“It’s been a week since he attended a group. I’m surprised he hasn’t just up and left. He’s not doing anything but sleeping in his room,” Kaitlin said as I put Erik’s breakfast tray back on the cart.
“What happened? I mean, I thought he was making an effort.”
“Not sure, but the last few days I haven’t seen him at all. I tried telling him he was never going to get a room with a door on it if he didn’t go to groups, but he didn’t seem to care.”
“Is he doing anything?” I asked as concern for Erik pushed through in my voice.
“He’s been meeting with Jarrod. That’s something, I guess.”
“Well, I’m here today. So, I’ll get him to go to group,” I said confidently.
Surely, everyone else must just really suck at motivating people. Erik and I had talked a few times and certainly he wasn’t the easiest of patients, but he wasn’t the worst, either. He had come for a hike and even went to group with Melanie the last time I had worked. I was positive I would be able to motivate him and get him back into his treatment.
“I’ll take that bet,” Kaitlin joked.
“It wasn’t exactly a bet. I’m just saying I have a way with people and I can get him to go to group.”
“So, what you’re saying is that everyone else who has worked this week isn’t nearly as good as you. And now that you’re here, you will be able to magically motivate the man into getting up out of bed and stopping his self-pity party to attend group sessions?”
She seemed pretty annoyed at my insinuation that I could motivate patients better than others. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was putting Kaitlin or anyone else down, but I did feel like I had a way with patients. Maybe it was because I had also gone through treatment, or perhaps it was because I was honest with them. But for whatever reason, patients listened to me more often than not.
“I’ll go wake him up again. I didn’t know he had been sleeping in all morning or I would have been tougher on him.”
“So, what’s the bet?” Kaitlin said with a grin.
“What do you want it to be?”
“If he refuses to go to group, you’ll come out to the jazz club with me this weekend. If you can get him up, I’ll go out with you to the jazz club.” She laughed.
“That seems like a lose-lose situation for me.”
“No, it’s a win-win situation. In both options, I win.”
Kaitlin laughed loudly and everyone in the dining area turned to look at her. It didn’t faze her, though, as she continued to laugh.
r />
“How about you give me a hundred dollars if I get him out of his room and to group?” I asked.
“Well, then you have to give me a hundred dollars if he doesn’t go to group.”
“Deal,” I said with a victorious smile. “You better get your money ready.”
Kaitlin didn’t seem very scared at all as I walked toward Erik’s room. I had been there once already that morning when I had tried to get him up for breakfast. But when he said he wasn’t hungry, I didn’t argue and instead just returned to the nurses’ station.
Anytime I had been away from work for a few days, I had to get reoriented to the patients and what was going on. I didn’t want to push Erik if he was still having panic attacks like he had had the last time I was there. But if he wasn’t having panic attacks and he was just hiding out in his room hoping that treatment would magically fix him, then he had another thing coming to him.
I might not have looked like I was all that tough, but I could be if I wanted to. I had been through treatment; these patients couldn’t pull anything over on me. I knew what it was like to be depressed. I knew what it was like to not want to get out of bed or even what it was like to feel like treatment was useless. The thing about it was, I also knew that if you just stuck it out, treatment really did work.
Treatment took a lot of hard work. I knew that firsthand and it really annoyed me when people thought they could just sleep through a couple months at a treatment facilities and they would be all better when it was done. Sure, they would be over their physical withdrawals, but addiction was about so much more than physical addiction to a substance. The mental process of addiction was where the true treatment came in.
“Let’s go; it’s time to get up,” I said as I marched into Erik’s room.
“I’m sleeping.”
He turned toward the wall in an effort to ignore me. But I wasn’t going to lose a bet because he wanted to be lazy. Sometimes, I had to act more like a drill sergeant than their friend and that was just fine by me. Whatever I needed to do to make Erik get moving, I was going to do it.
“Let’s go,” I said as I reached for his comforter.