Chapter 18: Carrie

A couple of days later, I was leaving the office when I got a call. I looked at the screen and saw it was Sandra. She rarely talked to me outside the meetings so I was curious about what her call would be about.

“Hello, Sandra, what a surprise. What can I do for you?”

“Carrie, ehm ... I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m calling to inform you there will be no meeting next Saturday.”

“Oh, okay. I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”

“I have some very upsetting news.” Sandra made a pause. “It’s about Amber ... She was found by the sheriff in her apartment this evening, and she’s ... dead.” The last word was a whisper.

Sandra’s news was like a sledgehammer to my chest.

“What do you mean?” I asked, absolutely unable to process what I had just heard. “Are you sure?” I stupidly asked, not knowing what to say, or what to do. “It can’t be. I attended her yoga class this week. She looked fine—” I was shaking my head, finding difficult it to breathe. “How did they find out?”

Sandra’s voice became somber. “Apparently, she had started drinking again.”

Sandra explained to me that the sheriff had responded to a call of concern from one of her friends after she didn’t show up at a pre-arranged meeting. When Amber didn’t answer her phone, she called the sheriff and he found her body already cold on the floor.

“What? Why? It doesn’t make sense. Amber was doing great.”

The voice on the other end was filled with a sorrow that mirrored my own impending despair. Sandra just said, “I know ... I’ve wondered myself if I missed the signs or anything—”

I heard a long painful moan.

“I’m sorry. Her parents are in shock. They live in Oregon. There will be a service this Saturday. I’ll text you the details.”

Amber and I had become good friends since I started attending her yoga class. She was my battle buddy in the war against addiction. And then, she was gone. Alcohol had snatched away a life brimming with hope and recovery.

Shock numbed my senses. A chasm of fatalism opened within me, a void that screamed to be filled.

Grief, a monstrous entity, began to seep into the cracks of my resolve. I needed a drink. No, not just one drink. A whole bottle. A desperate hunger gnawed at me. Not for food, but for oblivion.

The carefully constructed walls of sobriety trembled under its weight. The memory of countless shared tears, whispered promises, and hard-won triumphs right then felt like a mocking echo. The world, once viewed through a filter of hope, appeared bleak and unforgiving.

We were doomed. There was no hope for any of us.

I walked to the nearest liquor store like a zombie, and I bought a bottle of their cheapest wine.

I sat down in my car and looked at the liquid oblivion in my hands.

The familiar demon of addiction, once chained and subdued, stirred from its slumber. The bottle seemed to glow with a promise of taking away the crushing pain I was feeling.

Part of me wanted to give in, to drown my sorrows. It was a familiar path, one I knew by heart, littered with broken promises and shattered hopes.

But another part, a flicker of resistance, held on. I reached for my phone, my fingers hovering over Cindy’s name. It rang ten times, but there was no answer. She was probably dealing with the same upsetting news as me.

“Shit!” I exclaimed, hitting the steering wheel.

I called my husband. Ernie’s phone was off. He was probably at his Al-Anon meeting.

“Shit, shit, shit!” I looked at the sky with tears in my eyes. “God, why are you doing this to me?”

Then, I remembered Yaron. The phone was shaking in my hands when I punched his number.

“Please, please pick up.”

After a couple of never-ending seconds, I heard my therapist’s voice, “Hello, Carrie. What can I do for you?”

His voice was a steady anchor in the raging storm inside me. I broke down and cried.

“Okay, calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”

“Everything is wrong!” I cried in desperation. “Amber is dead ... I bought a bottle of wine ... I’m ready to drink until I can’t remember my name...” I sobbed.

“Where are you?”

“Inside my car.”

“Are you in Seattle?”

“Yes.”

“Come to my office right now. I’ll clear a spot for you. Take a taxi or call an Uber, but don’t drive.”

I looked at the sky again. “Thank God, for Yaron.”

When I arrived at his office, the weight of the world seemed to have multiplied tenfold. I was carrying the bottle with me without even realizing it.

As soon as I entered his office, Yaron hugged me. “You made it.”

I collapsed on a bean bag, my body shaking. “I’m broken,” I managed to whisper, my voice barely audible. “I’m broken beyond repair.”

My words hung heavy in the air.

Yaron handed me a bottle of water and took the wine from my hand.

“Okay, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, and then drink some water.”

I did exactly what he told me. My will had left me at that moment.

“Now, tell me what triggered this. You mentioned in your call Amber was dead. She was from your A.A. group, right?”

“Yes, and my yoga teacher, too,” I took another long gulp of water and a deep breath. My hands were shaking.

“Losing a friend is a shocking experience, but there is more to it, isn’t it?”

I gulped several times, but the lump in my throat didn’t go down. “She was doing fine, Yaron. FINE! It makes no sense.”