todd of tacoma

Camille woke up attached to a drip. She expected beeps and alarms when she saw the IV bag, but there were none, only the drone of a vacant room in a quiet building with not much going on outside. In these detox centers you get the feeling everyone in the world wears socks.

Her shoulder hurt. She’d taken a B vitamin jab in her arm and had probably flexed. Five hours before that she’d wet herself blowing two-point-four into a breathalyzer and the intake nurse made her sit under a tree outside. You’re drunk? You gotta wait.

She tried to play with the grass while she waited and pretend she was a little girl playing in the grass but she had no imagination. She tried to imagine music, too, when her phone would not load songs, but she could hear only what she heard, a car idling and when it stopped idling some interstate traffic and a plane. She also heard birds. She was getting sober.

What happened between the B vitamins and the bed she woke up in no one will ever know. Sure, a nurse could recall something if interrogated, but the story would be a composite memory of every unremarkable intake ever, apart from two things. She was quiet, in fact silent, and was big. She was imposing and muscular and God forbid they’d ever have to restrain her, they’d say, but it’s rare to have to restrain a detox, they’re so feeble.

To many, like the nurses at Austin House, Camille was merely that, mute and big and enfeebled by alcohol and withdrawal. To the observant, however, she was six-foot-six with farmhand’s biceps and silent like an owl is silent. She had wiry, LEGO hair.

She thought the drip would have felt like Gatorade all through her body, a cold twenty ounces of it on a hangover, but it did not feel like that. It felt like nothing at all and she wondered if anything would feel like anything ever again. She removed the IV needle from her forearm, she felt that, and her fist clenched involuntarily and tried to punch a wall but the wall was out of reach.

Seconds later, when her arm stopped throbbing, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stepped on a catheter wrapper that crumpled too loudly. The nurses must have dropped it. She grimaced and pushed her IV cart away. Its pole kinked when it hit the radiator, that’s how hard she pushes.

It was an old room that looked by the tile pattern to have been a classroom once. Aside from the irritating wrapper there was no debris on the floor. She was supposed to be wearing socks but didn’t know that. Not that she would if she did know. How often do you get to step on a floor this clean?

The room had two beds but she had no roommate.

Turkey

In a small cafeteria room she looked over sandwiches in a fridge and grabbed turkey. She opened the wrapper and split the ingredients in half laying the top directly on the countertop. She tried to tear open a mayonnaise packet but had used up all her dexterity on the sandwich. Her fingers shook for a minute-and-a-half and she gave up and squeezed the packet’s contents out both ends of her fist.

She failed again with mustard and swatted her sandwich against the wall. She wiped her hand on her already condimented shirtfront, grabbed another turkey from the fridge, and decided to try this one sitting down.

A nurse had heard the last sandwich thump and entered the room.

“Let us help you.”

Shocked by the nurse’s sudden presence Camille protected her sandwich like a running back and hurried to sit but missed most of the chair. As she fell she flung the unopened sandwich up and into a recycling bin. The nurse didn’t seem to want to help her. She just cursed.

“Oh, mustard!”

For purchase Camille grabbed the edge of the table and her tipped-over chair and launched herself upright, but she capsized the table into her shins landing her right back on the ground. Up, down. Lettuce and turkey surrounded her, and mustard and mayo, and rehab center brochures, daily reflections, recovery pamphlets, meeting schedules, As Bill Sees It, and the Big Book.

“I’ll get this! Don’t move!”

The nurse stepped into the hallway with one leg only and spoke loudly without yelling.

“Fall!”

Camille grabbed the Big Book and held it in her hand. It was so blue. She could feel the letters on its cover spell Alcoholics Anonymous. They were indented.

“We’re just going to get Wyatt to help us up. We don’t do it by ourselves anymore. Had a patient a year ago, swear he was two-eighty, I tried to catch him, out for a month with my back. Policy now is two nurses to a fall.”

The blue book appeared to have been opened but never read. The flyleaf stuck a little and the spine popped when she splayed the covers. The table of contents had a single smudge on it. She gave it a fingerprint.

Oh, mustard.

As Wyatt entered to assist nurse Rachel or Hannah, we’ll never know, Camille tucked the book in her pants elastic and worked to clinch it there with her stomach muscles. Wyatt touched both her shoulders while Rachel stood back.

