The Brighton rehabilitation center was ten stops from the city center. The main building stood in the middle of a lush green lawn as big as the campus of Derdâ’s old boarding school. It was called Hope.
Reading the name on a sign over the garden gate, Derdâ thought about all those people in the world that lived with hope. So people who just passed by the center, maybe only once a day, felt good just reading the word on the sign, Derdâ thought. And she smiled to herself. But her smile wouldn’t last long. She wouldn’t smile again until week twelve in her recovery program.
The treatment for heroin addicts lasted eighty-five days. It was a difficult journey that was mainly about staying in one place as the body purged itself of the drug. A user completed the treatment with the help of three people. A psychiatrist, who could use mild sedatives as a last resort to help the patient deal with psychological pain. A therapist, who worked to re-establish the spiritual landscape of the patient. And a nurse, or companion, who never left the patient’s side, providing all the support the addict needed, preventing him or her from committing suicide or harming anyone else.
At the center, a psychiatrist and a therapist worked jointly with twelve patients. The number of companions depended on the season. Most of the addicts tended to come in the fall. Junkies slept outside during the summer, oblivious to the desperate nature of their situation. They were only worried about their lips drying out in the setting sun. But once the weather started to cool off, they dragged themselves out to rehab centers, settling in by the first autumn rains.
In the rehab center there were at least as many companions as there were recovering addicts. And all of them were volunteers. People willing to do such a job for no pay were either atoning for personal sins or already believed they had been absolved. It required a superhuman effort to spend twelve weeks with a heroin addict. Over the course of the treatment, a companion only slept when the addict slept. A superhuman effort meant closely following another human being, sticking to them like air. Companions were like air when they walked arm in arm with a recovering addict, always by their side, never judging them. They had to be sure the addict was always breathing, pick her up when she fell, wipe away her tears. Pay no heed to her foul language. A companion had to take hold of her wrist as she pounded her fists onto a table, and wipe her chin if she spat or drooled, always with the same smile. And if the addict threatened a companion’s life, there was nothing they could do but wait until one of the two hospital directors intervened. They had to do all this and they had to be everywhere at the same time. Just like air. The managers at Hope called them saints. That was easier. It would break the hearts of all those women—mostly retired nurses—to look them in the eye and praise them using the words “you’re like air” every time they succeeded in curing an addict.
Anne was Derdâ’s companion. She had worked with her last addict four years ago and left Hope with no intention of ever returning. But Derdâ showed up quite suddenly and because there was a shortage of companions at Hope they had no choice but to call Anne. She told them straightaway she wouldn’t come. She told them that even though she was only fifty-three years old her heart felt old and that she couldn’t handle the work anymore. And she hung up. She stared at the phone for four minutes thinking of the last four years away from the job, before she called Hope back and asked which week the addict was in. She promised herself she wouldn’t go if they told her week one. She knew it was the most difficult week. Watching an addict suffer through the first week locked up in a room, going through countless visits with the doctor, was like witnessing the end of the world. But they told her week two. She’d trapped herself; Anne told them she’d come in the next day. She kept her promise. The next day she found Derdâ. She wasn’t suffering in the throes of immediate withdrawal. She only stared at her with vacant eyes, with Anne smiling back. Anne was living proof of someone who would never retire. She would always continue to volunteer.
“Hello. My name’s Anne. I will be with you for the next twelve weeks. What’s your name?”
Without even looking up: “Fuck off.”
Pleased she at least got a response, Anne said, “Ok, but I won’t go very far. I’m now your companion from now on. So I’ll just stay right here. If you need anything, all you have to do is look up,” and she took two steps back and stood there. This was a tactic she’d developed over the years at the center, a tactic to bring out any shards of humanity left in an addict, with the hope they would rub together and make a spark.
Derdâ sat on the park bench gnawing at the flesh around her nails while Anne stood just two meters away, her hands crossed over her stomach, her feet firmly planted on the ground. She looked like a kind of sentry guard keeping watch. In the past, she’d stayed in this position for up to four hours. She called it the invitation pose. In the invitation pose, she often thought of her time as a nurse—the endless hours up on her feet—and she tried to leave her body behind, traveling only in her thoughts. And she did just that. But soon enough she found Derdâ’s humanity. Ten minutes. Derdâ couldn’t bear the thought of Anne in that uncomfortable pose and she said:
“Derdâ. My name’s Derdâ.
