Page 34 of As a Last Resort

I stared at her. She was absolutely out of her mind.

“That’s it. I’m leaving. I can’t believe you would have the audacity to lay there in a bed, hooked up to fluids after having your stomach pumped, and tell me I’m the one who needs help.

” My blood was boiling, hot and unforgiving.

This was it. The last time I’d put myself in this position.

The last time I’d sit outside a heavy hospital door, waiting.

The last time I’d let her twist my emotions and wish it could be different.

“I didn’t come back here to take care of you.

I came back for a job —one that is over in less than two weeks.

And after that, I’m going home. You can go back to calling whoever it is you call when you wake up on docks, in alleys, or wherever else you end up when I’m not around. ”

I turned to the door and heard her small voice behind me.

“I’m ready to go somewhere and get help.”

I froze. I turned slowly, half expecting her to be joking. Those words—words I had begged to hear for years—had never come out of her before. Not once. No matter how much I urged, pleaded, or fought with her, she would never even consider it.

“No, you’re not.” My voice was thick with disbelief and hope at odds.

“Yes, I am, Samantha.” She sat up a little straighter against her pillows, eyes locked on mine. “I know why you don’t come back home. Believe it or not, your mother is actually quite intelligent, though I don’t display it quite as often in certain situations.”

I didn’t move. I stood there staring at her, hating myself for the little glimmer of hope I thought I’d buried long ago that simmered underneath the weight of so many years of anger.

“I’m serious. I want to go somewhere and get clean. For good.”

I crossed my arms, my defenses fighting their way back to the surface. “You’re just saying this so I don’t walk out right now.”

“No. But I understand why you’d think that.”

We’d been here so many times. Well, not here , because she was admitting she needed help which she had never done.

But we’d been to this point where my heart beat a little faster, and I felt a tiny seedling of hope trying so hard to poke through the surface of so much shit .

This little sprout was timid and scared that it’d be stomped on again, but it was there, barely breathing.

“I’m leaving in two weeks.” The words came out sharper than I intended. “Regardless of what you do.”

Her eyes flickered with something. Regret, maybe. “I wouldn’t expect anything different.”

“You realize you’d have to leave straight from here once you’ve detoxed.”

“I know.” Her voice wavered, betraying the conviction she’d started with.

I let the air sit between us for a moment, my mind racing. After all this time, all these years. I wanted to scream, but instead I asked quietly, “Why now?”

“Do you remember the year I put you in dance lessons?”

I had a hard time hiding my annoyance at her sudden change of subject. “Vaguely.”

“You were maybe six or seven, and you practiced that recital dance a hundred times. But you walked out, smack-dab in the middle of the stage, and looked like you had just seen a ghost. You looked out and saw all these people staring at you, just waiting for you to perform, and your face drained of all color. Your dad was there. Do you remember that?”

“I do.” A tightness rose in my chest at his memory.

“You just stood there while everyone else was dancing. You completely forgot the routine. But after about ten seconds, you lifted your chin up and started dancing. You made up an entirely new routine and did your own thing all over that stage, weaving in and out of all the other girls.”

I rolled my eyes at the memory. While I didn’t remember the actual recital, most likely subconsciously blocking it out of my memory, I had seen enough pictures and heard enough stories to validate the ridiculousness of it.

“When I asked you what happened, you looked at me and said, Well, I couldn’t just stand there. I had to do something. And we all burst out laughing.” She wiped her eyes once her laughing subsided and looked at me dead-on. “I can’t just stand here. I have to do something.”

Tears welled up in my eyes. I was just so tired.

Tired of running around trying to prove to everyone that I had it all together when I was so scared that I was just like her, barely keeping my head above water and hoodwinking the entire world.

I had clean countertops and not a single dirty dish in my sink.

My fate sat staring at me in the face, someone who pretended to have it all worked out who was finally saying maybe it wasn’t all working out the way she pretended it was.

But she was going to try. And she was willing to do something different this time.

And that was something.

“Okay.”

“I’m going to get some rest. You get out of here. Go back to the hotel and take a nap. You look horrible.”

“Right.”

“I’ll have them call you when it’s time to leave.”

“What about where you’ll go? All the details? What do you need from the house? I can grab it for you.” I wiped my cheeks with my shirt.

“Don’t do that, you’ll stretch out the neck.” She smoothed out the nonexistent wrinkles on her bedsheets. “I’ll figure out the details. I’ll take care of it for once. Sound like a plan?”

I nodded. There was this part of me that desperately wanted to walk over to her bedside where she looked so frail, grab her hand, and crawl up next to her in her hospital bed. But there was a bigger part of me that didn’t.

“I can’t promise you this is going to fix everything. But I can promise you I’m going to try as hard as I possibly can to make you proud of me.”

My throat felt like a fly trap for words, so I just nodded and gave her a small smile, opened the door, and walked out.

I walked to the nurses’ station where Patrick’s mom was sitting at a computer, typing away. She handed me a brochure.

“It’s in Boca Raton.” Her smile was warm and proud. “One of the best. They’ve got someone driving up to get her. She’ll be on her way by this evening.”

It was a brochure for Willow Rehabilitation Center in Florida.

“She’s going to Boca?” I asked.

“She didn’t tell you?”

“She didn’t.” I looked down at the brochure. There was a picture of two ladies playing tennis and laughing on the front. She hated exercise.

“They surprise us sometimes, don’t they, these people the universe shoves in our path and won’t let us shake?”

Tears spilled down my face.

“Speaking of, Austin hasn’t called out of work in years. You must’ve done something to him to get him to hand over that boat to my boy for the morning.” She leaned closer. “It’s about damn time.”