Drug Addiction Stories

In the very back of my closet hangs a wedding dress. I picked it out seven years ago when my boyfriend proposed to me. We had gone together all through high school and college and planned to be married one year after finding good jobs. We had a plan for our lives and nothing was going to stop it. 

Something did.

We graduated from high school and college with honors. David got a job right away at the accounting firm he had interned with and I was hired as a nurse at our local hospital. I started out in the emergency room.

We picked a wedding date that coincided with vacation time from our careers and planned the perfect wedding. I had found the dress of my dreams and it hung in my closet with a promise from David not to see it until the day I walked down the aisle to him.

One night I was getting ready to get off when a three-car pile up was called in with multiple injuries. When that happens during shift change it is mandatory for all available staff to stay on. Rumor was coming in that one of the drivers was drinking and had crossed the center line, hitting another car and calling a serious accident. As victims came in, we got them into triage and worked steadfastly.

There were four children in a minivan involved as well. Children always have the hearts of hospital staff but we have to work diligently and concentrate on helping them immediately so it does not always show. Miraculously, they all made it. We were told that the car between the drunk driver and the minivan had taken the brunt of the hit.

Another team was working on that driver. As I walked out of the room where the last of the children had been checked over thoroughly, I heard a doctor stating the time of death. I looked over and screamed. It was my David!

David had been driving home from dinner at his parents’ house when the drunk driver, a man who had stopped in at happy hour four hours earlier, took it upon himself to drink and drive. The only person killed in an accident that involved eight people, David, the drunk driver and the family of six in the minivan, was my fiance.

That was seven years ago. Instead of a wedding, we had a funeral. Sometimes the pain is so great that I think about just forgetting myself in a bottle of pills or whiskey but that seems almost like it would be a sign of disrespect to David’s memory. So each year, on Valentine’s, his birthday, the anniversary of his death and what would have been the anniversary of our wedding, I go to his grave. I tell him in my heart he is a hero because he took the impact and four children are alive today.

I don’t date and I get that dress out from time to time and try it on. I know David sees me in it from where he is. If I could have anything, it would be for David to be here. He isn’t so I can only ask this. If you are reading this, please, PLEASE, I am begging you. Do not drink and drive. It isn’t always just your life you ruin.