Las Vegas Strip, NV

February 6, 2013

My oldest son Jeremy was a good kid.

I gave him all the values I thought he needed, though I knew he didn’t always listen.

But I knew I’d drive a wedge between us if I got too upset with what he was doing and who he was doing it with.

One day on the Strip, some guy beats up my son’s friend.

So Jeremy and his buddy chase the attacker into a parking garage with no security cameras and the guy shoots Jeremy’s friend in the shoulder.

He unleashes the remaining 12 bullets from his 9mm from 10 feet into my son’s 17-year-old body.

*****
My brother hammers on the door and jolts me out of an exhausted sleep.

“Jeremy’s been shot. We gotta go,” he says.

The next thing I know he’s driving us down the Strip past an area cordoned off with yellow caution tape…

The place where Jeremy was shot.  

I rush into the ICU at the University Medical Center.

They pull out bullets from Jeremy’s torso and drop them into a metal can.

Ping. Ping.

The CT scan showed the 3 bullets that were too dangerous to remove…

2 in his gut and 1 in his lung.

His body had suffered so much trauma the doctors put him in an induced coma.
*****

Jeremy was under for 75 days.

I sat by his bedside for as long as the nurses would let me.

When they kicked me out, I’d sit in the lobby and work on my laptop or stay with a buddy who lived nearby.

People brought me so much food that I packed on over 100 lbs.

The days were a mixture of hope and despair.

One day my Mom and I videoed Jeremy twitching his toe.

Another day the doctor suggested removing his damaged lung.

“The Lord gave him two. I’m pretty sure he needs them both,” I reply, not sure if I’m doing the right thing.

“I understand, Mr. Miller. But he suffered so much trauma that we don’t know if he’ll pull through this,” he replies.

I had always believed that if I couldn’t solve a problem myself, then it wouldn’t get solved at all.

And now the weight of all the unsolved problems starts to crush me.

My two youngest kids aren’t in my life.

My wife got a court order to raise the child support I must pay.

The business I started instead of taking a high-paying chef job is failing.

My health is in the gutter.

My son is dying in a hospital bed, and I can’t save him.

I’ve no idea how I’m going to pay for the vast medical bills.  

I'm a complete failure as a father…

As a businessman…

As a man.

*****

I grew up without a father, so I had to create my own rules for being a man by myself.

My internal decision-maker didn’t always get it right, but it was mine.

My biggest rule was that my decisions wouldn’t hurt anybody.

But my whole internal system had just imploded.

So I plan on going to a buddy’s house to off myself with one of his guns.

I’m so numb to the world that I don't think about the burden that would have laid on my friend.

I’m staring out the window, resigned to my fate, when my phone rings.

“Hey man, what you doing?” asks Brian, another buddy of mine.

“Not much, got a couple of things to do later, you know?” I manage to say.

“You sound different,” he says. “You alright?”

I think of just hanging up, but I find myself saying:

“I don't see this thing for my son working out. I just don't know if I can make it through it. But like I say, I gotta go do a couple of things now, so…”

There’s a brief pause on the line, then he pipes up:

“Nah, man. Whatever it is that you were planning on doing, we’re not doing that. I’m gonna scoop you up and we're gonna do something else.”

*****
Brian drives us to get some sushi.

I’m looking out the window and thinking to myself:

“Somebody else does give a fuck about you. You’re only a failure if you give up.”

I could have just put off doing the deed till the next day.

But Brian’s gesture switched something inside of me.

Here I was going to eat a nice meal on a warm day with a good friend, and Jeremy’s hooked up to machines clinging to the one life he had.

As we pulled up at the restaurant, I thought:
“You’ve got to finish the fight for your boy. His life depends upon it.”