Who: Jack and Sam What: Conversations Where: The hospital When: After this Warnings/Rating: Mentions of drug use. And since this is Sam, language.
Sam had gotten her attending physician's assurance that no one would be allowed in to see her without her saying it was ok, and Sam had no fucking intention of saying it was ok. She felt like shit, and she was embarrassed. They were pumping her full of naltrexone, and she was still puking up charcoal from having her stomach pumped, and the last thing she wanted was for anyone to come pat her on the fucking head when she felt like was dying. No, fuck that, she felt like she would rather be dead. The Critical Care nurses weren't even friendly, something about positive reinforcement if they were, and the checks from poison control every hour were driving her fucking nuts, and she hadn't even been there a full night yet. She was so thirsty, but she couldn't even have water, not when the charcoal was still supposed to be soaking up whatever was still in her stomach, and she wanted to tear the fucking tube out of her nose every time she swallowed.
The attending physician had told her how it would be. She would be under observation until she was stable, and then a shrink had to ok her release. She didn't trust the shrink that had come to see her once, and so she'd called Jack instead. It wasn't even that she wanted to bail. No, she felt shitty enough that she wanted something to change; she just didn't want to go to that fucking public facility she'd been in after the memories. That was like jail with benzos, and she didn't want to end up here again.
She was hunched on the bed when she heard the door open, and she looked up in time to see her doctor talking to Jack, probably filling him in on the smack, meth and heroin combo they'd found in her system, and she groaned at the lecture she was expecting to get. But she could take it from him. It was the looks she would get from Lou and Tessy and Iris that she couldn't handle. And she didn't know what the fuck she would say to Neil. Hey, baby, sorry I ODed all over you? Because, yeah, her heart had stopped twice, and she was lucky to be sitting there being miserable at all, but it didn't make her feel any less ridiculous. She couldn't even remember the things she'd said to Neil, but she feared some grand revelation that would make him pity her, and fuck that; she couldn't deal.
When he had gotten the call from the hospital there had been that brief, sick drop of dread in his stomach. Any number of his patients could have done something (though he truly hoped that he would have known before they ended up in the hospital), something could have happened to his father, but he hadn't expected it to be Sam. Though now, looking back, he still felt as if he should have known. Given their conversations and the random conversation he had with Neil (did he know Sam? Jack didn't know) but he still felt as if he should have picked up a clue somewhere.
After a talk with her attending, Jack read the notes in her chart about everything that had happened after they managed to get her into the hospital and her care since that time. He should have tried harder, he thought, but he also knew that there was a fine line between what he could do as a therapist and doctor and what she had to accomplish herself. Putting the chart back, he rolled up the sleeves of his navy blue button down shirt to his elbows. Time to talk to Sam.
There was no lecture prepared or not. Lecturing her wasn't going to help her. There was only this quiet sadness, not pity, but an honest true sadness as he waited for the nurses and techs to clear the room. He shut the door quietly behind them for her privacy, he could grant her that, so that no one passing in the hallways could hear their conversation. He was still quiet when he grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the edge of her bed before sitting in it, elbows on his jean-clad thighs. There was no 'hey, how you doing?' He knew how she was doing, clinically speaking. And for another moment there was just that quietness, the beeping of the monitors and the hum of the IV pump. Instead he simply reached out and placed his hand palm up on the bed. She could reach for it or not, but he'd leave it there. "I want you to tell me what you have to live for, Sam."
She looked at his hand, then at his face, and she groaned as she let herself fall back against the pillows. "Oh, god, don't fucking shrink me," she whined. "I don't want to fucking die. I wasn't trying to fucking kill myself." Which no one believed, because of the immensely stupid cocktail in her system. "MK was bummed, so we went to a party to make her feel better, and shit got out of control, but I wasn't trying to kill myself." That, at least, was true. She might be addicted to every feelgood on the planet, but she wasn't suicidal, not intentionally anyway. She closed her eyes, because fuck everything. "I was doing better after I saw you. I was. I was trying to stay off the juice, and I was working and welding again, but then I met MK, and we went to this party with coke in the bathroom, and it's all been fucking shit since then," she admitted. And even she knew it was fucking stupid to go places where the temptation was so high, but it was a lost cause now. The marks on her arms indicated weeks of tracks, the proof of the problem in the bruises on her skin. "Did Neil bail?"
