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them, with all his (deluded) strength. Clearly this matter was beyond him at this time. The thing to do was admit it. He felt lurched by his guardian angel into business. With his head on fire he said goodnight abruptly, patting Jeree’s shoulder, and went out down the corridor.
    â€˜I doubt’ (he wrote hurriedly) ‘if this will be an acceptable First Step; and I don’t care. I doubt if any man can exactly “take” the 1st Step; maybe some can, but I know I tried hard and failed. Last Spring I wrote one which Gus Larson—a severe judge—recently called one of the best he had ever seen (it was a comprehensive account of twenty-three years of alcoholic chaos, lost wives, public disgrace, a night in jail and a lost job, injuries and hospitalizations, a blacked-out call to a girl student threatening to kill her, involuntary defecation in a public building, DT’s once, convulsion once, etc., and it was completely sincere); and a month later I had a slip, four or five more over two months, two months’ sobriety, six days drinking, and here I am again—in spite of dead seriousness, never missing either an AA meeting or Dr Rome’s Encounter-Group, always confessing all, and every sort of other help, including
daily prayer and the 24-Hour Book.’ He struck out the last phrase, as being not quite true. So screw that First Step.
    â€˜This is only a short true account of my present thinking on the subject.
    â€˜It seems that the memory of experience will not keep me sober; and determination will not; and reliance on God, and all the other helps available will not. But what else is there? So my case seems hopeless. But I refuse to submit to the view that it is, because I do not wish to die insane and in fact I even desire the remainder of my life to be very different from the last twenty years.
    â€˜On Riverside’
    But somehow there he lost heart and broke off, took a new sheet and scribbled at the bottom: ‘As you comb your hair in the morning, say to the mirror, “Severance, you are going to have to make out today, as usual, with one arm. You are lucky to have it. God is interested in you, and conscious of your struggle and your services. Good luck.” ’
    His elation had faded, and he couldn’t understand it, because he seemed to have reached terra firma at last. Hardly happy ground, admittedly, but real. His week of failures hadn’t been wasted after all. He was making progress. Mike had said to him last night, ‘You’re too ambitious, Doctor. I figure if you pick up just one thing a day, really get it, say you’re in treatment the average four to five weeks, that’s thirty-odd things: you’re in business.’ He expected to shock Gus etc. but he was doing his duty. Okay. Free now to concentrate, amid the gruelling ward routine, on his Contract with Line—nothing had happened there —and on the new (old) problem increasingly worrying him and threatening his treatment.
    Going down at midnight for an Eskimo Pie, only that pig Herb had cleaned them out, he learned that Eddie had had a seizure. ‘In and out of bed ten times he was,’ Charley grumped amiably, ‘staggering over to the window, as if
there was anything to see. Get him back down in, up again. Arita looked in presently with the news that he had had another seizure and been taken across to Intensive Care, ‘God bless the sinner.’
    Severance slept like the dead for a change and only Buck and Delores were still eating when he drifted down for breakfast—ad lib on Sunday, eight to ten. ‘Do I look as if I self-destructed at 3:18 a.m.?’ he asked them gloomily. ‘Eddie died,’ said Buck, ‘about then.’
    â€˜So he made it,’ said Severance.
    â€˜God damn it,’ angrily, ‘I said the nurse said he didn’t make it.’
    â€˜Exactly. What we’re all up to, aren’t we? Suicide.’
    Then the