Doctor Sleep

ANNIVERSARY

The Saturday noon AA meeting in Frazier was one of the oldest in New Hampshire, dating back to 1946, and had been founded by Fat Bob D., who had known the Program’s founder, Bill Wilson, personally. Fat Bob was long in his grave, a victim of lung cancer—in the early days most recovering alkies had smoked like chimneys and newbies were routinely told to keep their mouths shut and the ashtrays empty—but the meeting was still well attended. Today it was SRO, because when it was over there would be pizza and a sheet cake. This was the case at most anniversary meetings, and today one of their number was celebrating fifteen years of sobriety. In the early years he had been known as Dan or Dan T., but word of his work at the local hospice had gotten around (the AA magazine was not known as The Grapevine for nothing), and now he was most commonly called Doc. Since his parents had called him that, Dan found the nickname ironic… but in a good way. Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always came back to where it had started.

A real doctor, this one named John, chaired at Dan’s request, and the meeting followed its usual course. There was laughter when Randy M. told how he had thrown up all over the cop who arrested him on his last DUI, and more when he went on to say he had discovered a year later that the cop himself was in the Program. Maggie M. cried when she told (“shared,” in AA parlance) how she had again been denied joint custody of her two children. The usual clichés were offered—time takes time, it works if you work it, don’t quit until the miracle happens—and Maggie eventually quieted to sniffles. There was the usual cry of Higher Power says turn it off! when a guy’s cell phone rang. A gal with shaky hands spilled a cup of coffee; a meeting without at least one spilled cup of joe was rare indeed.

At ten to one, John D. passed the basket (“We are self-supporting through our own contributions”), and asked for announcements. Trevor K., who opened the meeting, stood and asked—as he always did—for help cleaning up the kitchen and putting away the chairs. Yolanda V. did the Chip Club, giving out two whites (twenty-four hours) and a purple (five months—commonly referred to as the Barney Chip). As always, she ended by saying, “If you haven’t had a drink today, give yourself and your Higher Power a hand.”

They did.

When the applause died, John said, “We have a fifteen-year anniversary today. Will Casey K. and Dan T. come on up here?”

The crowd applauded as Dan walked forward—slowly, to keep pace with Casey, who now walked with a cane. John handed Casey the medallion with XV printed on its face, and Casey held it up so the crowd could see it. “I never thought this guy would make it,” he said, “because he was AA from the start. By which I mean, an asshole with attitude.”

They laughed dutifully at this oldie. Dan smiled, but his heart was beating hard. His one thought right now was to get through what came next without fainting. The last time he’d been this scared, he had been looking up at Rose the Hat on the Roof O’ the World platform and trying to keep from strangling himself with his own hands.

Hurry up, Casey. Please. Before I lose either my courage or my breakfast.

Casey might have been the one with the shining… or perhaps he saw something in Dan’s eyes. In any case, he cut it short. “But he defied my expectations and got well. For every seven alcoholics who walk through our doors, six walk back out again and get drunk. The seventh is the miracle we all live for. One of those miracles is standing right here, big as life and twice as ugly. Here you go, Doc, you earned this.”

He passed Dan the medallion. For a moment Dan thought it would slip through his cold fingers and fall to the floor. Casey folded his hand around it before it could, and then folded the rest of Dan into a massive hug. In his ear he whispered, “Another year, you sonofabitch. Congratulations.”

Casey stumped up the aisle to the back of the room, where he sat by right of seniority with the other oldtimers. Dan was left alone at the front, clenching his fifteen-year medallion so hard the tendons stood out on his wrist. The assembled alkies stared at him, waiting for what longtime sobriety was supposed to convey: experience, strength, and hope.

“A couple of years ago…” he began, and then had to clear his throat. “A couple of years ago, when I was having coffee with that gimpy-legged gentleman who’s just now sitting down, he asked me if I’d done the fifth step: ‘Admitted to God, ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.’ I told him I’d done most of it. For folks who don’t have our particular problem, that probably would have been enough… and that’s just one of the reasons we call them Earth People.”

They chuckled. Dan drew a deep breath, telling himself if he could face Rose and her True Knot, he could face this. Only this was different. This wasn’t Dan the Hero; it was Dan the Scumbag. He had lived long enough to know there was a little scumbag in everyone, but it didn’t help much when you had to take out the trash.

