Chương 11: The Intervention (01/20/1980)

DATE: Sunday, January 20, 1980 LOCATION: Carlsbad, California | The Tillman Residence LOCAL TIME: 08: 30 PM PST The new house was quiet, save for the one-sided conversation echoing from the kitchen. My father, Doug, stood by the sliding glass door, staring out at the black water of the lagoon. He wasn't pacing. He wasn't shouting. He leaned against the glass, slumped in a posture of total surrender. He held the phone loosely, listening to Phil Jauregui hype him up on the other end.

"Really?" Doug said softly, his voice thick with a gullible, passive wonder.

"Eight hundred an ounce? You really think it'll go to two thousand?" He took a sip of his scotch, nodding to the empty room.

"Yeah... yeah, that sounds incredible, Phil. Whatever you think is best. We just... we ride the wave, right? Just let it ride." I sat in the hallway shadows. He was pathetic. He wasn't a wolf of Wall Street; he was a sheep waiting to be sheared. He was listening to a predator and nodding along, betting my entire future on the idea that gravity didn't apply to him. It was this passivity that I hated most. The rage rose up in me—cold, ancient, and absolute. It wasn't the temper tantrum of a four-year-old.

It was the calculated fury of a man who had already lived a lifetime with this version of Doug Tillman. In the original timeline, Doug was a ghost. He was physically present but emotionally absent, always looking past me, always stressed about the next deal, the next bill, the next mistress. He had ignored me for eighteen years. Watching him now, nodding at Phil, I saw the same weakness. He was about to blow the win because he was too afraid to cash out. I stood up. I walked to the guest bathroom.

I climbed onto the toilet, then hoisted myself onto the sink. I opened the mirrored cabinet. It was a graveyard of toiletries—Brylcreem, Old Spice, half-empty tubes of toothpaste. I pushed them aside until my small fingers reached the back. There it was. The amber glass bottle. Phenobarbital elixir. Prescribed: Oct 7, 1975. Patient: Chad Tillman. It was the bottle Dr. Evans had prescribed the night I arrived, the night of the "seizure."

My parents had filled the prescription in a panic, but they had never opened it. The "fever" had broken before they got home, and the bottle had sat here for four years, gathering dust. I picked it up. The bottle felt heavy in my small hands. I examined the cap. The plastic safety collar was still intact. The seal was unbroken. It wasn't a leftover. It was a loaded gun. I hesitated, looking at the label. Concentration: 20mg/5ml. If I poured too much, I wouldn't hypnotize him; I would kill him.

I needed the Goldilocks zone. Enough to strip away the ego, but not enough to shut down the brainstem. Target dose: three teaspoons. I gripped the cap. My four-year-old hands lacked the necessary grip strength. I placed the bottle flat on the counter, locked both hands over the lid, pressed down with my entire upper body weight, and twisted hard. SNAP. The plastic collar gave way with a sharp crack. I unscrewed the lid. The smell was medicinal, syrupy, and bitter.

I walked back to the kitchen, clutching a plastic medicine spoon I'd swiped from the drawer. Doug was still staring at the water, mesmerized by Phil's voice.

"Sure, leverage the equity. If you say so, Phil. We'll be set for life." I climbed onto the counter behind him. His refill glass sat there, the ice melting. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. I didn't pour a stream. I poured exactly three teaspoons into the glass, steadying my shaking, uncoordinated hand against the granite. I tipped the spoon. The syrup swirled into the amber scotch, disappearing instantly. I capped the bottle and slid back into the shadows.

"Okay, talk tomorrow," Doug said dreamily. He hung up the phone. He didn't turn around. He just kept staring at the dark lagoon, lost in a vision of a life he hadn't earned. He reached back, grabbed the glass, and downed the mixture.

"Two thousand," he whispered to the window. I waited. Barbiturates are not instant. They are insidious. They creep into the nervous system like a fog, shutting down the lights one by one. Ten minutes passed. Doug loosened his tie. Twenty minutes. He leaned harder against the glass. Thirty minutes. The wave broke. He swayed. His knees buckled. He tried to grab the doorframe, missed, and slid down the glass until he hit the floor.

"Tired..." he mumbled, the words slurring into mush.

"So... ti... red." His head lolled forward. The room was spinning for him now. I walked over. I stood over him. I looked down at the man who was supposed to be my protector. I sat on the floor in front of him. I grabbed his chin—forcing his heavy head up so he had to look at me. His eyes were rolling, unable to track. He could hear me, but his brain couldn't record the visual data. He was dreaming with his eyes open. I didn't whisper. I hissed.

