Dreams of 18

“You know what, Dad, I gotta go. I can’t do this right now.”

He hangs up then, and I throw my phone across the seat.

I bury my hands in my hair and make a fist and pull. Then, I smack the wheel over and over.

Do you like her, Dad? You want her?

I wish I had lied.

I wish I had said no to that question ten months ago.

I wish I didn’t want my son’s best friend – the girl he secretly liked.

Detoxing is so not fun.

I know.

I’ve gone through it myself. When they put me in Heartstone, they gave me all kinds of medications, cocktails of medications. They all had side effects. Some worked, some didn’t. So they’d wean me off and I’d go through withdrawals. I’d go through the shaking, the shivering, the night sweats, night chills, vomiting and all the fun stuff.

Four days ago, I cried in front of him for the first time and he left. Hours later, he came back from wherever he’d gone. The entire time I’d been alone in the cabin waiting for him, I’d cleaned up a little. I threw away the trash, did the dishes, wiped down the kitchen counters. The basic stuff.

He took it in with a blank face and a silence that I had to break.

“I just, uh, tried to make it better…” I trailed off when he shifted his eyes over to me before adding on a whisper, “For you.”

He stared at me with an intensity that burned my skin and made it bloom a pretty red color. An intensity that I’m still feeling four days later.

I thought he’d say something, something rude or scathing or something about where he went and what he did. Why he practically ran away when he saw my tears.

Because I still think he ran away. I still have this feeling that he couldn’t see me cry.

Which has to be the most ridiculous thing in this whole world, right?

Why would he care? He hates me.

Anyway, all he did was walk toward me with a purpose until I became breathless and he handed me a bottle of Jack Daniels.

That’s it. That’s all. A bottle of Jack Daniels and nothing else.

But I knew.

I knew he’d agreed to my plans. He’d agreed to quit.

I smiled that day.

But I’m not smiling now. It has not been pretty.

I knew that, though.

I knew it wasn’t going to be pretty and I thought I was prepared for it. But you’re never prepared when it comes to seeing someone else live through the pain of detox. Someone you care about so deeply that their every discomfort makes you feel useless.

First of all, there are the headaches.

God, his headaches.

It’s like I can feel them myself. I can feel his temples pounding. I can feel the heat and the pulse of his pain at the base of my own skull. His eyes water when it gets too bad. They get red-rimmed, bright in a way that I know comes from exhaustion.

It would’ve been okay if he just got the headaches, though.

But it’s never just the one thing, is it? It’s never just the headaches. It comes with waves of nausea.

Yeah, nausea is even worse.

It burns your gut and your chest and your throat. It makes you sweat and shake and sometimes, with all your gagging and retching, nothing comes out. Because you’ve already expelled everything.

I’ve been through this. But Jesus Christ, did I sound so agonized? Did I sound like someone was torturing me, strangling my windpipe and I was hoping and praying that I’d die?

I don’t think so. I don’t think I was as tortured as he is.

Through the bathroom door, I keep telling him that it’s going to be okay. That it’s going to pass and he’s going to be fine.

But he never utters a word. He never complains about any of it.

Although he does ask me this one thing, when I tell him to drink more fluids and count out the multi-vitamins that I had my pen pal, Billy, buy for him so he can keep up his strength.

He trains his eyes on me, his hazel-colored, chameleon eyes, as he gulps down the pills with the juice. “How do you know so much about this?”

“You mean, alcohol and all this?”

“All of this. Yeah.”

Now I feel like throwing up. I feel my stomach churn.

“Google.” My heart starts to hammer when he doesn’t buy it. I can see it in his speculative gaze. “And because I come from a family of closet alcoholics.”

That seems to satisfy him. “Your mom.”

Phew.

Good.

“Yeah.”

He scoffs. Like he doesn’t approve of it. Like he doesn’t approve of my mom drinking and I feel so guilty about lying to him.

I mean, of course my mom drinks. But all this knowledge I have comes from something else. Something else that I can’t tell him about.