“Two to a fall?”

“I’ll watch the door.”

“For what?”

Wyatt, of all the nurses at Austin House, was Camille’s only equal in strength and he was not getting the better of her now. She squirmed free and crawled away and sat against a wall. Wyatt clenched his jaw but stayed calm.

“We can help you get anything you need. Just tell us.”

“Can you talk?”

“I know you can. I heard you talk in your sleep.”

Together the nurses picked the table up and the chair. Wyatt took the sandwich out of the recycling and washed it in the sink with a little soap.

“We can get you a different one. This one’s perfectly good for the next person, but I’ll make you one special.”

He winked and went to the fridge.

“Turkey, right?”

“When does she go in front of the doctor?”

“Saturday.”

“I’ll make a note to double nightlies.”

“I’m working it. Hey, what’s that?”

He bent over Camille and peeled iceberg lettuce off the ball of her foot. He smiled and she smiled, withholding a giggle.

“You want everything on it?”

Maurice

The nurses would not let Camille shower although she’d never asked. So, she sat in the common room with three men watching DVDs. One of the men kept an eye fixed on her breasts. They were perky and half the right size, according to her brothers, and men seemed to like them.

She got up and went to the phone room calling no one for the allotted half hour. The landline cord was very short and funny to see dangle. The girl in there before her seemed to have farted continuously, but you get used to smells here. She flipped open her book. There were stories at the end and they didn’t seem very long. There was a preface at the beginning and four forwards and a Doctor’s Opinion and it seemed difficult to read. Where were the famous twelve steps?

The man in the community room who’d eyed her said the only way to read the book was aloud with your sponsor. 

“He walks you through it until God takes over. I can read it to you.”

When her phone time was up there was no one watching DVDs. Nights each day take three weeks to arrive here and you celebrate the darkness when you find yourself in it. Everyone goes to bed at nine with portable DVD players, the ones parents take out on road trips to calm their kids.

This being her first day at Austin House, Camille stayed back in the community room. There was no curfew. Moonless night coiled around her like a snake and it felt cool and good. It squeezed out the light and the day’s awful smells. Even the television exhaled.

“Watch the head.”

Casters broke the silence rolling over hallway tiles and Camille opened her eyes. A patient was being driven past the reception desk and into the dark entrance and exit behind it. There were two doors open that might as well have been garage doors. They were the exact dimensions of the hallway leading out to the world.

Camille stood up as if summoned and steadied herself and walked toward the nurses wheeling the gurney. One was Wyatt. The other she didn’t recognize. He passed Swedish Fish to Wyatt and they talked while chewing.

“Eighteen-B’s roommate asked where we’re going.”

“Privileged information.”

“Then he asks what stage is he?”

“Ha, you playing!”

“Too many pamphlets in this place.”

“Wouldn’t you want the gossip?”

“Beats watching Scent of a Woman the sixteenth time.”

They reached the parking lot and stopped laughing.

“Shit, it’s Maurice.”

“Well, this patient’s gonna die in a drive-through.”

“Oh my God, I’m dead.”

A man in a blue van rolled down his window. The nurses crossed their arms sternly but couldn’t be taken seriously when their candy bag spilled.

“Shit.”

“You kids get treats?”

“Hey, Maurice.”

“This one gonna give me trouble?”

“If you be stopping for fries he will.”

“Straight there or he’ll sit up and strangle you.”

“He’s a fucking zombie, bro.”

“Yeah, yeah. Load ’er up, ladies.”

They wheeled the patient to the back of the van and opened its doors. Wyatt swapped saline bags and the other nurse pulled the van gurney out like a drawer and got it ready to transfer the patient. Maurice turned his head to watch them when a black shadow eclipsed a parking lot lamp.

“Guys.”

The shadow crawled over the nurses and over the comatose patient, like it was tucking him in.

“Oh, shit!”

They pushed the van gurney back in slowly.

“Fuck.”

“Calm.”

“Maurice, call code yellow if she runs.”

“We good.”

Wyatt stepped into light but didn’t release the van door.

“You want something? I can get you something if you ask.”

He turned to his partner.

“Stay with the patient.”

“Yep.”

The night air felt like something from a dream, something Camille had been trying to feel all day: anything.

