Had the guy with the backpack been Zoe’s drug-dealing boyfriend? If so, she’d been alive in December.
I’d knocked on the door of the neighbor to the west, striking out, as the owner was an elderly woman so blind she could only tell I was female from my voice. With overgrown foliage and garages blocking the view, the backyard wasn’t visible to anyone other than the two immediate neighbors. That left me with the information I’d gleaned from the guy who lived on the east side of the property.
The brochures I’d found in the house for the addiction treatment center indicated a weekly open house. I had no idea how old they were or if the information was up-to-date, but the card said the meeting was every Thursday. So I’d left the home on Pierce and was now driving north to check out the business.
I pulled up to the building in the Buena Park neighborhood, parked across the street, and stared. It was stunning. The property was an enormous red sandstone Victorian with narrow windows, a turret on the right corner, and a deep arched portico that graced the front of the building. A driveway ran to the back on the left side of the building, and I could see a large multi-bay coach house at the end of the lot. The building spoke of history and the grand lifestyle of a long-gone era. It had been built in the days of servants, horse-drawn carriages, and heat provided by fireplaces or maybe coal furnaces. Buildings like this, although occasionally still configured as single-family homes, more often than not had been broken into multi-unit rentals or condos.
I glanced around at the surrounding structures, and while the buildings here were certainly large, none matched the grandeur of the property in front of me. I looked again at the brochure I’d pulled from the closet to make sure I had the proper address, as there was nothing about it visually or in signage that identified its purpose.
Grabbing the brochure, I got out of my car, crossed the street, and walked up the steps. A small brass plaque above the doorbell read Renacido Center. The interior door was open, leaving only the decorative wooden screen door as a barrier. I could see a round pedestal table in the center of a wood-paneled foyer decorated with a tall vase of silk lilies and stacked with literature. A center hallway appeared to run front to back through the building. I paused, looking again at the card in my hand. In big, bold letters it said, “Open House Every Thursday from 3:00 to 5:00.” Footsteps on the brick behind me drew my attention. A woman with a sullen looking twenty-something trailing behind her approached. She smiled weakly at me, while he refused to lift his eyes from his feet, then opened the door. The family dynamic playing out between them was likely not an unusual one.
What the hell, I was here. I followed them into the foyer, stopping to look at the literature and giving myself a chance to get my bearings while the two continued into the meeting. The room on my right opened to a large parlor beyond it. Ten-foot-tall doors separated the first room from the next, and elaborate fireplaces graced both. Rows of folding chairs had been arranged in the adjoining space. Between the two rooms, about two dozen people were milling around. They spoke in low tones clutching plastic cups of water or what looked like weak tea. Plates of cookies and pre-poured drinks were laid out on a buffet.
Given the small size of the group, there was no way to hide myself in the back to observe. However, looking at the faces around me, discomfort with the gravity or foreignness of this unknown next step seemed to be the common denominator. Checking out another newcomer was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
I remained at the table in the foyer, busying myself with pamphlets as I stole glances at the attendees and wondered about their stories. I could see the mix of fear and hope and desperation in their faces. How many had been down this road before? How many were facing their first public acknowledgment of their struggles with substance abuse?
As I perused literature with tag lines such as “We can help” or “When you have no other options,” the screen door opened again and a gruff-looking man in his forties came in followed by a girl of about sixteen who was his spitting image. He took hold of her arm and nodded toward the parlor. She glared at him and pulled her arm away, quickly heading for the table I was standing at. The man I assumed to be her father, scowled and proceeded to the other room, where he stood alone, busying himself with a cup of coffee and checking his phone.
One of the staff stopped, handed the girl and me name tags and a Sharpie.
I gave her a weak smile, scribbled my first name on the sticker, then concentrated on the flyer in my hand. The language of desperation ran throughout the sales pitch, coupled with photographs depicting people in emotional agony. I flipped the trifold card to the back, where the photo was now a beaming couple, their arms around each other, a happy teenager at their side. The business of selling hope.
