Doctor Emma encouraged us to come and see her whenever we needed, as she always did, before we all stood up and left. I didn’t wait for Fiona as I usually did, instead I immediately left the room and went back into the sterile, beige hallway. I needed to go to my room and figure out what the hell was going on with me. I needed to figure out why my body reacted like this.
“Excuse me, wait!” I suddenly heard a voice behind me, as fingers tapped my shoulders lightly, and I froze. I turned around slowly, and found myself staring into Daniel’s chest. That perfectly formed, muscular chest. Looking up I found his face, my eyes looking directly into his deep brown ones. There was pain in those eyes, but also curiosity.
“I just wanted to tell you, I really liked your story,” Daniel told me, shooting me that smile that sent fire running through me once more. Standing now, my legs felt like jelly, like I was going to faint just from being in Daniel’s presence.
“Thanks,” I told him, trying to smile.
“Kylie,” Daniel repeated, slowly, as though trying on the name for the first time. The way he had just said my name, it sounded so different coming from his mouth. It sounded so pure, so sexy somehow, not the plain Jane name I always thought of it as.
“That was your name, right? It’s nice to meet you Kylie” Daniel told me, flashing me another smile as he held out his hand.
“Yeah. You too,” were the only words I could muster in reply, and even they sounded dumb and hollow coming from my mouth. I stood there in silence I watched Daniel continue down the hallway. I wondered what his story was, where he came from. There was something about him, something that I couldn’t quite place my finger on it but that made my body react in ways I just wasn’t used to when he was around me. I wasn’t comfortable with it, I didn’t like it. I could really use a drink right now I thought to myself, but I quickly forced the thought from my brain. I wasn’t going there. Absolutely not. Not again. I might not want to heal, but I also didn’t want to depend on alcohol to make the pain go away again.
“Hey, new guy’s pretty hot, don’t you think?” Fiona asked as she came up next to me.
“I guess he’s okay. I hadn’t really noticed,” I lied in reply, not really wanting to confide with anybody as to what I had just felt.
“Bullshit! Don’t think I didn’t notice you spent the entire group therapy section staring at the guy, not to mention you actually said something for the first time ever.”
“I did not!” I protested, but I knew my words were falling on empty ears. “I just figured I’d tell my story because Doctor Emma’s been on my case about letting my feelings out, about trying to heal, and that story about me jumping off my bike has absolutely nothing to do with my life now.”
“Whatever you say dear,” Fiona replied, obviously not believing my terrible excuses. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing, personally. Boys are fun, just don’t get too attached to them.”
“You’re impossible. Where is he from anyways?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about him at all. My guess is some rich kid who played lacrosse in college.”
“Really? You think he’s that young?” I would’ve placed Daniel’s age at closer to 30, which would have made him a full six years older than me.
“I guess not. When you get old like me, Kylie, it becomes a lot harder to tell people’s ages. You’ll know one day.”
“You’re ancient Fiona, I guess late 30s is the new late 70s,” I told her, rolling my eyes.
“Whatever. I have a date with Sam to play Monopoly in the lounge, because unlike you I’m not afraid of boys and just because I’m an alcoholic doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun.”
“You and I both know that you cheat at Monopoly and that this place has a strict no dating policy. Sam’s about to be disappointed on two levels.”
“Sure, but as long as it’s only pretend, there’s no problem!”
I laughed to myself as I watched Fiona walk down the hall. She was looking good. I was already here when Fiona arrived, I’d been at the clinic for around a month. She had looked like the perfect suburban housewife then, well dressed, healthy looking. I never would have guessed she had a drinking problem if I’d seen her in the street.
The next few weeks had been hard on her. She lost a lot of weight, I knew she wasn’t eating, the bags under her eyes indicated that she wasn’t sleeping either. We never talked about our problems, but slowly she began to get better, and I realized as she walked down the hall that she was looking a lot better. I wondered if it wasn’t going to be too long before she would be discharged, going back to her family, her two kids in college still not knowing that she was here. They both went to colleges out of state, and seeing as it was the middle of the school year, as long as Fiona was out of here sometime in the next two months they would never even know she had been gone.