Author’s Note: Hey, everyone. Jack here. Erica’s story got a little bigger than expected. So it’s going to be a two-part thing. Enjoy.
“Okay. So bad guy’s got your friend as a hostage. You’ve got a gun, but no obvious shot. Bad guy tells you to put the gun down or your friend’s dead. What do you do?”
Erica looked at her Dad sitting in the driver’s seat of his patrol car, studying his face, looking for a clue. He gave away nothing and kept driving. Even his bushy mustache remained motionless.
“I know what they do in movies,” Erica said cautiously.
“What’s that?”
“They put the gun down and then outsmart the bad guy.”
“That’s right. You think that works in real life?”
“Sometimes?” Erica said. Her dad burst out in laughter.
“Yeah, I guess so, but you haven’t given me your answer.”
“Maybe lower my gun slowly, then at the last second shoot’em.”
“That’s definitely a better answer for an action movie. But in real life?”
He hit the turn signal. They were getting off the highway. They must be close. So she skipped her other guesses for the hypothetical situation and said what she thought he wanted to eventually hear.
“What should I do, Dad?”
He smiled at her. It made her feel warm, but she also felt kind of bad for some reason. Like maybe she was supposed to have the answer and didn’t. Or that she didn’t have the answer even though she should, but he didn’t even expect her to. Maybe he just wanted to be helpful.
Jesse had been at Robertson Riverside for two weeks. He had two weeks to go. Sundays were visiting days. Erica and her Dad hadn’t gone up the first week. She had really wanted to but her dad told her they like to have the first week of rehab with complete isolation from their old life for at least the first week of the program.
Maybe that was true Maybe he just didn’t want to go. Erica had spent the following week mentioning it to her parents whenever possible. Her father had reluctantly agreed to drive her up. They’d spent the hour or so on the road talking about hypothetical dangerous situations to pass the time. And, Erica, thought, to not talk about Jesse.
“A hostage situation where you’ve got no shot and no one knows what’s happening except the people in the room?” Her father gave her a knowing smile. “What you want to do in a situation like that is leave.”
“What?”
“Leave and call the police.”
Erica laughed. Her dad narrowed his eyes at her.
“Why are you laughing?”
“Did you really just tell me this story to remind me again that cops are the good guys?”
“I know how those kids in school are.”
No he didn’t. Kids find out your dad is a cop, guess who isn’t invited to the parties? Guess who gets called a ‘bootlicker’? The kids thought she was a narc. The staff thought she was another Jesse. She squirmed in her seat and looked out the window.
“Seriously, chipmunk,” He said.
“I know, dad. I don’t listen to the kids at school.”
“That’s good, but I meant when I said leave and call the cops because maybe you make that shot and maybe you don’t, but if you don’t, maybe both you and your loved ones are dead and they get away. But you leave and get help? That puts a clock on the situation. You see?”
“Yeah,” Erica said. And she did. It’s why she liked hearing her dad talk through scenarios. Sometimes she learned something new. Sometimes she saw something in a new way. And every time she felt something like love from her father or as close as he seemed to get to it. There were times she felt that his affection for her simply originated in the fact that she wasn’t her brother.
They passed a power station she remembered passing two weeks before when they dropped him off. They really were close. Her dad had really made Jesse ride in the back of his patrol car on those hard plastic seats.
She should probably leave things alone, but an obvious thought occurred to her regarding her dad’s hostage ‘strategy’.
“But what if they kill my friend?” Erica asked.
“Then your friend’s dead, but that’s probably not going to happen. If they wanted your friend dead, they wouldn’t take your friend hostage.”
“Seems like a big risk,” Erica said, unconvinced.
“It’s all risky. Might even get you killed. But that only happens the once.”
Her father laughed loudly, she smiled pretending to get the joke, but she didn’t find death funny. It seemed dangerous to joke about it.
He took a right turn into the parking lot and pulled up to the curb near the entrance.
“I’ll drop you off here and find a spot to park,” her father said.
“You’re not coming in?” Erica asked this question as if it hadn’t been her idea to drive out here in the first place because her dad had made it clear he wanted nothing to do with Jesse. Now Erica looked at her Dad, hoping he’d changed his mind, but his only response was a short, quick shake of his head. A moment later he said, “Call me when you’re done and I’ll swing around and grab you, chipmunk.”
