On Pills and Needles

by Rick Van Warner

  When I protested via email to the athletic director, I received the kind of holier-than-thou response that sometimes gives Christians a bad reputation. Apparently winning was more important than acceptance, and the way the whole thing was handled seemed very counter to the biblical principles for which the school stood.

  For Tommy, even though competitive rowing later entered the picture for a period of time, this rejection coincided with the beginning of his slide. Coming home to an empty house every day after school while his parents shuttled his three siblings around to a myriad of sports and activities may have made him feel lonely and worthless. Sitting in hospital or recovery center waiting rooms years later, I’d often lament how it must have made him feel when his exuberant father and brothers came bounding into the room after an exciting sports contest, the father often wearing the coach uniform. Tommy had tried to find an activity where he could earn the type of praise two brothers and a sister received from a home run, touchdown, or winning performance but had often fallen short. Now he spent hours alone while the rest of his family were at the field, gym, or auditorium.

  Oblivious to this then, I later realized that the most important thing Mary or I could ever give any of our kids was our time and focused attention. Nothing was more important to each of them than this. No new electronic gadget, toy, or game came close to their need for time together to talk, laugh, or simply admire the clouds in silence, time when one or both of us were present and not glued to the television or the latest texts or emails on our phones. Focused attention that let each one of them know they were our number-one priority, providing the affirmation and love that is essential to building positive self-esteem. Tommy frequently was short-changed when it came to such time and attention.

  “Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses,” my aging mother, born and raised during the Great Depression, would often urge during our phone calls. “Enjoy your children; they’ll be gone before you know it.”

  Too caught up in the daily whirlwind of life, I mostly ignored her advice. Even when with my children physically, I was not always truly present emotionally. Caught up in my own thoughts and worries, often triggered by the incessant jolts delivered by my shock collar, aka cell phone, I often did not truly connect in a way that let them know I was listening intently or accepting what they had to say. Kids definitely know the difference.

  Tommy eventually got a job working at a local sandwich shop, which seemed to lift his spirits and provide a sense of belonging. As it turns out, an older teen who worked at the store was supplying many of his younger coworkers with marijuana. Since this person lived less than two blocks away, employees apparently walked to his apartment to get high during their fifteen-minute breaks. We later learned, among other deceits, that Tommy sometimes requested we drop him off at work hours before his shift. He would then head to the older teen’s place to smoke and hang out before clocking in. Sometimes he would pull the ruse after work, telling us to pick him up two hours after he’d clocked out. With no school activities or sports to occupy his time, our bored and depressed son began turning more and more toward drugs and the temporary escape they provided.

  My own feelings of rejection from my loner father led me to initially blame myself for not being a better father to my struggling son. The twelve-step gurus can talk about the three Cs all day long—I didn’t Cause it, I can’t Control it, and I can’t Cure it—but to me the first C was the hardest to swallow. Despite pleas from my other children, wife, friends, and therapist not to blame myself, the pain I felt over feeling that I’d failed Tommy reopened many of the childhood wounds I’d worked hard to overcome.

  Like most sons, I longed to spend time with my dad. Unfortunately, most of the very little time he offered when I was a child was spent clearing brush, delivering firewood, or other chores. Desperate for his acceptance, I tried to keep up with this quick-tempered, physically imposing man, often getting yelled at for not being fast enough, strong enough, or skilled enough for the tasks at hand. When it came to the fun father-son activities that I longed to share with him, such as fishing or sports, my father almost always preferred to be alone.

  Not by intention but due to the simple reality of having brought three sons into the world in less than four years and a daughter a few years later, there simply was not enough time to go around. Despite my best efforts, my gentle-natured, sensitive son who needed affirmation the most was short-changed on the most important thing every boy needs and desires: attention and acceptance from his father.

  As I was handing out the flyers with Tommy’s image, I wondered if we’d ever find him. Would the last time he would ever hear my voice be the night I yelled at him over the disguised Coke can? Around this time, Mary visited the police station in the city where we lived and entered Tommy into the missing persons database. I brought a flyer into a CVS store in the area of Orlando we’d been searching, and the manager recognized Tommy. He had seen him the previous night, reaffirming my hunch that he was still in the vicinity. Another flyer was left with an Orlando cop whom I flagged down and unsuccessfully tried to convince to search the abandoned naval building. I took other flyers to the local Greyhound and Amtrak stations, where I learned that any child fourteen or older could buy a ticket to anywhere, no questions asked.

  But my thoughts kept returning to the abandoned building, as if a homing beacon planted there kept summoning me back. Mary and my friends insisted that he was likely long gone from the area.

  “C’mon, Rick, give it up,” Mary said, not hiding her irritation. “You’re wasting time you could be spending on searching other areas.”

  “My gut tells me he’s still there,” I responded. “Leave me alone and stop telling me what to do!”

  I refused to waver from focusing on the dark, imposing building in the center of Orlando’s version of Smallville, which I had already entered with Rich two nights earlier and searched alone the previous morning. With my hope waning, the phone rang. It was my eldest son, Paul, who was in college two hours away.

