Free Come Back by Claire Fontaine Page A

red slashes across her upper thighs and stomach as they scabbed over and faded to pink. Rosy ribbons of proof that I wasn’t in denial, that my family was healed, my child was whole.
    Life returned to normal. Mia became her cheerful, funny self again. I was hired by a revered producer to adapt a book I loved. We were putting a bid on our first home and Mia was choosing the breed of dog she’d finally be able to have. At midnight on January 30, I sang all the way home from my office, under a sky full of stars. I sang down the walkway to my back door.
    I was singing when I noticed that her bedroom window was open.

6.
    “Test her for every possible drug you can test for.”
    I’m with the admitting clerk in the hospital’s psych ward. A day after we found Mia in Venice, she’s still stoned. I wish they could test for the gene for split personality. This déjà vu of my life with Nick is just the first of a series. The next two weeks will make me think I’m cursed.
    I keep Mia locked in my vision while I admit her, in case there’s an exit beyond my sightline. She sits listlessly on a gurney with her flushed face and matted hair.
    I corner a doctor and tell him I want a full STD panel, too. Her journal made it clear that the wholesome ski trip to Mammoth with her classmates was anything but.
    “I can’t do HIV without her permission,” says the pasty-faced doctor.
    “ Her permission? She’s a minor.”
    Apparently in the sunny State of California I can’t have my minor child’s blood tested for AIDS, even if her life’s at risk. I have no right to ask them to hold her against her will for more than three days, even if her life’s at risk. And, I have no right to force her into rehab, even if her life’s at risk. Only she can make those decisions.
    “You’re putting a fifteen-year-old on drugs in charge of her own welfare? If she had cancer and I didn’t make her go for treatment, I’d get arrested for child endangerment—what’s the difference?”
    “There are good reasons for these laws,” he says as he scribbles.
    “Really? I’ll tell you what, Doctor, if my daughter is the one making all the decisions, then why don’t you send her your bill? Better yet, why don’t you send it to the ACLfuckingU.”
    I rarely curse but right now I want to do it in three languages. I wanthis children to join cults, shoot heroin, end up in the gutter. I want him to suffer a Saturday night with a voodoo-eyed kid. I want to keep feeling this anger because it feels better than the sick-hearted pain.
     
    A nurse takes Mia to get settled while someone gives us a tour of the ward, which is fifteen minutes of beigeness. We’re given a stack of information and a cheery good-bye. We have almost no idea what her treatment will be and we don’t get to talk to a doctor. Which means their primary source of information will be her. We’re afraid she’ll do what she did with us for the last year, and no doubt with Colleen, figure out what they want to hear and give it to them.
    Mia refuses to come out to say good-bye to us. It is a knife.
     
    What the hell is wrong with her? Everyone here’s anorexic, except for an OCD who wipes himself bloody every time he takes a shit. All I did was run away, so why the FUCK am I here? God I hate her. Two days ago everything was perfect and now I’m locked up with Twiggy and the ass-wiper in what’s gotta be the creepiest place on earth.
     
    Paul and I navigate the sterile halls for our first visit with butterflies in our stomachs. I feel like I’m going to a maternity ward to see my new child, the one I didn’t know I had. I see our faces reflected in the chicken-wired glass of the visiting room. We look like basset hounds.
    Mia’s physical presence had always been sharply defined, vivid with contrasts—light eyes, dark brows, light hair, olive skin; her live-wire limbs carved a big space in the world for herself. People always noticed Mia.
    Now, when Mia slinks into the room and