A MEMORY

A MEMORY:
January 6, 2009 

That morning I had taken Addison to UT for orientation and realized when he answered the door that something was terribly wrong. He had taken something, but at the time I had no idea what it was.
That night, my mom called me and said that she had just gotten off the phone with Addison and his words sounded slurred. She wanted me to call him myself and see if I heard the same thing in his voice. I called his cell phone repeatedly, getting more and more nervous as each call went unanswered.
I called his roommates cell phone. A roommate that had moved into the apartment that my parents were paying for without asking permission, and without paying for ANYTHING whatsoever. This was the same roommate that I would later find out gave Addison his very first pill.
I knew right off that when he answered the phone that he didn't sound right for sure. I sternly asked him "WHERE is Addison?" To which I received a nonchalant "I don't know, I'm playing a video game." Sternness turned to anger when I yelled "You are in a two bedroom APARTMENT. GET up, off your ASS, and GO LOOK!!!"
A few minutes passed as I heard fumbling noises coming from the other end of the line. Anger then turned to panic when I was told "Well, he's in the bathroom, on the floor, sort of half way in the tub, and half way out." I demanded that he check to see if Addison had a pulse or if it was too much trouble to interrupt his video game to make sure that my brother was still alive. He told me "Oh no man, he's okay, he does this all the time. He's asleep, he'll just sleep really good for a long time and then he'll wake up and he'll be fine."
With every part of my body trembling, having remembered what I had seen that same morning I demanded to know what Addison had taken. It took some yelling, screaming, and threatening to get it out of him, but finally I was told that he had taken about 6 or 8 Xanax bars. And again I heard, "But it's totally cool, he does it like every other day." With all of the panic I felt I don't remember all the expletives that came flying out of my mouth next but I do remember telling him that SOMEONE was on the way. I didn't know if it would be my family, or an ambulance, or the cops, or all three, but someone was coming.
I couldn't even get my cell phone held still enough to call my mom back. Once it began ringing I yelled for my husband and was trying to get out of my pajamas and into my regular clothes while I told my mom what was happening. All I got out was "Mom we need to go, Addison didn't answer the phone because he is unconscious on the bathroom floor, what do you want me to do?" She was trying to get out of her pajamas and into regular clothes too as she yelled for my dad and told us to meet them at Baptist West Hospital.
That January night was cold. My parents called my grandparents to follow them to Addison's apartment. My grandfather being a retired Marine made my mom think they might need his help depending on the situation they found upon arrival.
When we left our house it raining. Not even pouring, but what was happening was probably the definition of a MONSOON. The rain drops were as big as golf balls and then came slamming down onto the windshield with great force. We could barely see to drive. My parents and my grandfather were experiencing the same weather as they sped at break neck speed down the interstate to Addison's apartment.
They entered the door and ran to Addison's bathroom. There he was, the way I had described. My grandfather picked him up, which Addison wasn't a really small guy at almost 5'11'' and about 170 pounds. He threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carried him down one flight of stairs to the car.
When we met them at the hospital Addison was awake again. He was in ROOM 1 in the emergency room, and he was angry. The doctors had forced my parents to leave the room because Addison was 19, and not a minor, and he didn't want them in the room. My mother was hysterical because since Addison had not given permission the doctors would not discuss with her anything about Addison despite her plea's to them that he was her CHILD, no matter what his age!
I begged a nurse to go ask Addison if he would let me in. I was relieved when she opened back up the two large automatic doors and said "come on."
I proceeded back to ROOM 1, where I found Addison awake, hooked to an I.V. He was groggy, but sitting up in the bed. His big brown eyes were as bloodshot as fire engines, and his face was fuming with fury when he screamed to me "I HATE YOU JESSICA! I F-IN HATE YOU!! Apparently that was the only reason he allowed me to come back there, to tell me that he hated me for calling our parents. As I backed away with a nurse in my face I yelled back at him that I didn't care if he hated me forever as long as he was alive.
A few hours later, which by then was the wee hours of the morning we were able to take Addison home back to my parents. Leaving still with very little information from the doctors about what had happened and what they had done to treat him. I sent my husband home, who had to work in a few short hours and road with my family back to their house.

72 hours later Addison was on a plane to Arkansas to Capstone Treatment Facility where he would stay for the next 4 and a half months. That was a terrifying night. When I got the call January 2 of this year saying meet us at the hospital, it's Addison. I was panicked yet again, but knowing he had been clean for 6 months I was NEVER expecting the news that I got on that day. I repeatedly wrote ROOM 1 in capital letters because that was the room that Addison was in when he overdosed on Xanax. The next time I saw him in the hospital, it was the same room. He was at the same hospital, in ROOM 1, but this time he was gone. He wasn't screaming that he hated me. He was cold, and intebated with a tube down his throat. There was no fixing it this time. My baby brother was dead. Addison was never coming home again, ever. That was, and will remain, the worst day of all of our lives.