Post-S3: Rehab, Day 12
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Tuesday, Jack told himself, looking at the date on the display of the electronic thermostat in his room. It was the only thing that let him keep track of time. The furniture was expensive but scarce, there was no decoration, no calender, no wall picture, nothing that an inmate could have used to hurt someone or theirselves. Ever since he had left CTU, days, weekends or time in general hadn't mattered to him. Every day had blurred into the next, sometimes he hadn't really been awake, but in some drug-induced delirium for days, sometimes he had driven through the night, looking for a dealer where he could get the good stuff. Pacoima would have been his grave, if Audrey hadn't taken him out of there. It was too easy to get the good stuff there.
It was quite some time ago, that he had cared about weekdays and weekends. The Salazars had had their rhythm. Sundays at their place were different from the other days. The few times he had been invited to their family get-togethers were the last 'typical weekends' he remembered. Not that he cherished them, no.
He had never cherished weekends, rather hated the forced smiles and hypocritical peace.
Here in this facility, there were no weekends either. People came and went. Nurses who sometimes gave him some methadone, when the cramps and the sickness had become unbearable. A doctor who had checked on his vitals once or twice but concluded that he needed no medical assistance.
The psychologist. Damn it. She was the toughest one of all. Her name was Angela Blake.
He didn't know how she did it, but they had talked every day, throughout the past week. Somehow she had managed to make him talk, even though he had used his classified time-out flag as often as possible.
Three days ago, he had seen her office for the first time. Before that, she had come to his room. Now after the first wave of withdrawal symptoms had gotten better, she had invited him to come to her office, which was just one floor below.
"How are you, Jack?", she asked him, like every time.
He thought about what to answer. Fine. That would be his usual answer, if anyone asked. He'd say he was fine, no matter how he really was.
Normally this answer served him well. It stopped people from asking further questions and that was usually all he wanted.
But it didn't work with Dr. Blake. The first time he'd told her he was fine she had asked him why he felt fine. He hadn't been able to come up with an answer. Because he was alive? No, being alive felt more like a nuisance then. Was he fine because back then he hadn't shot up in a week? No, that was nothing that made him feel fine- on the contrary, it was the reason why felt like hell.
"Alive.", he answered today. He'd had the time to think about what to say to her, because he already knew this would be her first question.
"Is that a good thing?", she asked.
He sat at the couch, looked out the window, thought about it a while, shrugged. "I am not sure."
"Sounds like you just haven't made up your mind about it."
"Maybe."
"So there are arguments for why it's good and why it's not?", she kept asking.
"Maybe." He wanted to say as little as possible. His counter-interrogation training helped. Back in Delta force they'd already trained him on how to survive interrogations. CIA initial training had brought it to the next level – they'd put him in a hostile environment and the trainers had been allowed to do much to him and his comrades. Five days, they had experienced how bad life could be. Torture. Degradation.
Above all, he had learned to endure silence. Anyone who asked a question would always wait for an answer. If there was no answer, the silence became unbearable after a while and the question-answer game turned into a staring contest. He'd always win that one.
"What's on the good list?", she had to ask.
It didn't take him long to find an answer. "It could be worse.", he told her.
"In what way could it be worse?"
"The withdrawal symptoms have gotten a lot better."
"I'm glad to hear that. When was the last time you were sick?"
"Yesterday morning."
She noted it in her file. "And before that?"
"Three days ago."
"Any methadone since?"
"No."
She wrote that down in his patient's file. A few days ago, he had seen his 'file' for the first time, when she asked him some banalities like his age or whatever. The form had had nothing on it but his name and a signature on the bottom, where it said Audrey Raines. Audrey must have filled it out – well, his name. Her handwriting was pretty, dynamic, typically female. He liked her handwriting. She had filled out nothing but his name and her signature. Obviously she didn't know what to write because she didn't know anything about him.
He had to smile when he thought about it, as Dr. Blake turned the page on his file and he spotted Audrey's handwriting again. Audrey knew so much about him – more than anyone else, he felt. She didn't know his date of birth, his address or his phone number. In the end, that didn't matter anyway. She knew some things that nobody else knew.
What was she actually? A friend? Yes. A one-night stand? Yes. She was more than that, but he didn't know how to put it in words. He'd seen from the very first moment on that she was a classy woman. She was way out of his league. The way she had touched his gun, two weeks ago, like she was afraid of hurting herself, showed him that she had no connections to the world he had been living.
He couldn't really put it into words what she was to him. There was for sure not one single word out there in the English language that could describe how he felt about Audrey. He admired her. When she'd stepped out of the car down in Pacoima, his jaw had dropped. She looked stunning. That blonde hair, the white blouse, the tight skirt… he even knew how her body looked like, beneath these clothes. Simply breathtaking.
