Ozzie opened his mouth, but then he heard:Don’t pick up that first drink.
He bit back that itch in his throat. “I can’t. Visiting hours will be over soon. Another time,” he said, and then put one foot in front of the other until he was nearly running out the door.
When he arrived at Mercy-Douglass Hospital, he went straight to the nursery. He stood at the big window looking at all the infants in hues of brown, resting in identical wicker bassinets. He spotted Maceo right away, swaddled in a blanket with a blue knit hat on his head.
“Which one is yours?”
Ozzie turned. It was Joe, the man he had met in the waiting room.
“Second row on the left.”
“Cute little fellow.” Joe pressed his hand against the glass. “That’s our baby girl next to him on the right.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks, man.” They stood in silence, and then Joe asked, “So, how did you do?”
Ozzie knew what Joe meant, and even though they had known each other only a day, he already felt like he could trust the man. “I didn’t pick up the first drink, like you said. Even though I couldn’t sleep. I sweated all night and vomited twice before work.”
“That’s your body trying to detox itself. It’ll get better. Remember the meeting I mentioned?”
Ozzie nodded.
“Why don’t you come with me tonight. It starts at eight, and it’s right here in the hospital. All we have to do is take the elevator down to the bottom floor.”
“I don’t think I need to do all of that.”
Joe turned to face him. “Do you want to live or die?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. To come with me tonight to the meeting is to live. To keep trying to do it by yourself is to die. What’s it gonna be?”
Ozzie looked back at Maceo, who had started to fuss, and remembered his promise not to let this second chance at fatherhood slip away. He thought about all the ways in which he had failed Rita in their marriage. He wanted to be better for them and show up for Maceo in all the ways he couldn’t for Katja.
“Okay.”
“What room is your wife in?”
Ozzie told him.
“I’ll meet you right in front at ten to eight.”
The meeting was held in a drafty room with no windows in the basement of the hospital. Ozzie could hear the pipes hiss and rattle, and he smelled coffee and cigarette smoke. There were folding chairs set up in a circle, and the room buzzed with boisterous voices and deep laughter. On a plastic card table sat an assortment of cookies, Dixie cups, sugar cubes, and a pot of coffee. Ozzie watched the men greet one another with such pleasantry that it felt like he had entered a family reunion. How were these men supposed to help him control his drinking?
“This here is Ozzie,” Joe introduced him around the room, and the men greeted Ozzie with the same enthusiasm.
Then someone rang a hand bell, and they all moved toward seats.
“Let’s have us a meeting,” said a husky man with gray hair at his temples. He introduced himself as Earl. “We have a new fella with us tonight. So why don’t we talk about what it was like for us in the beginning.”
One by one, the men in the room begin to share their stories.
“Every morning when I woke up, I asked God why the hell was I still here. My family didn’t want me around. I was a disgrace.”
“Doctor diagnosed me with liver disease, but even the threat of death didn’t stop me from picking up.”
“Alcohol was my best friend. I didn’t know how I would function without it. I mean, how do you go to a party—hell, watch the fight on a Saturday night—without a drink?”