Erica entered the building and noticed against the far wall a large banner that read, “ROBERTSON RIVERSIDE”. Below that sat a nondescript cheap looking desk. A rail-thin man about her father’s age with horn-rimmed glasses sat at the desk. She thought about the fact that as far as she had noticed driving in, they were nowhere near a river.
Erica began to open her mouth to speak when the guy pointed at a three-ring binder and said, “Sign in here. Your name in left column. The person you’re seeing in the middle column. And the time in the right column.” The man glanced at his watch. “It’s 10:35 a.m.”
Erica grabbed a pen with a fake flower on it from a cup on the desk and signed in. The man with the horn-rimmed glasses watched what she wrote then punched a button on his phone. He picked up the receiver for a moment and said, “One for Jesse Stauffer.”
A large woman who smelled like glass cleaner arrived through a door and offered to take Erica to the visiting area.
“Relation?” the woman asked.
“What?” Erica said.
“Who are you in relation to the guest? Girlfriend?”
“I’m his sister.”
“Oh. You been here before?” she asked.
“No.”
“Okay, honey. Let me go over the rules with you.”
The woman led her down the hallway as she told her the rules. No weapons. No smoking except in the smoking area. She couldn’t hand him anything. No hugs longer than thirty seconds. No talking about alcohol or drugs. As they rounded corners and went through doorways only to go down another hall, Erica wondered if she’d be able to find her way out of here without help.
Jesse had been at the facility for two weeks. That’s what her parents called it. The facility. She knew the truth. Her brother was in rehab. Twenty-two years old and already an alcoholic in rehab. Not that Erica expected that the rehab would turn Jesse into a new person. He’d probably be partying with his pals as soon as he got out of this place.
Finally, they arrived at what looked like a high school cafeteria and seemed to serve the same function here. The room consisted of a dozen or so round plastic tables with six or seven plastic chairs around them. She saw her brother sitting at one of them. Jesse sat alone. He wore a white t-shirt and blue jeans which seemed to be the uniform for people going here. He didn’t look bad really. His eyes were puffy like he was tired or maybe he’d been crying.
She went ahead of the woman and walked quickly toward the table. As she got there he stood up. The two of them hugged before they said a word. When Jesse released her from his arms he said, “It’s so good to see you, sis.”
Jesse sat back down. The woman wandered off. Erica took a seat across from him. The chairs were uncomfortable. Some part of her started adding up all the cheap crap she’d seen in this place, all the ‘guests’ she’d seen here, and the fact that thanks to her father’s complaining on the way here, she knew that this whole thing was costing $12,000 for one month. Erica didn’t know what the overhead was in this place, but she imagined they were making one hell of a profit off these poor bastards.
Jesse gave her a confused look. “How’d you get up here?”
“Dad drove me,” Erica said.
“He won’t come in?”
“He thinks paying for it is enough.”
“I didn’t ask him to.”
“Wasn’t it this or jail?”
“Yeah.”
“So he’s helping you.”
“Fuck him.”
“Jesse…”
“Nah. He can’t come in here and say hi when I’m doing the right thing? Fuck him.”
Erica sighed. She had what increasingly seemed like a silly idea that maybe her family could, you know, be a family?
Jesse brushed his hair out of his. It was longer than Erica’s.
“So how is it?” Erica asked.
“What? The program? Shit. It’s shit. But it’s almost half way over. My roommate crushes up these pills and snorts them. Xanax or something. I don’t know. He offered me some, but that just ain’t my thing. I’m really glad you’re here though, sis. You can help me out.”
Erica laughed. “How? I’m fifteen. Not like I can buy you some Bacardi and sneak it in.”
“I bet you could if you really wanted to, but no. I can go two more weeks without a drink. I need a favor. I need you to go in my room…” Jesse spent the rest of the visitation telling her what he needed her to get from his room and where he needed her to take it.
“Don’t have Dad take you there. And do not go inside for any reason,” Jesse said. “Just hand him the envelope and tell him Jesse will get the rest in three weeks. Remember that. Three weeks.”
Erica nodded. She didn’t want to do this.
“If I do this what do I get?”
“Erica, I’m stuck in here. What can I do? I need you to do this. I’m already a week late.”
Erica thought it over.
“Fine. I do it and you owe me one favor.”
“Done.”
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