“WISH I WOULD’VE HEARD FROM you this week,” I say, flashing a tight smile as I analyze the wrinkles in her forehead, the sadness in her eyes.
“Bishop …” Carleigh lets out a heavy breath. Her eyes still stray from my own, as if she feels guilty of something. “I want to say so much, it’s just … it’s hard.” She bites her bottom lip, dropping her head into her hands. She lets out a groan.
“You’re a therapist. Ain’t you supposed to be good at this whole talkin’ thing?”
I smirk. She forces a smile, but the dread remains in her eyes.
“What happened, Bishop, it shouldn’t have. It was a mistake,” she says in a hushed tone.
The words strike me in the chest like a brand, but I fight the disappointment from my face. “A mistake? Which part? Gettin’ to know each other?” I wave my hand around the room. “Not caught up in this goddamn white ass room?”
“Bishop …”
“I just thought it was different. It seemed different.” There’s a little whine to my tone and it makes my skin crawl. I lean back in my chair to look a little more at ease, but the tension in my shoulders remains. “It felt different.”
“I told you at the start of the night that I just couldn’t do this. I’m your therapist. We have too many sessions left. And God, Bishop, I’m forty-seven years old. How old are you again?”
“You know the answer to that. So …” I respond, my jaw clinching as the anxiety rolls over me like a storm, my face red hot.
“So, it’s a big difference! And I’m your doctor,” she repeats, as if that’ll change the fact that I find this woman irresistible—even more so now that her brow is all furrowed and her face is flustered.
The tangled feelings of insecurity and desire confuse me. Overwhelm me.
“You can’t deny what we both felt that night in each other’s arms, kissin’. It was different. It was electric.”
She looks nervous, her eyes continuously flitting toward the door. “Can we not talk about this here? We really should be doing therapy during this time.”
“Where then? When?”
She breathes out a heavy sigh and nods her head toward the computer. “Is the number we have on file your cell phone?”
I nod.
“How about I call you tonight? After work … say … eight o’clock?”
“You’re lyin’,” I respond, putting both feet on the floor and leaning forward, studying her. She looks me in the eyes now, a new confidence in her stature.
“Well, you’ll just have to wait and see, won’t you?” she says, tilting her head down and pinching her brows. A smirk appears.
“I guess I will.”
“How has your week been?” she asks, jumping right into it.
“I had an absolutely incredible Saturday night.” I grin, and she shakes her head.
“After Saturday. Anymore drinking this week? I know you haven’t been the past two days, at least. Donna brought me the results.”
“Nothing but a few beers on Sunday.”
“And the trace amounts of marijuana in your urine?”
A spiky heat prickles up my neck. “I swear I didn’t smoke!” I plead.
She puts a hand up to calm me. “No, you’re fine. It was only trace amounts, which tells us it was secondhand, but you really need to watch that. You don’t need to be around it. It’ll just tempt you, and all the time we spend together over these seven weeks will go to waste, you’ll face charges, and worse than what may come from those, I will have failed you in here.”
“I don’t think I’m as addicted to this stuff as people would like to think.”
“If you had to quit everything right now, could you? Say you were sent to jail over this. Can you tell me sincerely that you wouldn’t feel the effects of withdrawal?”
I take a deep breath, my eyes tracing the lines of the tile floor and my thoughts racing.
She’s right.
“No, I couldn’t quit everything and not feel fucked up.”
“That’s okay. You aren’t a lesser man for admitting that. You’re not weaker somehow. In fact, I think it makes you stronger.”
“I gave up a lot when I left home at sixteen … I wasn’t sure where I was gonna sleep for a good while. Barely graduated high school.” I pause, catching myself as the words spill out. I hadn’t thought about them, simply let them fall from my lips.
“But you did.”
“Thank God for that.” I chuckle, passing a quick glance toward the ceiling.
“What about after high school? What was it like?”
“Well, when I joined the Army, I gave up a lot, too. I gave up the freedom to piss, sleep, and eat when I wanted to. I gave up the ability to tell a grown-ass man screamin’ in my face to back the fuck up. I gave up a lot when I decided to get out of the Army and pursue this whole new life. I’ve given up a lot in this life. But I’ve controlled my own destiny each step of the way. I had the final say. I chose to leave home because I knew it’d make me better to get away from them. I chose to join the Army because I knew it was my only way outta that shithole I call my hometown. I chose civilian life because I knew I got everything out of the Army that I possibly could. It was time to move on. I made these choices for my own betterment. I took control.”
