Dervla Brennan stood at the bus stop, waiting in the rain as the cold mist crept around her. Her long brown hair was matted against her face, and she was struggling to keep a cigarette burning between her lips as fat drops of rain drowned it. She was young, but her eyes were hollow in her head and worry lines were beginning to ripple across her forehead. As the coach bus rolled into the station, she threw the cigarette to the ground, and watched as the ember slowly died. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” she murmurs to quote the old Neil Young song.
Every Monday morning, Dervla boards the Peter Pan bus from Newton, Massachusetts to Worcester. She makes the long trip every week to visit her father, a patient at Adcare Hospital in Worcester. Adcare specializes in treating alcohol and drug addicts and rehabilitating addicts. Dervla’s father has been a long time alcoholic, and finally decided to seek treatment when his wife left him and threatened to divorce him if he didn’t seek help. “I can remember secretly hating Christmases when I was younger because his drinking always ruined everything,” she recalls. Although memories such as this stain her childhood, Dervla says that she does not hate her father because as a 21 year old woman, she understands that her father is ill and needs help to recover.
Dervla leaves Newton every Monday morning at 7:20 so that she can stay with her father for the whole day. She boards the bus wearing last night’s makeup and her hair in a perfect pompadour style. She explains that her shift as a waitress at Jillian’s of Boston ended at 3 am, and instead of tempting herself with sleep, she catches up on reading for the classes she is taking at Suffolk University as a part time student.
“I can’t wait to see him,” she softly says and shuts her eyes as she battles with sleep.
