“No, thank you, I’m eating.”
“I
’d suggest you go with him,” Cassidy said with a quirky smile across her face.
“Mr. Levy, I’m Jarrod, your therapist. We will be meeting every day at 8:30 a.m. If you refuse to meet with me, there is a one-point deduction charged to you.”
“Oh, for God’s sake with these damn points. Fine. Let’s go talk,” I reluctantly agreed. “I’ll talk to you when I get back,” I said as I stood up and looked Cassidy in the eyes.
“Enjoy your counseling session. Group sessions will start at ten.”
“You’re committed to torturing me while I’m here, aren’t you?” I asked as a joke.
“Yep,” she replied with a mischievous smile.
I couldn’t wait to talk to her again. She was a hard ass and certainly nothing like any other girl I had met in recent years. I liked the challenge she represented for me. Maybe this treatment program was going to be a little more fun that I had expected.
If I could get through all the damn meetings and rules, I was interested to get more information on this girl.
“You shouldn’t bother flirting with her. She doesn’t date guys from treatment,” a man next to me in group said.
“What?”
“Cassidy, you were flirting with her. She’s tough. Don’t waste your time.”
“It’s not a waste. I’ll bet you that I can land her in my room before I leave.”
“I’m Brad, and I’ll take that bet,” the man said as we shook hands.
Chapter Five
Cassidy
I tried to avoid Erik for the next few days that I worked. I even asked to work on the secure unit if there was enough staff to supervise me. He made me uneasy, nervous, and distracted, and I wasn’t really sure I liked any of those feelings. I had to just stay away from the guy, or at least try to stay away.
Men in general made me uncomfortable now that I was sober. I didn’t know how to interact with them and certainly wasn’t sure if I had the energy to be anything more than friends. Most men wanted sex or some sort of relationship, and I could barely manage myself at the moment; I wasn’t going to get into any sexual relationships with a guy.
My girlfriends and friends at AA were enough for me. Being sober was exhausting as I constantly felt the urge to drink. That instant relief of my anxiety was something that was difficult for anyone to understand; well, anyone who wasn’t an alcoholic.
But inevitably, Mr. March had me assigned to work on Erik’s unit, and I couldn’t convince anyone to trade with me. It wasn’t surprising that when I wanted to trade, everyone else was miraculously busy; yet when they wanted me to work for them, everyone expected me to be fine with it. That was pretty much the story of my life at Paradise Peak, but I dealt with it and didn’t complain. It was nice to be sober, have a good-paying job, and get to hang out with people and talk as my job for most of the day.
I reluctantly sauntered into work at eight in the morning and made my way to the nurses’ desk without looking around at all. I couldn’t risk making eye contact with him. I couldn’t risk an accidental meeting. No, I would interact with him on my terms. With enough time to prepare and focus myself so I wasn’t so damn distracted by him and his charms.
Luckily, as I went about handing out morning breakfast trays, Erik was nowhere to be seen. If I could make it through breakfast, I was in the clear for at least a few hours because I had volunteered to go with the recreation therapist and a few patients on a hike that morning before lunch. I didn’t necessarily enjoy hiking, but I was excited to get away from Erik. He wasn’t going to be in a good mood as he continued to come down, and I was a little afraid of how much harder to handle he was going to be.
Melanie was our recreation therapist, and she was also a personal trainer. Sometimes our clients wanted to use their time in treatment to get back into shape and we provided her services free of charge to them. It seemed to me like patients who put their own health ahead of relaxation were better able to stick with their sobriety, but I didn’t really have scientific evidence of that. I just had more people coming back for a second and third round of treatment who had been relaxing during their first stint at our facility.
“Can you go get Mr. Levy up? He needs to come eat; he’s been sleeping through breakfast the last few days,” the nurse for the day said.
“Let him sleep and be hungry; maybe he’ll learn his lesson,” I snapped in a totally uncharacteristic way for me.
Susan, the nurse on the unit that day, looked at me in total shock. She was one of the kindest people I knew. Susan was a grandmother and babied the clients even more than I did. She knew it wasn’t in my nature to act so crude toward a patient and the look on her face flashed total disappointment in how I had behaved.
“I’m sorry, it’s been a rough morning,” I said in quick reply to her disappointed eyes. “I’ll go right in.”
Reluctantly, I made my way to Erik’s room to get his ass up and out of bed. On his first morning, he had come out and made an effort to eat, so it was disappointing that he had reverted to the idea that sleeping his stay away was a good idea. No one ever made it through treatment without actually getting up and participating.
Mentally, I focused myself. I was going to be stern, firm, and give real guidelines for him. I was going to treat him just like any other patient, and I wasn’t going to get distracted by his smile, or his winking at me, or anything else. Focus was all I was going to do.