Chapter 3 #2
"I'm saying you come by it honestly. But that doesn't mean it has to define you." She leans closer, and her eyes—for just a moment—are clear. Alive. The mother I remember from before. "You're stronger than I ever was, Vanna. You just have to believe it."
"Everyone keeps saying that. That I'm strong. That I can do this." I'm crying again, the tears coming so easily now that I've stopped trying to hold them back. "But I don't feel strong. I feel like I'm dying."
"You're not dying." She cups my face in her hands, and they're warm. Not the cold, dead hands from my nightmares. Warm and alive and gentle. "You're being born. It just hurts like hell."
When I blink, she's gone.
Just an empty chair and the pale morning light filtering through the curtains.
But for the first time since I got here, I feel something other than misery.
I feel hope.
The second week is marginally better.
The vomiting stops, replaced by a bone-deep exhaustion that makes even lifting my head feel like running a marathon.
The hallucinations become less frequent, less vivid, fading from full-color horror movies to shadowy suggestions at the edges of my vision.
My body is starting to remember what it feels like to function without poison in its veins.
I still want to use.
That wanting hasn't gone away, and the counselors tell me it never will entirely.
But it's starting to feel less like a scream and more like a whisper.
Something I can acknowledge without being controlled by it.
I'm allowed out of bed now, allowed to move through the facility with the other residents.
There aren't many of us in the detox wing—maybe a dozen, at various stages of withdrawal.
Some are like me, emerging from the worst of it with hollow eyes and shaking hands.
Others are just arriving, their terror palpable as they realize what they've signed up for.
I want to tell them it gets better.
I'm not sure if that's true yet, but I want it to be.
The facility is nice, just like Garrett said.
The common room has big windows that look out over the Pennsylvania mountains, still green with the last stubborn leaves of autumn.
There's a library with worn paperbacks and a TV that's always tuned to something soothing—nature documentaries, cooking shows, anything without violence or drama.
The staff brings us meals three times a day, and I'm starting to be able to keep them down.
I make myself eat even when I don't want to.
I make myself walk the halls even when my legs feel like jelly.
I make myself get up every morning and face the day, even when every cell in my body is begging me to give up.
One hour at a time.
That's what the counselors say.
Don't think about tomorrow.
Don't think about next week or next month or next year.
Just focus on getting through this hour.
Then the next one, then the next.
It's exhausting, living like that.
But it's also strangely freeing.
I don't have to worry about the future because the future doesn't exist yet.
All that exists is right now, this moment, this breath.
And right now, at this moment, I'm still here.
Still fighting. Still alive.
That has to count for something.
I'm allowed to make phone calls at the end of the second week.
One per day, fifteen minutes maximum.
The first time I pick up the phone, my hands are shaking so badly I can barely dial.
Garrett answers on the first ring.
"Vanna?" His voice is rough, like he hasn't been sleeping. Like he's been sitting by the phone waiting for me to call. "Baby, is that you?"
"Yeah." My own voice sounds foreign to me—hoarse and weak, nothing like the woman I used to be. "It's me."
"God." I hear him exhale, a long, shaky breath. "I've been going crazy not hearing from you. How are you? Are you okay? Are they treating you right?"
I want to tell him the truth.
That the past two weeks have been the hardest of my life.
That I've hallucinated my dead mother telling me I'm going to die.
That there have been moments when walking out the door seemed like the only option that made sense.
But I don't want to worry him more than he already is.
"I'm okay," I say instead. "It's... it's hard. But I'm getting through it."
"That's my girl." I can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes my chest ache with how much I miss him. "I knew you could do it. I knew you were strong enough."
"I don't feel strong, Blood. I feel like I've been run over by a truck. Multiple times."
He laughs—a real laugh, warm and full—and the sound of it makes tears prick at my eyes.
I'd forgotten what his laugh sounds like.
How it fills up a room.
How it used to make me feel like everything was going to be okay.
"You're doing something most people can't even imagine," he says. "That's the definition of strong, Van."
We talk for the full fifteen minutes.
He tells me about what's happening at the clubhouse, carefully edited to remove anything that might stress me out.
Ruger's been checking in on him every day, making sure he's eating, making sure he's not drowning in the silence of his empty room.
Maddox has been coming by the garage to sit with him while he works, not saying much—that's not Maddox's way—but being there.
Present. A solid, silent reminder that he's not alone.
"Aunt Ellie's been bringing food," Garrett continues. "Enough to feed an army. I think she's convinced I'm going to waste away if she doesn't stuff me full of pot roast every other day."
I smile at that, the first real smile I've managed in weeks. "She loves feeding people. It's how she shows she cares."
"I know. I've gained five pounds since you left." He pauses, and I can hear the shift in his voice. Something more serious. "Leah came by once."
My heart stutters. "She did?"
"Yeah. Things are still... tense. Between us, I mean. She's still angry about everything. But she asked how you were doing."
"She asked about me?" I'm surprised enough that I forget to hide it.
"Yeah." Garrett pauses. "She's... she's not ready to forgive you yet. But she's not as angry as she was. I think maybe she's starting to see that you're really trying this time."
