Chapter 220: Detox
*He’ll be here until he’s weaned off heroin and is strong enough to breathe on his own. – Dr. Hamilton*
RYE’S THOUGHTS
When Rye had returned to her sister’s room, she had unsurprisingly found that it was empty. Leigh Anne had an infant son who was less than a day old and she was already out of his life. Rye had expected it and would have been surprised if the woman was still there.
For the next week Rye dealt with family services, police, hospital staff, therapist, and an employment agency. She found a cheap efficiency apartment and furnished it through a thrift store. Working with a case worker, she received emergency guardianship.
It didn’t take long for her to burn through what Miss Beulah had given her. Or her savings. She calculated that she had about a week before she was completely broke.
During all this chaos, she contacted the college in Georgia and transferred her classes online. Rye had explained to her advisor that she was now the guardian of a preemie baby still in the hospital roughly sixteen hours away. Due to the circumstances, the professors had agreed.
All five of her remaining classes were now online. Whenever she was at the hospital with Michael, she would pop in an ear bud and listen to a lecture. Several of her professors recorded their lectures and now she was grateful.
During the day, she interviewed for jobs and took online parenting classes that the state required. At night, she slept on a small pull-out couch and scoured the local want ads. She posted her resume on a few job websites but had no luck so far.
She could not afford a lawyer and was doing everything on her own. That was how it always seemed to have been. On her own. She didn’t know why she had thought for a moment that this time it might be different.
Her dad died when she was thirteen. Four years later, her mother was in a car crash with Leigh Anne. She buried one and lost the other. Three years later, she became the mother of her nephew.
Her nephew who was detoxing from an addiction that he had no choice in.
Rye sat in the nursery’s family style waiting room at a round table with her laptop, notepad, and history book. This was the class that was going to keep her from graduating. History. Ugh. And for those who did not hear, UGH!
She never understood this class. What was so important about what happened a few hundred years ago? Much less a few thousand years ago. Unless the museum came to life or a Pharoah time traveled, she did not think that any of this would ever be relevant. And if she had a question about something in the past, she could always rely on Google.
Rye still wore her nonslip black tennis shoes from when she waitressed. They were expensive, still in decent shape and the only pair of shoes that she owned. Her jeans should have been skinny but were becoming loose. Not just from her losing weight, but from her wearing them for the past three days. Tomorrow was Tuesday and a slow day at the laundromat. In her sweats and t-shirt, she would wash her two pairs of jeans, nine shirts, one sports bra and eight pairs of panties and socks.
Since her father died, her mother drowned herself first in a bottle, then in pills and finally a needle. Donna Leigh had taken her oldest daughter with her. Leaving the younger to deal with everything else.
Thrift store clothes. Food banks. Forging signatures on school forms. Finding an adult to bail her mother out. Sobering them both up enough to go before the judge and give a sob story. Hearing them both say they would change. Knowing they would not.
Changing schools. Getting herself to school and keeping grades up. Finding a valid address to use if they were living in the car.
Skipping town in the middle of the night to avoid charges. Or running from Donna Leigh’s latest abusive boyfriend. Or her pimp. Frequently, the boyfriend was the pimp and charges were usually pending.
Her mother and sister had both had a long line of one-night stands. Everything from an accountant to a zoologist and everything in between.
Leather clad bikers. Clean cut doctors. There had even been a police officer. Her sister had made her way through the high school football team on more than one occasion.
It had made high school awkward for Rye. All the guys had thought that she would be easy like her sister. When she did not spread her legs for them, they simply lied and said she had.
When Donna Leigh died and Leigh Anne left, Rye did not feel sad. There was no remorse. No tears.
Only relief.
The scholarship to the University of Northern Georgia came and she sold anything of value that had no meaning, bought her brown Volvo and after a quick daytrip to Savanah, never looked back.
She worked two jobs in addition to going to school. The scholarship did not cover room and board or books or other supplies, only tuition and fees. Everything else was on her.
She did summer classes and the winter break mini semesters. At the end of this semester, she will graduate with a teaching degree. If, and right now, it was a big if, she could pass history.
She had to pass history. This was how she was going to give little Michael a future. A future better than what either she or his mother had.
They just had to get past the detox.
The high pitch scream of his cry when his methadone wore off made her cry. The wails could be heard even outside the private nursery. She knew that the other families on the floor knew why the baby was in the private nursery. It was more then just because he was premature.
Rye could not help but feel shame each time one of the nurses looked at her. Their eyes automatically looked at her inner elbows. She knew what they were looking for. She had seen the track marks on her mother and sister.
