know why she swallowed a fly, Perhaps she’ll die,’ Greta sang, remembering one of her childhood nursery rhymes. ‘Run for your little life, fly, before this old lady goes in for the kill.’
She swiped him off her with a gentle pat. Now that the rhyme was in her head, it refused to leave, and over and over again she repeated each line until she wished the ceiling would collapse, if only to put an end to the blasted song.
Like a guilty kid reaching for the good biscuit tin, Greta watched the door in case her mam was hovering outside ready to pounce. She counted to ten, and when the handle didn’t move, she reached inside her toiletry bag and took out the pack of cotton-wool pads. She removed a bundle of them until she saw what she was looking for. Her sleeping pills. She had kept an emergency stash hidden from her parents. And there was no doubt that this was a code red emergency.
‘I’m sorry.’ She apologized to her family. She’d made and broken promises to them and to herself. Then she swallowed a tablet with another gulp of red wine.
With great clarity, she realized that – because of the terrible week she had just been through – one more tablet couldn’t hurt. In fact, she reasoned, as she shook the tablets out into her hand without really counting them, her taking a second tablet was for her mam’s sake. Because when she got into bed and slept, Emily would think her bath had done the trick. She popped them into her mouth just to be safe …
Safe, that’s all I want to be, safe and sound, asleep, away from all of this …
Safe, not sorry.
Minutes moved on, or at least she guessed they did. Greta began to feel the familiar, heavy, melting sensation snake its way through her arms and legs. She loved and craved it. Greta sank further into the tub, and the water felt as if it was giving her a warm hug; no longer shaming her, it was her friend. Her eyes were heavy, and she couldn’t see the fly any more.
‘There was an old woman who swallowed a fly …’ Greta mumbled.
And as she finally felt that blessed relief of sleep, her last thought was: Perhaps I’ll die …
Hands, rough, tried to grip Greta’s body, but they kept slipping with the soapy water.
‘Is she dead … Stephen, is she dead, please god, no, is she dead … my poor baby, is she dead?’
Who was Mam talking about? And why was Mam screaming like that? Ow! That hurt. Greta tried to open her eyes, but they felt so heavy, so she closed them again. She awoke feeling something cold and hard underneath her. The tiled floor. Glimpses of the drama unfolding slipped through the slits in her eyes. Her dad and Ciaran. Her mam, hysterical, kneeling beside her, sobbing. Greta was cold.
Someone placed a towel over her naked body. She trembled not just with the chill but with shame. It must be a nightmare. She willed herself to wake up, to make it stop. I don’t like this. Please. No more.
‘Oh love, what did you do, oh my love.’ Emily was cradling Greta’s head in her arms, stroking her hair and sobbing.
She tried to speak, but no words would come out. Why was her dad so wet? His two arms were stained with water, right up to the collar of his shirt. Ciaran was the same. Only his joggers were wet too. Had he jumped in water?
The bath. She had been taking a bath.
And now she was on the floor with a towel covering her, with her mother crying and her father and brother wet. Greta opened her eyes and saw the fly one more time. It paused for a moment before it escaped through the open bathroom door, past Aidan and Ciaran.
I’m dead and this is hell, with me naked on a cold floor.
But Greta wasn’t dead. She was in the centre of a tornado, spinning so fast and fierce that she might never leave it.
No one has ever destroyed her before, so I naturally thought she would make slaves of you, as she has of the rest. But take care; for she is wicked and fierce, and may not allow you to destroy her.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
Hope Crossing Addiction Treatment Centre, Tipperary, Ireland
Greta went to the small ensuite bathroom and splashed water over her red puffy face. There was no mirror over the sink, or in fact anywhere in her new bedroom. Greta wondered if it was because people might be tempted to smash the glass and cut themselves. Not an hour in rehab and her mind had already gone to self-harm. By the time she’d finished her three-week stint here, she’d be a basket case.
Not that she cared about the mirror. She didn’t need reminding of how she looked. She knew that her eyes, once one of her best features, were now dull and small, like pebbles lost in her round face. Her skin was blotchy and red.
At only six p.m. the rest of the evening loomed ahead of her. She flicked through a bundle of leaflets that sat on the bedside locker. One was a schedule of group classes for the forthcoming week, counselling, meditation, yoga, meal times. Another outlined the treatment plan.
We holistically approach addiction, working with mind, body and spirit to come together in one healthy life.
Addiction. There was that bloody word again. Every time Greta heard it she wanted to jump in a shower and scrub herself clean. She felt like a fraud. Greta was not an addict and was most probably taking a bed from someone who genuinely needed it. Once again she asked herself how had this happened to her? And the sting in the tail was that she wasn’t even famous. She was forever reading about A-listers in Hollywood disappearing to the Betty Ford for a reboot when life got too difficult for them. She’d even daydreamed about being that famous and needing rehab herself one day too.
But not like this. There were no celebrities here. It was most likely full of junkies and alcoholics, who’d been found huddled under a railway bridge, shooting up or sculling cans. Not ordinary people like her. OK, things may have got out of control lately, but she was handling it.
The fallout from her bathtub incident had been apocalyptic. Her mam had started to cry and said, ‘You never sat still, not even for a moment, when you were a child. But now it’s as if a tornado is tossing you around and around. I can’t reach you to pull you out. And you can’t get out yourself either. Let us help you, please G.’
So here she was, at Hope Crossing, feeling like Dorothy dropped into the Land of Oz. She looked down at her red Converse and clicked her heels to escape. Unfortunately this was real life, not a childhood fantasy.
Greta was still smarting from her first encounter with Caroline, the rehab nurse, who had searched Greta’s bags the second she’d arrived.
‘You can’t do that surely!’ She was indignant at the invasion of her privacy.
‘You have nowhere to hide in this place. Learn that little lesson right up front, and it will be easier for you to settle in,’ she replied, not unkindly. The first things to be confiscated were Greta’s phone and iPad. ‘We find that it’s in the interest of patients to have time away from all outside distractions. Think of your time here as a digital detox. If you need to make a call, you come to find me, and we can discuss it.’
Caroline then rifled through Greta’s make-up bag and took out her tweezers and nail clippers.
‘Why are you taking those?’ Greta ran her hand over her chin, already feeling the start of regrowth of a hair. ‘What do you think I’ll do with them? Pluck myself to death?’
‘Never mind your tweezers, how will we call our daughter if she has no access to her phone? Or the family WhatsApp group!’ Emily was stricken at the thought.
‘Sorry, but there