Page 61 of The 1 Lawyer

“Oh, shit.” I bailed out of the car once again and got ready to haul ass back to Mississippi on foot.

Jenny slid out of the seat after me. “Stafford Lee, just go inside and check it out.”

Mason shouted through the open window, “Jenny! You gotta give him an ultimatum!”

“Don’t yell at me,” she snapped. She turned to me and said, “Stafford Lee, I don’t want to make threats—that’s not how I want this to go. Won’t you come inside just because I’m asking? Talk to the administrator. Please? Will you do that for me?” She grasped my hand, the one without a splint, and tugged on it. “Please,” she said again.

Standing on the gravel drive, I looked into her pleading face. I was too tired to fight with her any longer. I figured it wouldn’t kill me to go inside. Maybe I’d take a toilet break while we were in there. It’s not like I was committing to anything.

I followed Jenny through the front door. She walked up to the receptionist and said we had an appointment with Amy. When the receptionist picked up the phone, Jenny turned and whispered, “Amy’s the administrator.”

“Got it,” I said with a smirk. “Nurse Ratched.”

Jenny looked away, shaking her head. Mason joined us, and I followed the two of them into the business office, gearing up for a showdown. I had battled plenty of pompous medical professionals over the course of my career. The admin of an addiction prison couldn’t intimidate me. I already had a clear and unflattering mental picture of Administrator Ratched.

Except that she was younger than I’d anticipated, about Jenny’s age. Tall and slim as a racehorse. And uncommonly pretty.

As I sat across from her desk in the pristine office, I was painfully aware that I was scruffy and dirty and that the administrator could smell my foul breath and body odor. It put me at a disadvantage, but she radiated compassion. She leaned toward me; she didn’t scoot back her chair. While I sat there staring at her like an idiot, she said something I didn’t catch. We sat in silence while she fixed me with an expectant look. “Stafford Lee? What do you think?”

“Yeah, can you repeat that?”

She gave me a warm smile. “Sure thing. I just observed that you’re fortunate. You have very devoted friends.”

I took a moment to digest that statement. “Really?” I looked over at Mason and Jenny, seated to my right. “My friends tell me I have a problem. Apparently, they think I’m a lost cause.”

Her smile dimmed. In an earnest voice, she said, “That’s not what I heard from them. Stafford Lee, you’re not a lost cause. But you have to take steps to reverse course.”

I glanced over at Mason and Jenny again. Neither one spoke, but Mason wore a familiar dogged look. He wasn’t going to back down.

Jenny’s hands were clutched together in her lap. As our eyes met, her nose reddened. She mouthed the word this time: Please.

I had to clear my throat before I replied to the administrator. “Beg to differ. I am a lost cause, but with very good friends.”

They had backed me into a corner, all of them. I was out of arguments. So I waved the white flag.

CHAPTER 48

IN THAT moment of weakness in the administrator’s office, I signed on for a voluntary stay of sixty days.

Sixty. Days.

The first week was a blur because I was struggling with the physical symptoms of coming off a yearlong bender. The agony kicked in during my first twenty-four hours. My muscles twitched and jerked; my head was pounding, and weird spots floated before my eyes. The nights were even worse. Without my nightcap, I battled the curse of insomnia. I lay awake in bed, my heart palpitating, suffering through crippling bouts of anxiety. When I caught snatches of sleep, nightmares haunted me.

Mealtime was another form of torture. My stomach was sour, my appetite nonexistent. And because I’d developed pronounced tremors in both hands, holding a fork or spoon was difficult. Though no one in the dining hall commented when my food slipped off my fork and onto the plate or, worse, the table, the shakes made me self-conscious and disinclined to eat in public.

Coping with alcohol withdrawal, the staff told me when I complained, was the first stage of treatment. They advised me to go for walks. Get sunshine, drink water. And, of course, participate in therapy.

By day seven, I’d had it with Hope Springs Recovery Center. At two o’clock in the afternoon on that seventh day, I was seated in one of a dozen chairs placed in a circle inside the sunroom for group therapy. So much soul-searching, talk therapy, blame. It tested my patience way beyond reasonable limits. I didn’t even try to play along.

At that moment, Tristan Broussard, my rehab roommate, was sitting directly across from me, talking. Tristan liked to share. I hadn’t been forced to room with another guy since my freshman year at Ole Miss. Tristan was third-generation leisure class from New Or-leans, and we had nothing in common. Well, nothing but alcohol.

“So I think I was condemned to an alcohol-use disorder at birth. You know? If you’re born and raised in New Orleans, there’s this culture of excess, a celebration of alcohol. It’s inescapable.”

A middle-aged woman from Arkansas said, “Because of Bourbon Street?”

Tristan looked down his nose at her. He considered himself Garden District royalty, a class apart from the rest of us. “Not just Bourbon Street. It’s everywhere. At my favorite place for brunch, the menu says: ‘Breakfast without wine is like a day without sunshine.’ That’s the town mindset, and I learned it from the cradle. It was preordained that I’d end up right here.”

The therapist was a long-haired guy named Marcus who sported round wire-rimmed glasses like John Lennon wore in the 1960s. He gave my roommate a nod of approval. “Tristan, we’re glad you’re here. Who else feels motivated to share?”

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