Released (Caged 3)

I didn’t answer him. I didn’t even look at him again.

“You are going to have to tell her, Liam,” Dr. Baynor told me. “If you want to fix this, fix yourself and get her back, you are going to have to man up and tell her everything you are hiding inside. Then you are going to have to agree to get help in order to get over it. It’s going to be hard, too. It’ll be the second hardest thing you’ll ever do in your life, but it has to be done. It’s the only way you are going to be able to prove to her that you can do the hardest thing in your life.”

Confused by his words, I looked back at him again and tried to figure out what angle he was trying with me now. I couldn’t tell anything from his expression, though, so I was forced to ask.

“The hardest?”

He leaned back on the couch, placed his hands behind his head, and stared pointedly at me before speaking again.

“Be a father.”

My whole body went cold. I stood dumbly next to the couch as Baynor pulled a hypodermic needle out of his medical bag and gave me an injection.

“Methadone?”

“No,” he said, “just B12.”

Baynor pulled out a cell phone and walked into the kitchen. I could hear him speaking softly but couldn’t make out the words. After a few minutes, he came out with a large cup of water.

“Drink it all.”

I took the cup and drank a little. He glared at me until I finished it all.

“I’m tempted to take you in and give you IV fluids. I need a better idea of how long you’ve been on the shit.”

“What day is it?”

“Sunday,” Dr. Baynor informed me. “I checked with the gym, and you were last there on Monday—six days ago. How long were you really strung out?”

“I spent Monday night in the holding cell,” I recalled. “Bought the smack Tuesday night.”

“I checked the police reports,” Baynor told me. “That was three weeks ago. You were high for a lot more than four days. You came into the hospital about five this morning. You bought a lot more than that one rock, so don’t bullshit me.”

Baynor and I dug around in my apartment to discover all the cash I thought I had was gone. I should have had about a hundred and fifty left for rent, even with the rocks I remember buying. When Baynor went digging around, he found more needles in the trash in the bathroom.

“Why don’t I remember any of it?” I asked.

“What do you remember?”

“After I figured out she left, I just wrecked shit and then went to the guy with the drugs. Other than that, I remember being high.”

“That will happen,” Baynor said with a nod.

“What will?”

“Losing time, losing yourself,” he said. “Between your post-traumatic reactions and the drugs, you were too far inside yourself to know what was going on around you. I assume that happened to you in the past when you were using regularly?”

“Yeah,” I said as I remembered. “I just didn’t have anywhere to be, so I didn’t give a shit.”

We talked for most of the morning, and Baynor took me down to the deli and made me eat a sandwich and potato salad. My stomach wasn’t happy about it, but at least it stayed down. After a quick trip to the grocery store to make sure there was enough for me to eat for the next couple of days, he brought me back home and told me to come back to his office on Tuesday—sooner if I needed it.

Before he left, Baynor handed me a card with the name and phone number of a counselor who would apparently give me a few free sessions. My first inclination had been to throw the little card in the trash while he was still standing in the apartment, but I had shoved it into my pocket instead.

My only priority now was to find Tria. Now that my head was clearer, I found Elissa’s number by the phone and called her. She had seen Tria in class but had no idea Tria wasn’t living with me anymore. She sounded concerned enough that I didn’t think she was lying to cover for Tria or anything. I thought I might go to campus tomorrow to see if I could spot her.

As I plopped the phone back down, Dr. Baynor’s words floated in and out of my head. I didn’t want to think about anything he had told me, but there was also a part of me that realized some of the shit he said might be right. The one piece that I kept coming back to was the word if. If I wanted her back. If I wanted to fix this. For whatever reason, he had more hope than I did.

I wanted more smack.