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I lift my head from the paperwork in front of me and smile at him as he steps up to the desk. “I wanted to get a head start on the intake papers for the new admits that we have today.”
Nolan returns a smile, nodding before taking a sip of his coffee. “How many do we have coming in today?”
“There’s supposed to be two, but I don’t know that they will both show. Desi told me that sometimes people end up changing their minds or different circumstances prevent them from showing up.”
Nolan purses his lips, giving me a sad smile. “It all depends on their situations. I hope that both of them come, but Desi was right. And I’m sure that you know how hard it is to come to terms with needing help and actually coming into treatment.”
I swallow hard over the knives in my throat as the memories from my past creep into my mind. I was so resistant to treatment, as many addicts are. It took hitting rock bottom and then a fucking car accident and losing Killian for me to finally get my shit together.
As much as it hurts my heart to think about it, it’s the reality of life as an addict. It’s impossible to force someone into treatment. It never works. Being in the treatment facility for as long as I have been, between being a patient and working here myself, I’ve seen it so many times.
I mean, even when I was in the intensive outpatient program, I know from my own experience that it doesn’t work. You can’t help someone who doesn’t want help. We’re left with no choice but to wait for them to come around the realization.
And it’s usually not a pretty process. It’s raw and brutal and heartbreaking. You have to fall completely before you can get back up again. The only way that treatment works is when an addict is ready to get help for themselves, not for someone else.
“So, I wanted to talk to you about Killian,” Nolan says, breaking through my thoughts as he fiddles with one of the pens on the desktop.
My stomach drops and heat creeps up my neck, spreading across my cheeks. My eyes widen slightly and I swallow roughly, feeling the panic as it builds within me. What the hell does he know? I’m instantly plagued with thoughts of him knowing our secret, even though it literally just began.
“Okay,” I choke out, coughing. “Um. What did you want to talk about?”
“I wanted to get him his own personal phone in his room.”
I let out the breath that I didn’t know I was holding. My heart still pounds rapidly in my chest and I breathe deeply, feeling the panic slowly washing away. “Do most patients get phones in their rooms?”
There wasn’t a phone in my room when I was a patient here, but then again, my roommate was a complete basket case. She wasn’t here by choice and it was evident. She struggled fucking hard as hell. She was so close to making it to the end of her course of treatment, literally days away from moving into the halfway house when she bounced.
She took off without a single word and no one has heard from her since then. I can only imagine where she ended up and for her sake, I hope she didn’t end up underground.
“He’s been displaying a lot of progress and I think that he’s responsible enough that he’s earned something.” Nolan shrugs lightly. “We reward good behavior and he doesn’t share a room with anyone, so we don’t have to worry about someone else using it to call their plug or god knows who.”
“Who would he even call?” I wonder out loud, speaking the words before I even realize that I said them and Nolan heard them. Heat flushes my face and I swallow back my embarrassment. “I mean, he seems so quiet. Has he expressed wanting to talk to anyone?”
Nolan gives me a knowing smile. “Now, you know that I can’t discuss anything that falls under patient doctor confidentiality. I just think it would be good for him.”
I suck in a breath and nod. “Do we have any phones here?”
“Yeah.” Nolan nods, motioning to the stock closet by the intake room. “There should be some boxes in the closet that have phones in it. If you get a chance, can you grab one and take it to him? If not, I can swing by later and grab it for him before our session.”
“No,” I respond without hesitation. “I can take it to him after breakfast. Our first admit isn’t supposed to be coming until around nine anyway.”
“Okay, perfect.” Nolan smiles brightly at me as he grabs his coffee from the desk and drops the pen he was playing with. “Let me know if you need any help with the admissions. If I can’t help you, I’m sure that someone else would be able to.”
“Thanks,” I nod, smiling back at him. Nolan gives me a small wave before he heads over to the locked door and holds his card out to the keypad. The lock clicks and he slips through the door without another word.
I take a deep breath, sucking the air into my lungs as my heart finally calms down in its cage. I thought for sure that he somehow knew about what happened last night, but I was wrong. Once again, my anxiety got the better of me. Even though it worked out, I can’t help to shake the feeling that there might be more that he knows.
Did Killian talk to him about me in their sessions? Does Nolan know about us? Does he know about what we had and what happened to us in the past?
The thoughts plague my mind, weighing me down. Pushing my shoulders back, I straighten my spine and rise from my chair, abandoning my paperwork. There’s only one way that I’m going to get the answers and I need to know them.
When I was in treatment and even in my sessions now, I had brought Killian up, but never by name. They knew of the accident and what happened and everything that we went through together, but not that we were ever in a relationship. Nolan wasn’t my therapist so he doesn’t know the details from my side of the story.
Nolan knows about the accident and if he knows my story, it wouldn’t take much for him to put two and two together. Our stories would be too similar for someone to not connect the dots and come to the realization that we are each other’s past.
If we want to be each other’s future, I need to know the truth. I need to know what all Killian has told Nolan. And if he hasn’t told anything, I can only hope that my therapist didn’t violate HIPAA and spill any of my secrets to Nolan.
My footsteps are heavy as I walk over to the supply closet. Unlocking the door, I pull it open before stepping inside. It’s fairly organized inside and even though Desi showed it to me before, she didn’t show me every inch of it. I find a few boxes with telephones in them on the bottom shelf at the back of the closet.
