Jordan curled into a ball, too exhausted and spent to resist the emotions coursing through her. After a time, the door opened and Helen Moore, the resident psychiatrist, came in. Jordan knew her slightly, and had always liked her kind smile and forthright manner.
“Hi, Jordan.” Helen sat down beside the cot and reached for one of Jordan’s hands. She took it gently, cradling it between both of hers. “Can you tell me what’s made you so upset?”
Jordan tried, but it was impossible to talk through the tears. Helen reached for a box of tissues and handed over a fistful. “Try to take deep breaths.”
After a few moments, Jordan was able to put words together. “My hus-husband is—is a drug addict,” she began. Once she’d said the words aloud, it became easier to tell the rest of the story. She began with the car accident, the morphine, the prescriptions she’d written him and, when she’d refused to supply him, how the apartment was ransacked. Amid fresh bouts of weeping, she managed to recount what had occurred the previous night in the E.R.
“What—what about—about—Garry? What am I going to do about him? How—how can I—help him?”
“This is not about him,” Helen said firmly. “This is about you, Jordan. What are you going to do about you?”
Helen’s words shocked Jordan out of her tears. For so long, she’d exhausted herself worrying about Garry and his problems, believing that if only she could help him stop taking drugs, their life together might work.
“Garry is an adult, making choices about the way he lives his life,” Helen continued. “Do you want to go on allowing him to make those same choices for your life? You’re an exceptional physician with a great reputation at this hospital, Jordan, and I know you to be a good and caring person.” Her kind face broke into a mischievous smile. “Lord knows you’re good to look at. I’ve seen men fall over their feet like schoolboys when you’re around.”
Jordan started to cry again. It had been so long since anyone had complimented her. When she’d first met Garry, she’d felt confident and even pretty. Now she felt gray and old. And ashamed, so ashamed of not being able to control herself.
Helen gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “I think you need to value your own worth, Jordan, and go from there. The scene last night in the E.R. was hard, but sometimes it takes a hard lesson for us to see we’re on a path that isn’t the most beneficial for us.” Helen smiled again and released Jordan’s hand. “I’ve had my share of those tough lessons, I know how much they hurt. But they also help us heal. Right now I’m going to give you a sedative because you need to rest. We’ll talk again.”
“I feel so—so stupid,” Jordan admitted, her voice trembling. “You’d think I could cope with this on my own. It’s humiliating to admit that I can’t.”
“We—all of us—are only human, Jordan. Being doctors means we start out with a higher level of daily stress, and then we have our own personal stuff on top of it. As a profession, medicine carries the highest rate of alcohol dependency, drug addiction, divorce and suicide. Coming here shows good judgment and common sense. And no one needs to know you’re here.”
Jordan blew her nose. “Thank you. That would make things easier.”
“I’ll have a word with the staff. Now, I think rest is the best restorative at the moment.” She gave Jordan a sedative and gently tucked the blanket around her. “I’ll be in this evening to see how you’re doing. Relax now.”
As the medication gradually took the edge off her panic and her muscles loosened, Jordan was able to think more clearly than she had for weeks.
Garry was a junkie.
As an E.R. doctor, she’d seen enough junkies to know that no one could help them unless they chose to help themselves.
He wasn’t making the slightest effort.
Her eyelids were heavy, and she knew that within a few moments, she’d be asleep.
What are you going to do about you, Jordan?
The answer floated to the surface. It made her terribly sad, and it frightened her as well, but it was the right thing for her. The only thing.
As soon as she felt able, she was going to see a lawyer about a divorce.
“THE VERY LEAST you could have done was tell me you wanted a divorce before you saw this—this scumbag of a lawyer.” Garry’s face was scarlet with rage and disbelief. “How could you do this to me, Jordan?” He threw the copy of the proposed separation agreement she’d just handed him to the floor and stood glaring at her, hands knotted into fists. The pages scattered, landing at her feet.
His voice rose. “You know I’m not well. I’m not over the accident yet! You could help but you won’t. What about the marriage vows you made?” Sarcasm dripped from every word. “I could swear there was something in there about in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Have you thought about my parents? They’ve treated you like one of the family, and now you’re doing this to me—to them.”
Jordan’s heart was hammering. It was true, Meg and Edward had been good to her. She hated the thought of hurting them. She kept her expression impassive and did her best to convince herself that the problems Garry was throwing at her weren’t hers to solve.
This was all his stuff, as Helen would phrase it. And Meg and Edward had witnessed Garry’s recent tantrums. Surely they would understand her decision when they accepted the reality of their son’s addiction….
It was helpful to remember Helen’s advice. Jordan now viewed the two days she’d spent in psych as an intensive training seminar.
Right now she noticed that everything Garry said related only to himself. Lordy, how could she have missed how self-centered he was? She’d known him two and a half years, and yet she felt that during the past week, since she’d come home from the psych ward, she was seeing him as if he were a stranger.
And it surprised her to realize she didn’t even like him anymore. His addiction had turned him into a bully and a whiner, not exactly a sexy combination. There hadn’t been any sex for months now, anyway.
He was hollering at her again. “What kind of bull-shit is that dyke of a doctor pumping you full of, Jordie? You never acted like this before. What’s between us should stay between us. I don’t like you dumping your guts to some stranger.” His voice grew softer, and he tried to reach out and take her into his arms. “You’re my wife, babe. Shouldn’t you be talking to me about stuff that bothers you?”
Jordan held up both hands, palms out, and moved away.
He swore a long stream of curses, and then she could see him consciously turning on the charm again. “C’mon, Jordie. Honey, baby, don’t be this way,” he wheedled. “I said I was sorry for what happened in the E.R. I just couldn’t take the pain in my back anymore, and you wouldn’t give me anything for it, remember? I’m not good with pain, honey, you know that.”
She moved farther back, out of his reach. She remembered everything. He sickened her.
The second day of her stay in psych, Jordan had called home and left a message for Garry, telling him where she was. Hours later, he’d come to the ward, and on Jordan’s instructions, Helen and the staff had conveyed the message that she didn’t want to see him. High, he’d become verbally abusive. Helen had threatened to call security, and finally he left.
Now Jordan looked at him, and she couldn’t even summon pity.
“I won’t prescribe drugs for you ever again, Garry. So don’t bother asking.”
He tightened his mouth and narrowed his eyes. Taking a step closer, he shook his trembling finger under her nose. His breath was foul.
“You