
It's Day 28.
*
He sees a dark speck turn onto the drive and his fingers close around the handles of his duffel bag. This is it. Sayonara. Thanks for the laughs. Best of luck. We'll bill you.
Forty-six dollars and his lucky quarter. That's all the money he has to his name. It'll get him to the train station, but not much farther. The train ticket he bought was round-trip—5:22pm to Los Angeles.
This time tomorrow, he'll be back in his old life.
*
He brushes his teeth for the last time in front of the little mirror over the middle sink in the men's room and rinses his mouth out with a handful of water.
The yellow wristband still hugs his wrist. He stares at it.
Evan said he can take it off, but he thinks he'll keep it for a while. He thinks yellow just might be his new favorite color.
*
The car's halfway down the drive when he notices that there's no 'Taxi' sign on the roof. He relaxes, the handles slipping from his fingers.
Another addict, he thinks. Another Humpty Dumpty carrying their shattered pieces in an old suitcase.
He tries to guess. Coke, maybe. Or meth. Or something more hip, like Oxycontin. Or maybe just another smack head. Like him.
It's a dark blue sedan. A Nissan. Middle class suburbia. Maybe they're an alkie. He hasn't met too many of them over the last twenty-eight days. There was Susan. And Mark. But that was it. Williamson's specialty is the hard stuff. The tough nuts. They leave the drunks to Betty Ford.
He looks away as the car approaches. He doesn't really want to see another set of empty eyes; not when he's still trying to figure out how he's going to face his own every day for the next sixty years.
The car comes to a stop in front of the steps and the engine cuts off. A door opens, closes. Heavy footsteps thump up the four steps and stop.
Where's Evan? Evan always greets the newbies. He's the face of hope around this place. Used to be an inmate here once upon a time. Knows what it's like to want to sell your soul for the next hit.
Something seizes in his chest a second before he hears his name.
His head snaps up. Drake is standing on the porch with rain in his hair and a ring of keys dangling from his right index finger.
Josh stares at him, his eyes locking onto Drake's across the space. His chest aches with something he doesn't want to feel, but it hurts anyway. "I sold your guitar to buy heroin," he says, because it's the one thing he's been wanting to say for a while now.
"I know," Drake says.
The rain is still pinging on the roof.
"I'm sorry." The words hurt, scraping over his tongue like industrial sandpaper.
Drake bites the inside of his bottom lip and nods. Pulls his face back under control and says, "Evan called me. Why didn't you?"
Josh just looks at him. "I didn't think you'd want to talk to me."
Drake almost laughs, but it's a broken sound. A half-smile slips from his lips as quickly as it formed. "I miss talking to you."
Josh can't breathe, feels the prickle of tears behind his eyes and presses his hands to them. Drake's here. He's not alone after all.
There's a hand in his hair and the spark of an old connection warms his blood. He looks up, feels the slide of fingers against his scalp as they fall away.
"Let's go home, Josh."
The End