Free Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs Page A

red plastic tray. Dinner is served by the exact same bitter, underpaid woman who served lunch. Her name tag reads MRS . RICE . So she has lived up to her name, fulfilled her destiny to work somehow with food. She’s a tall woman, fleshy without being fat. Her hair is gray and because it is also long and straight, parted in the center, this for some reason makes me think she used to be a blonde. She is now a former blonde working a double shift in a rehab hospital. I smile at her because I feel guilty, like the fact that I wear Armani means I should somehow have my life more together, that I am ungrateful and spoiled and deserve no empathy or dinner. All of which is probably true.
    I take the tray of gray shepherd’s pie, canned cream of corn soup, tapioca pudding and milk and stand there looking at the tables, trying to see if Brian from Group is here. I spot him. I make a beeline.
    He seems unsurprised that I chose him to sit next to. “Brian, right?” I ask.
    “Shit, you’re doing good. It took me two weeks before I learned even one person’s name.” There’s corn on his chin.
    I smile, genuinely for the first time in twenty-four hours. “You’ve got corn there,” I say, pointing to my own chin.
    We find an easy rapport. He hates the food here. I agree. The people are freaks. Exactly what I thought. The place is in shambles. Obviously. But it works.
    “Really?” I ask, unsure as to how this is possible.
    He tucks into his meal, placing his arms on the table in such a way that they surround his food, protectively. Between bites, he tells me that he is a psychiatrist and has been involved in treating chemically dependent people for six years and that these are some of the best, smartest and most dedicated counselors he’s ever seen.
    “You’re a shrink?” I’m stunned by this news. So then why . . . how? I don’t actually ask, but he seems to be able to read me.
    “Yeah, at San Francisco General. Here for Valium. With shrinks, it’s always the Valium that takes you down. Occupational hazard.”
    For some reason, I never considered that any of this could happen to a doctor. I buy the whole white jacket, stethoscope slung around the neck, double-parked Saab convertible thing.
    “Then it was, ‘ . . . one Valium for you . . . two for me.”
    He’s not some nut. He’s a doctor .
    “That became ‘one Valium for you . . . five for me.”
    Oh my God , I think, that’s exactly the kind of bartender I would be .
    He looks down at his tray and continues. “At the end, which was a little over two weeks ago, I was swallowing all of my patients’ Valiums, about twenty a day, and giving them aspirin instead. I got caught.” He brings his eyes up to meet mine and I see sorrow in them. Sorrow edged with fear. “I might lose my license.”
    Sometimes there is nothing else to say except, “Oh.”
    We spend the next five minutes in silence, eating. He asks me to pass the pepper.
    I drop my napkin on the floor and lean over to pick it up. I finish before he does because I only sip the starchy white broth around the corn in the soup. It’ll be easy to play Karen Carpenter in this place—I bet I get down to ninety pounds by the time I leave.
    I watch him stab an overcooked green bean with his fork and the gesture strikes me as tragic. Suddenly, there is a buzzing in my chest. As if wasps are trapped inside of me, stinging. That a doctor could sink so low. I mean, what does that say about me? Surely, an advertising guy would sink even lower. “I really don’t like it here,” I tell him.
    He looks at me like he knows something, but won’t tell.
    I go on. “It’s dilapidated, unprofessional—and the people. I don’t know. It’s not what I expected.”
    He stands up, bringing his tray with him. I do the same and we walk to the trash area, dump our plates.
    “It’ll take a few days, but you’ll see. You’ll get it.”
    A skinny woman with long, dark, straight hair grabs Dr. Valium by the arm and whispers