She nods. “You mention ‘giving up’ a lot. Is there some resentment for having to give up so much?”
“A lot of resentment all around, I guess. I wouldn’t have had to give up so much if I had a better start to this life game. I do love the Army, and I loved serving, but I wonder sometimes what it would’ve been like to have lived a different life.”
“We all do. Really. I think it’d in our DNA to question our past. But it does us no good. You are where you are, and you’ve been through what you’ve been through, for a reason.”
“See, and I know that to be true. But it doesn’t change a damn thing. I still worry and wonder. Sometimes I think about what it would’ve been like to have missed that mission too. I think that’s when my problems really started. It’s when I lost all control.”
She leans in, her brows wrinkled. “Lost control of what?”
“Of everything. After the RPG. Any semblance of control was ripped from my hands. And then, this alcohol thing … it’s just the path set forth from that day. My injury and addiction are two peas in the same fucked up pod.”
“Bullshit.” She scoffs.
“Which part?”
“You can tell me you drink because of the explosion. That, I buy. That, I can understand. But to say it’s a path set out for you. To imply it can’t be changed. It’s bullshit.”
“I never said it couldn’t be changed.”
“I said ‘you implied it’.” She smirks as her fingers twirl the pen. “The question is, how much control do you really have? Personally, I think you have far more than you give yourself credit for, but that means nothing. You have to know it too. And down the road when you’re done with therapy, and this mess is behind you, will you have enough control to not let the alcohol control you?”
“That is the question of the day.” I smile, but a determined look remains on her face.
“You have to be willing to fight, Bishop. You have to take back control. This is a disease. It’s a sickness. And if you’re not careful, it can swallow you whole.”
“I know. I watched my own father’s dance with the bottle. I promised myself I’d never get like that. But in the Army Infantry, you drink. It’s a way of life.”
“And what about after you were hurt, while you were rehabbing?”
I chuckle. “You don’t even wanna know,” I say, shaking my head.
“I certainly do.”
“I was a mess.”
“How so?”
“Well, first off, Walter Reed was a mess. No leadership. No accountability. I went to appointments and then nothin’ … no direction. No real support system. So, I spent a lot of time alone, oftentimes in pain. For a year it was like that … maybe a little less. I knew no one, didn’t drink a whole lot because I didn’t wanna leave my barracks room, but I was slowly dyin’ inside. I was a ship against a squall. I thought about suicide a lot. Not about doin’ it. I told you, I’ve never thought much about that. I focused more on the aspect of me not bein’ around anymore. What it would be like … whether anyone would miss me.”
I gulp, clearing my throat before continuing, “And other guys are droppin’ like flies in their own barracks rooms around me, ODed on their pain pills, most of ‘em. A gunshot too, my first year. Guys couldn’t handle the loneliness … the quiet … the battle. I handled it as best I could, stuffin’ all that agony, anxiousness, and desperation deep down, where they could hide away from the world. And they did for a while. I fell into habits. Comedy shows, usually sitcoms. Comedy and action movies. Drama, if I was feelin’ weepy. They’d play on repeat, one show after another. One movie to the next, and it saved me. It really did. I fell in love all over again with all those movies that stole my heart when I was younger.”
“And when did the alcohol come into play?”
I chuckle, the memory of the man I’d grow quite close to over a year’s time washing over me. “Once I met my buddy Tim. He was a man’s man, with a rough edge to him. Pretty boy looks with a country boy’s swagger. The ladies fuckin’ loved him, and after gettin’ to know him during occupational therapy, I came to see why.”
“He was injured as well?”
“Yeah, he lost his leg to a roadside bomb. One that killed the rest of his guys. He never showed a sign of despair over it, though. Never talked about it, really. And in turn, I didn’t talk about the men I lost. We bonded over other shit. Baseball, girls, video games, and eventually, Jameson. I’d never really had it before him. Never liked it, at least. But I admired and looked up to him. He was the man I wanted to become, even if he was only two years my senior. He was just so … grounded. Level-headed. Always so aware of his actions, and the actions of others.”
“Do you still keep in contact with him?”
I don’t even feel the tear well in my eye, but I do feel it cascade down my cheek. I’m quick to catch it with a shaky finger.
