Therapy
A few days later, I made my way out to Hauppauge to the rehab center where Zac was staying. It was in a fancy residential neighborhood that reminded me of the suburb where my parents had lived. The cab deposited me at the gate of a large white house with blue shutters. It looked perfectly normal, if larger than even the biggest family could possibly need. Except for the sign out front and the large gate, it would have been impossible to tell that I was standing in front of a rehab center.
There was a buzzer mounted to the gate, and after I identified myself to the receptionist, the gate creaked open for me.
Then there was nothing standing between me and Zac. Having not seen him since the day he left for rehab, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was suddenly so nervous that I stupidly considered turning around and running back through the gate before it shut behind me. I hesitated just long enough that I heard it lock and knew that wasn’t a possibility. It was stupid, anyway. He needed to see me, and if I were honest, I needed to see him, too.
After collecting myself for a moment, I walked on and knocked on the front door of the center. A man in jeans and a button-down swung the door open, and I wasn’t sure at first if he was the receptionist, another patient or what.
“You’re here to see Zac, right?” He asked, and I recognized his voice from the buzzer. “He’s around back right now. I can take you back there.”
I nodded, and attempted to say “okay” but although my lips moved, no sound came out. The man just smiled and led the way through a few hallways. Although it looked like a house form the outside, the inside of the building was a bit more clinical, with plain white walls and light wood décor. I didn’t see anyone else until we stepped out onto the long, wide back porch.
A few men were gathered around the porch steps, and in the center of them all was Zac himself. An acoustic guitar was positioned across his lap; he plucked the strings with his right hand while instructing another guy where to place his fingers on the fret. What they were playing hardly resembled a finished song at all, but they seemed happy. So happy that I barely wanted to interrupt, but the man who had escorted me there cleared his throat loudly enough to catch their attention.
“Zac, your visitor is here,” he said. “You’re free to walk around the yard, and we’ll come back for you two in an hour or so.”
If I thought Zac looked happy before, it was nothing compared to the smile that spread practically all the way to his ears when he glanced up and saw me. He flipped his hair back and handed his guitar to the guy who had been helping him, along with a semi-joking threat if he damaged it in any way.
“Have fun,” the man said as Zac stood up and took my hand. That caused all the other guys to whistle and laugh, and I blushed.
“Come on,” Zac said, still smiling as he led me off the other side of the porch. “Ignore those guys.”
“You look so good,” I blurted out once we were away from the crowd. “And you thought you wouldn’t be able to play music again.”
“I’m not sure that really counts,” Zac replied, only a hint of bitterness in his voice. “At least I learned to play guitar right handed. God knows this cast would get in the way if I tried to strum with my left hand. I’m supposed to be getting this off next week, though. Then I guess we’ll see where we are.”
“Well, you sound more positive about it than before,” I remarked.
Zac sighed softly. “If I didn’t try to be positive, I’d be right back where I was before. That’s my problem, you know? I drink—I drank–because I thought I had it so bad. And then I made decisions that only made things worse. So I drank more. And the cycle just continued. If I don’t focus on the positive… I’m afraid I’ll be right back at the bottom again. And there are things I can do with music even if I have to relearn a lot of the physical stuff. You know they have a studio here? Did I mention that in my email?”
I shook my head, grinning so much my face almost hurt. His positivity was new and infectious. “No, you didn’t.”
“Well, they do,” he replied as we walked along a row of rose bushes. “And it’s not like a lot of these guys have written or produced anything before, you know? It’s therapy, so anything that we do to express ourselves is good regardless of quality, but I’m finding that I get a lot out of helping some of these guys get their ideas to be what they imagine them to be but don’t know how to really do. I didn’t think I was much of a producer, but… maybe. And it’s not like I damaged my voice at all.”
“Not at all,” I replied, giggling. “If anything, I think you’re even more talkative now.”
He tilted his head to the side and smirked. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Not at all,” I said. “As long as you’re rambling happily and not snapping at me, you can talk all you want.”
“You know, the times I snapped… I was probably in withdrawals. I mean, god knows I’ve never had it as bad as some guys—they brought this guy in the other day who was shaking and sweating like he had the flu. I just got irritable, I guess, and didn’t really even know why. And I was pretty irritable when I called you from the hospital. Whatever detoxing I had to do, I guess I got through most of it by the time I woke up and they finally decided to let me go home. I was lucky.”
I nodded. “You were lucky in a lot of ways, and I just… I just didn’t want you to take that for granted and think that because you did survive, you hadn’t done anything wrong. But I didn’t want you to feel sorry for yourself over the wrist thing, either.”
“And I’m trying to do… well, not do… both of those things,” Zac said. “That’s what the therapy here is for, really. Figuring out how to say, okay—I screwed up. Now what do I do to actually fix it?”
