Addicted

Diamond left, and the nurse was standing there, looking-silly. “Umm, could you hand the phone back over here, please?”

She picked it up, handed it to me, and uttered, “Sure.”

“Thanks.” She was still standing there and didn’t look like she had any immediate plans to vacate. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get some rest now.”

“Okay, just let us know if you need anything.” She forced a smile and then made a quick exit, probably hoping the crazed bitch in Room 301 would hurry up and get her release papers.

Before I drifted back to sleep, I looked at the crumpled pillow at the foot of the bed and wondered if Diamond was really demented enough to try to smother me. In my mind echoed the word, “Naw!”

• • •

As promised, Dr. Graham and Marcella got down to business. For the next few days they counseled Jason and I together and apart. They made us read several books. I thought I was back in high school for a minute— homework assignments and shit—but it was all worth it.

Jason and I spent hours on end talking about everything that had happened throughout our years together— what went right and what went wrong, where we wanted our marriage to go in the future.

Jason learned to deal with his mother’s prostitution and the things he witnessed and was subjected to at such a young, vulnerable age. Marcella made us do touching experiments, which made Jason understand that there was nothing nasty or vulgar about having oral sex with his own wife. He confessed that he had always wanted to try it but could never bring himself to let me. As it turns out, while I was hiding sex toys all over the house, Jason was hiding porn flicks that he watched on a regular basis when no one was around. He said he mostly watched them on the TV/VCR combination in his drawing room, and a lot of times when I thought he was down there sweating over blueprints, he was watching the movies and jacking off. I was stunned—I couldn’t even picture Jason jacking off. I wondered was he better at masturbating than me because lawd knows, I thought I was a pro.

His main fear about letting go sexually was allowing me to take control of the situation. We talked it over, and I promised him I would never do anything to make him feel uncomfortable. We could do it at his own pace, gradually adding new things and positions as time went on.

As for me, that was another story altogether. Dr. Graham requested I make arrangements to come down to his clinic in Florida for a couple of weeks. I told him I would, but not right away. I had been away from my home and my kids for too long. Being back there was the best therapy for me at t

he time. Marcella agreed to work with me three times a week. I told them that just knowing what happened to me when I was younger had helped me tremendously. All along, I never understood why I became so obsessed with sex at a young age. I felt I could put those incidents behind me and move on. As long as I had Jason, I could move mountains.

Jason and I wouldn’t be able to recover from everything overnight, because it didn’t happen overnight. We made a pact that whatever it took and no matter how long it took, we were both in it to win. Everyone seemed satisfied with the results of the first three days of therapy, and Dr. Graham headed back to Florida, making sure Jason and I had both his home and office telephone numbers.

That night, I called Dr. Ferguson at home. I looked his digits up in the phone book and told him if he didn’t let my ass out the hospital the next day, I would become the patient from hell, screaming all day and all night disrupting the other patients. He laughed, even though I don’t think he found my intrusion into his quality time at home humorous, and agreed to release me the next day.

chapter

thirty-two

The next afternoon Dr. Ferguson finally released me with a clean bill of health. I was so excited about going back home, I didn’t know what I wanted to do first when I got there. Well, second, because kissing and hugging the hell out of my kids was definitely the first thing on my agenda. Taking a long, hot bubble bath and raiding the fridge for some decent food were tied for second place.

Jason arrived at exactly two to pick me up. While they wheeled me down to the nurses’ station to get my release papers, I got suspicious about why Jason was smiling so damn much, so I asked him why.

He laughed and told me, “No reason! Just happy my Boo is coming home. Things haven’t been the same without you.”

I lifted one of my feet up off the slat on the wheelchair and kicked him lightly in the shin. “Things better not be the same. I’m not easily replaceable, you know?”

He knelt down and kissed me. “You could never be replaced.”

Once we were in the car headed home, we talked about what the children did and did not know about the recent turn of events. The twins were too young to understand anything more than the mere fact I had been away for a couple of weeks. Peter, on the other hand, was another matter altogether. Jason comforted me and assured me Peter didn’t know anything except I had been involved in some sort of automobile accident and had to stay in the hospital until I got better.

I was relieved. Jason held my hand the rest of the way home, telling me all the wonderful things he had planned out for our future, including buying some land up in the mountains, designing and building us a summer home. That brought a smile to my face; a summer home had always been a big dream of mine. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford it. It was just the lack of free time that had held us back. Jason told me he was willing to talk to his partners and make the time to do it if I was willing to do the same. I quickly replied, “Not a problem, Boo. Now’s the time to do everything we’ve ever dreamed of. Life is too short not to.”

When we walked in the front door, I was taken aback when I saw the Welcome Home banner, flowers, and balloons everywhere. Momma was standing there in the middle of the great room and had all three kids dressed alike in stonewashed jeans and red T-shirts. Kayla had an abundance of red ribbons in her hair. She reminded me of a picture of me when I was a little girl in a similar outfit.

Peter was kneeling on the floor, and he had his arms around a Dalmatian puppy with a huge red ribbon attached to his flea collar. “Mommy, this is Spot! Daddy bought him for you!”

I rushed over and hugged all my kids and even the dog. Jason had gone out and found me a dog just like the one that I used to feed my vegetables to under the dining room table as a child, who had been hit by a car. He obviously had a little help from my mother: the puppy was the spitting image of the original Spot and could’ve passed for his grandchild.

Peter helped Jason fire up the gas grill on the patio while I played some board games with the twins. They showed me some of the new toys their grandmother had gotten them while I was away. My mother loved to spoil her grandkids and went overboard in my absence, knowing I couldn’t object.

The phone rang. I yelled out to Jason, “I’ll get it!” I picked up the cordless and said, “Hello.” There was no answer, but I could hear someone breathing heavily on the other end. “Hello? Who’s there?” Still nothing but the breathing, and then the line went dead.

Jason came into the house to retrieve the steaks and chicken breasts for the grill. “Who was it, baby?”

I shrugged my shoulders and whispered, “Wrong number, I guess.”