LEXIE
Another week passes before Luke calls to tell me that Annie is ready for a visit.
Daisy is now four weeks old. She is finally tapering down on the morphine. The first few times her doctors tried, she got sick again, and had to step back up to a higher dose. But she’s making steady progress at last, and she’s finally gaining weight. Her face has filled out, and the agonized cry is softening—now, when she’s due a dose of her opiates, she cries as if she’s a normal newborn.
Daisy changes a little every single day. Her wellness seems to be approaching in slow motion, but then other times I look at the clock and realize how many days have passed and how much Annie has already missed, and I wonder how on earth she will ever catch up. I take hundreds of photos. My phone is never far from my hand, ready to record any positive moment, no matter how small. When I look back at my camera roll some nights with Sam, he teases me for being overzealous.
“It’s like you’re doing one of those time-lapse films,” he says with a laugh.
But I’m achingly aware that I’m not just standing in for Annie’s arms and warmth, but also her eyes and ears. At first, I observe Daisy with just a little clinical detachment. But then I start to sink under her spell, and soon I’m riding the waves of it all, so invested in her progress that her every achievement becomes mine.
I wake in the morning and Annie is the first thing I think of, but thoughts of Daisy follow close behind. Will I feel the curl of her fingers around mine? Or will today be all about her distress, and will my only reward be the way she nestles into me for comfort?
When Luke calls to arrange my visit, he tells me that I can’t bring Daisy. He’s worried that her presence at this early stage would be too destabilizing. It’s a moot point anyway—she hasn’t been discharged from the NICU. So I make the drive out to the clinic alone. A nurse takes my handbag, jewelry and mobile phone and secures them in a locker. Then I’m taken through the living space—a large, open area with a big-screen TV at the front and a variety of couches, and past it, to the dining room.
Annie is waiting at a table far away from the other residents. She shoots to her feet when she sees me. I walk faster—then I jog until I reach her, and then when she’s within arm’s reach, I clasp her shoulders and stare at her. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, but her pupils are a normal size, and I realize that she’s simply been crying.
“Are you okay?” I whisper. Annie’s expression crumples and she shakes her head.
“No, I’m not okay. I hate it here.” Her voice breaks as she speaks, and the sound reminds me so much of that agonized cry that I’ve been listening to Daisy make for all of these weeks. I clamp my arms around my sister and I pull her close against me, just as I’ve been doing with Daisy.
“You’re over the worst of it, Annie.”
She is shaking within the circle of my arms, her frail body trembling against mine. I pull her toward the plastic chairs and position us side by side. She complies, but doesn’t remove her face from my shoulder—she’s still sobbing quietly into my neck. I hold her for a while as I try to think of something wise to say.
The thing is, I’m all out of wisdom, if I ever had any to offer her in the first place. Nothing I’ve ever said to her has helped, not one bit.
“How is Daisy?” she croaks after a while.
I drop the package of photos onto the table and she reaches for it greedily. As she opens the envelope, noisy sobs burst from her mouth. She spreads the photos all over the table and presses her hands over her mouth.
“She’s so much better, isn’t she? Her little cheeks...those gorgeous little cheeks...”
“She’s weaning now, and it’s going really well.”
“I’m only here for her. I’d have left a dozen times already but for her.”
“She’s a good enough reason to stay, Annie.”
“She really is.”
After the initial burst of emotion, the photos seem to calm Annie, and I steal a few glances to assess her. She’s still skin and bones, still incredibly pale, and quite teary—but although she might not realize it yet, she’s definitely in better shape than she was a few weeks ago.
“So you went cold turkey, huh?” I ask her after a while. She shrugs.
“I needed to prove to myself that I could do it.”
“And you did.”
“I did, but the work is only just beginning.”
“Surely after what that detox felt like, everything else will seem manageable?”
“You’d think so, huh?” She laughs, but it’s a biting sound—bitterness and anger are right below the surface. “But now I’m doing this intensive therapy with Luke. I really liked him for the first few days—we did the usual sobriety stuff, debriefed the detox... I’ve heard it all before. But now, he wants to talk about every fucking moment of my life between birth and right now and he’s such a hard-ass—he gets pissed off when I don’t want to talk about things, and shuts the session down like he’s having a fucking tantrum.”
“What things are you talking about?” I ask gently, and she frowns at me.
“He’s my therapist, Lexie. If I can’t talk to him about it, why would I talk to you?”
“I...” I’m startled, and I pause before I shrug. “I don’t know. I just want to help, I guess.”
“You’re doing enough. I can’t keep relying on you to fix me every time I fuck up. If I’m going to be a good mom, I have to learn to face my problems myself.”
“And so... Luke is pressuring you to talk about things you don’t want to talk about, but you know you need to if you’re going to get on top of this—is that what you’re saying?”
Tears fill her eyes, and she shakes her head and admits in a whisper, “I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m so tired and so confused. I just know that I hate it here and I should be with my baby.”