“And what do you do to fix it?” I asked.
“Stop and think about why things are going wrong—usually something I’ve done—and what specific steps I can take to fix it,” he said. With a sigh, he added, “Specifically, that means shutting my mouth when I know I’m being an asshole, and not shifting blame to Kate or you or anyone else. And even when someone in my life does do something that makes me upset, figuring out a way to express that to them without lashing out or drowning myself in a bottle.”
“Sounds like some good ideas,” I replied.
Zac leaned against me as we rounded the corner of the building and came back around to the front, where a few guys were tossing around a football on the yard.
“Seems pretty relaxed around here,” I remarked.
“Mmm, not really,” Zac said. “I’ve got therapy coming up after you leave. Unless you want to stick around for it… and I’m not saying you have to, but the Doc is interested in getting some of my family in here. Ike and Tay were just up here Monday.”
“I don’t know what I would even say,” I replied.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Zac said. “You can just listen. Whatever you’re comfortable with. But I do think you should know… Kate’s coming up here for a session, too.”
Even though I knew it was unreasonable—even if they were divorced now and he and I were together—I felt myself bristle as a twinge of jealousy ran through my body. “She… she is?”
He nodded. “I mean, we were together for so long. Through some of my worst times, you know? And even if it is without a doubt over, that doesn’t mean there aren’t unresolved issues there—issues that we’re going to need to resolve for the sake of our kids.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I replied. “And if she can do it… I guess I can.”
“I’m sure you can,” he replied, leaning against me again and kissing the top of my head. “You’ve been the best thing in my life lately. And I may have used you as an excuse to do a lot of shitty things, and even been shitty to you at times, but I don’t think we’re truly bad for each other. We just weren’t in the right place—mentally, emotionally, whatever—to be good for each other.”
“I think it’s definitely debatable whether or not we were good for each other while you were still married,” I replied.
“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s not debatable that I wouldn’t be here, getting clean, if you hadn’t helped me to see that I had a problem.”
I shrugged and glanced down. I didn’t want to take that much responsibility for his sobriety. If he relapsed, I would only blame myself, I was sure. But I couldn’t think about it like that, I knew. Like Zac, I had to be positive. I had to believe that this was going to work—and continue to work.
“Well, how are we doing here?” A voice I didn’t recognize asked. I looked up and saw another casually dressed man walked toward us; aside from the short, white coat he wore, nothing distinguished him from Zac or any of the other patients.
“Better now that she’s here,” Zac replied, then nudged me. “Colby, this is Doc Holliday, who hates it when I call him that. Doc, this is my… my girlfriend, Colby.”
Girlfriend. It was the first time he’d actually called me that.
“He thinks he’s so creative. Like I haven’t heard that one before,” the doctor teased. “So, Colby, what do you think of the place?”
I smiled. I liked him already. “I think it’s worked miracles on this guy.”
“I don’t know about miracles,” Zac replied, a hint of a blush on his face. “But I’m doing pretty good, huh Doc? Good enough to make it home in time for our baby girl’s birthday?”
There was a teasing tone to his voice, but I knew it was a big deal to Zac that he be there for Layla’s birthday. A part of me had wanted to bring her to visit him today, but I didn’t like the idea of taking my daughter to a rehab center. Who knows what the men there might be like? It was, however, much calmer than I had expected. I suddenly felt very stupid for not bringing her and letting her see Zac for the first time in weeks.
“We’ll see about that,” Dr. Holliday said, laughing softly. “But it’s definitely possible. Visits like Colby’s today are important; they’re the first step toward figuring out how you’re going to re-integrate yourself with your family.”
“This is the part where he starts to analyze you,” Zac stage whispered.
The doctor laughed again. “Not exactly. In fact, I think we can just keep walking around here. No need to get so clinical about it. But we should talk. Would you like to lead the way, Colby?”
“Umm, sure,” I replied. Not sure where to go, I kept walking along the edge of the property, like we had been doing.
As the doctor talked, giving me the full perspective on what Zac had been doing during his weeks at the center, I thought about how much progress he really had made. Even without knowing all the details, it was evident just in Zac’s attitude and behavior. I didn’t believe that I had all that much to do with it, but it felt good to know that he did, and that his doctor saw me as a big enough part of his life to be so frank with me.
I was, it seemed, Zac’s girlfriend.
I couldn’t even describe what it felt like to hear Zac call me that. I had wanted it for so long, but I hadn’t imagined it being anything like this. Still, I couldn’t picture us any other way. I had always seen a pain and darkness in Zac, and it seemed he’d had to reach his lowest lows before the two of us could possibly be what I wanted us to be all along. It wasn’t perfect or ideal, but was anything ever? As long as it was… as long as we continued to be together… that was good enough for me.