I don't know what to say to that.
The jewelry I stole from Leah sits between us like a ghost, a wrong I can't undo no matter how clean I get.
But maybe Garrett's right.
Maybe trying is enough for now.
Maybe that's all any of us can do.
"I have to go," I say when the counselor signals that my time is almost up. "They're pretty strict about the phone limits."
"Okay." His voice drops, becoming softer. More intimate. "I love you, Vanna. I'm so damn proud of you."
"I love you too." The words catch in my throat. "I'll call you tomorrow, okay?"
"I'll be here. Waiting."
The line goes dead, and I'm left standing in the hallway with the phone pressed against my chest, trying to hold onto the sound of his voice for as long as I can.
That night, I dream about the first time I used heroin.
It wasn't my mother who introduced me to it.
That's what everyone assumes—that I followed in her footsteps, that she handed me the needle the same way she handed me her addiction.
But that's not how it happened.
My mother was already dead when I took my first hit.
I was missing the high of the pain pills, desperate for something, anything, that would make the world quiet again. Somehow I found myself standing in front of a trap house.
The guy who found me was named Mojo—yeah, like the Powerpuff Girls villain.
I don't remember much about him now—just a blur of a face, a voice that sounded almost kind.
He took one look at me and knew what I needed.
Not comfort. Not sympathy. Not the phone numbers for therapists or grief counselors.
Escape.
"This will help," he said, pressing the needle into my hand. "Trust me. It'll make all of this go away."
And it did.
God help me, it did.
One hit, and everything dissolved into warm, golden nothing.
All of it just... disappeared.
I chased that feeling for the next twelve years.
Through my marriage to Garrett.
Through the slow destruction of everything good in my life.
Through overdose after overdose, each one bringing me closer to joining my mother in whatever darkness waited on the other side.
But I'm not chasing it anymore.
I wake up from the dream with tears on my face and my heart pounding in my chest.
For a moment, I'm back there—eighteen years old, standing over my mother's body.
Then I remember where I am.
Who I'm fighting to become.
And I let the memory fade, let it settle back into the past where it belongs.
I can't undo what I've done.
I can't go back and make different choices.
But I can make different choices now.
Starting today. Starting this moment.
One hour at a time.
I get out of bed, and I face another day.
By the end of the second week, I'm starting to feel almost human again.
The physical symptoms of withdrawal have mostly faded, replaced by a persistent, low-grade discomfort that the doctors assure me is normal.
My appetite is returning.
I'm sleeping better, even if my dreams are still haunted by ghosts.
I can walk the halls without holding onto the wall for support.
I'm still in the detox wing, but they're talking about moving me to the main residential program soon.
That means group therapy, individual counseling, learning how to live in the real world without the crutch of heroin to lean on.
It sounds terrifying.
It sounds impossible.
But I've survived the past two weeks, and that seemed impossible too.
I'm sitting in the common room, watching the sun set over the mountains, when one of the counselors comes to find me.
She's a middle-aged woman named Patricia, with kind eyes and a no-nonsense attitude that I've come to appreciate.
"How are you feeling?" she asks, settling into the chair beside me.
"Better," I admit. "Not good, but... better."
"That's progress." She smiles. "You've come a long way, Vanna. A lot of people don't make it through detox. The fact that you're still here, still fighting—that says something about you."
I shake my head. "I'm just too stubborn to quit."
"Stubbornness is an underrated virtue." She pulls out a folder, flipping it open to reveal what looks like a schedule. "We're going to move you to the residential wing tomorrow. The real work starts then."
The real work.
As if the past two weeks haven't been work.
As if fighting my way through hell hasn't counted for something.
But I know what she means.
Detox is just the beginning—getting the poison out of my body.
Now comes the harder part: figuring out why I put it there in the first place.
Learning how to live without it.
Building a life that doesn't revolve around the next hit.
"I'm ready," I say, even though I'm not sure it's true.
Patricia looks at me for a long moment, and I see something in her eyes.
Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.
"No one's ever really ready," she says. "But you show up anyway. That's all any of us can do."
I think about my mother—the real one, not the hallucination.
The woman she was before the drugs took her.
She had my same laugh, my same stubbornness, my same hunger for something she could never quite name.
She never got this chance.
She never had someone who loved her enough to pay for rehab, never had a facility full of people who believed she could get better.
She died alone, surrounded by strangers who cared more about their next fix than the woman dying in front of them.
I used to think her death was inevitable.
That addiction was a one-way street with only one possible destination.
But sitting here, watching the last light fade over the Pennsylvania mountains, I'm starting to wonder if that's true.
Maybe she could have gotten better, if she'd had the chance.
Maybe she could have fought her way back to the surface, the way I'm trying to do now.
I'll never know, but I can honor her memory by being the person she never got to be.
I'm not going to end up like that.
I'm going to fight.
I'm going to claw my way back to the surface, one painful inch at a time.
I'm going to become someone Garrett can be proud of.
Someone Leah might one day forgive.
Someone I can look at in the mirror without flinching.
Someone my mother would have wanted me to be.
One hour at a time.
One day at a time.
Starting now.