“He told me that he thought there was one wrong I couldn’t quite get past, because I was too ashamed to talk about it. He told me to let it go. He reminded me of something you hear at almost every meeting—we’re only as sick as our secrets. And he said if I didn’t tell mine, somewhere down the line I’d find myself with a drink in my hand. Was that the gist of it, Case?”

From the back of the room Casey nodded, his hands folded over the top of his cane.

Dan felt the stinging at the back of his eyes that meant tears were on the way and thought, God help me to get through this without bawling. Please.

“I didn’t spill it. I’d been telling myself for years it was the one thing I’d never tell anyone. But I think he was right, and if I start drinking again, I’ll die. I don’t want to do that. I’ve got a lot to live for these days. So…”

The tears had come, the goddam tears, but he was in too deep to back out now. He wiped them away with the hand not fisted around the medallion.

“You know what it says in the Promises? About how we’ll learn not to regret the past, or wish to shut the door on it? Pardon me for saying so, but I think that’s one item of bullshit in a program full of true things. I regret plenty, but it’s time to open the door, little as I want to.”

They waited. Even the two ladies who had been doling out pizza slices on paper plates were now standing in the kitchen doorway and watching him.

“Not too long before I quit drinking, I woke up next to some woman I picked up in a bar. We were in her apartment. The place was a dump, because she had almost nothing. I could relate to that because I had almost nothing, and both of us were probably in Broke City for the same reason. You all know what that reason is.” He shrugged. “If you’re one of us, the bottle takes your shit, that’s all. First a little, then a lot, then everything.

“This woman, her name was Deenie. I don’t remember much else about her, but I remember that. I put on my clothes and left, but first I took her money. And it turned out she had at least one thing I didn’t, after all, because while I was going through her wallet, I looked around and her son was standing there. Little kid still in diapers. This woman and I had bought some coke the night before, and it was still on the table. He saw it and reached for it. He thought it was candy.”

Dan wiped his eyes again.

“I took it away and put it where he couldn’t get it. That much I did. It wasn’t enough, but that much I did. Then I put her money in my pocket and walked out of there. I’d do anything to take that back. But I can’t.”

The women in the doorway had gone back to the kitchen. Some people were looking at their watches. A stomach grumbled. Looking at the assembled nine dozen alkies, Dan realized an astounding thing: what he’d done didn’t revolt them. It didn’t even surprise them. They had heard worse. Some had done worse.

“Okay,” he said. “That’s it. Thanks for listening.”

Before the applause, one of the oldtimers in the back row shouted out the traditional question: “How’d you do it, Doc?”

Dan smiled and gave the traditional answer. “One day at a time.”

After the Our Father, and the pizza, and the chocolate cake with the big number XV on it, Dan helped Casey back to his Tundra. A sleety rain had begun to fall.

“Spring in New Hampshire,” Casey said sourly. “Ain’t it wonderful.”

“Raineth drop and staineth slop,” Dan said in a declamatory voice, “and how the wind doth ram! Skiddeth bus and sloppest us, damn you, sing goddam.”

Casey stared at him. “Did you just make that up?”

“Nah. Ezra Pound. When are you going to quit dicking around and get that hip replaced?”

Casey grinned. “Next month. I decided that if you can tell your biggest secret, I can get my hip replaced.” He paused. “Not that your secret was all that fucking big, Danno.”

“So I discovered. I thought they’d run from me, screaming. Instead, they stood around eating pizza and talking about the weather.”

“If you’d told em you killed a blind gramma, they’d have stayed to eat the pizza and cake. Free is free.” He opened the driver’s door. “Boost me, Danno.”

Dan boosted him.

Casey wriggled ponderously, getting comfortable, then keyed the engine and got the wipers to work on the sleet. “Everything’s smaller when it’s out,” he said. “I hope you’ll pass that on to your pigeons.”

“Yes, O Wise One.”

Casey looked at him sadly. “Go fuck yourself, sweetheart.”

“Actually,” Danny said, “I think I’ll go back in and help put away the chairs.”

And that was what he did.