The teenager next to me seemed to be more interested in being away from her father than the promises on the page, but she complied and slapped a tag on her shirt that read “Kendall.”
“I hope it gets easier,” I said to her, “because this first step is a bitch.” I hadn’t known what I was walking into, and it now appeared I would need a personal backstory to explain my presence here. I was also starting to think acting classes would be a good investment.
“They’ll tell you it only gets easier when you decide to surrender.” She shrugged, rolling her eyes and fiddling with the charm dangling from the leather choker at her neck. “Surrender? To what? The fact that your life is shit? To God? At least the idiots around here don’t make you pray. My last gig was the fire-and-brimstone folks. They never could answer why God would let people get hooked on shit in the first place. What kind of God does that? But those are my dad’s beliefs, not mine.”
“It sounds like you have a little more experience at this than I do,” I said, playing my role and disturbed by the thought that this pretty, young woman was facing such a monstrous challenge far too early in life.
She smirked. “Don’t worry, it won’t take you long to get the hang of it. Just smile and sound agreeable.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, accenting the two-tone dye job—dark under layers under platinum. Although intended to make her look tough, as was the heavy eye liner, the effect instead increased her vulnerability. She looked even more like a little girl trying to play dress-up in big girl clothes.
A man near the refreshment table was calling for the meeting to get started.
“I’d better go.” She walked off sullenly to join her father, who had been glaring at us from the other room. I could feel his frustration and annoyance from here. I followed them and took a seat a few rows back where I could make a quick exit if I needed to. I looked again at Kendall, wondering about her struggles, comparing the little I knew about Janek’s niece and this young lady. Would she be one of the resilient few who made it?
As the attendees settled in, a round-faced woman stood near the podium at the front of the room, smiling and welcoming the group.
“Thank you all for coming. We know all too well how difficult it was for each and every one of you to come here today. For many of you, your struggles with addiction have been an ongoing battle over many years. You are to be applauded for your bravery, and yes, it takes bravery to combat a force as serious and as relentless as addiction. I won’t take up much of your time. My name is Francesca, and I’m the office manager here at the center. If you have any questions later about the admission process, just flag me down and I’ll be happy to help. Now, I’d like to introduce Dr. Troy Wykell, our program director, chief psychologist, and the man who developed this highly successful treatment protocol.”
A tall, thin man with a close-shaven beard, who I would’ve pegged as a therapist on sight, stepped over to the podium. Bookish was the single word that came to mind to describe his appearance. I could picture him in a cardigan with suede elbow patches, loafers, and corduroy pants in cooler weather. Yet, despite the horned-rim glasses and gentle features, his gaze was cutting. He swung his green eyes around the room, person to person as he spoke, as if able to separate the addict from the non-addict via some kind of telepathy. A chill ran through me when his eyes met mine. My instinct was to turn away, but I held firm until he moved on to the next person. If this was the guy charged with one-on-one treatment, he wasn’t making me feel warm and fuzzy.
“Yes, you are to be commended for the bravery you’re demonstrating,” he began. “You’ve all heard some version of the sales pitch for twelve-step programs, prayer therapy, just-say-no, yet here we are, fighting this disease still, day in and day out. Some of you have been told that it’s just a flaw in your character. That if you only tried a little harder, you would be successful. Bullshit, I say. That’s right, bullshit. And I’m not going to apologize for my harsh language. Although well-meaning, most of these programs are simply a version of a hope and a prayer. Most of you are here because you’ve been through it all already, yet still your struggle continues.”
He spoke with the authority and presence of a preacher, and I found myself listening for an “amen” from the crowd.
“Here, there are no twelve steps,” he continued. “Or any other kind of steps, for that matter. Here we use science. We use science to understand, and we use science to treat.”
I watched many of the attendees nodding their heads. They understood this cycle intimately. A few mothers dabbed away tears as their sullen adolescent children sat next to them. The slumped posture of their charges was always impossible to gauge. Others clung to their partner’s hands, hoping beyond hope that this would be the thing to end the agony and the war in their relationships.
