Rehab's Finest

“What’d you write about?” asks Ron who’s holding a steaming styrofoam cup, lightly stirring it with shaky hands.

“Just some more stuff they wanna hear,” mutters Louis under his breath, half-heartedly holding a pencil to a black notebook.

“What about that scratch-off you won?” asks Ron.

“Ugh dude, don’t remind me, twenty thousand dollars on a two-dollar scratcher, and I can’t even use it,” says Louis in an irritated voice.

“Well, what about how many times you’ve been here? You’ve had to learn something right?” asks Ron with a puzzled expression.

“This is my third rehab, I know the drill, yeah, but it doesn’t make a difference believe me.”

Ron looks away and shakes his head. “Don’t you think by now you should be trying to do better, otherwise why waste your time?” He takes a sip of his coffee then looks at Louis with pitiful eyes, “I know I can’t do this anymore. If you’ve been here two different times, you definitely can’t man.”

Louis stares at the blank sheet of paper as Ron walks away. What does he care, he’s shaking so much he can barely sip that fucking coffee. “Hey Ron!” Louis yells across the room. Ron looks back just to see Louis holding up the middle finger. Ron doesn’t react, climbing onto his bunk.

What do they want me to say? That I’ve ruined every relationship I’ve ever had? That I’m filling the void with alcohol, and the cycle keeps repeating? Or how about I don't care if I get better, and I’d rather die on some street corner with a fifth in my hand than confront my demons?

Louis holds his head in his hands as his thoughts spiral out of control. He feels a hand rest on his shoulder and looks up to see the kind, smiling face of his counselor.

“It’ll really help if you can write what's going on in that head of yours Louis,” she says in a sweet voice.

Louis musters a half-smile and says, “you’re the only thing I’m thinking about now,” and winks at her. She shoots a disapproving look at him and picks up his journal.

“Here, I’ll write a few words to get you started. Sometimes we just need a starting point.”

Louis takes the journal back when she’s finished, reading aloud “getting better is hard, but the first step is..”

“What’s the first step, Louis?”

Louis robotically repeats the first of the twelve steps, “we admitted we are powerless to alc---”.

“No Lou, what's YOUR first step?” she asks.

Taking a moment to think, Louis's eye’s soften, “wanting to get better," he replies dropping his head in shame.

“ We all want you to get better Louis, now it’s your turn. It’s time to stop being your worst enemy, and do the work,” she taps him on his head with her pen and walks away.

Maybe they do care. I still want a drink though.... and my fucking money.

Louis spends the rest of the night writing about what got him to this point. He spilt all the grimy details of the people he’d wronged, and all the pent-up emotion he’d hidden for fear of being ridiculed. He even wrote a few paragraphs about Ron, and how their stories were similar. By the time he was finished everyone in the dorm was asleep. Letting out a big yawn, he called it a night and climbed under his covers, putting the journal under his pillow for fear of someone reading it. He falls asleep to the raucous snoring of Ron on the top bunk.

Morning comes quickly as one of the assistant counselors yells for breakfast time. Louis yawns an obnoxiously loud yawn and rolls out of bed. He bangs on the bedpost, “hey Ron get up ya lazy sum bitch, I know your fat ass wants some bacon,'' Ron doesn’t respond. Louis shrugs, and heads out to the mess hall, falling in line with the rest of the groggy crowd.

“Ron not up again?” asks a tall gangly man named Derek.

“Yep he’s gonna miss out on the bacon again,” they both laugh as they enter the cafeteria. This earns them both some odd looks from the rest of the crowd.

"What you never heard laughter before Margarette?" he asks a sour faced older woman. She grunts, and continues walking.

Louis finishes his meal and follows the crowd to go to the first group session of the day.

"Would anyone like to read from their journal today?" asks the squat, older Japanese man who runs the morning group session.

Hell no, thinks Louis as he sits down. It then occurs to him that he left his journal laying on his bed, and uses it as an excuse to kill some time.

"I left mine on my bunk, can I go get it real quick?" the older man nods and Louis darts out of his seat. As he approaches the dorms, he sees his counselor hovering outside the door, visibly shaken.

“You ok Ms. Hernandez?” she looks up at him, her eyes darting from Louis’s face to the bunk beds.

“Your, your notebook. It was open, and I… I read some of it” she looks down ashamed, “ but what---- I mean how could you have known about him?”

Louis stares at her with a puzzled expression, “known about who?”

“Ron…. he… he's gone.”

“What do you mean? I just saw him this morning.”

“No Louis, he died nine years ago, how could you possibly know about him?"

"What, how? I just--"

"I know everyone by name, and there's nobody here anymore by that one . It was an overdose, another patient snuck fentanyl in and they both died.”

Louis froze, thinking back to the tall gangly man he knows as Derek, his last words ringing out in his mind “Ron not up again?”

“The other one, was he tall and thin with blonde hair?” Ms. Hernandez shoots him a look of terror.

“Are you messing with me, Louis? That’s not funny if you are,” she says hurriedly walking past him, mumbling a prayer to comfort herself.

The notebook lays on the nightstand wide open, its pages filled with messy handwriting and scribble marks. Louis peers over the railing of the top bunk, where Ron had been sleeping. All he finds is an empty, well-made bed. He looks back at the journal and notices something he hadn’t seen before.

Some of us don’t get any more chances. Make this your last one Louis.

-Ron