I took a couple deep breaths and walked back to Erik’s door. I had to take a different approach. There had to be a way to earn his trust and get him out of his room and working on his recovery. Part of what I had said was true, there was no way he would ever get better if he just stayed lying in his bed the whole time he was with us.

“I’m sorry for yelling,” I said as I stood in the doorway. “Is there anything I can do for you? Is there something you need so you can feel better? What do you need to be successful?”

There was no answer.

I waited another moment before I started to talk again.

“Come to group this morning. I’m going to help Jarrod with some activities. It’s not going to be fun, at all. It’s going to make you uncomfortable. You’ll probably hate it here even more than you do now. But come anyways.”

“That’s the worst sales pitch I’ve ever heard,” Erik said as I heard him moving in his bed.

“So, is that a yes?”

“Hell, no. I’m not coming, but thanks for the effort.”

“Fine. Just fine. You want to rot away in this room all alone, then go ahead and do it. I don’t care!” I yelled as I left and went back to the nurses’ station again.

But I couldn’t stand to look at Kaitlin and the smug look on her face, so I went into the back room and hid for a moment. Why did this man drive me so crazy? Plenty of other patients had refused to go to group before and I had never raised my voice to a single one of them.

Brad constantly argued with me about his food and what was in it, yet I didn’t yell at him. Kimber could hardly walk half the time because she was so drugged up on psych meds and refused to let the doctor lower them, but I didn’t yell at her, either. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I had yelled at anyone in our facility. But there I was, yelling and berating Erik like it was going to help motivate him.

I knew better! I wasn’t a counselor and I wasn’t a nurse, but I had been a patient before and I knew that yelling at someone wasn’t going to motivate them. I knew that trying to make them feel bad about their decision was the worst thing I could have done. It put a divide between us and assured that Erik would stick his heels in deeper, just to avoid looking like I had forced him into doing something he didn’t want to do.

I knew all of those things, yet I had still yelled at a patient to try and get them to a group session. I felt like the worst mental health technician in the world. How was I ever going to be a nurse if I couldn’t even handle my own frustrations when all I had to do was get people to groups and feed them?

My stomach was in knots as I sat in the back room and tried to pull myself back together. It wasn’t like me to act like I had been and I really needed to knock it off. This place wasn’t about me or my feelings – it was about people getting better. I took a couple deep breaths and decided to still go and help Jarrod with group for the day.

Showing up late to a group session was worse than not going at all, at least as a patient it had been. So, as I walked into the group room, I kept my head down and went right to the empty seat in the back of the room by the supplies we were going to be using for the project that day.

No one even seemed to notice I had arrived, which was a relief. It was sometimes a hard transition for me from patient to staff member. I was probably the youngest person at Paradise Peak who had a history of addiction. Plus, my addiction and treatment weren’t all that long ago, so everything felt fresh for me still.

“Erik, it’s nice to have you with us again today. Why don’t you start by telling us what you hope to get out of this exercise?”

My ears perked up as I heard his name and I couldn’t help but smile that he had actually showed up. Although, it didn’t feel as much like a victory as I thought it would.

Whatever he decided to do with himself after he left the facility was all his business, but while he was in our care, I really wanted to push him to make the most of it. There was no reason for a patient to spend thousands of dollars if they weren’t going to participate in the program. It was a waste.

“I’m going to make a collage of things my mother loved. Thinking of her makes me happy and sad, so I’m not sure what all I’ll put on there.”

“Great, I look forward to seeing it.”

“Kimber, what will your collage be about?”

“My boyfriend, Rob, and our relationship. My parents don’t like him. They think he’s just using me for my money. But I know our love is pure.”

“Why do your parents think he’s using you?” Jarrod asked.

“Because he’s unemployed and old. They don’t understand what I see in him. But I see love. He loves me. It wouldn’t matter if I was poor, I know he loves me.”

Even Kimber didn’t sound convinced by her own words. I know I wasn’t convinced the guy was a stand up, decent fella. He sounded like a douchebag to me. What kind of middle aged guy didn’t have a job and was still able to land a rich twenty-one-year-old woman? I imagined he must have been pretty easy on the eyes, at least.

“Okay, I look forward to seeing it,” Jarrod said.

I could see that Jarrod was visibly trying to hold back his own opinion on Kimber’s relationship. Jarrod was a damn good counselor. He didn’t tell people what to do, instead he guided them to finding their own solutions to the questions they had in their minds. Sometimes watching Jarrod work made me think that I wanted to be a counselor instead of a nurse, but Kaitlin always talked m

e out of that option because of the pay difference.

Nurses made close to thirty dollars per hour, while the therapists made much less. I certainly wasn’t interested in the job because of the salary alone, but both nurses and therapists were positions I wanted to explore.

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