Chapter 48
Nick
When I was twenty-four, my life changed forever.
I had already had a strange introduction to my twenties—coming out and having a daughter all in the same time period, becoming a father when I was only twenty-two, and a single father at that.
I will always be thankful for my parents’ support during that time.
Though they didn’t have much to give, they gave of their time and their love to make sure that I could support Abigail and continue my job.
Without them, I would never have been the father that Abigail deserved.
Unfortunately, I know that, in those early years, I was not the father she deserved.
On the surface, it seemed like I was. I was rich, already, at twenty-four.
I had a mind for finance, for numbers, for algorithms. Through some good connections in college, I’d gotten a nice job at a hedge fund in San Francisco.
It was a terrible place to work, full of unhealthy competition and completely lacking in morals, but I would make more money in a month there than I could in a year elsewhere.
My best friend at work was named Chaz.
We had been in the same intern class at the hedge fund, and were both offered jobs at the same time. He worked on a fund that primarily supported businesses in East Asia, while I worked on the main fund, and we constantly cheered each other on in our successes.
Chaz had dreams of opening his own hedge fund someday. He wanted to be a big name in tech or in finance.
He inspired me, and not often in good ways, to work harder, for longer hours, pushing myself to make the most money I could, often through doing things that I didn’t fully agree with ethically.
He wasn’t a bad person, necessarily. But he was greedy, and he was chaotic, and he was often blind to the corrupting power of money, something that my parents were never shy of warning me about.
They didn’t like Chaz, or really anyone I worked with, and they worried about what my job and lifestyle meant for Abbie.
I was never around in those days.
It was worse then than it is now, even though I am a firefighter. I worked longer hours and every day, even on weekends. I was never home. I was always at the office. I missed birthdays, field trips, many, many milestones.
Always, my excuse was that I was working. That I was making money, and that the money was for her. I was stressed out of my mind, and I was using and abusing things that I shouldn’t have been.
Chaz had a coke habit, which wasn’t uncommon where we worked. Many of my old colleagues abused prescription medications, and when that wasn’t enough, got the straight-up illegal stuff. It was a fast-paced world, and you had to be as fast as it.
Like many college students, I’d experimented with some drugs in college, but that had never really been my thing.
With Chaz’s influence, I started doing more. Mostly abusing Adderall and other stimulants to stay awake in the long days that we were working, saying that it kept me alert and present with our clients.
Really, it just numbed me, made me anxious, made me a worse version of myself.
Things took a dark turn when, one day, Chaz missed a meeting.
I went to his desk to look for him, and he wasn’t there. Someone was sent to the bathroom to see if he’d fallen asleep in there (it wouldn’t have been the first time), but he wasn’t there, either.
After checking with the office’s receptionists, we learned that he’d never gotten to work that day.
The fund managers, our bosses, chalked it up to him probably being hungover at home, sleeping off a long night. He’d get a slap on the wrist when he returned, but nothing more.
But I was worried. I knew Chaz, and I knew something was up. I felt this instinct in my gut that something terrible had happened.
I left work that day, drove to his apartment building, and let myself in.
He was already dead when I got there.
He had probably been dead for a while. The paramedics did everything they could, but they weren’t miracle workers. He’d had a heart attack, and it had killed him. He was only twenty-five.
I quit my job a week later and enrolled in the fire academy.
My parents didn’t understand the decision at first, but they were glad that I had left finance.
They knew that it wasn’t good for me. I knew it wasn’t good for me.
I had plenty of money saved and knew how to invest, so Abbie and I wouldn’t struggle financially, but I would have to be smart in the future.
I knew that the life I had been living for the last couple of years wasn’t sustainable. I would not, could not, work myself to death like Chaz had.
I owed it to my daughter to stay alive.
There were a dozen things I could’ve done instead of becoming a firefighter-paramedic, but I remembered that gut instinct I’d felt when Chaz didn’t come to work. I knew something was wrong. And I knew that that was an instinct I could trust, I could follow.
For the first part of my career, I’d been thinking only about myself. I was telling myself that I was making the money for Abigail, but that wasn’t true.
It was for me.
I was being selfish.
I wanted to right some of the wrongs I had perpetuated, wanted to be selfless where I had been selfish. I don’t know if I believe in the concept of callings, but if they exist, my calling is to save lives.