“A Shot at 4am”
Where it all started . . .
Have you ever been startled awake, sat up in bed struggling to remember the noise you just heard? If you’re the parent of an addict that lives in your home, the answer is probably yes. I know I did. I got to the point where my sleep started to feel like a place somewhere between staring at my work computer around 3pm after eating that donut and driving home in a blizzard. Exhausted, but too on edge to enjoy the feeling of finally being in bed. Every noise was like an alarm bell signaling my heart rate to speed up. Man I don’t miss those days.
On June 28th, 2016 at approximately 4:00am such a sound jarred me awake. The next few sentences felt like an eternity but happened within just a few seconds. I sat up, heart pounding, trying to make sense out of the loud bang floating around in my mind. Did I hear that?
*A bang on my door*
I jumped and grabbed my chest, my heart beating wildly now.
“Mom!” *Another bang on my door* “Mom!!”
Dylan’s shrill voice, filled with a guttural desperation I’ve never heard. The sound of pure fear. I jumped across the bed, realizing my husband must’ve fallen asleep on the couch downstairs and flung open the door. Dylan was crouched down inside his bedroom door, a black shirt seemingly balled in his hands at his chest, screaming up at me.
“Aahhhh God Mom! Aaaahhh God!”
I looked around, expecting to see a gaping hole in his wall where he had violently punched, breaking his hand. My husband came bounding up the stairs, eyes barely open and yelled, “What?!” I half shrugged and half shook my head as Dylan pointed his eyes to my bedroom door behind me and continued to howl. When I turned, I saw a bloody hand print smeared across the white wooden door. My head snapped back to his window, my eyes squinting to see if the glass was broken.
“No mom, Noooo! Looook!”
My eyes followed Dylan’s gaze to the floor. In front of him lay a black hand gun. I looked at it, trying to process if it were real. My first thought was that it was an air soft gun, so popular with the teen boys around this time. I was always getting those stupid plastic orange BB’s stuck in my vacuum. I looked at my husband and down again.
“Is that ours?!”
Dylan nodded and sobbed as he rocked back and forth on the floor in front of me, holding that shirt to his chest.
“You shot yourself?”
He nodded again.
I’m not sure what came over me in that moment but I’ve never experienced it before. My voice became gentle and soothing. My vision became sharper, my words deliberate. I helped Dylan off the floor, down the stairs and into the back of my car with a blanket. I could tell from his sounds he was in severe pain, but I also knew he was the most scared I’ve ever seen him in my life. His face was turning gray and I could see his heart beat from the side of his neck. He was going into shock, I could see it happening and that is something I will never forget. I managed to run back inside, throw pants on, grabbed my purse and flew to the hospital.
I was able to get Dylan into the Emergency Department waiting room and into a wheelchair before his legs gave out. Once he was in the room with medical professionals who were assuring me he would be okay, the mom-mode-type-peace I had just experienced began to dissipate. The nurses were asking me questions, along with a State Trooper (after all, this WAS a gunshot wound) and I’m not sure what I said.
I remember, once Dylan was stable, out of pain and talking to the police officer, one of the nurses was telling me he would need to be transferred to a hospital that was better equipped to salvage his hand. I was standing in the corner of his ER room, gathering my purse for the transfer. I looked up at her and couldn’t speak. Tears started streaming from my eyes and I turned from her, desperately grabbing tissues and forcing a deep breath. You can’t lose your shit now *deep breath* Dylan doesn’t need to see you upset. *deep breath* The nurse put her hand on my back and said “it’s going to be okay.” Amazing how us gals are connected in that way.
The Damage
He had shattered both the middle finger and ring finger bones and demolished the ring finger knuckle. That wasn’t savable, although steel works wonders putting things together again. He will never have a 3rd knuckle and be able to make a fist. He has a metal plate laying over the top of the width of his hand holding tendon and bone together. He was lucky. The bullets in the gun were for target practice. My husband and I hadn’t re-loaded the actual clip after shooting a couple weeks earlier.
Guns in the Home
Just for reference on how naive we were before this incident in regards to guns in the home … I had never told Dylan we bought a hand gun. I figured if he didn’t know to look for it, he wouldn’t. It was hidden well, wrapped in clothes and in a drawer under my bed. Not only had he known it was there for some time, but he was able to get it, literally an inch from my “light” sleeping body that night. He later told us he had snuck in to get the gun around 2:30am and had been in his room wanting to kill himself for an hour and a half before the gun went off and through his hand. My husband had assessed the situation more closely and when he came to the hospital informed me that the bullet went through Dylan’s hand, through his bedroom wall, into our bedroom and over my sleeping body that night. It had struck the air conditioner in our window and fell to the floor. We found it. I kept it.
You Can’t Change the Past
This night started the ball rolling in diagnosing what was wrong with my son. He had a short mandatory psych-hold stay, came home on suicide watch for weeks, (my job allowed me to work from home during this time and also filled out FMLA paperwork for all the work I would miss). Dylan needed to see a psychiatrist every week, along with weekly sessions with my husband and I. He would also need an alternative to high school as he had shot himself and his high school was not going to allow him back. I honestly don’t blame them. With the recent school shootings, his emotional instability, and honestly, at this time, I couldn’t be sure my son wouldn’t hurt someone else. I just couldn’t.
It was during this “time at home” with him that I really noticed his mental health. Agitated, angry, constantly wanting money. I noticed any medication in the house disappearing. Benadryl, cold medicine, Nyquil. My husband saw that his gas cans in the basement were being tampered with as well. Is my son doing anything he can to get high?
I began living in constant fear. I put everything he could easily abuse in my purse and started locking it in the bedroom with me at night. Each day he would sleep late (because he was up all night, rummaging through the house). I would sit downstairs, working, on high alert, waiting for any sign that he was waking up above me. ANY noise at all and my heart would begin pounding, not knowing what version of my son would come bounding down the stairs that day. I started living for early mornings, going to bed early, locking myself in my room and getting up at 4-5am so I could have a longer stretch of peace and quiet while he slept. He wasn’t okay, I knew that. But what could I do?
I felt trapped. Trapped in a home with a stranger I was expected to love but hated to see each day. I tip-toed around him, gave him money almost daily because that would keep him from becoming a monster, that quite frankly, I was afraid of, for at least a few hours a day, so I could keep my job. I was barely holding on, depressed, eating my anxiety into sickness, watching mind-numbing television to distract me from my real life. During this time, I let my son down. I knew it was happening but I didn’t know what to do to stop it. Fear drove my every move.
What they don’t tell you is, this situation is out of your control and over your head almost the minute it starts. You cannot police addiction away. No love, support or punishment is strong enough to keep it at bay. A lot of us give in to it, at least at first, because we love our children and don’t know what to do. They become abusive strangers in our own homes, and we become their co-dependent enablers, making them sicker without even understanding those words.
That’s what we do . . . learn to survive, feeling like helpless failures as each day brings more crazy, more “wrong” – stuck as spectators in our own lives. If this is your reality, I understand you. This means your child is now in control of YOU – and I’ve been there.
Mama in Pain 