Joey Driscol knew it. Things had gone from bad to worse. He had woken with a desperate throbbing in his head and a ringing noise like an electric drill in his left ear. Worse yet, he was in a hospital bed, the heavy white linen sheets strapped across his chest telling him he was going nowhere in a hurry.
All he remembered of the night before was Macca’s warning about the grog which stabbed at him with the guilt of it. Jaysus, he was bad for the drink. Fluthered, he was. A fine state for a grown man and father to be in, was it not? When he thought about Marti, miles away in Ireland, he felt the guilt stabbing again. He could see his mother shaking her head at him, saying, “Hell mend ye, haven’t ye only your own self to blame.”
Hadn’t he entirely. It was his own stupid fault. He had let th
