First thing the next morning I drug myself from the bed and downed two beers. I refused to eat. I was too angry to eat. The strands of the cloth I called life were being pulled apart, one by one. It wouldn't be long until the last string was taken and I fell into the endless pit I was hovering over. After intoxicating myself I announced that I was going to take a bath.

10 MINUTES LATER

I thought of the water, warm and pleasant. As good a place as any. A painful way to go. But I deserved the pain it would bring to me. I could slip down and breathe just as I usually did. Except my lungs would find not oxygen, but bath water, to fill them. Water contaminated with my sweat and the dirt I had collected from throughout the day. My brain would automatically panic and force my lungs to search for the precious oxygen by taking in another disappointing breath. And finding no air there, it would force the pain of breathing on me again and again, until my lungs filled and my brain collapsed from the abrupt lack of the needed element.

At least I would be clean for the funeral.

I said a silent goodbye to the world and got into the bath tub. I laid back into the water and took a couple deep breaths to prepare myself. Then I pulled myself under the water. Just as I went under I saw the door open. My mission was compromised. I didn't mean to, but I gasped and shot up out of the water. I tried to breath, but I couldn't I couldn't even cough. My mind raced. I looked out at who had opened the door.

There in the doorway smiling at me was little Ami. She thought I was playing a game. Ami clapped her hands and laughed. I became lightheaded, I was drowning. I couldn't drown in front of my daughter. But how could I undo what was already done? Then I remembered a CPR class I'd taken in school once. I fumbled for the side of the bath tub. I tried to make my body limp and straitened my arms enough to create adequate force. My chest convulsed trying to take in the air it knew was just above the water. I pulled my arms from under myself. My trunk slammed into the siding. Pain shot through me. I tried to cough. Nothing. I tried to pull myself up again. My sight was failing. I had to hurry. I pushed myself up as best I could. But I was disoriented and I kept forgetting what my goal was. I slipped on the wet siding, I hit it with my jaw instead. I was quickly up again. I tried once more. This time when the pain came a stream of bloody water spouted out of my gagging mouth. There was still more in me I knew. I tried to cough, I was successful. I tried to speak. I failed. I tried to cough as loud as I could. I prayed that Sam would hear me. I tried to breath. I still failed. I was almost gone. I needed to get Sam's attention.

I grabbed the scrub brush with the wooden handle from the wall and hammered on the door, weakly. All the while coughing and convulsing violently. Ami-- I noticed-- was gone. She must have been frightened when I started harming myself to expel the liquid from my lungs.

"What on earth are you doing!?" Sam yelled as she entered the bathroom. I became too weak to hold up my extremity. I dropped the scrub brush as Sam squealed in terror and ran to my side. I looked at her and my world turned to darkness. I vaguely remember hitting the water again. Still coughing. And I remember my chest lurching. And then I remember feeling nothing.

According to Samantha I blacked out and fell back into the water before she could catch me. When I coughed I breathed in more water. She pulled me from the tub and performed CPR as best she could. She wasn't strong enough though. She reportedly bolted from the bathroom and to the hall phone. She dialed 911 and gave them the needed information. She laid the phone down and drug me out of the bathroom to the hall where the phone was. She knew it was dangerous to move me. But she couldn't leave me in there and stay on the line like the EMTs wanted her too. She tried her absolute best to push all the water from my lungs. But my organs refused to let it out.

She told me that Ami tried to help by mimicking her. But she got into Sam's way.

"I yelled at her to move, and she did. She sat beside your head and played with your hair. I think she told you that I was going to save you." Samantha told me later.

The first responders arrived in minutes and rushed my wet, naked body onto the gurney and into the ambulance. Sam had grabbed a pair of shorts for me on her way out. The EMTs hurried to put them on me as they administered adequate CPR. When we arrived at the hospital three blocks away, the doctors pumped my stomach of the water I had inhaled. Samantha had waited with Ami in the hospital lobby for hours as they tried to extract the water and return my breathing and pulse to normal.

She told me she called all of the boys and my family from the emergency room phone. Peter and Davy had arrived together and Mike came only a few minutes after them. He had been picking Christian up from Phyllis for the week. Christian was with him now. My sister, Coco, had been the first to arrive though. She drove with my mother. The whole group sat in tense anticipation. Davy paced the floors. Nobody spoke because nobody wanted to ask any questions while the children were around.

After about an hour both of the children became unsettled. Ami wanted to run around the waiting room and Christian was bored out of his mind.

"Daddy, can we please leave?" He begged, ignorant of the seriousness the situation called for.

Mike sighed loudly. "We can't leave. We need to stay and support uncle Micky." Mike defended.

"It's alright." Sam said. "If you need to go I can call you when we know something."

"Are you sure?" He asked.

"Yeah, could you help me and take Ami out as well?" She asked.

"Of course!" Mike agreed. He stood and so did Chris. Mike wrangled up the energetic 15 month old and the posse left the hospital. Mike took them to the park to play.

When the children were out of the room everyone felt it was safe to ask my wife what had went down. She couldn't tell them much. Only that she heard me banging on the door and came to see what I was doing. Then she described to them the adventure of finding me, and her attempt to save me.

When they asked her how I was choking in the first place she was ignorant. Of course she couldn't have known for sure that I had meant to drown myself. She told them that she didn't know and explained that our tub was always quite slippery, and that it was very possible that I had slipped under on accident, and in surprise, gulped in the water.

"You don't think he did it on purpose do you?" Coco asked. She was the only person I had confided in about my suicidal thoughts. I know she believed it had been a failed attempt to take my own life.

Samantha shook her head. "No. Why would you say that?" She asked.

"Uh, no reason. I was just asking." Coco covered. She stood up. "I have to use the bathroom. Samantha will you please join me?" She asked.

The two women of my life made their way to the bathroom. Once inside Sam turned to my sister.

"What do you know?" She said in an almost threatening manner.

"Did he not tell you?" Coco asked.

"Tell me what?"

Coco sighed. "My brother is such an idiot! At Ami's birthday he confiding in me, everything! He told me that he's having a bad time with the band. He's scared you don't love him. He told me he was depressed. He told me he felt like no one wanted him, or needed him. Samantha, he told me he wished he was dead. He wants to kill himself..." She said with urgency.

"Wait! He wishes he was dead? Are you saying he tried to commit suicide? You think he tried to drown himself?" Sam said in shock. It was then that she realized I was not just seeking attention, but actually felt depressed.

Coco nodded slowly.

"He kept saying he was down, but I thought...I don't know why I didn't believe him..." Sam rambled on.

My sisters eyes had filled with tears and her cheeks were stained from them. Samantha was still processing the information most recently presented to her. She extended her arms to my sister. They hugged and Coco's chest rose and fell not unlike mine had a few hours earlier. In this moment Sam squeezed her eyes closed and a few tears fell from them.