Meetings

Sam checked his phone and then realised he was looking for a message from Ben. Ben had always been running late for the meetings. AA. “Who cares”, he’d say when he got there, “you think you might fail the course? Does anyone here look like they’ve passed?”

It was part of their plan, Ben pretending to support Sam as he began to attend classes again. Ben could get away with it because he hadn’t lived with Michelle for that long, not long enough for her to have gone through the things the other women who had shared his life had. It made sense he was supporting such a close friend and he was practised at hiding his own drinking.

Sam wanted to do it, he had been sinking further and further into the drinking, taking nights off and then lying about it and barely being able to look at himself afterwards. His marriage was slipping through his fingers, when Susan spoke to him now he knew she didn’t trust the words he came back with even before they were said.

Ben had treated the classes as just another night out, he would joke around outside the class and during the hour drink coffee and listen to those who spoke with a look on his face as if Michelle had made him go to a French film festival. When they were done he would drive Sam to a café and they would talk. And Ben managed to find the little things to talk about from that day at work, or one of the days before, how young the dead driver had been at the job last night, things about the boss, money and how over-time had dried up. Anything and everything that left Sam wondering how he was going to cope with the next day and dying for a drink. And when Sam slipped he would ring his support network and Ben would be there in a flash, talking about how it was understandable, how they would get through, the classes would keep her believing, and what more could she ask anyway?

Sam looked down the length of the long bare hallway and saw Andy coming towards him, he was checking off the black stencilled numbers sitting starkly beneath the small frosted windows high on each door in turn. Sam could almost see Andy’s lips moving, imagined him repeating the number over and over in his head in a slow mantra as he walked. He offered to come back from work and get Andy for the meeting. But it seemed important to Andy, when he thought of it later, that he get here alone and on time. Find the building, find a park, find the room, find Sam. When Sam thought of the decisions he had seen Andy make without batting an eye he could almost feel the swirling storms that must have gone on inside the man’s head to leave him counting off room numbers so intently.

The room number never changed; Sam had been so many times, the faces changed but they never dwindled. And they returned. That was the hardest thing to see. They came back, only older, darker and more beaten. He saw some men he vaguely recognised, some were new to this and desperate to get well, standing near the door and wanting to get started. Others lingered back near the dark glass of the bank of windows running away down the hall, not too near the door as if maybe they weren’t here for that at all. Their routinely stained fingers fidgeted with phones and keys and they turned in small semi circles with their eyes on the light that pooled in the grey tiles of the floor.

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When Sam and Andy were in their seats half way back on one side of the rows of folding chairs with Sam in the aisle, he looked around, really for the first time seeing the people he came here with, and seeing how much each of them fidgeted endlessly. Newcomers, veterans, men, women. Legs bobbed, some leaned forward and back, forward and back, others sat up and took long breaths or slouched and picked at their nails. He felt Andy next to him, his long leg still against Sam’s and his hands stretched out to his knees, simply looking up to Mark, the man who organised his things for the class at the front of the bare room. And Andy was the one who was supposed to be falling to pieces.

When later Mark asked if anyone else would like to speak, Sam was looking out across the room, as he and Ben always did. He had laughed about it later sometimes, remembering how angry Ben got at brigade events whenever the floor was thrown open and someone actually took up the invitation. “The right answer to that question is silence”, Ben always said. “Then you can get the hell out of there and back to doing what you’re paid for.”

Sam looked over to Andy, thinking of offering a coffee afterwards, before they went home.

“Why not?” Andy said it quietly, looking straight back at him.

Sam sat there for a moment, and then thought that’s right, if not then what am I doing here?

He got up and met Mark at the lectern, surprised by how relaxed he felt. “Hi, I’m Sam”, he began. “I’ve nodded hello to a lot of you. I’m sorry I’ve never contributed before now.

These past few weeks have been something I hope I don’t have to go through again. But then, the fact that at the end of that time I’m here and not in a bar doing things that would bring me back here next week feeling like an absolute waste of space is a massive step forward for me. I’m a firefighter. Lots of people are and they don’t end up like me so I’m not looking to make excuses.

A guy that I really respect left work a few weeks back now, all of a sudden. I don’t think we’ll see him there again. I had based almost all the things I did at work and outside it on what I had learnt from him, he is my greatest friend.

I didn’t know what I was going to do without his guidance and help and our whole shift has been a mess without him, without admitting it. I started drinking again because I was so lost without him.

I’ve been given a chance to keep on learning from him, which is fantastic. But I feel selfish that I am doing that at a time when he is the one who should be getting the help.

I guess that is the thing I have struggled with the most coming here; probably in other ways throughout my life. Seeking help can seem so selfish.

He looked out to Andy then and smiled.

“I’ve been coming here pretending that I wanted to stop blotting things out with drink. I feel terrible when I think how hard you all are trying, when I wasn’t. How selfish I have been towards the people in my life.”

He paused and looked down.

“I have been coming here with another man I worked with. He isn’t with us anymore. I feel so much shame that he didn’t believe that he could call me when it got to that.

I lost a great friend. His family are torn to pieces losing him.

I think if there is a heaven it’s somewhere you can take the breath you’ve been meaning to take for so long. I think he’s probably up there now, taking that breath. He wasn’t wrong about many things in his life. But he got that one completely wrong, it’s selfish to not seek help, not the other way around. We’re all doing a good thing being here tonight.

So I’m going to go home, not my home now. Like so many others my home became somewhere that I just wasn’t welcome because of my drinking and what it made me. And I’m not going to drink, and I’m going to be a dad when I can, and a firefighter and just a guy doing his best not to be selfish.”

Sam looked around the room as he fell silent, and then over to Mark who got up from the chair he had been listening from, offering his hand.