Page 9 of Letters to Lily

I spent the next 48 hours at the hospital by my mom’s side. Sally, the social worker assigned to my mom’s case, allowed me to use her cell phone quickly to have my bags transferred from my room to my mom’s suite in the hotel, and to extend her stay there for a few more days. I wasn’t sure what else to do. They were already talking about transferring my mom to a mental health facility where she could start a program that would help her recover. I was looking at having to be here in Vegas for quite some time. I didn’t bother to ask to call Sasha yet. Now, I needed to wait so that I had all the information I needed for her first, like how long I was going to need to stay here. My heart hurt for my mom, for Sasha and what she must be thinking, and for myself. This was a shit storm that turned into a way bigger mess, and one I couldn’t seem to dig myself out from.

“Mr. Miller?” Sally asked as she came back through the door.

“Yeah, sorry, I was zoning out.”

She gave me a weak smile and then nodded her head to the corner of the room. I’m pretty sure my mom wasn’t sleeping anymore, but she’d gotten really good at faking it when certain people were around.

“Sorry, I know this is all very difficult. The judge signed off on that order we talked about, considering the circumstances, the process was expedited.” She handed me the paperwork. “The transport should be arriving soon to take your mom to Andover. You won’t be able to ride with her though. Do you have other means of transportation?”

I shook my head, no. I had the hotel concierge return her rental car a day ago, because I wasn’t sure how long her rental agreement had been for. It was a good thing I did, because it had been due back the previous day. I guess my mom thought she would only need it until she got in touch with my dad. “I’m only 19, so I have trouble renting a car here.”

Her shoulders slumped then. “Okay, well, we can see what we can do to take care of that matter.”

“If you could just take me to a used car lot or something, I’ll just buy a car.” Sally’s eyes narrowed on me then, but before she could let her assumptions and judgments fly, I cut her off. “Look, not that it’s your business, but I have my own trust fund from my grandparents. I can access enough to buy a cheap car, considering it was kind of an emergency. I just need to contact our lawyer and let him know what’s going on so he can release the funds for me. Her money is staying right where it is.”

Sally had the sense to look slightly embarrassed as she nodded and handed over her cell phone. I had to Google our lawyer’s firm in order to get the number, and then I called to inform Mick what was happening. I promised to send him the legal documentation that basically made me my mother’s legal guardian for the time being. How fucking strange had my life become?

Once that was done, we had a short wait until the transport showed up to take my mother to her new temporary residence. Funny, at one time I would have been making jokes about someone going to the nut house or the funny farm. Now, I didn’t see the humor at all. This was my mother. My even crazier father had driven her to the brink, and I was the nineteen-year-old left holding the bag of shit that they both made for me. Nope, nothing funny in that.

I still hadn’t really had a conversation with my mom except to hear her apologize repeatedly, and for me to say she was going to be okay. I wasn’t sure I believed her apologies or my assurances at that point though, so I didn’t bother to get in depth with any more conversation. She must have sensed my unwillingness to talk, so she left it at that.

Sally dropped me off at a little used auto shop on the outskirts of Vegas, promising me she knew the owner, and he’d give me a good deal without cheating me. As soon as I took a sweeping look at what was available on the lot, I saw the one I would be walking away with. A silver Jeep Wrangler was sitting off to the side looking a little worse for the wear, but I knew I’d be able to spruce it up in no time. My new circumstance had left me with enough time on my hands to get the job done.

I worked a deal with Stew, the self-described “Vegas King of Used Cars” and was on my way to Andover Rehabilitation in less than three hours. Rehab. What a joke. My mom was being treated not only as a suicide attempt with anxiety and depression issues, but also as a junkie and an alcoholic since those were her weapons of choice when she decided she didn’t want to live anymore. I wondered, for a second, where they sent people who pulled the trigger wrong. That was probably just my waxing bitterness and anger talking though. I still hadn’t had a moment to myself, outside of buying a used Jeep, to do anything. Eat. Buy a damn cell phone. Whatever. Now, I was in intake-paperwork-hell because somehow, most of the paperwork from the hospital had been damaged during transport.

Translation: the jackass driving the transport accidentally spilled his coffee on all the paperwork that I’d already filled out with the help of the social worker, and now it had to be re-done. I was ready to pull my damn hair out when a nurse finally walked up and took pity on me as she heard my stomach rumble.

“Hey sweetie, why don’t I take this to the desk for you and you go grab some dinner. I’m sure it’s been a long day.” I looked down at my bare arms, just now realizing I never put my watch on before leaving my apartment forever ago. I glanced around for a clock, because her mention of dinner meant an ungodly amount of time had passed and the day was almost done. “It’s 5:30,” she supplied.

“Jesus. Is there a store around here where I could purchase a cell phone, by chance? Mine got damaged on my way here, and I haven’t had an opportunity to get one in days with everything that’s been going on.”

The nice nurse gave me directions to a little strip mall not far from the rehab facility, and off I went in search of a way to finally reach out and talk to Sasha.

May 3

There was a snafu with my cell phone last night. Thanks to me getting one in Nevada my cell service company was having a bit of trouble transferring my North Carolina area code number to activate it on the new phone. There was a lot of yelling and hateful discontent on my part as they continued to screw up whatever they had to do to activate a new phone to my old number. This is what happens when you go with those cheap pay as you go plans. They ended up telling me to just come back the next day and they should have it working.

They did not have it working, what they ended up giving me was a new phone with a new local Vegas number, and telling me that maybe it could be worked out, and switched back to my old number once I got back to my real area code. Great.

Luckily, I had my address book stored in a cloud service, just in case, and was able to download some of my old contact numbers. My first order of business was a mass text to let everyone know I had a new number thanks to a snafu while visiting family. A couple of texts were returned as bouncing back from numbers that were no longer working. I rolled my eyes. Such is the college life. People my age got new phone numbers all the time.

My dad texted back:

Harlan: new number? Local? Sticking around a while?

I almost ignored him; because honestly, I hadn’t planned on texting him anyway, he just happened to be in my cloud storage.

Kade: New number because these asshats screwed up the transfer of my old one to a new phone. Mom’s in hospital for a while, so I’m sticking around until she can come home.

Harlan: WHAT HAPPENED?

I was furious with his text. So now he wanted to pretend to care? Nah, I skipped that one, and read on down the list of people who just said things like, “Cool” and “Where you been? Class is boring without you.” I ignored most of those too.

Jason M: Cool man. Any idea when you’re coming home?

Kade: Nah, my mom ended up in the hospital here. I’m here until she can be discharged. It will probably be a few weeks at the least. How’s Sasha? I sent out a text to everyone but haven’t heard back from her yet.

Jason M: Dude, I hate to tell you this over text, but I think she’s seeing someone else now.

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