Chapter 13 Ruby
Ruby
An hour with Dr ‘Call me Amber’ Hardwicke was way more than an hour. She asked me why I had tried to take my life. She had a referral letter from the hospital in her hands.
‘That was a misunderstanding. I was trying to walk along the bridge and fell in.’
She looked at me and then back at her notes. ‘At six thirty a.m., by yourself, Ruby?’
‘Yes, I’d had a few drinks.’
She sat back and let my words echo around the room.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘more than a few. I was on a bender.’
‘Do you accept that you are an addict?’
‘Of course, that’s why I’m here,’ I lied.
‘Good for you, that’s the first step. You have no control over your drinking. Isn’t that true?’
I was still shaking. God, how long was this day going to be? Dr Amber said my shaking was a sign of withdrawal. She gave me a tablet, Ativan, and told me I would get one per day for a week to quell the worst of the symptoms. I was so grateful, I could have wept. ‘I want to get better.’
Throughout the rest of the hour, I agreed with everything she said, and asked her to help me recover.
‘You know, Ruby, I’ve seen hundreds of addicts come through these doors, and I’d say probably twenty per cent went straight back into active addiction and died well before their time, and then forty per cent stayed clean and sober for ten years or more, but it still got them in the end.
If I was to guess, I’d put you in their category.
I’m not here to argue with you, but if you don’t tell the truth in the privacy of these walls, you won’t recover, and you will either die or end up on the streets or in prison.
And then there’s the forty per cent who thrive in sobriety.
That’s the percentage you should aim for.
There is no point in telling me what you think I want to hear. ’
Scaremongering. And if twenty per cent of their clients died after attending this place, what was the point?
‘You are lucky, you know, that you have people who care for you,’ she continued. ‘A lot of our clients are alone in the world because they have alienated everyone in their family and friendship circle. They think they have nobody to live for. Who do you have to live for, Ruby?’
I listed my family members and my grandmother, though I’m not sure anyone except Grandma actually cared.
Erin had rung when I was in hospital and said I should go into rehab.
She hadn’t called again. Dad had come over to make sure my indiscretions weren’t going to impact his beloved church and he and Mom had agreed to put me into this place to get me out of the way.
‘Haven’t you forgotten someone?’
‘Me?’
She smiled indulgently. ‘Don’t you think you’re worth saving, Ruby?’
I couldn’t look directly at her. ‘Yes, I do. I thought you were talking about other people.’
The session continued past what I thought was the allotted hour. She wasn’t going to stop until I told her something. Eventually, I told her about the incident and how I had been taken from America to Ireland to start over. She livened up then. Now she had something on me, something to work with.
‘Let me get this straight, Ruby: you were sixteen, your sister’s boyfriend raped you, you endured a trial and were taken to Ireland from Boston, away from your home, your friends, your school, familiar surroundings, and then because of the move your parents divorced?
And you are estranged from your sister?’ She was almost gleeful.
‘You know none of that was your fault, right, Ruby? Tonight and every night, when you are brushing your teeth, I want you to look at yourself in the mirror, directly into your eyes. I want you to say “I am free of blame” over and over again.’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Ruby,’ she said – she sure did like using my name – ‘I can help you. Miracles happen within these walls. You can be one of them.’
She was beaming at me. I had graduated from the forty per cent likely to fall back into addiction to the miraculous top forty per cent, as if I was an addict. That was quick.
‘Yeah,’ I said, thinking, Sure, if I could turn back time.
‘We have a lot of work to do. But the blame stops now.’
Thank God, the Ativan was already taking the edge off the panic I was feeling. Dr Amber noticed.
‘That is the only drug you will get in here, Ruby, you understand? From now on, no more Valium, no codeine, not even cough medicine. It’s time to face reality. You have an opportunity now to change your life. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?’
I was already dreading tomorrow. I only told her about the incident to give her something to hang the drinking on.
Everyone in here was insistent that I was an alcoholic and that there must be a reason for it.
I was just a girl who liked to party. Yeah, sometimes I took it too far.
I thought about jumping into the Liffey.
It was only three weeks ago. What had I been thinking?
Was I trying to end my life? The last few months were cloudy, but the way Amber had put it, 6.
30 in the morning on my own, and I didn’t even remember.
I didn’t want to. I remembered being relieved when I woke up in hospital.
If it was a suicide attempt, wouldn’t I have been disappointed? God, I needed a drink.
The next session was a lecture from a German counsellor on Rebuilding Your Life. The chairs were hard, and I suppose that was on purpose to keep us awake because this guy’s voice was soothing. My head kept tilting back as I nodded off and then clanked it on the back of the chair.
There was no time to be alone in this house. I could see clearly what they were trying to do. Isolate us from outside sources, no radio, no TV, no internet. This bubble we lived in was a brain-washing machine, but I was not going to fall for it.