No one else believed, but Jack did. "I know you weren't trying to kill yourself," Jack said quietly, his index finger twitching on the bed. Sam wasn't depressed enough, wasn't in that desolate place where the only way to solve things was to kill oneself. Even with all that she'd done tonight, the cocktail of drugs in her system, Sam wasn't a suicide junkie. He glanced down at her arms, seeing the needle tracks and bruises, the evidence of what she'd been doing since he saw her last. "I know you weren't, but you very nearly succeeded anyway. So. I want to know what you have to live for, because what you're living for is what's going to keep you clean." It was blunt and maybe it was shrinking her, but it was as truthful. "As far as I can tell, no. I haven't talked to any of them yet."
"We were never big on fucking introspection in my house," She said with a groan. "There were nine of us, not including the few my parents gave up, and there was never enough food for introspection. Nothing hones survival instinct like a rumbling belly," she explained, tugging her knees up to her chest to ease the cramping in her stomach. "Jesus, I feel like fucking shit," she said, watching his finger twitch. "What do I have to live for? Right. I don't fucking know. Living is just what happens when you aren't dead." Which was true; it was hard to ask a girl who'd never had the luxury of philosophy to philosize. "I'm in love with someone who's a booty call, but only when I get him drunk or tripping enough. Otherwise? Yeah, no. My sisters are crazy and-or miserable. My brother is, well, fuck. Have you met Lou? You should. He needs a shrink. And you know how Liam is. Boss is in jail. Mouse is dead. Loren is, fuck, probably killing someone somewhere. I don't fucking know, Jack."
Sometimes it was the things that people didn't notice that were the most telling. Sam didn't list things, she didn't list a love of her welding, or going out with friends, she listed family, friends. Even the booty call. People were important to Sam. And starting with the first person she mentioned was as good as any. He wanted to ask, 'Have you tried talking to him about why?' Jack thought perhaps not, not given the way that Sam was. Asking didn't seem to figure high on her list, doing did. And the sad reality was that in the face of her ODing, the small details like that were going to have to be talked about in therapy, not now. "Your family's important to you?" He did ask, though he already knew the answer.
"Yeah, I guess," was Sam's articulate answer. "When you grow up without shit, people matter," she explained, because Sam did love her family, and they loved her. So they weren't the fucking Brady Bunch, but that didn't mean they didn't care. It wasn't a societally accepted family environment, but whatever; fuck society. "Neil isn't family," she added belatedly, after a round of hacking that left all her machines beeping up a maddening fucking storm. "He's Lou's family, not mine. We're not that fucked up," she added with an exhausted smile as her head hit the pillow again. She was too miserable from the charcoal to feel any gnawing need for anything just then, but she knew that would come too, eventually. "How bad's it going to be? Be fucking honest."
"Friends can still be family," Jack noted, the edges of his mouth turned upwards. He waited for the coughing fit to end, his eyes on her vitals, her skin tone, and when the nurses came in to check on her, he waved them off. Once more he waited for the door to shut with a click behind them before he answered her question. "It's going to be bad. Really bad. You'll have the physical effects of withdrawal, sweating, shaking, headaches, drug cravings, nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea. You may have pain in your extremities, not unlike muscle cramping or when you have the flu. You can have sleeplessness, confusion, agitation, depression, anxiety..." He paused to lick his lips before he continued. "Meth withdrawal can exacerbate feelings of depression and anxiety, which will have to be treated as if they're separate disorders."
She groaned. Seriously, staying on the shit sounded better than what he described, and there was a moment of uncertainty in her young gaze. She pretended she was a lot stronger than she really fucking was, and she wished she'd never gotten into this shit. All that time with Clarissa, and she'd only used light shit during parties. She knew better than this. She'd seen plenty of her brothers fall prey to this crap, and she knew better. She knew, too, that every single one failed a few times while getting clean, and she didn't look forward to any of the shit that came after this. She sighed, and she turned her face away from him, toward the window and the desert heat outside. Paying didn't cross her mind, though it should have. As a contract worker, she had no health insurance, and she had no money to speak of. But she wasn't opposed to taking money from people, and she knew Lou would figure that part out. Not Neil. She assumed Neil would want nothing to do with her ass after this. It made her chuckle a bitter chuckle, one that came seemingly out of nowhere, since she wasn't sharing her thoughts. Neil liked smart, professional women, not little girl addicts. Yeah, she said nothing, and she just closed her eyes and hoped he would go.
