Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 29

“Honey, you can’t keep doing this.” Tish watched Cheryl bag up another departure’s belongings. She was out cold in the waiting area, ready for her trip.

“What? I’m not doing anything.”

“O, so you’re not sitting in your office with the door closed 7 hours a day? And you didn’t lose ten pounds in two months? My mistake.”

“How would you know about my office? You’re never even in that building.”

“Because people talk.”

“They shouldn’t.”

“But they do. And you’re making it worse, because they don’t know. They think you’re sick. Except Matt – he thinks you’re abusing pills!”

“Matt’s a dipshit.”

Tish wasn’t getting anywhere. She didn’t want to fight. She didn’t know Cheryl well; they didn’t spend time together outside of work. But everyone’s a friend if they care even a little. She placed her hand on Cheryl’s shoulder. “Stop. Just for a minute.”

Cheryl shrugged and rolled her eyes. She’d humor Tish. “Fine. I’ve stopped.”

“Sit down.” They each took a chair. There were always at least two chairs in these rooms. One for the caseworker and another in case someone came to see the person off. Cheryl always wondered what that must be like. It was parents mostly; they didn’t understand. They questioned what they’d done wrong. Rarely a significant other; not many who had someone like that in their lives wanted to leave. Friends, sometimes. Only close friends. She wondered sometimes about the sense of abandonment they must feel, but they usually were supportive, sometimes to a fault.

Tish placed her hand on Cheryl’s leg and used a soft voice. “Why don’t you go see him?”

“Who says that’s the problem?” Cheryl knew, though, she all but admitted it by not questioning who ‘him’ was.

“I was in the room. Alright? Stop with the bullshit.”

Cheryl looked away from Tish and shook her head. “Did I make the wrong decision? We send people there every day because they want to go. He just wanted the pain to stop. Maybe I could have helped him here.”

“It wasn’t your choice. You followed the guidelines. The doctors cleared him. They said he was making the choice without influence from depression. And he wanted to go.”

“He asked a lot of questions, a lot more than most.”

“So he’s smarter than most.”

“Did I talk him into it, though? Did he want to go there or leave here?”

“He said he wanted to go, he went through every step, he signed every consent. ‘Going there’ or ‘leaving here’ aren’t part of the guidelines.”

“Then maybe they should be. Other motives are part of the guidelines. If he’d been running away from creditors, we’d have stopped it … I was responsible for him.”

“You were responsible for carrying out his wishes based on the guidelines. It’s not your job to save people from themselves.”

“I should have slowed it down.”

“It took five months.”

“I should have slowed it down and gotten him help here.”

“That’s not your job.”

“So add that to my job description, too!” Cheryl was getting angry, at what she couldn’t say. “Fuck! I … my god, it’s like … fuck the job. If this was about the job, I wouldn’t feel this way.”

“And how do you feel?”

“Like … Like I’m an awful person, because I held my friend’s hand while he …” She’d been torturing herself with this analogy for those eight weeks but never said it out loud.

“Cheryl …” Tish felt exasperated, and scared for her; she thought she knew what Cheryl didn’t say, and she understood why she couldn’t. Tish didn’t want to say it; she didn’t even want to acknowledge the thought. “He may be very happy where he is.”

“His last letter didn’t exactly seem like it. He’s not written in a while.”

“Maybe he’s having too much fun.”

“Heh. That’s not his strong suit.”

“So write and ask him.”

“I can’t.”

“Because you feel guilty?”

“No … I can’t dump my emotions on him. That’d be a shitty thing to do. ‘Here: do you mind carrying my issues plus your own that were so bad they drove you off the planet?’ I’m … I can’t do that to him. That could make a good situation bad, or a bad situation worse.”

“You vetted those people.”

“I’m not worried about them. Just the whole experience. Did I just give him a new place to be miserable in? Or even more miserable? Damn near everyone else goes regressed. He’s there with all the crap in his head he left with and god knows what else is new.”

“When’s his first home visit?”

“Another month.”

“So move it up. You’ll know when you read the file.”

Cheryl shook her head. It went beyond just him.

Tish saw she hadn’t gotten through. Cheryl would move up the home visit, but Tish doubted whether that would make her feel any better.

“Cheryl, you miss him. You can invent every reason for why you should feel like a monster, but isn’t it possible you just miss him, and you’re making yourself suffer for it? Just go see him.”

Cheryl’s eyes weren’t focused on anything in the room. “It’s too early. I’d just break his routine.”

“Then move up the home visit or send a letter or get over it. And go eat an actual meal.”

Tish left the room to take care of her next patient.