Nic’s readmission to St. Helena Hospital

Nic’s readmission to St. Helena Hospital is a renewed attempt to place him in treatment after days without contact and a brief, unstable return to his former girlfriend’s home. His father makes rehabilitation a condition of coming home, then drives him to a program in the Napa Valley. The admission does not resolve Nic’s addiction; it shifts the immediate crisis into a hospital routine and draws his family into another round of care, cost, uncertainty, and watchfulness.

The Return to Treatment

After days without hearing from Nic, David Sheff receives a call from the house of one of Nic’s former girlfriends. Nic speaks quickly and appears to be lying when he says that he has stopped using on his own and has been sober for five days. David gives him a stark choice: another attempt at rehabilitation or the streets. The firmness of the ultimatum conceals his wish to go to Nic and embrace him, making the exchange a collision between the father’s concern and the boundary he believes he must enforce.

Nic argues that rehabilitation is unnecessary and that he can stop by himself. David refuses to treat that assurance as a reason to abandon the plan. Nic eventually agrees, but without enthusiasm. When David drives to the house, he waits outside in his idling car on a cul-de-sac. Nic gets in looking depleted; David notices that he has been assaulted and robbed. Nic dismisses what happened as unimportant, while David reacts with alarm. Nic has brought neither a suitcase nor a backpack, so the decision to go to treatment begins without even the ordinary belongings of a planned stay.

The next day makes clear how unsettled that decision remains. Nic’s mood moves between agitation and near-comatose withdrawal, and his plans keep changing: he imagines making music in the Metro with friends and a trained monkey, backpacking to Mexico, joining the Peace Corps, or farming in South America. Each fantasy gives way to the prospect of returning to rehabilitation, only for Nic to reject treatment again and insist that he is sober. At other moments he acknowledges that he needs drugs and cannot manage without them. The shifts do not amount to a stable choice; they show the distance between his promises of self-sufficiency and his recognition of dependence.

Admission at St. Helena

David is unsure whether another four weeks of rehabilitation will help, but decides that another attempt is worth making. He succeeds in getting Nic admitted to St. Helena Hospital, in the Napa Valley wine country. The choice carries a substantial practical burden: a twenty-eight-day program costs nearly twenty thousand dollars, while insurance coverage from Nic’s mother and David pays most of the cost. David reflects that many families exhaust savings, mortgage homes, or spend college and retirement funds while trying successive treatment programs. In this case, insurance is not incidental; it makes the renewed attempt financially possible.

The following morning, Nic, David, and Karen Barbour drive through the Napa Valley’s mustard-flowered fields and geometric vineyards toward the hospital. The landscape marks a sharp change of setting, but the admission itself is institutional and procedural. Inside, they follow signs to the substance-abuse program, take an elevator to the second floor, and sit near a busy nurses’ station filling out forms. The gray carpeting, fluorescent lights, corridors, nurses, and orderlies make St. Helena feel sterile, especially beside Ohlhoff Recovery House, where Nic had previously received care. A nurse explains that Nic must first be interviewed and physically examined before admission, extending the family’s wait while the hospital completes its intake.

During that wait, David and Karen go to the gift shop and buy Nic a few toiletries from its limited selection. When he is ready to leave for his room, they walk with him partway down the corridor. Nic holds David’s arm and seems exceptionally light to him. The family embraces awkwardly before separating. Nic thanks David and Karen, whom he addresses as KB, and the exchange includes an expression of love. These gestures do not erase the conflict that brought him there, but they give the admission a personal shape: treatment begins with a family’s practical assistance and a difficult goodbye, not simply with the completion of forms.

What the Program Offers

St. Helena’s program resembles the earlier treatment at Ohlhoff Recovery House but adds a broader set of medical, educational, and family components. Nic exercises through yoga and swimming in the hospital’s kidney-shaped pool, consults staff physicians and a psychiatrist, and attends lectures and films about the brain chemistry of addiction. Daily Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are part of the schedule. The program also offers an expanded family program that meets twice a week, making relatives’ participation a formal part of the treatment environment rather than an occasional visit.

The hospital’s structure provides a defined regimen after the preceding days of shifting plans and contradictory claims. It brings medical consultations, education, exercise, mutual-help meetings, and family sessions together within one program. That structure is a reason to try again, not evidence that recovery is assured. David remains unconvinced about rehabilitation’s prospects, allowing himself only a sliver of hope. At the same time, knowing where Nic is brings a temporary, fragile relief: the uncertainty of his whereabouts has been replaced, for now, by the boundaries and routines of the hospital.

Family Participation and Uncertainty

The admission does not end David’s fear once Nic is inside. At home, David sleeps poorly and dreams of Nic using drugs; in those nightmares he alternately rages, pleads, and weeps, while Nic appears indifferent. The dreams register the persistence of the crisis in the father’s life even when Nic is physically in treatment. The hospital may locate and supervise Nic, but it cannot immediately quiet David’s expectation that addiction will return.

David and Karen make repeated trips to the wine country for family weekends. Before their first session, a counselor tells them that a patient’s prognosis is considerably better when family members participate, adding that the staff worry most about patients who lack families. The comment gives the family’s presence a clear role within the treatment program, and it casts Nic as fortunate to have relatives who can attend. Yet participation is not presented as control over the outcome. The family can travel, take part in sessions, and support a structured admission; it cannot make Nic’s recovery certain. The readmission therefore closes on a provisional combination of care and apprehension: Nic is back in treatment, his family is involved, and hope remains deliberately small.