Falling From Disgrace

“I went through months of physical therapy and all of that to help me heal and just about a year after the accident I was fully able to walk and move properly again. The pain lessened as time wore on but it never fully went away which is why I have the pills you saw me take in my bathroom.”

Jack knew that part wasn’t entirely the truth. At the beginning, yes, Adrianna took the pills for physical pain. But as time wore on, she had come to realize they helped keep the emotional pain in check as well. He knew the signs of someone addicted to painkillers all too well and he had seen enough now to know that Adrianna didn’t only take her pills when her back was hurting.

“Did you ever see a therapist? Someone to help you with the emotional effects of the accident?” he asked her.

“My parents made me,” she answered, “but no amount of talking to a shrink helped. There isn’t anything out there that helps you get over being responsible for your best friend’s death.”

“Whoa, wait a minute,” Jack said, moving to pull Adrianna to a sitting position. “Come on up here, sweetheart, and look at me.” When she was seated on his lap and facing him he placed his hands on her shoulders, looked her square in the eye, and continued, “Don’t tell me that you’re responsible for Rachel’s death. You said yourself that a truck driver fell asleep behind the wheel. If anyone is to blame it would be him.”

Adrianna’s eyes, wide and sorrowful, held his for a beat and then dropped down to stare at the middle of his chest. She shook her head slightly from side to side and whispered, “She wasn’t supposed to be in the car with me.” Fat, salty tears began running down her cheeks.

Jack brought his left hand up from her shoulder to cup her cheek and draw her attention back from his shirt to his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“She shouldn’t have been in the car with me, Jack,” Adrianna cried pitifully. “She wanted to leave the party early and have her boyfriend pick her up but I wouldn’t let her. I made her stay with me because I wanted to stick around waiting on some stupid guy. If Jason had picked her up like she had wanted she wouldn’t have been in the car with me and she’d still be alive today.”

Sobs defeated Adrianna’s ability to talk any longer and so Jack pulled her to him, hugging her gently to his chest while she stained his blue shirt with her tears. He didn’t hush her or tell her not to cry; he just let her release all the pent up sadness and guilt that had been built up over the last four years; sadness and guilt that she tried to bury beneath pills and solitude, and sometimes alcohol and sex. Sadness and guilt that would linger no matter how much time went by.

The tears continued for ages and Adrianna craved the sense of tranquility that would come from taking one of her Vicodin. Her tongue itched to have one of those magical tablets on it, quivering from the brief bitter taste before it would be washed down to where it could take full control of her senses. She didn’t move though. She just stayed curled beneath Jack’s arms willing herself to gain peace from them alone.

When her crying ceased, Adrianna stayed still and quiet for so long Jack actually thought she had fallen asleep, but then she spoke again.

“A while after I was released from the hospital I went to see Rachel’s parents. They hugged me and said kind words but I could see it in their eyes. They resented me for surviving the accident when their daughter didn’t. Rachel was their only child and I took her away from them.”

Jack sighed again and wondered what he could say to erase the blame she had placed on herself for four years. Coming up with nothing he simply told her, “That’s not true; you know it’s not true.”

But Adrianna didn’t know that.

“After visiting her parents I went to see her boyfriend, Jason. He didn’t even try to hide the blame he placed on me. He came right out and said that if he had picked her up like he had wanted she wouldn’t have been in the car with me. He told me he was going to propose to her and that now his life was over simply because I had made Rachel wait with me at that party for Ethan to show up. It was him who called me earlier.”