Wyatt walked softly toward her as he spoke.

“That was quite the fall today. You know they’d never forgive me if I let you drop out here, too.”

When he reached her he side-hugged her and they walked together like friends from the pavement to the cement.

“Something for sleep?”

The interstate honked and something in a tree warbled. Camille closed her eyes and wandered to each place and saw each thing. Her legs wandered, too, and then gave up standing.

“Oh, shit!”

Wyatt wasn’t supposed to catch her but he tried. Her shoulders slipped away from him and he gripped her shirt. He wouldn’t let go and was taken to the ground.

“You got her?”

Maurice chuckled.

Wyatt sprung up and dusted himself off.

“I got her! She’s a big one, no offense.”

None was taken.

Wyatt’s eyes ran along the sidewalk where a book had fallen. A blue book, shiny. Camille sat up and grabbed at it but couldn’t reach. Wyatt stood between.

“That’s for the cafeteria, girl. It’s everyone’s.”

She panted from her nostrils like a bull.

“But you can read it in bed. I won’t tell anyone.”

He winked.

She pointed a finger at his chest and he looked down.

“Yeah, I got mustard on me. I’m silly.”

She shook her head and shook her finger and pointed from him to her.

“You want me to read to you?”

She nodded.

“Tell you what, let’s get you back in and we can talk about reading.”

He leaned over and grabbed her by the armpits. His face was next to her ear and she could hear him breathing and she never liked close breathing, or gentle voices that don’t do what you ask.

“Let’s get you up.”

She seized him by the ribs and lifted him over her shoulder and drove his head into the cement. It popped like an ankle and his body crumpled.

When Maurice saw blood he yelled to no one in particular.

“Code yellow!”

“Fucking gray, you idiot!”

The nurse with the patient left his patient and slid to Wyatt on the ground. He touched, without moving them, the neck and the head.

“Wyatt! Wyatt!”

Camille was picking up her book and flexing her muscles ecstatically. They had not been saturated with blood for more than twenty hours.

It was good, rich blood.

“Maurice, call for help!”

The nurse tried to restrain her as she slipped the book in her waistband but she flailed and punched his gut so hard he fainted.

Seeing two nurses down Maurice locked the van’s front doors and rolled up the windows and reversed, pushing the patient on the gurney over a parking block and into a berm with phlox and gravel.

“Fuck!”

He fumbled with his phone and tapped the bright screen until it rang. His beard shook.

Camille walked toward the noise and the light and up to the passenger window. She gazed inside, like a buffalo gazes, just a big head looking, waiting to be spooked.

“Maurice?” asked the phone.

“Sshhhhhh, shhh!”

She squeegeed her fingertips on the passenger window and tapped, tapped, tapped, tapped and then looked down at something on the ground. She picked up her foot and plucked a red, disfigured Swedish Fish from between her toes and before she could get her foot back on the ground she tipped over and disappeared.

“I think he butt-dialed.”

“Ssshhhh! Don’t hang up!”

He listened for movement beside the van. He tried to imagine which sounds signaled imminent danger and which a happy ending but his mind had gone blank. He thought silence might be good but wasn’t one-hundred percent.

“Are you okay?”

“Ssssshhhhhhh!”

Camille was suddenly and overwhelmingly at the front of the van with both hands slapped against its hood and rocking.

“Aaaaagh! Aaaagh!

The back doors swung in and out and whacked a maple tree in the berm. Maurice cried spittle and looked at the open doors behind him and then at Camille and then behind him and at her again. Her lips were blue and she hissed and howled. Her face was puffed and she had mustard on it and blood on her shirt and in her terrible hair.

“We got a code yellow! No, gray! Austin House, code gray! Code gray!”

He crawled over the console and raced Camille to the back doors and closed them. He heard a maple branch crack and waited for a shattered window but there was no more sound.

“Is there any other information you can give us?”

He wouldn’t answer. He wouldn’t even breathe. He would sit in silence without air until help came, came for him and the patient in the berm and the nurses on the cement. He wouldn’t even close his eyes and pray.

“Are you still there, Maurice?”

End Call.

Camille

Camille merged with the overlapping shadows of a nearby grove. She dropped her book repeatedly and picked it up again. She couldn’t remember how she got to Austin House so she went home the same way.