The Right Treatment by Tara Finnegan Page B

But Matt had already annoyed her over the clinic, and her old assertive self was sneaking back as she faced her demons.
    “Don’t get me wrong, Matt. I am beyond grateful to you. You really saved my life, and then put me back on the right track. I owe you everything. But I need to live again, without a jailer.”
    Grateful but not a fool, she thought. Aoife knew she had to keep emotionally detached if at all possible. It would have been too easy to continue to rely on him and not face the world. It was obvious she had become a project to him, a project he intended to complete with top grades. She decided to give him his A+ and prepare for real life, as unscathed as possible. That meant regaining her life and self-control. She could do the star student. She had done it before as a child, under worse circumstances. But this time there was more at stake, or so it seemed.
    Aoife had a spring in her step as she went to the clinic. It really felt like she was getting her life in order again. She arrived in with two coffees, and handed one to Katie.
    “You’re very chirpy today, did the dishy doctor get his way with you or something?”
    Aoife sputtered coffee over the desk. “Matt wouldn’t touch me with a fifty-foot barge pole. I used drugs; he’d be tainted by association,” Aoife said with a grin.
    “Oh, come on. He can’t be that bad, surely. I could find you twenty people in here who think he is God Almighty.”
    “Oh, no. He is great, really. Look at all he has done for me. But he’s just not big on the empathy thing. And drugs are dirty to him. The new leprosy. Anyway, to satisfy your curiosity, Matt has no designs on me. But I am hoping to hear that I will be back to work when the schools open in September.”
    “Aw, that’s brilliant. And speaking of open, we had better admit the new lepers,” Katie said, rising from her chair. Four of the usual faces headed up the line, all there for their regular methadone. Aoife was still in front of the desk, tidying up the information leaflets in the stand at reception.
    “Hey, Stacey. Last week for you and me,” Aoife said cheerfully. “How do you feel about it?”
    “Scared and excited. I really want to do this, you know, for her. This is the first time I have dared think I might be clean.” Stacey looked at her newborn baby swaddled in pink. She was so different to when Aoife had first started in the rehab. She looked happy and hopeful—such a contrast to the desperate, heavily pregnant woman she had seen on her first day there. Stacey had made such an impression on Aoife that day, and Aoife prayed her journey would be successful. And somewhere, deep in her heart, Aoife really thought it would be.
    A new face, a man with wild eyes, was standing behind Stacey, his impatience to get to the front of the queue obvious. Aoife hadn’t seen him before. Katie must have spotted his anxiety because she stopped what she was at and called him over. He was side by side with Stacey then. Katie took out a registration form and asked his name and if he had been referred and by whom.
    “Give me all you have,” he snapped, cutting through her questions. Aoife spun around to see what the kerfuffle was.
    “We have access to nothing, you need to see a doctor. They’ll be here in ten minutes,” Katie said calmly. But she shot Aoife a warning look, and trying to be discreet, Aoife reached across the desk and hit the panic button, alerting the local police to a situation. Immediately the man took out a hypodermic needle, claiming it to be his, and that he was HIV positive, first threatening to stab Stacey’s baby with it. Without even thinking it through, Aoife placed herself between Stacey and the man.
    “The baby can’t get you anything,” Aoife reasoned. “Let them go, and I’ll see what I can find.” She signalled to him to follow her and she headed off in the direction of one of the consulting rooms, depressing the door handle. It was locked, as she knew it would be,