  “Dad, I’m on my way; I’ll be there within a couple hours,” he said.

  “No, Paul, please don’t come; this is not your problem, and I don’t want you to get distracted by this!”

  “Dad, he’s my brother. I’m coming no matter what you say,” he insisted.

  By 9:00 p.m. our expanded search team congregated outside the building on a dark, rainy Sunday evening. It now included Paul, a friend he had enlisted, and my friends Kevin and Rich. We set out to do what the police had refused to. We moved through the building’s ground floor quietly, carefully stepping over broken glass and straining our ears for any sound or movement from the floors above that might break the eerie silence. Half-expecting someone to jump out at us every time we opened another door or turned a dark corner, we began searching the seemingly endless maze of rooms and potential hiding places. Only our flashlight beams broke the blackness within the windowless basement level.

  “Check this out,” called Rich from what seemed like a long way away.

  “Where are you?” I responded, irritated that his loud voice would warn anyone in the building, including Tommy, of our presence.

  As I wound my way through the corridors toward his voice and turned a corner, I could see Rich standing at the opposite corner of the building from where we’d entered. For the past three days and nights we’d focused on what we all had assumed was the only entry point to the structure, but here, as Rich discovered, was yet another gaping hole on the other side of the building. Since the ordeal began, I’d diligently kept watch from the opposite side. Positioning my car at a safe distance, binoculars at the ready, I’d been obsessing on the spot where Rich and I had first gained entry days earlier. From morning coffee through afternoon business calls, I’d been certain Tommy would eventually enter or emerge through that access point. Now we realized that the entire time he could have been entering and leaving from the other direction, outside of our sight zone.

  Feeling a little d
eflated for not more carefully searching the perimeter during daylight hours (tall grass obscured the newly-discovered opening the time we’d walked past it at night), we resumed our search. The crumbling concrete stairwells caused our group to pause and tensions rose, just as they had on previous searches.

  “How do we know there isn’t a homeless guy waiting to jump us?” Paul asked, gripping his baseball bat tighter.

  “Look, let’s just get this over with,” I said, taking the lead up the stairwell steps to the second floor, every ounce of energy consumed by fighting back my fear.

  On the second floor I shone my light into the open elevator shaft and warned the group about this potential hazard, which was repeated in several other places throughout the building. Kevin suggested that we separate into two groups, allowing us to more quickly scour the two wings and two sets of group bathrooms and small rooms on every floor.

  Systematically we searched the entire building this way, all the way up to the roof. Nothing. Discouraged and drained, we stepped back out into the light drizzle of the evening and headed our separate ways, barely exchanging a word.

  3

  Hunches and Heartaches

  The peaceful sounds of waves breaking onto the beach and children laughing were pierced by two words from my wife.

  “Where’s Tommy?!”

  I quickly dropped the book I’d been reading in the beach bag and scanned the water’s edge. My young sons Barry and Paul were busy digging channels through the sand and using plastic buckets to fill them with seawater. But five-year-old Tommy was nowhere to be found. I rushed toward the ocean instinctively, scanning the breakers and shallows, but there was no sign of his curly blonde hair and blue bathing suit with dolphins on it. By now Mary was out of her chair and in panic mode. What if he went under or got pulled out by a rip current? What if a stranger convinced him to go for an ice cream?

  Our oceanside vacation in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, was something we looked forward to every summer. It was one of the few places where we could relax without worrying about one of our three young energetic sons darting in front of a car, falling out of a tree, or tumbling down a flight of stairs. All we had to do was keep them in front of us and not let them go very far into the ocean without us. They would amuse themselves for hours in the surf, sand, and shallow tide pools, making this the perfect place for a young couple to relax with their kids.

  Only now one was missing, and we were frantic.

  “Have you seen your brother?” Mary asked Paul.

  “Yeah, he’s right up there.” Paul pointed, motioning toward the dunes many yards behind where our chairs were positioned.

  In our intense focus on the ocean and its dangers, we hadn’t even considered that Tommy could be behind us. But there he was, rolling in the sand just in front of the dunes.

  While two of our three young boys preferred the waves and wet sand at the ocean’s edge, Tommy loved to cover himself in the hot dry sand at the top of the beach. We found him rolling around contentedly at the hottest part of the day, body and hair completely covered, without a care in the world.

  “Hi, Mommy, hi, Daddy,” he said with a sweet smile.

  The silent terror that now ruled our every thought on the fourth day since Tommy disappeared felt far greater than that brief panic attack on the beach a decade earlier. Mary and I shifted our focus to the growing possibility that he’d left the area completely, and maybe even the state. We contacted the Amtrak police to try to determine if there were any records that he’d boarded a train. Mary decided to reach out to our local police department given the disinterest shown by police in the adjacent city where we’d been searching. She found a detective willing to help, and before long the girl we suspected had been hiding Tommy received a visit. The detective questioned her and searched the premises, including a small shack out back, but found no clues.

  Frustrated and not sure what to do next, Mary and I began blaming each other.