I stay for almost two hours. I try to fill her in on the days of Daisy’s life that she’s missed—but it’s difficult to keep the conversation positive when so many of those days have just been hard. I wish I had some tangible milestone to report that doesn’t involve her morphine dosage—but Daisy isn’t even smiling yet, so I can only talk about the improvement in her symptoms.
When the time comes for me to leave, Annie cries some more, and thanks me for coming.
“Hang in there?” I ask her tentatively.
She looks at me helplessly. “Do I have a choice?”
* * *
Four days later, I’m driving home from the hospital when my phone rings. It’s the rehab clinic, and I answer it anxiously.
“It’s me,” Annie croaks down the line. I can tell immediately that she’s been crying. I clutch the steering wheel harder, until my knuckles turn white.
“What happened?”
“How is Daisy?”
I notice that she’s deflected my question. But it must be a good sign, if she’s been granted access to the phone?
“She had a good day today—one of the best she’s had yet.” I take a deep breath, and ask again, “So—what’s going on?”
“I can’t stay here, Lexie.”
I pull to the side of the road. My stomach lurches and I think for a minute I’m going to be sick. I close my eyes and breathe carefully—purposefully, trying to calm myself.
It’s like I’m living a flashback to the last time this happened, and the time before that—and those earlier times, I really thought that Annie completing rehab was the most important thing in the world. I couldn’t even imagine back then how much higher the stakes could actually be.
“Annie,” I say, very slowly and very carefully. “You have to stay. You have to complete the program. For Daisy, remember?”
“You don’t understand, Lexie. They are picking on me. Luke is such an asshole, and no one here likes me, and it’s just not working. The scar still hurts from her birth all of the time, and I can’t forget even for a second of the day that I’m here and not with her where I belong.” Her voice increases in pitch and volume. I let her speak, waiting patiently for the rush of energy to fade. As I sit in my car by the side of the highway, my hand is pressed over my mouth to hold in the sobs. It is too hard to talk to her when she’s like this. I know from experience that there is nothing I can say to calm her. “Would you just say something?” she exclaims eventually.
I bite my lip, and I admit in a hoarse whisper, “Annie, I don’t know what to say.”
“You have to help me, Lexie! Get me out of here, for fuck’s sake! Are you really going to leave me in here to rot like this while the early days of my baby’s life slip away?”
She hangs up then, and I open my eyes and stare at the screen on my dash. The call lasted less than a minute.
I go home and I ignore Sam’s repeated insistence that I come to bed. Instead, I sit at the computer and I Google for hours, trying to figure out a way to keep her out of jail if she did walk out of the clinic. There’s no guard at the gate to stop her, no one to save her from herself. Even as midnight passes, I’m still staring blindly at legislation that may as well be written in Greek, and I’m no closer to finding a loophole. And of course I’m not, because if a loophole existed, Bernie would have told me about it.
I wake up at the desk in the office. My neck is stiff and my eyes are gritty. I pour several cups of black coffee down my throat and call Luke at 9:00 a.m. the next morning.
“What the hell is going on? She’s obviously not handling the process well at all—why haven’t you called me?”
“Alexis, I have explained this to you. Your sister is here to get help and treatment. You don’t need to be involved on a day-to-day level. If anything of significant concern happens, I will call you.”
His nonchalant attitude is irritating, and I can suddenly see why Annie is finding this man’s treatment so difficult to deal with.
“Last night she was threatening to walk out of there. So I’d say that’s a significant concern.”
“Annie is well aware that if she leaves the clinic, I have to call the police and they will arrest her. She won’t risk that,” Luke says calmly, and the easy modulation of his tone infuriates me more.
“Maybe you’re not the right person to treat Annie,” I snap. “She said you’re making things very difficult for her, and you said yourself you rarely treat patients directly—maybe someone with more recent experience—”
“Don’t you see what she’s doing, Lexie?” Luke interrupts me, still speaking very gently. “Can you really not recognize when she’s playing you against me?”
I falter, my mouth still hanging open. I try to reframe this whole situation in my mind—to take myself out of the panic of her call and turn off my automatic reaction to the pleading in her voice.
And then I can see, as clear as day, that once again Luke is absolutely correct.
“Shit,” I whisper, and then I sigh. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m asking her to walk me back over her history, and she’s refusing to participate in the therapy. She’s not engaging—and I don’t believe she will make any progress at all until she starts to unpack the things in her life that have led her to this point. So yes, I’m pushing her, and yes, I’m asking a lot of her. But I’m doing it because she can’t leave this place until she really makes herself vulnerable. Otherwise she’ll wind up right back where she started.”
“Okay.” My face feels hot as the embarrassment of the moment dawns on me. I’m a doctor, for God’s sakes. I should have seen this myself. “I’m really sorry.”
“Annie is a woman of incredible potential—she’s articulate and intelligent, but that also makes her dangerous because she’s just clever enough to know how to manipulate. And as I’m sure you’re aware, addiction can make even the sincerest people expert manipulators. Listen, since we’re chatting anyway—I’m trying to convince her to join in some of the group sessions to bring her out of her shell a little. Even just occupational therapy would be a good start. A lot of our patients like to do crafts or sports, but Annie’s refused everything we’ve invited her to. Any ideas what might draw her out?”
