{Jon}

"Jon, time to wake up." His father's hand shaking his shoulder made the room twirl and his headache pound double time. Jon groaned and brought his blankets up to cover his head. "I'm sick, Dad. Not going to school."

The bed rocked as his father sat down on the edge of it. "I know you're sick, son. We're going to the hospital." Pete began to peel the blankets off him, and Jon made a shrill cry of protest, balling up and hanging on.

"No—no hospital! I'll be fine!"

"You won't be fine," Pete said evenly. "You're experiencing withdrawal from opioid addiction. You need more help than we can give you here."

Jon made a strangled noise, feeling like his bed had flipped upside down, dumping him down a slide to hell. He scrambled to the corner of his bed, holding his pillow in front of him like a shield. "That's a fucking lie—Cary is a liar and you know it!" His voice was high and strained, cracking in places. If the room hadn't been spinning and reeling like a funhouse ride, he would have got up and lit into Cary himself.

Pete had his hands folded in his lap, the only steady point in the rocking room. "The hospital has a program that can help you. Drugs to help wean you off."

Jon abruptly stopped shrieking his accusations. His breathing came faster and his mouth watered. "Drugs?"

Pete nodded, his mouth flat inside his beard. He got up and turned away from him to the closet. "Do you need my help to get dressed?"

"No—fuck," Jon muttered. "I can fucking dress myself, Dad." He hardly noticed the swears popping out.

His dad stepped out, shutting the door behind him. Jon swayed to the closet, dressing in short, shaky jerks. His stomach was in knots, and his head was pounding, and he didn't care because the hospital was going to give him drugs that would make all these feelings go away.

He hadn't been upright and in the daylight for a couple days, and walking to the car almost cost him the little juice he'd been able to stomach for breakfast. He rode with his head pressed back against the seat and his eyes squeezed shut. For once, his father had nothing to say to him and he didn't have to think about anything except how much better he was going to feel when he got those drugs.

The hospital took forever—one nurse made him pee in a cup and then sit and wait, then a new nurse made him pee again and wait in a new room. At least it was cool and quiet in this room, not like the ER waiting area, and his father sat reading his Bible on his phone while Jon jiggled and sweated and shook.

When the doctor came in, she swept a glance over his sweating face and the bandages on his arms before checking her clipboard. "Do you feel comfortable talking to me in front of your parent?" she asked in a clinical voice.

Pete stirred in his chair. "He's just 15. I would like to be here."

"I don't want him here," Jon said. The pain in his head matched the look on his father's face as Pete rose and left.

She asked questions about cutting and he lied. She asked questions about whether he wanted to die—he said no and he was pretty sure that was the truth. "When do I get my drugs?" he asked every five minutes, and it seemed like she was ignoring him, writing on her clipboard. She left and another person came, also with a clipboard. He asked more questions until Jon couldn't keep track what lies he'd told and what was the truth. "When do I get my drugs?" he asked this new person.

The man tapped his pen against his clipboard, his bushy eyebrows going up and down. "We need to make a decision here, young man, about what would be best for your recovery. There are treatment centres where you could live full-time—or you could participate in our outpatient program and come in a few times a week to see a psychologist."

Jon made a face. He did not need a psycho-whatever person. He was normal; he just needed those drugs. He imagined a quiet room of his own with an ensuite bathroom, like in a hotel. "Living someplace else," he said.

"Let me speak with your guardian," the man said.

"My dad is in the hall," Jon said. "When do I get my drugs?"

///

Pete didn't look at him when he came back into the waiting room. Jon slumped in one of the plastic chairs while the doctor talked, feeling his first taper dose take effect. His thoughts felt more clear than they had in days, but they were black as pitch. He clenched his hands over the bandages on his arms, feeling every line he'd carved into his skin with a loathing so strong it was like a stink in his nose.

Pete walked him silently to the van, and silently shut the passenger side door behind him. When he got into the driver's seat, Jon turned his face away, waiting, a lump as big as a fist in his throat.

There was a long silence, and his father let out a shaky breath. "Jon." The word was heavy with disappointment and it settled on his chest.

"I don't want to hear it, Dad." Jon's voice was thin and sharp.

"You need to hear this, son. You're better than this."

It felt like Pete had shoved on his chest and broken his rib again. Jon bit his lips closed, fixing his eyes out the window.

"Your mother and I believe in you. We count on you; you know that."

Jon pressed his shoulder against the door like he could be anywhere else, his fingers twisting on the bandages. "I know that."

There was a pause, and he could feel the weight of his dad looking at him. He was starting to feel sick to his stomach again, and the clean Jon he was supposed to be was sitting in the backseat, smirking at him.

"You're going to get better," Pete said firmly. "And you're going to come home."

Jon closed his eyes, his throat aching. In that order. Never mind that going to a treatment place had been his decision. He knew as well as Pete that he had fucked it up and they couldn't afford to have him back in their family until he had his shit together again.

{Pete}

Mel came down the hall to meet him when he returned, clasping her hands and searching his face. She glanced behind his shoulder and paled. "Where's Jon?"

"He decided to go to a treatment house." His voice sounded flat and exhausted even to himself. "I'm just going to pack him a bag and drop it off."

She sucked in her breath. "For how long?"

Pete felt in his pocket for the slippery brochure the psychologist had given him and handed it over. "Ten days."

"Can we visit?" Mel's voice sounded shaky.