“Let’s get to the heart of why you’re here,” Dr. Wykell continued. “You’re here because you’re ready to put this behind you and rebuild your lives. That’s our mission. That is our goal. That is our record of success. An eighty-five percent success rate, I might add. Yes, you heard that right.
“Our program is not for people unwilling to be open-minded, unwilling to try new things, even when they might not make sense. We are not talk therapy, linking every trouble in your life with some long-held childhood belief. We will not blame you for where you are, and we will not blame the parenting you received. None of that matters. None of it matters while you are in the throes of battle. Here, we don’t care about the why. We care about getting you sober. If why matters to you, the yellow pages are full of other people who can help you work through those struggles. But unless you are sober, and unless you stay sober, does the why matter?”
Parents and partners in the room seemed to collectively relax. The months, or years, of the battle feeling less daunting when hope was presented. But wasn’t hope the cornerstone of every treatment program? Or was hope simply what all these people had left after ongoing fear and struggle had drained them of everything else?
“Our program is highly effective,” Dr. Wykell said. “It is unconventional, and yes, it is expensive, but so are years of your life lost to drugs and alcohol. Think about the time and money lost over years as job performance suffered, raises were denied, jobs were lost, heartbroken families were pushed to divorce or worse. Is there really a price one can put on the destruction of a life?”
Despite his mousy appearance, Dr. Wykell delivered his speech with a passion I wouldn’t have predicted. I could feel the glimmer of optimism spreading around the room as possibilities for a different outcome entered people’s minds. People sat up a little straighter in their chairs, eyes were brighter. The man hadn’t actually outlined a single detail of his center’s protocol, yet the energy in the room had changed.
“I know that you are all anxious to know more and anxious to find out what we can do to end your suffering. Due to the unique nature of our program and the personal customization, we find it best to meet one-on-one. We like to understand a little bit more about the specific challenges in your life and your recovery goals before getting into the details. Francesca will coordinate individual consultations, so you’ll be able to set that up with her in a few moments. If you have any high-level questions, I certainly can answer a few of those now, but please don’t be offended if my response is to suggest that your issue is best discussed in private consult.”
A man in his thirties raised his hand. “I hear that psychedelics are being used these days for addiction treatment. You do any of that here?”
“While there is some literature to that effect,” Dr. Wykell responded, “I prefer not to discuss any of the specific techniques we use, other than to say again that we allow science to dictate our treatment protocol. We also believe that no one modality is a single answer. Each person’s addiction history and physiology will shape their protocol. We find that it is the combination of protocols delivered in precise sequencing that is the key to our success rate.”
He nodded to a woman in the front row. “Is this stuff covered by my insurance?” she asked.
“No. Excuse me for being blunt, but our medical system is not set up to understand or accept treatment protocols that don’t fall within tight parameters. I’m sure many of you have had difficulty getting medical coverage for conventional rehab or found that the treatment was restricted in a number of ways. We would rather spend our time treating our patients, rather than building in layers of expense and arguing with some insurance clerk—who only understands billing codes—about the validity of our treatment. In order to provide the best level of care, we are a cash-only facility.”
I noticed an intake of breath here, could see a grimace there, as the group grappled with the financial reality and calculated what the hit to their family finances might be.
A commotion in the back of the room pulled my attention. A young man in his twenties stormed in, oblivious to, or perhaps because of, the audience. His long hair fell in clumps, clinging to the sweat dripping down the side of his face.
“You told me this wouldn’t happen!” he screamed at Dr. Wykell. “What did you give her?”
I swung my head from the young man to Dr. Wykell. He’d lost the passion of the preacher, and in his face, I could see his therapist hat was back on. He smiled calmly at the crowd. “Thank you all for coming. Please enjoy your refreshments. Francesca’s here to answer any of your questions and to set up your consultation.”
With that, he stepped away from the podium, exiting the room through a side door as the angry young man plowed after him.