Rehab was all right. I guess.
My doctor was Dr. Friedman. We met every day. She smelled like campfire.
Technically the Center for New Beginnings wasn’t even really rehab, though I would never tell Seemy that. She’d never let me forget it if she found out I went to rehab lite, or that I kind of liked it. What kind of loser likes fake rehab? The thing is, once I stopped feeling like my guts had been pulled out through my nose, the feeling I had most when I first got there was relief. There was no one to perform for at New Beginnings. There wasn’t anybody I had to be other than myself. And it wasn’t like I had to go through some trite I don’t even know who I am! type thing. I knew who I was. I just didn’t know who I was without Seemy. I had six weeks to find out.
“Seemy says I’m just having a little Nanapocalypse.”
Dr. Friedman raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything, which meant she wanted me to keep talking. Instead I stared at her eyebrows. They were furry and wild and almost met in the middle of her face, and I’d gotten really attached to them in my three days at New Beginnings. I wanted to know if they were long enough to braid, and I admired her for keeping them wild. Most people couldn’t pull a look like that off without looking unkempt, but Dr. Friedman had an amazing superhero-size chin that balanced her eyebrows perfectly. She favored oversize, deconstructed sweaters and skirts in muted purples and olive green, and tasseled scarves as big as tablecloths wrapped around and around her neck, making a little nest for her giant chin.
We sat in her office, which she’d outfitted with lots of tapestry throw pillows in earth tones. And ferns. Lots of ferns. There was a burnt-orange rug with fibers so long it bordered on shag. The wooden shelves were lined with clothbound books and exotic-looking knickknacks. She kept the overhead light off, used lamps with heavy shades instead. The place was so pointedly warm and inviting it put me to sleep the first time I came in. Then again, I think I may still have been drunk.
I got tired of staring at her eyebrows and shifted in my chair, the movement pulling at the stitches in my forehead. I winced, ran my fingers lightly over them, trying to count the raised ridges of surgical thread.
“Do your stitches hurt?” Dr. Friedman finally asked.
I smirked at her. “Would you give me something if they did?”
“I can ask the shift supervisor to give you Tylenol.”
“With codeine?” I asked, with fake hope.
“What do you think?”
I shrugged, ran my fingers over the stitches again. “I thought they’d be bigger.”
The eyebrows went back up, and she waited for me to continue.
“They said I had fourteen stitches. I thought it’d look more impressive or something.”
“Impressive to whom?”
I cleared my throat to keep from groaning aloud. “Me. Nobody. Everybody. I don’t know.”
“What about Seemy, your friend you just mentioned? Would you want them to impress her?”
“Best friend,” I corrected her, even though I wasn’t sure it was true anymore. She waited for me to continue. I wondered if she ever counted up the minutes she spent waiting for people to keep talking. I wondered if she could fall asleep with her eyes open. “And I don’t know . . . I guess.”
“You guess what?”
“I guess it’d be cool if my stitches impressed her.” I squirmed a little in my chair, uncomfortable with the honesty.
“Why is that?”
“Because maybe then she’d believe I need to be here.”
“She doesn’t believe you need help?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t drink as much as she does. She thinks I’m a fake.”
“A fake what?”
Her question caught me off guard, and I laughed uncomfortably. “That’s a really good question. Um . . . a fake drunk? A fake friend? I don’t know. . . .” I trailed off, and we sat there in silence for a long time. “She wants me to be dangerous. Wants us to be dangerous,” I finally said.
“Dangerous how?”
“The way we dress, the way we act, the way we drink. Everything. But it’s never enough. I’m never dangerous enough to keep her.”
“To keep her what?”
I looked at Dr. Friedman. “Just to keep her. Interested. Happy. I don’t know.”
“And this is the friend who gave your overdose a nickname?”
I shifted in my seat. “It sounds stupid when you say it.”
“And how does it sound when you say it?”
“Funny.”
Dr. Friedman nodded. “And sitting here, with me, do you find this funny?”
Part of me wanted to laugh, just because she looked so serious when she asked the question. But I told the truth instead. “It’s not funny at all.”
“Well,” she said, smiling so wide her eyebrows stretched out. “That’s a start.”