“Listen,” my father said, “now that your mother and I have split, it’s going to be really tough for me to continue to pay for Notre Dame.” He explained that there was a lot of financial stress on the family, especially with my older sister on her way to UConn for college and my little sister in need of braces. “Your mom and I have agreed that it’s best if we move you over to Foran next year.”
Foran was one of two nearby public schools. It was considered a rough school compared to the sheltered, privileged environment of Notre Dame, but in the general community, Foran’s reputation was simply that of a party school.
So, at fifteen years of age, I was abruptly pulled from my private Catholic high school in order to lessen the financial pressure on my parents during their divorce. Everything that Notre Dame stood for—the required necktie, the uniform, and most of all, the discipline—went out the window the day I made the switch to public school.
My life had changed again. From then on, everything was different.
It wasn’t long before I began to act out.
four
2000
U.S. opioid deaths: 8,407
“Hit me, I’m open!” I yelled as Jeff dribbled the ball at the top of the key.
He was a short fellow with reddish-brown hair, only about five-foot-four, but he was quick on his feet and aggressive as a hornet. He faked the pass to me and instead drove to the basket himself for an easy layup.
“Come on, man. You’re a fucking hog,” I said as he dribbled back to the top of the key to inbound the ball again.
We were both fifteen and had been friends since elementary school. We’d lost touch for a while when I’d gone to private school, but we were quick to reconnect once I transferred to Foran High.
Jeff was originally from White Plains, New York, but had moved to Connecticut after his parents’ divorce. His family struggles were something I could relate to, and this was one of our main bonds. We just got each other. Like many other kids, we knew what it was like to go through the splitting up of a family.
Jeff’s mom, Caddie, was like a second mom to me. She cooked for me and her son, drove us to basketball practice, and was always around to bail us out if we got into trouble. Caddie had remarried a man named Danny Foster, who was abusive. He frequently hit Jeff, and I’d seen him treat Caddie violently in my presence. I was too young to know what to do about the situation. I felt a lot of empathy for Jeff and Caddie, and the whole situation unnerved me. As much as I bonded with Jeff over our homelife problems, his situation was clearly much worse than mine. That would become even more apparent over time.
One of the things we shared was an insatiable appetite and undying love for basketball. We loved playing basketball on his driveway, watched every basketball game we could on TV, went to Knicks games, took trips to the Hall of Fame, and played together for years in the town leagues. We lived for the sport, as did many of our closest friends.
On this particular day, Jeff and I had joined a large group of buddies to play a quick pickup game of basketball at a friend’s house. The makeshift court was one we were used to playing on—a driveway with a portable hoop filled with sand.
It became a fairly aggressive game, and players were shoving and tripping. At the top of the court, I maneuvered to get open so Jeff could pass me the ball.
“Jeff, I’m open!” I shouted.
He snapped the ball to me, and I dribbled for a moment as I assessed my next move. I then took a quick step and drove hard toward the basket. As I leaped off the ground, one of the players guarding me stuck out his foot.
In a quick motion, my foot clipped under his leg. I smashed full force onto the blacktop. I lay motionless for a long moment, facedown, unable to move. My vision was blurred and my ears were ringing. Finally, I rolled slowly over onto my back. I couldn’t breathe. Intense pain radiated through my abdomen.
Jeff hovered over me. “Holy shit, dude, are you okay?” He offered a hand to help me up.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I muttered. At that age I would have rather died than show any kind of pain or weakness.
I slowly picked myself up off the ground and began to walk around. I felt winded and could barely breathe. The pain in my abdomen was getting worse, radiating throughout my body. I’d experienced the feeling of the wind being completely knocked out of me after a hard fall during my BMX days, but this was different. The pain wasn’t dissipating or lessening as it should.
I turned to Jeff and whispered with all my remaining strength, “I’m going inside to lie down for a bit. I’ll be back out.”
He nodded, not knowing how much pain I was in, and continued with the game.
Inside my friend’s house, it was quiet. No one was home. A soft April breeze blew in through the open window, gently rippling the curtains. A large grandfather clock ticked methodically in the living room.
I found my way to my buddy’s bedroom and lay down on his bed. Despite the excruciating pain, I was somehow able to drift into a nap. As I slipped away into my snooze, I was welcomed by an unusually profound feeling of peace and serenity.
I didn’t know how much time had passed. When I came to, my friends were standing at the end of the bed with concerned expressions on their faces.
“Hey, man, you don’t look so good,” one buddy said.
“Your face is fucking blue, bro, you need to go to the hospital,” Jeff said.
Something had to be seriously wrong. I called my father to pick me up. He arrived within minutes, and soon we were on our way to Milford Hospital.
I was immediately admitted to the emergency room, where I told the doctors I had fallen playing basketball. The doctors seemed puzzled by my symptoms and decided to run further tests. I was required to drink an entire gallon of dye-infused water and endure numerous CT scans before the doctors figured out what had happened.
During my powerful fall to the ground, something, possibly an elbow or the basketball itself, had penetrated beneath my ribcage and completely obliterated my spleen. The rupture had caused severe internal bleeding that was now filling my stomach. It was a serious emergency that needed to be acted on immediately.
What happened next still sneaks its way into my nightmares from time to time.
“Honey, we’re going to have to pump your stomach,” one of the nurses said. “Unfortunately, though, we won’t be able to put you to sleep first. We need to feed a tube into your nose and snake it down your throat to your stomach in order to remove the blood.”
I began to shake. “No. No. I can’t do this.”
The nurses tried to calm me down, to no avail. The doctor approached my bed with a long, clear plastic hose. A nurse wearing latex gloves rubbed a lubricant on the cylindrical tip of the hose.
By now my mother and my little sister had arrived. They huddled together in the corner of the room, looking on helplessly with tears in their eyes as the nurses forcibly restrained me and began the barbaric procedure. The medical staff forced the long tube up my nose, then around a tight turn in my throat—causing me to gurgle and whimper in pain—and down into my stomach. A suction machine spun on. Dark brown blood and bile slowly snaked up the tube, through my nose, and out into a giant collection tank. Every five minutes or so, the nurses would replace the tank with a fresh one and the process would start again.