On Thin Ice (On Thin Ice #1)
Victoria Villeneuve
I stared at the clock on the other side of the wall. Its monotonous ticking let me know time after time that another second of my life had slipped away, another second was gone that I could never get back. It didn’t matter though. As far as I was concerned, the closer I was to death, the better. After all, what was the point of being on this earth for however many more seconds? In the end everyone dies, most of us having done absolutely nothing noteworthy to either help or harm mankind.
These sombre thoughts were normal for me these days. I’m sure it’s the sort of thing my therapist would love to hear, the sort of thing she would encourage. I smiled to myself as I thought about her encouraging me to speak, encouraging me to speak my mind. I knew my complete lack of interest in telling her about my thoughts, in telling her about what goes on in my head, frustrated her.
“Kylie, you need to allow yourself to heal. You can’t continue to punish yourself, or you’ll never move on with your life.”
What Doctor Emma, as everyone called her, didn’t realize, was that I didn’t want to heal. I wasn’t going to heal. I wanted to wallow in my depression, I wanted to punish myself. I deserved every terrible thought that crossed my mind, no matter what anyone said.
Finally, enough ticks of my life had slipped past that the minute hand was veering closer and closer to the top of the clock. I was going to be late if I didn’t get going soon. I got up off the couch I was lying on and made my way through the hallway.
Sometimes I wondered why they painted the hallways in this place beige. It was so sterile, so boring. It was like they did the absolute bare minimum they had to in order to make this place seem like not a doctor’s office, and justify the prices they charged to attend this place. I always thought to myself that maybe the people in here would be happier if the walls were purple, and blue, and red, and yellow. Of course, there was always a chance some of the people who were addicted to substances far more mind altering than I would think they were high, and perhaps it wasn’t the best idea. Still, I didn’t think it would kill them to add a bit of color to the place.
I guess rehab centers in general aren’t supposed to be homely. They’re supposed to be a place where you go in, get off whatever you were addicted to, and get out, hopefully with a better mindset to tackle the problems of real life without a relapse. In my case, it was alcohol. For me, as with so many other people, the addiction to alcohol was a reaction to something in my life. I had never had a problem with alcohol before, until I did. The real problem was getting over what had happened, and I knew that wasn’t something I was going to do. I didn’t want to do it. If I let myself get over it, that was letting me off easy. I didn’t deserve to be free from those memories.
When I was maybe thirty yards down the hall I reached the door I wanted, turned the knob and let myself in.
As always, the room had a bit more than a dozen chairs spread in a circle, half of them already filled. I sat about as far as I could from Doctor Emma, who took the chair facing the door. I vaguely looked around, all of the faces in the chairs the same familiar ones as were there every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon.
Sitting next to Doctor Emma, as always, was Sam. He had been in a car accident about a year ago and gotten addicted to painkillers. When his wife left, he finally realized he had a problem, and checked himself into the clinic. He had a beard now, and his black hair was getting pretty scraggly, but I could still tell there was a handsome man lurking under there somewhere. When he went back to the real world, I always thought Sam would be fine. He had run a successful business, which I think his son was now in charge of while he was here.