Not so Fast

Of course nothing was ever easy as I knew. I was just holding my breath hoping that he would make it to Salt Lake City.
We had arranged a hotel room for him to stay in that night and the attorney gave him permission to charge dinner and toiletries to the room and of course of pack of cigarettes.

He called me when he checked in. The first part of the trip to Kansas was over. He just needed to stay sober for one more night and catch the flight from Salt Lake to Kansas City. I felt relieved that his trip this far went off without any problems. Maybe he really was serious about getting sober. At least he was calling and saying he was. He called to say good night and told me he was very grateful to have a place to go. It must have been very traumatic sleeping in the desert. So traumatic that it seemed he was willing to do whatever it took to get help this time.
I know from being with him for years that he was most likely very sick at the moment. Otherwise he would not be so willing.
Of course he didn't want to alarm me and tried to make it sound like he was in fairly decent shape, I really knew better.

The next morning he got on a plane to Kansas and again the Attorney made arrangements for him to stay in a hotel for a couple of days. The Menenger Foundation did not have the facility to detox patients, he would have to do that himself. They would not admit him until he was sober for at least five days. This was day two. I was worried because this was a critical time for him.
If he was as sick as I knew he could be, he would go into some sort of bad withdrawal and all he would want was a drink to calm his shakes.

This hotel would not let him charge anything to the room but they were willing to accept an additional charge of $10 and they would give him the money to get some more cigarettes. He always chain smoked but even more when he was detoxing.
I didn't give it another thought. Kansas was a dry State and I didn't have anything to worry about.

Little did I know at the time that he would take that $10, find a "Club" that would sell bottles of alcohol and be off and running again.

I called his room before I went to sleep that night, because I had not heard from him. I started to worry. This was not a good sign. I just had this gut feeling that something was wrong. I barely slept that night.
The following morning I called his hotel again, no answer. I called the desk, they said they had not seen him.
What went through my mind was that he was dead. I thought his withdrawal had been so bad that his heart gave out on him.
I was freaking out.
I called the Menenger Foundation and told them what I was worried about. He was simply gone. The admissions people told me not to worry, they would track him down and find out what had happened to him. They told me to just stay calm, they would find him.

Several hours went by and I finally got a call. Bob was in the Kansas City Jail, and was awaiting sentencing for trying to force his way into a local hospital. He caused such a scene that they had him arrested. That's how sick he was. He hated hospitals with a passion and now he was trying to get himself admitted into one. That was a good sign but he just didn't go about it the right was. The staff called the cops on him.
This was Kansas, not Los Angeles. When he went before the Judge the Judge sentenced him to Menengers, it was no longer voluntary. He had to return to see the judge in two months and at that time he would let Bob know if he was going to lock him away in the State Mental Facility. It wasn't like California, where you could get out in 72 hours. If the Judge wanted to he could lock him in there and throw away the key. It was his discretion. He warned Bob that if he heard one bad report from the doctors at Menengers, that would be the end of his freedom. Bob was scared. More scared than he had ever been.
He was sent back to his jail cell. He was not sober enough to be admitted to the Treatment Center. This place was not really a treatment center for drugs or alcohol. It was a mental hospital that he was waiting to get in to Not the re=hab places that he was used to. This would be an totally different Journey. This time they were going to try and get to the bottom of why he just kept going back to the bottle. Nothing had worked for him so far.

He had tried everything conventional and still he would pick up that first drink. It was as confusing for him as for anyone.
This time, this place was going to approach things from an entirerly new direction. But now there was the added kicker of the Judge doing the decision making.

He could not afford to take this lightly. His freedom was virtually in the hands of some Judge in Kansas that could have cared less about his past history of trying to get and stay sober. He wanted results this time or he was just going to lock him up as a menace to Society for as long as he felt was necessary, even if it meant years.

Need I say Bob was just about to get "SCARED STRAIGHT'.