No No No No No No No No No No No No What was it this time? Approaching two years The researchers said that it can take two years for a user's brain to fully recover Nic has never made it two years since all this started An eruption of the same old worry—all that could happen to him —but then I become overwhelmed by fatigue and fall asleep, my worry settling into a newly carved-out nook in my remodeled brain Maybe this reflects something else that shifted in the hospital—the character if not the volume of the worry Lying in the neuro ICU, I came to another startling realization when it dawned on me that Nic— and not only him, but Jasper and Daisy, too—would survive my death It's not that they would be unaffected, but they would survive it Possibly because there's a time in their lives when children are dependent on their parents, we tend to forget that they can and will survive without us I did By now, though, through Nic's addiction, I have learned that I am all but irrelevant to Nic's survival It took my near death, however, to comprehend that his fate—and Jasper's and Daisy's—is separate from mine I can try to protect my children, to help and guide them, and I can love them, but I cannot save them Nic, Jasper, and Daisy will live, and someday they will die, with or without me In the morning, I contemplate whether to tell the kids about Nic In Daisy's letter to her teacher, she wrote, "My brother was a smoky guy." I suppose that is her way of summing up the drugs And she said: "Everything is A okay now." I want everything to stay A-okay for her for at least a little while I had so much wanted to end my book with Nic's letter to Jasper It served too perfectly as a neat bow on the package, a happy ending I wanted it to be the happy ending of our family's story about meth I wanted to move on from it I wanted this now to be the post-Nic'saddiction phase of our lives But no It is still so easy to forget that addiction is not curable It is a lifelong disease that can go into remission, that is manageable if the one who is stricken does the hard, hard work, but it is incurable Nic's latest relapse is an undeniable measure of the relentlessness of this disease It's not a new revelation, but a different iteration Everything was going well for him He had a girlfriend, so we cannot blame his loneliness We cannot blame work that bores him, because he seems to enjoy his job and adore his coworkers He considers them his good friends He has a book deal and a shot at a job as an assistant editor at a magazine His movie reviews have led to a few interviews and a review for Wired magazine Perhaps most significant, he has a close group of friends who seem dear to one another All of this is irrelevant now Despite my knowledge that addiction does not respond to logic, I have held on to a vestige of an idea that the trappings of a life— girlfriend, job, money, solid friendships, a desire to do right by those you love—can make it OK, but they don't Please God heal Nic When I was in the hospital, many people told me they prayed for me, and I am enormously grateful to them I never prayed Perhaps I cannot pray because I never have, I do not know how, and I cannot conceive of a god to pray to But as John Lennon said: "God is a concept by which we measure our pain." Here I am with Nic using again and I know that there is nothing I can do and I cannot believe that we are here again and that the next telephone call could be the one I have feared for the past half-dozen years, and I am praying Please God heal Nic Please God heal Nic Please God heal Nic It's my plea to whatever higher power there is, the one they—they in the endless rehabs, the endless meetings—the one they promise is out there listening I repeat it inside my head sometimes even without knowing I am saying it: Please God heal Nic I pray even as the news in the papers makes my prayer seem insignificant in scale and wholly selfish There is a devastating hurricane and flooding and suicide bombers and crashes and tsunamis and terrorism and cancer and war—endless and brutal war—disease and famine and earthquakes and everywhere there is addic tion, and today the heavens must be overwhelmed with the noise of all the prayers Here is one more Please God heal Nic Please God heal Nic The descent is quick Nic shows up high at work and loses his job His phone is disconnected because he does not pay his bill He deserts every real friend Saddest, he has deserted his best friend and sponsor, Randy In one message he says that he and his girlfriend have sold their clothes to pay for food I don't know how they have paid their rent I don't know how they will pay next month's rent, but soon, unless they have a benefactor or are dealing drugs, they will be homeless Today Vicki cannot stop herself, and she drives from the west side of town to his apartment in Hollywood She wants to see for herself She wants to see if he is alive I pretend that I am not waiting by the phone to hear from her She parks her car and apprehensively walks into the apartment building She pulls open the screen and knocks on the door There is no answer The window shades are down She knocks again No answer She knocks again The door opens a crack Then wider The place is filthy—squalor There is a pool of brown water on the floor Trash everywhere Nic, blocking the flood of daylight with his hands, shakily steps into view Behind him, his girlfriend does, too It is a scene familiar to me, but new to his mother Vicki has never seen Nic like this: gaunt, white, nearly yellow, trembling limbs, sunken black circles around vacant eyes Z.'s legs are bleeding When she notices that her legs are uncovered and that Vicki is staring, Z stammers, "A light bulb broke on the floor We were cleaning it up." Nic tells his familiar lies: "We had to go through this We're done now We're getting sober." He asks his mother to leave and to not come back Vicki calls and tells me She sounds like I have felt on many occasions before She sounds furious and wretched and horrified, emotion so overwhelming that she cannot yet cry *** A week goes by It is Sunday and I am driving Daisy to the city to meet a friend and her mother at Washington Square We meet up with them and walk through the park, from where we watch the Columbus Day Parade A float is filled with a dozen girls dressed as Queen Isabella Nic is here He is six years old Queen Isabellas float by This is our neighborhood Nic is one of the children running toward the climbing structure, climbing up to the tip top, watching the parade from that crow's nest, waving at the queens I drive Daisy and her giggly friend across town to a birthday party being held at a ceramics studio The girls, strapped into the backseat, play a game inspired by the picture book Fortunately by Remy Charlip The book reads: Fortunately Ned was invited to a surprise party Unfortunately it was a thousand miles away Fortunately a friend loaned Ned an airplane Unfortunately the motor exploded Fortunately there was a parachute on the plane Unfortunately there was a hole in the parachute "Fortunately she had a very delicious sandwich," says Daisy's friend in the girls' game And Daisy's turn: "Unfortunately she dropped it on the dirty street and along came a ... hurricane and flooding and suicide bombers and crashes and tsunamis and terrorism and cancer and war—endless and brutal war—disease and famine and earthquakes and everywhere there is addic tion, and today the heavens must be overwhelmed with the noise of all the... Unfortunately it was a thousand miles away Fortunately a friend loaned Ned an airplane Unfortunately the motor exploded Fortunately there was a parachute on the plane Unfortunately there was a hole in the parachute... he seems to enjoy his job and adore his coworkers He considers them his good friends He has a book deal and a shot at a job as an assistant editor at a magazine His movie reviews have led to a few interviews and a review for Wired magazine