Her compassionate eyes study me. “What happened, Bishop?”
I take a deep breath, letting it out slow as my hands squeeze the hand rests. “He missed the fightin’ too much. I tried to talk him out of it. Tried to get him to get out and go to college like me, but he was too set in his ways. Like me, the Army was the only thing he ever loved. Unlike me, a set of real legs isn’t as imperative as two workin’ eyes. He worked his ass off to get back in the fight, and before long, I was left alone again. It wasn’t too long after that I met Chelsea.”
“And your friend … what’s his name?”
“Sergeant Adrian Lang.”
“Did you keep in touch with Sergeant Lang?”
“For a while. I called him every now and then, once he got to his new unit in Germany. From the sound of it, he was gettin’ used to the workload with a prosthetic, and they were rampin’ up for a deployment.”
A knot tightens in my throat and my palms sweat; the tears punish my eye sockets, but I fight to hold them back.
“I didn’t even find out until four months later.” I draw in a quick breath. “From a fuckin’ Myspace post. I couldn’t—” I drop my head in my hands and let out a groan. “I just couldn’t fuckin’ believe I had to find out he was killed in action from some random motherfucker’s Myspace post. I couldn’t believe he made it out alive once, just to go back again and never return. I lost it. Fuckin’ lost it. Deleted that Myspace shit, the Facebook I had started, any presence I had online. I closed myself off from everyone, and I drank. Poor Chelsea, she was there for the worst of it.”
I smile, though the sadness engulfs me.
“You know … as much as I want to hate her for how she ended things, as much as it hurt me to see her go, I don’t blame her one damn bit. I hate who I was then. I don’t much like myself now. There’s a lot I’d change, but I’m proud to look back on who that man was and say, ‘I don’t even recognize him.’”
“That is good. It’s excellent. We need to continue encouraging that progression. You’ve come so far on your own. Let me help you to get the rest of the way, will you?”
“I don’t think I have a choice,” I joke, but she narrows her eyes at me. My eyes drop to the floor in defeat. “I will let you help me. I want you to help me. I guess, maybe, I need you to.”
“If you want to change, I mean, really want to change, the power is in your hands. With everything you have gone through, you’ve developed an unparalleled strength. We are going to use that strength to fight this addiction.”
“Can we use a different word?”
She scrunches her brows. “Different word?”
“Yeah, a different word to use than addiction. It has such negative connotations.”
“What would you like me to call it then, Bishop?”
“Hmmm…” I tap a pointer against my chin before shrugging. “Maybe, like, The Thirst. Kind of sounds like a superhero. Or we could go with manageable vice?”
She stifles a laugh as she shakes her head at me. “This isn’t funny. Addiction isn’t funny.”
“Alcohol ultra-enthusiast kind of is, though,” I say, grinning like an idiot.
“You actually called,” I say into my phone, sprawled across my bed with Scrubs on the tube. “I wasn’t expectin’ that.”
“Well, I said I would. And we do need to discuss this.”
“We do. Over dinner, maybe?”
“Bishop!”
“What? It’s just dinner, Carleigh.”
She hesitates, taking a deep breath, before she says, “Bishop, I’m your doctor and you’re my patient, and my job is to get you better, not to engage in inappropriate communications. This even is too much. I could get in a lot of trouble.”
“The last thing in the world I’d wanna do is get you in trouble. I wouldn’t tell a soul, whether we saw more of each other outside of the office or not.”
“We just can’t, Bishop. It’s such a complicated situation. Yes, I have feelings for you, I think you’re an incredible human being, but we must maintain professional bearing. There is no other option.”
“And in three weeks, when I’m no longer your patient?”
“We can discuss things further then, okay? It’s doctor-patient until that point.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I’m serious!” she says in a firm tone that’s far more adorable than I’m sure she intended it to be.
“Okay, Carleigh. Doctor-patient relations only for the next three weeks, and then I sweep you off your feet.”
She chortles. “Yeah, okay, Romeo. We’ll see. Have a good night.”
“Wait! Carleigh, before you go …”
“What?”
My lips curl into a grin. “What are you wearin’?”
She scoffs, chuckling a little when she repeats, “Goodnight, Bishop,” and there’s a click over the line.
I set my phone on the nightstand, a wide smile on my face as I think about three weeks from now, and the inevitability of our tryst.