I sat on the floor of the hallway at four in the morning and I held my eight-year-old son and I let him feel that what he had done was enough, was more than enough, was the bravest thing I had ever seen done by any person at any age.
When his breathing slowed, I carried him to his bed.
He was heavier than he used to be.
He was still light enough to carry.
I held him against my chest the way I had held him when he was two and small enough that I could feel his whole weight.
I put him in his bed.
I pulled the blanket up.
He was almost asleep.
He said, eyes closed: Mom.
I said: yes.
He said: is Halmoni going to be okay?
I said: yes.
He said: really?
I said: really.
He said: okay.
He slept.
I went back into the hallway.
I stood outside my mother’s door.
I opened it very quietly.
She was asleep.
The sound of her breathing.
The slow, careful breathing of someone whose body was working to heal.
I went to the bedside table.
I opened the medication drawer.
I counted.
I had a copy of the dispensing record in my own room.
I brought it.
I compared.
Tyler was right.
The numbers did not match.
I stood in my mother’s room in the dark and I held the paper and I counted again.
Twenty-two tablets.
Should have been twenty-eight.
Six missing.
Over two weeks.
Six tablets of her controlled pain medication.
My hands were shaking.
I am a nurse.
I have worked in healthcare for nine years.
I know what controlled substances look like on charts.
I know what diversion looks like.
I know what someone looks like when they are stealing medication.
I had not seen it in my own house.
I had not seen it because I had not been looking for it.
Because the person doing it was my brother.
Because I had accepted the explanation that made the least demand on me.
Because Tyler had been watching and I had not been listening.
I went to my room.
I sat on the edge of my bed.
I did not sleep.
I thought about Jason.
Not the Jason of the last few weeks.
The Jason of my whole life.
The person who had been present at every important moment.
Who had stood at our father’s grave and wept without being ashamed.
Who had called me every Sunday for years after my marriage ended.
Who had loved my son genuinely, I believed that, I still believed that, the loving of Tyler had been genuine even while the rest of this was happening.
People contain things that do not cohere.
People can love genuinely and harm simultaneously.
This is not a contradiction.
It is just one of the things that is true about people.
I thought about the opioid epidemic.
I had seen it in the hospital.
I had seen the specific shape of it, what it looked like from the inside of a person.
The way it rearranged priorities.
The way it produced behavior that was not the person’s original behavior.
The way it took people who had loved genuinely and made the loving conditional on access to the thing.
Jason had a back injury two years ago.
I knew about the back injury.
I had not known about what came after.
I should have asked.
I did not ask.
I sat on my bed and I did not sleep and I thought about what to do.
In the morning, I called my mother’s cardiologist first.
I explained that there had been a discrepancy in her medication count.
I explained that I suspected diversion.
I explained that I needed a new dispensing arrangement.
She said: I’m very sorry.
She said: let’s set up a lockbox.
She said: I can also send a home health aide for the next several weeks so the medications are administered by a professional.
I said: yes.
I said: both of those things.
I said: today if possible.
She said: today.
I called the pharmacy.
I explained the situation without naming anyone.
I asked about reporting.
They explained the process.
I said: I need to think about this.
They said: we understand.
They said: here are the numbers when you’re ready.
Then I called Jason.
He answered on the second ring.
He said: hey.
His voice was the voice I had known for forty-one years.
I said: Jason.
He said: yeah.
I said: I counted Mom’s medication.
There was a pause.
Not a long pause.
The pause of someone calculating.
He said: what do you mean?
I said: I compared it to the dispensing record.
He said: Sarah.
I said: six tablets, Jason.
He said: I can explain.
He said it immediately.
Which told me that the explanation had been ready.
He said: I’ve been having a terrible week with my back.
He said: I ran out of my own medication.
He said: it was just a few days and I knew Mom had extra.