But he wasn't so sure how she felt about their one-night stand. The morning thereafter, he had gotten the feeling that she wasn't comfortable with having slept with him or having had a one-night encounter. That's one of the reasons why he would have never called her. Everyone does things one in a while that they'll later regret or be ashamed of. He knew that just too well. Walk away. Forget it. After the wonderful hours that they'd spent, he'd surely do her the favor of walking away silently and making it easier for her to forget her slip.
Ever since she had shown up in Pacoima, he wasn't so sure any more about his initial assessment. Why had she come back? He hadn't dared to ask her. Two weeks ago, his mind had been so occupied with drugs that he hadn't even given it much thought. Now, as the only thing on his mind wasn't only where to get the next shot, Audrey found her way back into his thoughts.
"What are you thinking about?", Dr. Blake asked him.
"Huh?" She had ripped him out of his thoughts. He had thoroughly forgotten where he was or for how long they had both not said a word.
"What were you thinking about?", she repeated her question.
"Classified." He led his usual trump.
"I see. So you're sitting there, thinking about classified stuff… and nevertheless there's a big smile on your face. Your job can't have been that bad.", she summarized, half jokingly, to tell him that he could see through his classified lie.
He decided not to fall for her trick to make him talk. Had he really smiled? That had become rare, lately.
"I'd like to move to the next level, Jack", she said, "you've been clean for almost two weeks now. It's time to share your success with the people you love. Friends. Family."
"You really think this is a success?" He experienced a lot of conflicting feelings lately, but success was not amongst them.
"Isn't it?"
"No." Sitting here, in a rehab facility, his biggest achievement being that he hadn't had access to drugs for the past two weeks – that didn't feel like success. He hadn't managed to get away from the drugs by himself. Being here in this facility meant failing. It had taken Audrey to drag him here. It had taken these people here to drain the drugs out of his body.
It was one of the rare occasions in which he realized how much he hated it to accept help… or be in a position to admit that he needed help.
"What would need to happen to make it a success?", she asked.
He shrugged. "The shit has already hit the fan. There's no way to turn this into a success story."
"Then let's set a lower goal: isn't there anyone who might be worried about you? They haven't heard anything from you in two weeks. Maybe at least you want to tell them that you're still alive."
She was right. There was nothing one could add to that. Kim deserved to hear that he was okay. After he had left CTU, he had told her he needed time to deal with his issues and she had accepted that he wanted no help, because she knew him. That had been almost a month ago. More than two weeks ago, he'd called her from a payphone, that had been the last time.
Of course she had asked him how he was doing. He had said better, he had lied that he was already going through detox. Wishful thinking. No, be honest: a blunt lie, to make her stop asking questions. He had felt bad about lying to her, so bad that he went right back to the den and almost OD'd that night.
Kim.
Damn it. Of all people out there, she was the one who he had disappointed most. Years ago they'd had the talk about drugs, which every parent and their children had at one point. She'd brought home a pack of cigarettes, hidden in her schoolbag.
Two months ago, as everyone at CTU had found out about his issues… looking into her eyes after that was one of the worst moments he had ever had. It felt like being put naked in front of a big audience, the speaker saying: look, there's the one who failed.
She hadn't said much. She had pitied him, like everyone else. He hated that.
Somehow he had managed to avoid her in the weeks thereafter, by reassuring her that he was doing everything he could to get clean. Most of the time she was at hospital anyway, visiting Chase, or taking care of little Angela.
He had slipped away from her, just enough to hide what he was still doing.
As he stood in front of the payphone, an hour later, in the hallway of the rehab clinic, he thought a moment, if he should really call her. What to say? Apologize? Be honest and confess to her that he'd been lying to her, two weeks ago, but now he wasn't? How convincing.
He finally threw in a quarter and dialed her number, getting more tensed up at every ring.
She didn't pick up.
After the sixth ring, he hung up the receiver and was thoroughly glad that life had taken that decision away from him, that he didn't have to talk to her now.
As he went back into his room, the overly nice lady from the reception desk – he still didn't know her name – approached him, a little package in her hands. "That arrived for you.", she said.
"For me?" He took it out of her hands. Strange. Nobody knew he was here. Well… no one but Audrey. Could that really be...?
It was a little package only, six by four inches, maybe two thick. It didn't weigh much.
He thanked the lady and took it with him. Looks like they hadn't even opened it up to search it – if someone had sent him drugs.
As he returned to his room, he opened it up and found a phone in the package, along with a handwritten note. It was just a phone number, nothing else was written on the note.
But he recognized that handwriting immediately.
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