Life In Recovery

Stephanie was in outpatient treatment and feeling darn good about herself and how she was doing. She thought, I should have gone to treatment right away, rather than trying to do it all on my own. Oh well, as they say, live in today and live one day at a time. She was on her way to have some work done on her car. She had driven it down to Mexico, just a few short months ago now. She thought she should have an oil change and have just a minor checkup as it didn’t seem to be running quite right. When she went into the shop, she thought, what a mess. These guys could use some help to clean this place up a bit. As she was sitting waiting for her car to get looked over, she thought of her relationship and how that was going well. She felt so lucky to be in a relationship with a man in recovery. A man with a kick ass recovery program. He reads the grapevine every month, he reads two daily meditation books, one in the morning and one at night. He sponsors guys and is in service by being a group service representative or a GSR. Then he is always providing a role in the district.

Stephanie was looking around the shop and thought she knew just the guy who could make a few dollars, cleaning up this shop. Her son in law would do a good job and could use a little more work as his position has moved to part-time. Then she wondered if he would get upset with her for looking for work for him. Then she thought, I will only bring it up if it fits in to conversation. When her car was being driven out of the shop, she got up to pay for her car. While at the counter she saw something, she wasn’t supposed to see. She hurriedly got out of there after paying for her car. She went to tell her fiancé as she really wasn’t sure she saw what she thought she saw. One of the mechanics was heating up his lunch and dropped a picture of what looked like a dead woman on the floor out of his wallet. Was that really what she saw? How would her fiancé help? Should she tell the police? What could they do? She decided she had to let someone know, so she gave an anonymous report to the police and decided that she would wait and see what happened. And she would be careful that she would not have any repercussions from telling. It just did not feel like it could be real. Did she imagine what she saw? Why would someone carry around pictures like that? How could something like that fall out of someone’s wallet. Would it still be there when law enforcement investigated?

Then she knew she must have not seen what she thought as who in their right mind would carry around a picture of a dead woman. How could she tell the woman was dead anyway? And she stopped in mid thought and then said out loud, “am I just thinking this way because I know he would know who reported the incident as I was the only person in the shop when he dropped the picture.” She thought, am I safe? Her fiancé told her to go in and talk with the police. Admit that she was afraid to get involved, but realized she is involved as why would anyone take that claim seriously without a witness. The police sit down with her, and it was really pretty easy to talk about what happened. She felt better as she was leaving the police department. When she got back to the extended care building, she was happy to be living in a community of people that were working on recovery and she felt safe with them and in her temporary home. As she let herself into the apartment, she had a feeling that she wasn’t alone, and she started to call for her roommate. When she approached her bedroom, she could see Samantha’s door ajar and she hollered in. Nothing. She pushed the door open and saw Sam, motionless on her bed. As she walked over to Samantha she screamed and screamed and screamed. When she stopped screaming, she could hear footsteps rushing toward her. Her room mate had taken an overdose and was not breathing. They were quick to get the ambulance and administer Narcan. When they took her in the ambulance, she was breathing again.

Later that night, a group of her community were all at the hospital to visit Samantha. She was apologizing for being so stupid and she really didn’t want to die, and she was so glad she was found and helped before it was too late. With all that had gone on Stephanie was able to forget about her visit to the police station. She would go home now and get some rest. Living one day at a time and today is almost over. As Evette dropped her at her apartment, she was so tired, she decided to shower and go to bed. She called Jase and told him about everything that happened. Jase said that since her room mate was out for the night, he would swing by and stay over if it was alright with her. She said she would like that, hung up and went into the bathroom. As she turned on the water to warm and got undressed she thought about everything going on and realized that she did not even once think about having a drink. She was feeling pretty good about that. When she stepped into the shower, she felt pretty good. Should she have told Jase to come over. She felt like she may fall asleep in the shower, but no, she heard a noise coming from outside the bathroom door. It couldn’t be Jase already. “Whose out there?” came from her in her loudest, meanest voice. “It’s me Jase”, came a mild mannered voice. “I talked to you from the car and was really close. Can I come in? Is it safe?” he said. As he entered the shower I knew it was a great idea to invite him over.

When talking in bed later, Jase said, "do you think the guy could have had a picture of someone who overdosed as a reminder to him and her that next time you may not make it. That may be a good thing to be reminded of, what do you think? Not something I would carry around for that reason, but maybe someone else would? I can't even believe someone would catch a photo of that, but I have heard of it before." Then Stephanie said after a long pause, "If that is what it is, I would actually feel better, than if there is a killer at large, carrying photos of victims. But how would I ever know that? Maybe the police will get back to me with what happened. Now that I am on record. Hopefully it is a simple answer not having to do with death.