This rockstar life

3.14 Communication breakdown

Content: Actual plot! Angst, drinking, mention of drugs but no drug-taking.

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"Oh god. Is he all right?"

"That was two days ago! Why didn't you call me sooner?"

"Well fat lot of good that'll do, they never do anything."

"But he's stable now? And talking and everything?"

"Thank god. So what..."

"Has he agreed to go?"

"Then no, you can't send him against his will."

"No I can't. And I won't. He's an actual adult and he gets to make decisions about his life. Even though he is spectacularly bad at it."

"Well I would be all for it if I had any hope that it would work. But it never does, does it. In fact, it makes him worse. You know he'll just go on a massive binge the minute they let him out."

"That's a twelve step thing isn't it? That's even more useless."

"Look, I know you Americans don't understand this, but Steve, like most English people, believes in god about as much as he believes in the tooth fairy. So anything that relies on the intervention of a higher power is hopeless. The nearest thing he's got to a higher power is Jimmy Page. And he's a heroin addict."

"Still no. Not unless he agrees to it."

"I just feel like you want to put him somewhere so he's not your responsibility, but that's not what he needs. None of those places ever deal with the real problem."

"Yes but that's just temporary. The alcohol isn't the problem, or not the... core problem. Drinking is the coping mechanism... the medicine for whatever is really wrong with him."

"I don't know, I'm not a bloody psychiatrist. And neither are you."

"I am not being hostile. Look, the only person who's ever done any good was the counsellor at Highcliffe. Maybe we can get him booked in there? Just as an outpatient. Unless he says otherwise."

"Fine. I'll deal with it. As you say, I am indeed very familiar with that institution."

"I'm sorry Peter, but you've been packing him off to hospitals and treatment centres and holistic healing whatnots for at least five years now and it hasn't done the slightest bit of good. So maybe just... leave him be."

"Okay, then I'll come over and get him. Will the hospital keep him in until tomorrow?"

"Right. Can you at least book me a plane ticket? And two to come back again."

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Steve was almost entirely silent on the way from the hospital to the apartment, to pick up his stuff as packed by the devoted Malvin. He looked like shit, ghostly pale under four days of beard growth, with shaking hands, which I hadn't seen since his first days in the clinic nearly two years ago. We were in the second cab, nearly at the airport, when he finally spoke:

"Are we really going home?"

"Yes, of course."

"Mensch said... I have to go... to another..."

"I said he couldn't send you anywhere unless you wanted to go."

"You stood up to Mensch?"

"I guess I did."