“Is Cheryl at home?” she asked.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Mel Sheridan,” she said. “I’m the nurse-practitioner and midwife. I work with Doc Mullins.”
“You’re the one,” she said, looking Mel up and down. “Jack’s woman.”
“Yeah, that’s me. So. She here?”
“Sleeping it off,” the woman said, turning to waddle back into the house, leaving Mel to follow.
“Can you get her up for me?” Mel asked, letting herself in despite the lack of invitation.
“I can try,” she said. Mel followed the woman into the little kitchen, which was obviously where she had set up camp. There was a collection of newspapers and magazines, stained coffee cups and empty Coke cans, an overflowing ashtray, an opened box of doughnuts, a small TV sitting on the counter. Mrs. Chreighton went into a room off the kitchen, a crude add-on in the back of the house. The door didn’t close, didn’t seem to have a mechanism for closing—there was a hole where the doorknob should be.
Mel heard her in there, yelling, “Cheryl! Cheryl! Cheryl! There’s some woman here to see you! Cheryl!” After a bit of that, there was some muffled protest. Mrs. Chreighton came back into the kitchen, went back to her chair, which sagged under her weight.
It was a household of addiction, Mel thought. Mom is hooked on food and cigarettes, Cheryl’s hooked on alcohol, and Dad’s drug of choice was anyone’s guess. He was probably hooked on these two women and their problems.
Cheryl appeared in the doorway of her bedroom, wearing yesterday’s clothes, straggly hair hanging in her face, her eyes swollen and barely open. Mel took a breath. “Got a minute?” she asked.
“What for?” Cheryl asked.
“Let’s step outside and talk,” Mel said. She walked out the front door, leaving Cheryl to follow. Mel stood on the sidewalk in front of the house until Cheryl came out and stood on the front step. “How drunk are you right now?” Mel asked her.
“I’m okay,” she answered, rubbing her fingers across her scalp, threading fingers through her limp and greasy hair.
“You have any interest in getting sober? Staying sober?”
“I do sometimes. I don’t drink a lot of the time…”
“I can get you in treatment, Cheryl. Get you detoxed and cleaned up and in a program. You’d get twenty-eight days of sobriety therapy and a real good chance of going straight, off the booze. But you have to decide right now.”
“I don’t know…”
“This is your one shot, Cheryl. I’ll take you, check you in. The county will pick up the tab, but you only get this one chance. If you say no right now, that’s it. That’s all I can do.”
“Who told you to do this?” she asked.
“No one told me. I thought you could use a little help, so I found it for you. All by myself. And no, I haven’t even mentioned it to Jack. You could try this. You know you can’t do it on your own.”
“You ask my mom?”
“I haven’t asked anyone. You’re over twenty-one, aren’t you? You want help? Go shower and pack a bag—you don’t need much. They have washers and dryers. Clean sheets and towels. Healthy food. And a lot of people just like you who are trying to sober up. It’s hard for everyone, but they’re the experts and if anyone can help you, they can.”
She looked at her feet, her dirty, unlaced boots. “I get the shakes real bad sometimes,” she said.
“Just about everyone does. They have medicine to get you through the first days.” Mel looked at her watch. “I’m not hanging around while you think about it.”
“Where is this place?” she asked.
“Eureka.”
Cheryl shuffled her feet a little bit. Finally she lifted her head. “Okay,” she said.
“Fine. Go shower and pack. I’ll be back for you in thirty minutes.”
She came back and picked up Cheryl, who carried her belongings in a brown grocery bag. She had cleaned up; her hair was washed but only towel dried. She probably didn’t own a blow-dryer. She smelled of soap and a touch of liquor—a little nip to help her get into the truck, Mel suspected.
“Did you tell your parents where you’re going?” Mel asked.
Cheryl shrugged. “My mom. I told my mom.”
“And is she glad you’re going?”
Cheryl shrugged. She looked away from Mel as she answered. “She said it’s probably a waste of time and money.”