“Tell me about your Oxy usage,” the doctor said.
Gen gave her a recap of the past year.
“And you took your last pill on which day?” Dr. Quinley asked.
“August nineteenth.”
“Well done, Genevieve. And you, Sam! I have to compliment you on the support you’ve given Genevieve, and, of course, on the non-GMO foods. Excellent call.” Dr. Quinley drew her other foot under herself so that she now looked to be doing a yoga pose on the chair. She wore an irregularly shaped piece of sea glass on the hard silver circle of her necklace. “What we’re working toward now, as a team, is assisting Genevieve as she strives to reach the ninety-day mark.”
Why was the doctor including him in Genevieve’s “team”? He couldn’t afford to get any more involved with her recovery than he already was.
“You’ve been free of opioids for ten days now,” Dr. Quinley continued. “Eighty days free of opioids to go. If we can make it tothat important mark, your chance of relapse will decrease sharply, and your brain chemistry will have likely found its balance.” She crunched some seeds. Hunger twanged inside Sam’s stomach. How come he and Genevieve didn’t get snack bowls?
“Opioids turn off dopamine,” the doctor informed them. “Dopamine’s a neurotransmitter. It regulates emotional responses, among other things. Thirty days into your recovery, some of your dopamine will get back to work. At sixty days, even more. At ninety days, it should all be back at work and clicking right along.” She snapped the fingers of both upraised hands. When he expected her to drop her hands, she didn’t. The snapping formed a pattern. “‘Like a bridge over troubled water,’” she sang, smiling, in time to the beat.
The psychologists who’d treated Kayden and him back in the day had been very serious people. They hadn’t sung Simon and Garfunkel.
“You’re awesome,” Genevieve announced.
“You’reawesome.” The doctor seemed to mean every syllable. Unlike him, Kai Quinley was comfortable voicing affection. She set aside her bowl, planted her moccasins on the carpet, and leaned forward. “Every day will get a little bit easier than the last. But we can’t ever underestimate the power that these narcotic medicines have to draw us back in. Tremendous power. Are you tracking with me?”
“I’m tracking,” Genevieve told her.
“We’ll need to be very careful today, tomorrow, the next day, and every day after that.”
“What do you recommend I do?”
The older woman began counting things off on her fingers. “If I’m going to help you, I’ll need you to be totally honest with me.”
“All right.”
“You’ll have to take exceptionally good care of yourself, mentally and physically. Healthy food, exercise, water, sleep. Those things will quicken your body’s ability to rid itself of the drugs.”
“Without Oxy, I’m not sleeping well. At all.”
“Then we need to address that immediately. We’ll collaborate with your primary care doctor to make sure you’re able to rest.”
She counted off the next point. “You’ll need support from friends and family. The more the better, which is why it’s so, so good that Sam’s here for you.”
“I’m the guy who’s one notch above a stranger,” he felt duty-bound to point out.
“What’s my favorite phrase, Genevieve?”
“It takes a village.”
“That’s right. It takes a village, Sam. You’rehere,and that says a lot.”
He was only in this room because she’d forced him.
“Next, we don’t want you spending too much time alone right now. It’s harder to resist cravings when alone because you might begin to feel miserable and lonely and obsess over worries.”
“Check, check, and check,” Genevieve said.
“We’ll carve out a daily schedule for you to follow,” the doctor said.
“I’m sure Sam will volunteer to keep me company,” Genevieve joked.
“Uh...”
