Matty was sitting in the usual spot where she or Kerrie would sit for Group. The nearly two dozen men were in a circle with her, all in mismatched chairs and Styrofoam cups in hand. Heads turned in her direction, including Matty’s.
She held her breath.
“Do you need someone, or are you joining us?” Matty asked with a soft smile.
“Joining if you don’t mind.”
The smile widened. “Not at all. The more the merrier.”
Before she could get both feet off the last step, one man popped up to get her a chair from a stack against the wall, and another scooted to make room to include her in the circle.
“Well, where was I?”
“Grammy’s pill ring,” one guy reminded her. He was on Kerrie’s caseload.
Matty gave a short laugh. “Right. So, my Grammy is the one who first exposed me to opioids. She also had some sort of medication for any ailment you had. Her motto was she’ll either cure you or kill you, but you won’t be feeling anything when she was done.”
Laughter traveled around the room.
Reese was impressed with how relaxed Matty appeared.
“I remember the first time she gave me Oxy. I was maybe nine? I started getting these awful migraines when puberty hit. I’d have to sit in a room with all the lights off because my head would throb to the point I’d throw up. One day, Grams walked in with Oxy and a Phenergan to keep the Oxy from making me sick. Nine years old. I was just a small little shit too. That continued throughout my childhood and into being a teenager. Eventually, I learned that if I complained of pain, she’d give me something.
“Now you may be wondering, where did all the pills come from? Well, Grams is from a generation that doctors overmedicated, and when they did run low, they got just as crafty as anyone else with an addiction. She and several other old ladies from church would exchange pills all the time. They knew when each other had refills due. They’d buy them or trade for something their doctor wouldn’t give them. There was no limit to what they could get.”
Blain, a young client of Reese’s, raised his hand. He was a smart guy but had made some stupid choices, which is how he landed in rehab. “That’s wild. Does she know she’s an addict?”
“She’d beat my ass up and down the road twice if I ever asked her something like that. She’s firmly in denial, cause it is medication and not a crack pipe. Sometimes I think that’s the reason she doesn’t like me talking about recovery.”
“Guilt. She’s got guilt,” piped up another man.
Matty nodded, rubbing her palms on her jeans. “Exactly. Does anyone in here have someone like that? They ignore your using?”
“My mom,” Blain answered. “She acts like she didn’t give me beer when I was twelve or like she didn’t let me and my buddies drink at the house. Hell, she’d be the one to buy it most of the time. Then, when I get here, she acts clueless and wants to just talk about the weather.”
“It’s frustrating, isn’t it?”
“It really is, man.”
Reese hid a smile at the young guy calling Matty man.
“Well, once I started high school, I started going less and less. My cousin and I would skip here and there, and the next thing I knew, I had dropped out. I worked with a construction crew my uncle managed, but practically everyone used. We were fucked up more than we weren’t. I had a few run-ins with the law, but I got my felony when I was twenty-four.” Her voice lost all amusement, and the pause that followed made the atmosphere in the room stiffen. Reese could see the wheels turning in the men’s heads as many remembered their interactions with the law.
“It was, well, it’s one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made. My cousin and I were taking a ton of pills a day by that point. We were out and didn’t have cash because we hadn’t been going to work. It took a lot of pills to even get the numbing phase I was constantly chasing. Pot helped, but it wasn’t the same. It didn’t give me that level of peace I thought I had to have to just function.
“So, because of Grams’s pill ring, I knew a bunch of ladies that Grams exchanged with. They all went to church together. One Sunday morning, we went to the house of a woman I had actually picked up pills from for Grams. I…I really thought she was at church. We found a key under a plant on the front porch and went in. I knew she had to have something.”
Matty looked at the drop ceiling above her while letting out a breath. Her hands were pressed together, and all Reese wanted to do was rush over and throw her arms around her.
“She didn’t go to church. I was in the kitchen, going through drawers, when she came into the room. She was seventy-nine years old and still lived at home alone. That is, until she saw me. She screamed and jerked back. She couldn’t catch herself. She fell, hitting her head on the corner of one of those old-lady china cabinets. I was so shocked. I just stood there while she moaned on the floor. My cousin came running in and stepped over her. We didn’t try to help her. We didn’t call for help. We just hightailed it out of there.”
The whole room felt as if it were holding a collective breath.
“Later, I learned that she got a concussion and broke her hip when she landed. She was never right after that. She couldn’t live alone anymore. Her mind started to go. She died within the year.” Matty wiped a tear away, and Reese, along with a few guys, did the same.
“She was able to identify us. We were arrested the next day. I couldn’t look at Grammy for a long time after that. Since it was our first serious offense and we didn’t actually do anything violent to her, we got pretty light sentences. My cousin did four and a half years, and I did three.”
“Was that when you got clean?”
