Chapter 6: All it does is Rain
I packed my bags to head to Seattle, okay the only reason I was going was because Doug had sent the ticket otherwise I probably would have never gone myself. This wasn't like me just dropping everything and leaving town. Granted though I didn't have much that I was leaving behind. I had been trying to get my job back, or rather a job back at CHOP for awhile now and every day it was the same story that they didn't have any space due to budget cutbacks that was the reason that they gave me when they "fired" me.
The flight wasn't as long as I thought it would have been and before I knew it, mostly because I slept for the majority of the trip I was landing at Sea-Tac airport in Washington State. I debarked the plane when it had stopped and headed for the area where you could meet incoming passengers, at least I thought that's where Doug was going to meet me. That was about the only place where he could have met me.
"Anna!" I heard a voice calling to me.
I looked for it and finally managed to spot Doug in the sea of people, he really hadn't changed all that much in the 16 months that I hadn't seen him. "Hey Doug." I hoped I looked better than I felt, but I knew that I still had those dark bags under my eyes and looked pretty worn down. I think that in the 16 months I had aged about 12 years.
Once we were near each other Doug greeted me with a hug and a soft kiss on the cheek, "it's good to see you, hope that your flight was okay." He took my bag from my shoulder without saying anything about it and took my hand as he started to lead me out of the airport, "you look exhausted, do you want to grab a bite to eat someplace or just head back to my house and get some sleep?"
I didn't think that right now was the time to tell him about my new liquid diet, "food sounds good, I slept on the plane, for most of the trip over actually, we can grab something to eat that would be great." I said to him as we headed through the airport and towards where he had parked his jeep.
"Dinner it is then." He said as we both got into the jeep and he started to drive, "I know this great little place, it's not crowded give us a chance to talk a little while we eat." His attention was on the traffic now but I knew that he was worried from the way that his voice sounded as he talked to me, "it will take us about 20 minutes to get there. Hope your not starving."
"No not starving." I answered him back. Conversation wasn't something that I had been having much of lately, at least not while I was completely sober, and since I had managed to sleep on the plane I missed cocktail call. Which hadn't made me happy, sober yes, happy no.
It took us 15 minutes to get there; I guess traffic wasn't as bad as Doug was expecting it to be. We got out and I followed him inside where he got us a table and we were seated. Doug got us a couple of beers before he started conversation again.
"I have to admit, you're not looking all that great Anna, no offense." He said looking at me.
"I've had a rough few weeks Doug, kind of takes a toll on someone after awhile, I'll be fine." That wasn't very reassuring, or it didn't seem that way to me.
"Yeah I'm sure." He said his eyes not leaving me as we sat there. "You said you got fired?"
"Yeah budget cuts at the hospital and they needed to let some people go, I just happened to be one of them." I said, "they might have a spot for me in a few weeks, as an attending there, nothing like what I was doing but it's work."
"That's a good thing; here I thought you had gotten fired for something else." No beating around the bush for him.
"Nope no other reason other than budget cuts." I said as I finished off the beer that he had put in front of me, motioning for another one out of habit, "sorry if I gave you the impression that it was something else."
"Yeah well you did give me that impression and from the way that you look right now I think that I have every reason to be concerned about you." He said.
"Why," I said, "I just hit a rough spot and it's starting to pass, I'm fine Doug there's no reason to worry." Worry was exactly what everyone at this point should have been doing but no one really seemed to care anymore and my thought were if they didn't care why should I.
"Oh I'm sure that it passes, what after a fifth of gin or maybe it's after a nice shot of something, Demerol, morphine, Dr. Del Amico could probably get her hands on whatever she wanted to ease her pain and suffering."
"I told you I was tempted, and that's it, I never crossed that line." I knew that I was talking about the drugs more than the alcohol at that point, but the last time I checked it wasn't illegal to drink to one's heart's content.
"I believe that your words were temptation is a hard thing to resist." He pointed out to her, "someone's got to care about you, even if it is just me from the other side of the country. You should see what you actually really look like right now Anna, it's not pretty."
"Oh so this trip here, sending me a plane ticket, that's you way of pulling some kind of unneeded and unwanted intervention?" I said to him now getting upset but not showing it, over the past few weeks I had gotten very good at hiding my emotions from those who were around me.
"Yeah you could say that. I'm sure that you can't see the trouble that you are headed for."
