Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)(163)

He looked for a moment longer at what remained of his father. Then he headed down to the parking lot with Billy. When they got there, he looked back once more.

Roof O’ the World was empty.





UNTIL YOU SLEEP


FEAR stands for face everything and recover.

—Old AA saying





ANNIVERSARY


1

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 * 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?”