He had nightmares. He’d wake up screaming. Sometimes he’d be on the floor next to the bed before he was even awake, crouched, like he was taking cover.
He hurt his back at the garage in 2013. The doctor gave him pills. Oxycodone.
Ezoic
The pills were worse than the whiskey.
I tried for three years.
I took him to the VA. I took him to meetings. I poured bottles down the sink. I hid the car keys. I flushed pills down the toilet. I called his sergeant from Iraq, a man named Hollis, who drove all the way from Tennessee to sit with him for a weekend.
Nothing worked.
The last night was in April of 2016.
Nathan was six. Greg was supposed to pick him up from school. He didn’t. The school called me at work. I left in the middle of a meeting and drove there and found my six-year-old sitting alone on the curb in front of the school with his backpack. The last kid. The teacher standing over him looking at her watch.