"I'm not headed for any trouble Doug. I'm not doing anything that is against the law." I respond in my defense.
The waiter set another beer down in front of me and Doug looked at it and then looked at me. "No, you might not be doing anything that's illegal but that doesn't mean that you are not getting into any kind of trouble."
"I have everything under control." That was my response to that.
"If it's under control then you won't mind me taking this." He reached across the table for the beer and my hand shot out touching his.
"If you want another one, then get one." I say to him. "There's nothing wrong with having a couple of beers every now and then."
"Depends on how you define every now and then." Doug said giving me a very serious look, "every couple of hours, every couple of days, every couple of weeks, every now and then can be defined many ways."
"Get to the point Doug." I snap a little at him now.
"Anna we all get into trouble every now and then and we are usually the last ones to see it." He said his hand now resting on mine, "sometimes it takes a friend to see when another friend's sinking fast and to throw them a lifeline before they screw up their live so bad that there is no going back." He took a breath in and I just kept my eyes focused on him as he spoke. "You're starting to go down a path that leads only two places, neither place is a place that I can guarantee that you want to be. One path leads to hitting rock bottom and having to claw your way back up to the top, fighting to get everything that you once held dear to you back. Once you hit that bottom your family, your friends, they will never look at you the same way again. The second place that path could end is the morgue, a body bag with a tag on your toe that says who you are, if they figure that one out. You will either end up killing yourself, and there will be several ways that could happen some not so pretty, or you will end up killing someone else and wish for every day for the rest of your life that it was you. Because that guilt will never go away and will never ease up."
Doug wasn't painting a very pretty picture at the moment and in a way I knew that he was probably right but didn't want to listen to it. "I'm sure that is true for most people Doug." I said, "for those who decide to take one of those two paths, but you see my friend I am not on either one of those right now, and haven't made the decision that I am going to take either one of them."
"That's where you are wrong." He said to me again, "you made the choice to go down one of those two paths when you got drunk that first time after the bad things started happening. You decided that you weren't going to take the medications to ease the pain but you were going to drink it away, take the legal option, yet in the end you are still throwing it all away, it's just that this way is a lot harder to see than the other way."
"I'm not doing that." Denial was a hard emotion to get rid of.
"Yes you are." He said trying to force the truth down my throat, "you can't see it but I can. Look at you, you look like you haven't slept in weeks, the dark circles under your eyes, they are there, your cheeks are sunk in, you've lost weight and a lot of it." He said looking at me intensely now. "When I got to you at the airport your hands were beginning to shake and I know that you are not nervous, you could see that you weren't. Those were tremors, shakes that are easing up now that you have more alcohol in your system. I'm not telling you that you are a drunk, just telling you how I see it, and trust me Anna; you are not the first person that I have known to take that road. I grew up with an alcoholic."
"I am not an alcoholic." I regret the implication that he thinks that I am one, "I had a few drinks when my dad died; I had a few drinks when I lost my job, when my husband and I have had a nasty fight, but that doesn't mean that I am a drunk."
"You can't stop anymore can you; I'm just going to have one, turns into two, which results in half the bottle or the whole thing. No one is around when you drink; you are hiding from everyone when you do it. Slipping it into your morning coffee thinking that no one will know. It might look like a glass of water and if no one tries to drink from it they won't know that you are drinking vodka straight from the bottle now."
I was silent now I didn't know what to say or if I should even say anything. I didn't have a defense to that one, when you were caught you were caught and it was just a matter of time before they made you see the truth, that is if you were willing to listen to them.
"I want to help Anna, that's why I had you come up here. I could tell that you were in trouble or heading for trouble and I don't want to see that happen to you." He said to me now. "Everyone needs help from their friends; let me give it to you. I have this feeling that no one back home knows about this, either that or they don't want to see it, but I can, and I want to do what I can to make sure that nothing bad happens to you."
I just nod, I can't find words right now, it's not that I want to be silent but what do you say when someone calls you out like that, when they don't give you the chance to back out to cover your butt and make excuses.
The next thing I knew was that Doug had our dinner to go and we were headed back to his house, it was going to be a long trip to Seattle but in the end I knew that whatever he could do to help get me over this, through the rough spot that I had found myself in, was worth it. I was drowning and could find my way back to the surface. I needed help and was finally willing to take it from a dear friend.