“She loves to read and write... I mean, Annie was an English major. If there’s a book club or a poetry group or something like that...”
“No...not really,” Luke says, but I hear him shuffling papers. “Hmm. Interesting. When Annie was admitted and we asked her about her education, she just listed a GED.”
“No, she has an English degree. Her career kind of died in the mud when the addiction spun out of control, but she’s quite a gifted writer,” I say. “I have no idea why she wouldn’t list the degree on the paperwork.”
“I treated a neurologist once who had listed his occupation on admission as janitor,” Luke says quietly. “He’d been fired from his job and was embarrassed that his career had failed. Sometimes it’s easier to pretend you’ve never achieved anything than to admit you’ve had success and failed.”
“I think I’ve got an idea,” I say, and I walk up the stairs from the kitchen. I open the door to the spare bedroom down the hall from mine, a room that is used only for storage, and I stare inside. There are boxes everywhere, but only a few are labeled Annie. “She has this journal our Dad gave her just before he died...it was incredibly special to her. I don’t think she’s ever written in it. I still have it in storage here somewhere. Maybe I could bring it next weekend—if she doesn’t want to talk to you, maybe she can write her feelings down instead.”
* * *
I’m due to visit Annie on Saturday, but Friday afternoon, Luke emails me to ask me not to come.
I’ve had to withdraw Annie’s visitation and phone privileges. I know you’ll be very concerned by this, but Annie has continued to refuse to participate in her treatments this week and went as far as to refuse to leave her room for our appointment yesterday. I hope that you understand that I’m suggesting we put a pause on contact for both your sake and Annie’s—I’m concerned that she would continue to try to draw you in to rescue her. But I’ve also been thinking about that journal you mentioned—do you think you could mail it over to us?
Right beneath that email is one from Oliver. I groan and glance at the date. The four weeks’ leave he agreed to is up, and I haven’t even called in to let him know I won’t be back next week. I hesitate before I open the email. The subject line is only the word leave.
This can’t be good. I click the screen on my phone fiercely.
Lexie, Sam tells me that you are immersed in things with the baby. I’ve changed your leave to adoptive leave so that will give you another two months to figure things out. Come have a chat with me if you’re ready before then, otherwise, let me know what you’re up to in the new year.
“You called Oliver on my behalf?” I greet Sam at the door that afternoon, a glass of wine in one hand, a scowl on my face. I left Daisy early and have been sitting at home stewing over the email ever since.
Sam looks at me in surprise.
“I know how stressed you are—I just wanted to lighten the load.”
“You didn’t even ask me.”
“What was your plan, honey?” Sam asks me pointedly. “Your leave runs out on Monday. It’s Friday and you hadn’t given it a thought until Oliver called you, right?”
“He didn’t call me,” I snap. I know I’m being an idiot and his method of communication is completely irrelevant but I’m too frustrated and angry to stop myself. “He emailed me. And you had no right.”
“So were you going back to work on Monday?” Sam drops his bag near the door and closes it, then shrugs at me, prompting an answer.
“You know I wasn’t,” I mutter.
“And...”
“Sam!” I exclaim. “It’s my career. My problem. I dropped the ball, yes—but—”
“And what was I supposed to do? Let you get fired?”
“I wouldn’t have—”
“I saw Oliver last week, Lexie. He was pissed, but understood. If I hadn’t gone in, and you really had forgotten all about your job and just not showed up next week, he would have fired you.”
I spin on my heel away from Sam, then storm into the kitchen to stir the spaghetti sauce I made. He follows me and sits at the island watching me huffing and puffing around. After a while, he stands and, ignoring my protests, takes the wooden spoon from my hand and turns me to face him.
“I love you. I get that you have to deal with some of this on your own, but you can’t deal with all of it on your own. You’ve rejected every offer of help I’ve made, and I knew that if I asked you if you wanted me to talk to him, you’d have said no. I need to be doing something, Lexie. You can’t just shut me out because it’s messy. This isn’t a short-term crisis anymore—this is all going to be a part of our lives for months, maybe years.”
“But it’s my problem, Sam,” I whisper, and my bravado disappears and my eyes fill with tears. Sam brushes the hair back from my face.
“It’s Annie’s problem, Lexie, and she’s my soon-to-be sister-in-law.”
I nod, and Sam cups my face in his hands. He stares down at me, and I clench my jaw to stop the tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “It’s just really hard for me to share these problems with you.”
“Why, Lexie?”
“Habit? Pride? Stubbornness?”
“Please let me help,” he says, and then he punctuates his sentences with kisses all over my face. “Please let me support you. Please let me carry you. Please let me care for you.”
“I’ll try. I’ll try harder.”
He presses his forehead against mine and draws in a slow breath.
“I’m sorry,” I say again.
“Okay.” Then he adds in a whisper, “So we’re okay?”
“We’re okay.”
“Good,” Sam says softly. “Then that’s all that matters.”