He went into Jon's room without answering, opening drawers and tossing clothes onto his son's dishevelled bed—clean underwear, socks, pyjamas, jeans, sweats, T-shirts and a sweater in case it got cold. He shuffled through the mess on Jon's desk, looking for anything Jon might want to do in his spare time. His Bible was under a sloppy pile of comics. He drew it out, shaking off the chip crumbs. He tossed it onto the growing pile on the bed, not caring that Jon would probably sneer at him for including it.

He told himself he was not caring. He couldn't say what he was feeling at the moment, except there was a job to be done and he was doing it.

"Peter?" Mel's voice came from the doorway. "Can we visit him?"

"I don't know. It's a closed program. He chose it himself. I'm sorry, sweetheart," he said it automatically. "Can you find me a bag to put these things in?"

They went together. The treatment centre just looked like a house on a residential street. Mel stood on the mat in the entryway, trying to smile as she looked around the immaculately clean living room.

"This looks nice," she said.

Jon didn't come any closer than the couch, sitting there, staring at the wall. His skin looked a little less green and sweaty, and he wasn't shaking anymore.

"We brought your things," Mel said.

Jon lifted a hand, glancing at her. "Thanks, Mom."

She crossed the floor in a rush and knelt to hug him. "We love you, Jon, no matter what."

His arms came up to return her embrace, hiding his face in her shoulder, and Pete yearned to be in that hug with them. When she pulled away, Jon got quickly to his feet and left the room. He didn't look at Pete even once.

Pete left the bag on the mat and walked to the car, fumbling with the keys, fighting to keep his composure. Mel found him in the driver's seat, trying to fit their house key into the ignition.

"Peter." She closed her hand around his. "Let me drive."

He shut himself in on the passenger side and pulled out his phone to scroll through the work emails, numb. He'd asked for a personal day and hadn't told anyone at the church what was happening. With Jon in someone else's care, perhaps he was spared that now. 

"I won't need to take time off," he said. "So that's a blessing." The word choked him and he pressed his hand against his mouth, breathing in slowly.

"Can you preach?" Mel asked.

He dropped his hand, taking in the lines of worry carved deep on her forehead. "What do you mean, can I preach?"

She glanced away from the road a second, her eyes almost lilac in their clarity. She hesitated. "You open everything when you preach—yourself, along with the Word. It just seems like...this might be too much right now."

Pete curled his shoulders forward and set them on his knees. He had only half a manuscript ready for this Sunday—he had planned to write the rest today. He turned his wrist to check the time. Really, he still had time to do that.

"It's not too much," he said. "I can preach."

"We just lost our son, Peter." Her voice was soft as tears.

He tucked his chin into his chest, closing his eyes. "He's not lost," he whispered. "He's coming home in 10 days."

"You can't promise me he'll be better. You know you can't."

He stayed silent, remembering the thing Cary had said, that using drugs like Jon had changed people. He clasped his hands together tightly, like he could keep this from tearing them apart. "What do you want me to do? Quit preaching, quit my job? I have to work, Mel. We need this home—we need stability more than ever. For Jon. For Jon to have something to come back to. I can't afford to fall apart here." He took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice even. "If you need the time—to grieve and let go of your responsibility with the children, then you can do that. I can't. I won't. This is what I do for us—what I've always done."

She was silent, and the blunt force of his words caught up to him.

"It's not 'falling apart' to grieve," she said finally.

He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling heat building under his sternum. He pressed the anger small, but he couldn't keep a little from leaking out. "There's nothing wrong with going on, even when a thing is hard. I can't quit my job and lie in bed all day—I have to work. And I'm fine with that."

"You don't have to pastor."

It caught him under his defenses, where Jon had already bruised him months ago, hollering I hate your job—I hate being a pastor's kid. His voice broke a little. "Mel—we made the decision to go into ministry together. We decided to move and take this church together. We prayed about it—our church prayed about it—"

"So let's make another decision together," Mel said.

"The decision is already made!" Pete's voice rose. "I signed a contract for two years—I gave my word. It's done. This is where we are until those two years are up. And I'm sorry it's been hard and I wish I could fix it, but I can't. I just have to go on and do the best I can for us."

He took a breath, trying to swallow down the pieces that were coming apart. He managed to reset his voice to an ordinary volume. "You don't have to come on Sundays. This doesn't have to be your church—if that would be easier." It was a relief, in a way, to imagine that. He could be jostled by the politics of this congregation without worrying that his family was coming to harm because they stood beside him. "This can just be my job."

She pulled into their driveway and silenced the engine. She shook her head, her hair falling over her face. "You're not hearing me, Peter. You're not hearing yourself."

She got out of the car before he could answer or ask what she meant.

He went for a walk around the neighbourhood, moving his thoughts out of the room with the jumble of feelings and events from the morning into the room where he had pages of notes and half a sermon to write. On his way down to his study in the cool of the basement, he noticed that Mel had picked up the girls from school and there were bags of groceries on the kitchen counter. He was grateful she was holding together, that he didn't need to take care of those things as well as perform for his job.

The thing was, the words he would say about God on a Sunday weren't changed by what happened in his family on a Thursday. God didn't change—he was still good. There was even some comfort in writing a message about that and reminding himself of it. Maybe Mel didn't realize that. There would be time to talk about it when this manuscript was done. 

*What would you say to Jon if you could? What would you say to Pete and Mel?*