Page 59 of The 1 Lawyer

CHAPTER 46

I SHOULD have felt better when we left the ER. The doc had put five stitches in my head and splinted my broken middle finger. An X-ray showed that my ribs weren’t fractured; I was just bruised. When I complained of pain, the physician gave me a dubious look and recommended ibuprofen.

But back in the rear seat of Mason’s car, I felt worse than I had in the holding cell at the jail. I was sobering up, and everything hurt like hell. All I wanted to do was return to my own house, curl up on my living-room sofa, and sleep.

But before I went to sleep, maybe I’d have a nip of bourbon. Just a small one, for medicinal purposes. It wasn’t like I was legitimately jonesing. I’d suffered through a traumatic experience. I needed a dose of liquid comfort to soothe my jangled nerves.

Problem was, I couldn’t remember whether I had any bourbon at home. There’d been a bottle on the coffee table, but I might have polished it off the night before trial.

“Mason, make a stop at Big Pop Liquor on the way to my house, okay? I need to pick something up.”

Mason and Jenny exchanged a look like a couple of old gossips. I suspected they’d been talking about my liquor consumption behind my back. The thought made me paranoid. “Fine,” I said, biting off the word. “Just get me home.”

I leaned my head against the leather upholstery and closed my eyes. I’d almost started to doze when I felt the car pick up speed. Confused, I sat up and looked through the window. We weren’t headed for my neighborhood. Mason was getting on the highway.

“What the hell are you doing? You taking the exit to Hattiesburg? I’m not going to Hattiesburg.”

“No problem. That’s not our destination,” Jenny said. She was studying the navigation screen on the dash. After several minutes of strained silence, she said, “Hey, Mason, we can take the next exit.”

Mason veered off the highway and onto a roundabout. The movement of the car sent bile surging from my stomach into my throat. I lowered the window and stuck my head out just in time to heave. Vomit spewed along the pavement and sprayed the side of the Lexus’s shiny exterior. The first round of barfing didn’t relieve the nausea, and the involuntary spasms hit my ribs with excruciating agony. As the car turned, I grasped the window frame and rode with my head hanging out, like a dog. The queasiness built to a gag in my throat, and I puked again as Mason’s car bumped along on the rutted road.

He finally came to a stop at the side of a remote country lane. We were way out in the boonies, far from Harrison County. I saw no signs of civilization, not even in the distance.

I pulled my head back in, reasonably certain that I wasn’t going to retch again in the next few minutes. “Where are we? What are you doing?”

With the car idling, Mason shifted in the seat and met my eye. “Jenny and I think you need to go to rehab.”

My muscles tensed. By some miracle, the nausea suddenly evaporated. “The hell you say.”

“It’s true. We’re serious. Right, Jenny?”

She turned to face me. “I care too much about you to keep my mouth shut any longer. You’re hurting yourself, and I can’t stand to watch it go on. You’re ruining your health, throwing away your life. You need help.”

“Because I’m partying a little harder lately? Come on!”

“This isn’t a party, Stafford Lee. What happened on the beach last night—that’s scary. Blacking out, fighting the police, ending up in jail?”

“It was a fluke, a crazy misunderstanding.”

“Bullshit,” Mason said.

Jenny echoed him. “Yeah, bullshit. It’s not a onetime thing. You’ve cut yourself off from your friends. And you’re isolating yourself, getting drunk all alone at your house. All the time.”

“You’re the talk of the town. Getting so damned drunk you can’t try a case,” Mason added. “Jesus, Stafford Lee, I can’t believe you’d let drinking turn you into a shitty lawyer. Where’s your pride? That’s not like you. It’s way out of character.”

“Totally out of character.” Jenny reached over the seat and stroked my arm. I moved it away. I didn’t want to be patted like a six-year-old.

Jenny wasn’t backing down. “Stafford Lee, you know we’re right. If Carrie Ann were alive, she’d tell you the same thing. There’s no quick fix for this, but it’s not too late to turn it around. I want my friend back. You can recover from alcohol addiction at any stage. Will you agree to treatment?”

I wasn’t agreeing to anything. “I can’t believe you would spring this on me now, out in the middle of nowhere. I need to go home. I’m suffering from a serious injury.”

Mason turned back around in his seat, but I could see his eyes in the rearview mirror. “You are suffering from a hangover. You just puked all over my car.”

“Send me a bill for the car wash.” I jerked the door open with my injured hand and cursed with pain as I bailed out of the vehicle.

Jenny rolled down the passenger window. “Where do you think you’re going?”

I shouted over my shoulder as I stumbled down the narrow road, “I’m going back to the interstate. Hitching a ride back to town.”

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