"Daddy." He groaned.

"You are weak," I said, my voice dropping to a register that shouldn't have been possible for a child.

"I saw you die, Doug. I saw how it ends." He tried to pull away, but the drugs pinned him to the linoleum.

"You didn't die rich," I whispered, the venom dripping from every word.

"You died in a tract house that smelled of dust and failure. You let them eat you alive."

"No..." he whimpered. Tears leaked from his eyes. He wasn't seeing his son; he was seeing a shadow. A judgment.

"You are a doormat," I stated.

"Phil uses you. The women use you. Even I use you." I squeezed his jaw.

"You are a victim waiting to happen. If you stay at Coastal, I will destroy you."

"Help..." he gasped.

"You can fix it," I said, softening my voice just enough to let the command slip through.

"Fix..."

"You go back to the school," I commanded, overwriting his operating system.

"You finish your credential. You become a teacher." I burned the image into his mind. I planted the seed deep in the fertile soil of his chemically altered subconscious.

"High school English," I whispered.

"And football."

"Football..."

"Coach Tillman," I said.

"That is the only place they respect you. Friday nights. The whistle. The clipboard. Real respect. Not this fake friend bullshit."

"I want to be Coach," he sobbed, the drug stripping away his ego, leaving only the terrified child inside.

"Then sell the gold," I ordered.

"Quit Coastal. Register for classes. Do it tomorrow." I let go of his face. His head slumped back against the glass.

"Coach," he whispered, drifting into the black. I stood up. I looked at him one last time. In the original timeline, I resented him for his neglect. Tonight, I realized that his neglect was just fear. He was a weak man terrified of a strong world. My actions tonight made me feel that my father's past treatment of me was completely justified. He must have sensed, even then, that I was a monster. He must have known there was something wrong inside me. I walked back to the bathroom.

I dumped the remainder of the elixir down the toilet and flushed it. I took the empty glass bottle and buried it at the bottom of the kitchen trash, beneath the coffee grounds. I went to bed. LOCAL TIME: 07: 15 AM Monday, January 21, 1980 The scream woke the house. I walked into the kitchen. Doug stood in the middle of the room. He looked shattered. He looked like a man who had woken up from a nightmare where he had seen his own autopsy. He smelled of stale scotch and cold sweat.

"Doug?" Sue ran in, her robe flying.

"What happened?" He grabbed her. He held her so tight she gasped.

"I'm done, Sue," he choked out, shaking violently.

"I'm done with it. All of it."

"Done with what?"

"Coastal," he said.

"The gold. Phil. It's... it's a slaughterhouse. I had a dream, Sue. A nightmare. I was... I was being judged." He grabbed the phone. His fingers fumbled with the dial, but he punched Phil's number.

"Sell it," Doug barked into the receiver.

"I don't care what you said last night. Sell it all. Cash me out." He listened for a second, his face hardening into a mask of survival.

"And I quit, Phil. I'm out." He slammed the heavy rotary receiver down. He turned to Sue. He looked terrified, but beneath the fear, there was a desperate clarity.

"I'm going to San Diego State today," he said, his voice trembling.

"I'm going to re-enroll." Sue blinked.

"State? For what?"

"To teach," Doug said.

"I want to teach high school English. And I want to coach."

"Coach?"

"Football," he said, the word sounding like a prayer.

"I want to be a football coach. I think... I think that's where I'm safe." He looked up. He saw me standing in the doorway. He froze. He didn't remember the conversation. He didn't remember the words I had spoken or the drugs I had poured. The details were gone, wiped away by the amnesiac effects of the barbiturate. But the feeling remained. His lizard brain remembered the eyes. It remembered the primal sense of being judged by something ancient and dangerous.

He took a step back, instinctively putting the kitchen table between us. He looked at me with pure, unadulterated fear, the way a man looks at a dark corner of a room where he thinks he saw a ghost.

"I'm going to be Coach," he whispered, looking right at me, as if pleading for permission.

"I'm going to be safe." I stared at him. I didn't smile. I didn't offer forgiveness.

"Good," I said. I turned and walked to the cupboard for my Cheerios. He grabbed his keys and ran out the door. He was going to be a teacher. He was going to be a coach. He was going to be safe, and he would finally do what truly brought him joy. But the cost was a return to the cold, distant relationship I had known in the other world. I feared that after tonight, he was never going to look at me the same way again.