Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 62430 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 312(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62430 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 312(@200wpm)___ 250(@250wpm)___ 208(@300wpm)
He started going out at night and wouldn’t return until breakfast. At that point we were living with our mom, and there were lots of fights.
“Where have you been all night?” Mom would yell.
“Cleaning up after you!” George would shoot back.
He was right. She had no business telling him to stay clean and go to sleep. She stayed out all night sometimes too. She couldn’t hold a job. One week, she was a waitress or a cashier; the next, she would be stocking shelves. She was even an airline stewardess for a few months, taking trips to foreign places and buying us little gifts from the airport. That was when she was sober.
As soon as she began drinking on the job, she was fired, and we were back living with our grandparents. I left home as soon as I could, leaving George alone with Mom. They fought constantly, but I couldn’t stay and play referee anymore. It was exhausting being the only level-headed person since I was the one who didn’t drink or use drugs.
I studied hard and got into a good nursing school. Any money we had as a family had long since been spent. I took a job at a restaurant and worked my way through college. There were scholarships and loans—I did whatever I had to do to set myself free. After college, I moved to Nashville and found a job at an inpatient drug treatment center. It was coming full circle.
I didn’t hate my parents or my brothers. I felt sorry for them. Life was hard all around, and people just wanted to escape. The trouble was that the drugs they used became the problem instead of the solution. I wanted to help other people face their demons and reclaim their sobriety one person at a time. I just wasn’t ready to help my own family yet.
With the money I made as a nurse, I was able to afford a cute little apartment downtown. There were coffee shops and theaters I could walk to. Friday nights there were bands to see in upscale bars and plenty of restaurants to sample. I was close with a couple of the people I worked with and had made friends all around the city.
Some of my friends were casual drinkers, but I was suspicious even of a beer or two. I had seen how quickly it could escalate into life-destroying habits. Someday, I might be able to go back home and try to get my mom and my brother into recovery programs like mine. But for now, I was content helping strangers and living my best life with people who had never known the siren song of drink.
Besides, I had Evil to think of, and she had plenty of negative energy to go around. I fed her and cleaned out her water bowl before getting dressed or else she would cause chaos and knock over every item in her sight. Scrubs and clog charms were the work fashion, and while some of my colleagues spent extra money to get cartoon characters or hearts and stars, I stuck with plain old green. I loved all my coworkers, but some of them didn’t have the experience I had. Some of them grew up in loving homes and had never known an alcoholic or an addict.
Kids might appreciate loud colors, but I knew our patients would be soothed by the tasteful mint of traditional hospital scrubs. When there is so much going on in your head, it’s nice to have neutral tones on the outside. So, I just went with the scrubs provided by the treatment center, tying my hair up into a bun.
I had a car, but I didn’t use it often. It lived in the basement of the apartment building, in its designated spot. I occasionally took it out to drive into the country to sightsee with friends or to haul a particularly large grocery order back home. Most of the time, I walked everywhere. I could walk to work and back, and there were plenty of shops to keep me occupied within walking distance.
The sun was shining on what promised to be a beautiful day as I put on my little white sneakers, grabbed my brown-bag lunch, and started out. It only took me ten minutes to cross the five blocks to the treatment center. We were affiliated with Westview Hospital, but we weren’t in the same building. The hospital stretched over several blocks, with different departments in different locations. The cancer ward was right across the street, and general admissions was next to that. We were part psych ward, part drug and alcohol treatment center.
I was hired on the night shift but worked my way up to days. Since my specialty in college had been substance abuse counseling, I only saw the detoxing patients. The two populations were kept separate, had separate entrances and separate staffs. All the nurses shared a cafeteria, though, so I heard plenty of gossip about who was acting up and why. Of course, it was illegal to share patient information, but that didn’t stop people from complaining in general terms about the craziness of our shared jobs.