That uncertain look in her eyes didn't escape him, but Jack could offer her no promises. Addiction was a slippery road and right now it was going uphill. It wasn't going to get easier, not for a few weeks at least, and even then, things weren't going to be like they were before this time. But was never hopeless and in the back of his mind he felt some warmth from his new visitor. 'There is always hope.' Sam needed someone to be bold as brass with her. "I'm not going to lie to you, Sam. Until you're through detox, it's going to hurt, it's going to be hellish, and you're going to hate life. And then you're going to be done. After that, it's up to you whether you do the things that will lead you back here or not. That choice is solely yours."
She nodded, but she didn't look back at him. She knew he was right about all of it, she just didn't know if she was strong enough to handle this shit. She was on her own, regardless of how many people she had in her life, because no fucking way was she going to let any of them see her dealing with this shit. Too much of who she was involved being strong, not sharing. She was shit at letting people in, and she didn't want anyone seeing her like this. That wasn't going to change when things got fucking worse. The only person she might consider seeing was Neil, but this shit would chase him off faster than anything else would, and she was pretty fucking sure she'd just screwed up any chance she'd ever had there. No point in telling Jack that, though. She just wouldn't come out for visitation wherever they shoved her. There wasn't any fucking law that said she had to see people. If she was going to get through this, it was going to be on her own, with her fucking pride intact. She kept her eyes closed. "Thanks," she finally said. Thanks for bailing her out of a public hellhole. Thanks for coming. Thanks.
Given that Sam hadn't wanted any of them to come back and see her, Jack already had an inkling about her feelings on visitation. "You're welcome," he said quietly, finally reaching out to give her arm a gentle squeeze, careful of both bruises and her IV. "After you get out of detox, they'll start on rehab," he said quietly. "There are going to be family sessions, Sam. Once a week." He paused, hand lying back down on the blanket of her bed. "I know you don't want to see them, but you need to reconsider that. They need to see you. And given the priority you gave them in the things keeping you going, you need them." There were some days when Jack pulled his punches. Other days, he didn't even flinch when his knuckles split open with the force.
"I won't do it," she said plainly. Simple. "I won't. I didn't grow up with Iris or Lou. I didn't even fucking meet them until I got here. Tessy is the only one I grew up with, and she won't want to go to family sessions any more than I do. That isn't how we deal. They aren't part of my fucking problems, and they aren't part of the fucking solution." She did turn her head from the window to look at him, and she gave him the most direct look she could with those inky eyes. "No. I'll let them stick me in a public fucking facility if that's a stipulation. There's no law that says I have to let anyone into my shit, when no one has been part of it. I've been dealing with this crap alone all year, and I'll fix it alone." Period, and she'd fucking follow through with it if she had to. She'd unhook and walk out the door if it came to that. She'd let them lock her up in jail for using. This wasn't up for discussion. There was no point in pulling that punch, even if it took every bit of strength out of her to say it. She meant it; it was there in her bloodshot eyes. If he pushed it, she wouldn't see it through. It just wasn't something she had in her to do.
There was no point in her using up most of her strength to make that diatribe and no use in her glare. He was as mild as ever, like the first warm day of spring. "Most rehab facilities utilize some sort of family counseling." Jack hadn't pulled his punches with her yet, he wouldn't start now. "Even with rehab, your chances of relapsing within the first year are seventy-five percent. Without a good support system in place, like your family, that number goes up. That means being back here. It means possibly dying and I know you don't want that. And I know you don't want to depend on them, and that you've probably always been the strong one." He paused there, a wry smile barely lifting his lips. "But if you can't admit to them that you need help now, what are you going to do if you get back into this situation?"
"Not everyone has family, and not everyone has problems with the families they have. It's not me, Jack, to dump on people I just fucking met. We aren't like that. I take care of my shit myself. It's the way I was raised. Iris has her own shit, and so does Lou, and so does Tessy. It's not happening," she added tiredly. Seventy-five percent or not, she needed to do this for herself, no matter how much he was trying to fucking scare her. But he didn't get it. He didn't get that the idea of sitting in a room and talking to any of them about her problems was worse than jail, that maybe she could talk to Neil, but that was it, and that was just who she was. It wasn't going to change anytime soon. "I don't need their help," she said surely. "I need to do this myself." End of story. She turned in the hospital bed, and she pulled the blanket up to her shoulder.
Jack knew when the conversation was over. He hadn't said it to scare her, but she wanted the truth, always the truth, and he gave it. "Think about it, Sam." Standing up, he didn't reach out to her again. Sometimes this was the hardest part of his job: he could give someone tools and training and all the help in the world, but he couldn't make them use them. That was their choice. "I'll see you tomorrow." Opening the door quietly, he stepped out and headed to talk to her doctor one last time before he left.