Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [22]
“Is there a phone in there? I need to make a phone call. A private phone call.” I hoped I’d used my best assertive voice, but the one I heard belonged to a child. I just need to relax. I mean, one phone conversation with Carl, and I’m headed to the beach house. Or Molly. I could call Molly. She’d understand once I told her about this bizarro world I’m locked in. I’m sure we can find a place for people more like me, people I’d feel comfortable with.
Cathryn walked around me to the office, and I thought I heard her say, “No phone calls” as she passed.
“Did you say, ‘No phone’ or ‘No phone calls’?” I massaged my forehead where the temple drummers had relocated. Phone deprivation? What would the ACLU think of this? Surely this was a Civil Rights issue. No answer. Maybe she hadn’t heard me.
I wandered into the office, a sparse, ugly room. Cathryn sat behind a submarine-gray steel desk, creating handwriting havoc in a chart. My body was as hesitant to move as my mouth was to open. “What did you say about the phone?”
The tidal waves in my stomach intensified. I wanted to sit, but I might constrict the pool of nausea. Besides, there was no phone in here. I’d have to go someplace else anyway.
She looked up at me. “No phone yet. Sit down, and I’ll explain.”
“I don’t want to sit down. I want a phone. I know there are phones here. I’ve seen them. I’ve heard them ring. I want a telephone. I want to call my husband.”
My words marched out of my mouth like good little soldiers, slowly and deliberately.
“No one has phone privileges for the first seventy-two hours. That's one of the things we need to discuss.” She closed the folder, stood, and tilted her head toward me to make eye contact. “Let's talk. You can eat breakfast after that.”
I sent the troops out to battle one more time. “I don’t want breakfast. I want a phone.”
“I know. In forty-eight hours you can use the phone. But, for now—” she slipped the clipboard under her arm, and pointed toward the door “—we’re going to breakfast. Your face is as white as the paper I’m writing on.”
I was clearly not winning this battle.
11
My trauma over the phone issue re-prioritized after I bolted out of the office in a desperate search for the nearest bathroom. This business of moving to sobriety wasn’t much different than moving away from being drunk—they both involved throwing up. I didn’t remember this being mentioned in the brochure, either.
Breakfast was a culinary disaster. Foods that ordinarily and happily co-mingled on a plate proved less appealing in stainless steel troughs guarded by hair-netted people wielding long slotted spoons. Whatever hope I held out for the coffee dissipated as soon as I spotted “de” in front of “caf.”
Could I survive a month on Nutty Buddies? Maybe rehab was a blessing in disguise. Sobriety and weight loss. Double-teaming the addictions. A real two-for-one. Grams would be so proud I had scored such a deal.
I settled for two buttermilk biscuits with strawberry jelly, and warm orange juice with what I hoped was pulp clinging to the sides of the glass. Cathryn and I sat at a table for four in the corner of the cafeteria. Floor to ceiling panels of glass were evenly spaced between wide stucco columns. On one side of the room, diners could look beyond the glass into a wide semicircle of bushy purple azaleas. They surrounded a three-tiered pineapple-topped cement fountain flanked by black wrought-iron benches. On each side of the garden, red brick walkways wove through manicured sections of crepe myrtle trees, small magnolias, Mexican heather, and eager sunflowers. No evidence a frenzied world lurked beyond the landscaped perimeter.
“Finish