  “Maybe if you were around more this wouldn’t have happened,” she said, firing the first volley.

  “If you weren’t constantly stressing him out with your micromanaging, maybe he wouldn’t feel the need to escape,” I retaliated.

  “Oh, so it’s my fault?” she said, her voice rising.

  “You’re suggesting it’s my fault; stop blaming me!” I shouted.

  “You’re the one that threatened him!”

  “As usual, it’s never your fault, Mary. Just once I’d love for you to take responsibility for the stress you put on this family with your perfectionism and controlling nature.”

  “To hell with you, Mr. Perfect,” she said, storming off and slamming the door behind her.

  This was certainly not the first time we turned on each other under the pressure of our son’s behavior and struggles, and it was a pattern that would occur over and over for years. It’s a miracle that our marriage survived the finger-pointing and fighting that seemed to arise every time Tommy or another child found trouble or suffered a setback. Despite both of our training in social work and communications, all of this went out the window in an emotional tornado of turmoil when the safety of one of our kids was at stake. Rarely were we on the same page.

  Before my anger from our little dustup subsided, the telephone rang. It was a manager from the CVS pharmacy where I’d left a picture of Tommy a day earlier, just a few blocks from the building we’d been searching. Once again, the strong feeling that kept me returning to that area proved correct.

  “Your son is in my store right now,” he whispered. “Get down here right away!”

  “Please call the police and see if they can detain him,” I replied, immediately rushing to my car.

  By the time I arrived about twenty minutes later, it was already too late. My son, who was likely in the store to steal more over-the-counter drugs to abuse, had sensed the manager watching him. He bolted from the store and sped off on a red bicycle, the manager told me. The police had already come and gone, fairly disinterested in the situation as usual.

  Now days into the search and exhausted from lack of sleep, my adrenaline kicked in, and I became desperate. I simply had to find him and do so quickly. After a quick phone call, our friends Rich and Cherie showed up in separate cars to help us patrol the area and stake out the building. Paul loaded two bicycles into his borrowed vehicle and met me. Mary came in her own car.

  We devised a plan to take full advantage of our expanded resources. From the beginning, we knew Tommy had been spending time with his friend John who lived in the neighborhood. On the first night we’d rung the doorbell of his house and spoken with his father outside. Essentially the teen was a stranger to his own parents, who kept their bedroom door locked at all times to protect the valuables and prescription medicines inside. Their son was rarely seen on weekends, and even during the week, his father said, his presence was mostly noted by the pizza boxes or dirty dishes left behind from late-night or daytime visits. He had already been in and out of rehab programs and kicked out of school, and he was allowed to still have a key only because authorities had advised that they could face charges of abandonment should they kick him out prior to his eighteenth birthday.

  In essence, his battle-weary parents had thrown in the towel on their only child. At the time, I recall being very sad and somewhat disgusted at their attitude. Two years later, well into our own fight to survive the hell of having an addict child, I completely sympathized. However, there was no way we were going to quit.

  Luckily, the father had given me his cell number at our initial meeting, so I called him at work, reminded him who I was, and explained the situation.

  “We haven’t seen our son in three days,” he said.

  “Does he have a bike?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What color is it?”

  “Red,” he replied. “It’s in the garage.”

  I immediately assumed that this was the bike mentioned by the drugstore manager and that Tommy would be at his friend�
�s home. Less than an hour after the initial call alerting us that our son, identified by the flyer, had been at CVS, I found myself again on the doorstep of this teen. Tired, frustrated, and angry, I was ready to intimidate his friend into giving me some answers and break down the door if needed to find my son. Paul had a better and wiser plan.

  “Dad, you’re too worked up, let me talk to him,” Paul said. “He’s scared, but maybe he will talk to me.”

  Paul rang the bell and the teen let him inside. At the back, garage side of the connected townhouses, Rich staked out the alley in case Tommy was inside and tried to slip out that way.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Paul emerged from the house and walked slowly to the car.

  “Tommy’s not there,” Paul said. “The kid says he hasn’t seen him since last Friday, but I think he’s lying. He’s really sketchy.”

  “Did you search the entire place to make sure he wasn’t hiding?”

  “No, he wouldn’t let me,” Paul said. “Do you want me to go back in and force him?”

  “No,” I said. “The last thing we need is you getting in trouble over this.”

  We again called the police. Finally the responding officers seemed responsive to our plight and ready to help. They entered and searched the entire dwelling, except for the locked master bedroom and the garage that for some strange reason they skipped, but found no one. When they came out we begged them to go back one more time to at least determine the whereabouts of the red bike. Indeed, there was a red bike in the garage, as the father had said, but it was covered in cobwebs with two flat tires. Clearly this was not the one we were looking for. We’d jumped to a false conclusion. Once again, we found ourselves with no clues about where our son might be.

  With no other real options available, all of us in the area, and unwilling to give up, we kept pushing. Rich and I jumped onto bicycles to search the paved bike trails that wound around the lake and through sections of the woods where we’d heard homeless encampments were located. Taking different routes, we rode in search of red bikes, showing Tommy’s picture to those we came across.