Nothing

Max was a staff member. A good one. He was charismatic, full of energy, worked really hard, and had the attention span of a fly. Everyone liked him.

His birth parents were garbage and he was adopted by his best friends parents in grade school. He would refer to them as his Mom and Dad and his friend as “my brother”. Max dropped out of school after freshman year. He skated, tagged graffiti, and would join a street gang. Soon he was shooting heroin and meth, stealing cars, and committing armed robbery. He told me how he stole 15 cars in one night. He would drive each of them to some deserted street, park, and go get the next one. When he got all 15 lined up he sat across the street, shot meth, and stared at the cars with a sense of pride and accomplishment. He wondered if he had “broken a record”.

He had two strikes and was facing a charge that would have been his third. He told me he was “ready to do life”. He said his plan was that he would’ve volunteered for any “work” in prison to quickly make a name for himself and thought after a tough year or two, the rest would be “cake”. But instead he entered a two year, state run, lock down, drug diversion program. It was his last chance. He got sober in the program, and had two years when he started working for us.

After a couple of months our IOP manager called me and said he was in desperate need of a good male staff member to run our men’s sober living house. A leader. He needed a strong guy who could stand up to clients but who was also likeable. I instantly thought of Max. I’d hate to lose him but it was a good move for the company. Max jumped at the opportunity and did great there.

Andy was a client. A quiet, intense, good looking kid from Alabama with a Fentanyl problem. He was 25. He kept to himself. The girls tried to flirt with him, the guys tried to befriend him but he didn’t seem interested in either. I tried to get him to talk to me a couple of times but he never bit. He was nice, polite, answered every question, and when the conversation was over I realized I didn’t know him any better.

One night he was beating everyone in ping pong and I asked him if he would like to “take a shot at the title?” He nodded. We played quite a back and forth match and when he lost the final point, he punched himself in the head before shaking my hand. I took him to my office and tried to cushion his defeat by saying, “Hey, while you’ve been out there in the real world, I’ve been stuck here for years playing ping pong. In another two weeks I’d be lucky to win a point off you”. He was gracious and told me how good I was. I asked him what the anger and punching was about. He said he was “just competitive” and caught up in the moment. We spoke some more about his life, his addiction, his goals. But again, there was just something about him you couldn’t penetrate. I gave him my number and said we all need someone to open up to. It’s not only about drug addiction. It’s just life. People need people. And if you ever do… I’m here. He thanked me. A few days later he would graduate to our IOP program and sober living house.

One night Max was doing his final rounds of the night before going home at 12:30am. He entered Andy’s room and found him lying on top of his made bed unconscious, ghostly white, blue lips and vomit and foam all over his face and mouth. Max said he was “sure he was dead” and called 911. The operator asked him to check for a pulse and he said he found a really faint one. The operator instructed him to perform CPR. Max said there was just so much vomit but he had no choice. “I said fuck it, dug out the vomit from his mouth, and dove in”… after what seemed like forever and with sore arms he said he couldn’t believe it when Andy started coughing. Max propped him up and said he watched him “change colors”, from dead white to red and alive. Andy vomited on Max one more time as EMT’s rushed in.

I told Max he had done something very few people would ever do. He saved a life. I don’t care what people accomplish, how much money they have, you saved a fucking life! It’s glory. Game over, you won. Max just laughed.

A month later Andy went home to Alabama. Max would relapse shortly after that and disappear. No one knows where he is to this day. It’s been over a year.

A few weeks ago, on a slow night, I was cleaning out some corner of some cabinet when I found Andy’s Alabama driver’s license and his bank card. How did this end up here, I thought, and how long have we had it? I looked him up on our database and called the phone number on file. His mother answered and told me Andy had died 3 months ago from another overdose outside a treatment center in Florida. I spoke to her for over an hour. She told me of his whole life. He was a bright child, a track star in High School. She spoke about their relationship. And how they drifted apart. But mostly I just consoled her. She told me her preacher said she should’ve “never let her son leave Alabama”. I told her that had nothing to do with it and there was nothing she could’ve done… but she didn’t believe me.

I hung up and thought about Andy…and Max. How their lives intersected that night at the sober house. How you could literally save someone’s life and, in the end, it still didn’t matter. For either of them. I also thought about how their lives intersected with mine and how quickly they were gone from it. And I couldn’t help but wonder what I could’ve done for either of ‘em. I told myself “nothing”… but some days I don’t believe me either.