Her face changes the instant she turns to look at him, her mouth going into a thin line.
“We’re paying for rehab,” she tells her husband. “We’ll pay for it this time, and we’ll pay for it the next time, and with God as my witness we’ll pay for it until he’s clean if it takes our entire life savings and both our retirement accounts.”
“You’re going to bankrupt us coddling him into getting clean?” Thalia’s father says.
“It’s better than turning him out onto the streets to —”
“Excuse me,” I say, step around them, and leave the room.* * *The day is complete pandemonium before it’s ten in the morning. I’m sitting on a bench, outside the hospital’s back door, watching a man in a hospital gown chain smoke when Thalia texts me that she’s done talking to Javier, where’d I go?
The hospital wants him discharged. They wanted him discharged hours ago, because his life is no longer in danger and they need the bed back, but Paloma had begged them and they relented.
I get Thalia’s laptop out of my car, then head back upstairs with her and Bastien. Paloma is with Javier, somewhere. Captain Lopez has gone to the cafeteria to drink endless cups of coffee and presumably stare at a wall.
Our mission is simple: find a place that can take Javier today, now, before he has a chance to change his mind, and before he has a chance to start detoxing in earnest. Thalia finds locations and phone numbers; Bastien and I do the calling.
Thus begins my crash course in drug rehabilitation centers. Some are simple, affordable, relatively bare-bones. Some sound like resort spas. One offers something called crystal alignment therapy. One offers horseback riding therapy; neither has any openings for weeks.
Together, we work through the listen. Bastien finds a place with an opening, up in Northern Virginia, close to D.C., then I find a place in Maryland, near Ocean City. The list of options grows slowly. There are city rehabs and country rehabs, even a fishing rehab. One’s on a working dairy farm. One is also a daschund rescue. Several are very religious.
But in the end, we choose the place that specializes in addicts who also have PTSD. Thalia is adamant, and neither of us argue. It’s in the middle of nowhere, a few miles outside Lynchburg, and the only reason it has an opening at all is because someone didn’t show up yesterday.
Bastien calls to make the arrangements, and as he paces back and forth, trying to answer questions that I don’t think he knows the answers to, Thalia leans over and puts her head on my shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and I put my arm around her, then kiss the top of her head.* * *We say goodbye standing next to her parents’ minivan after we put her stuff into it. She’s going with them to take Javier to rehab, then back to Norfolk for winter break.
After we put her suitcase into the back, she looks at it, then rubs her eyes with her hands, and turns to sit on the tailgate and I follow suit.
“Did I apologize yet?” she asks, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“You did, and I told you to cut it out,” I remind her.
“Did I say thank you?” she asks.
“Yes,” I confirm, resting my cheek against the top of her head, my arm around her, looking out at the other cars in the parking lot, the gray sky, the spindly, leafless trees.
“I wish we were on a date right now,” she says, kicking her feet out in front of her. “Whatever you had planned, I have a feeling it wasn’t a questionable hospital in a bad part of Richmond.”
“Should it not have been?” I ask, and she laughs. “Oops.”
“My parents didn’t get weird, did they?” she asks. “I didn’t realize until it was too late that I’d accidentally left you alone with them, which probably wasn’t a great move.”
“I am a capable adult who can hold his own among other adults,” I remind her. “I know how to act.”
“Calling my dad sir was a very nice touch,” she admits.
“But I also panicked a little and told them I’m a grad student,” I say.
“I’ll take it,” Thalia says, and puts her hand on my thigh. I’ve got my right arm around her shoulders, so I put my left hand over hers.
Then she rotates her temple against my shoulder and looks up at me.
“I also didn’t get to give you my Christmas present,” she says, and then wiggles her eyebrows.
God help me, it works. I barely slept last night and then spent the morning driving and calling rehab centers, but that eyebrow wiggle still works on me.
“Is it the return of Sexy Freud?” I tease. “Tell me you didn’t get rid of it.”
“I mostly didn’t,” she says. “Though the bra was never mine to begin with, and I should probably go ahead and confess that it was mostly socks anyway.”